Free Dreams’ Dark Kiss by Shirin Dubbin

to find a way to harness the feelings.
    He tried. It didn’t work. Too eager and unable to control the emotions a moment longer, Keoni stepped into the suburban home anyway.
    Extending his left arm behind him, he turned his fingers counterclockwise and willed the five-petal opening to knit back together, sealing the path behind him.
    Cacophonous battle sounds filled his ears. Past the opening from the dining room, adjacent to the room he occupied, he could see into the kitchen and through to the backyard. Archer, Jay and Alexi had harnessed their spirit energy—they sent heads rolling, broke spines and wreaked general havoc on eight ankou. Something must have gone wrong. His brahs had abandoned all efforts to observe the ankou. They probably had Jay to blame or maybe to thank. Either way their group MO remained intact.
    Archer had nailed it. The ankou were amassing as a pack. Keoni hadn’t seen more than two band together before, and then only when a couple had somehow been taken over at the same time.
    At least he needn’t have worried about startling the inhabitants of this room. His primary target, the female ankou holding the girl, still hadn’t stirred from her place by the fire. If the roar of his brahs stomping her pack mates to mud pies hadn’t fazed her, he doubted his arrival could.
    With an arm as leverage he vaulted the plaid couch and landed soundlessly on the other side. An inch or so more to the left and he’d have tripped over the victim lying half on, half off the sofa. The victim, a man, was close to turning full ankou. Pale khaki fur covered his flesh and his face had grown decidedly hyenalike.
    It needed to be dealt with now. A growl escaped Keoni’s lips unbidden. He didn’t have the time to stall or bemoan the fact Somnians were blunt instruments when it came to ankou, exterminators at best. Useless to dream of saving lives the way he once did. Killing banes weighed heavy on the good fun scale. They were nightmares that had grown grotesque. Keoni viewed taking banes out no differently from squelching a bad idea. Every ankou, however, had once been a person in pain—a living soul. And no, his pangs of conscience did not assuage the risk of letting the creatures live, never had.
    A quick kill or when this thing—no longer a man—awoke as an ankou, it would attack. Keoni wouldn’t allow its revival to hinder his mission. He needed to save the girl.
    Decision made, he kept his eyes on the still unmoving figure by the fireplace and split his attention between the little girl cradled to its breasts and the quickly transforming creature at his feet.
    He dropped to one knee, pressing it into the prone figure’s back. His fingers stole around the furry neck and jerked, snapping the spine in a concise strike. The bones broke in a two-part crack.
    Cold, yeah, but he’d learned to set the coldness of such things aside long ago. There was nothing left of the man. Even if there were, nothing could have been done for him. Years ago Keoni had hoped to find a way to save those taken over by ankou, dreamed of—even prayed for—a solution. None had come. Dream guardians didn’t possess the philanthropic ranking of howlers or pyschopomps or any of the others. Mercy lay in eradication.
    He’d keep telling himself that.
    Low to the ground, Keoni crept to a second ankou-possessed body. It rested in a slumped but upright position on the nearby love seat. This victim had been a teenaged boy, a younger version of the man whose neck Keoni had just broken. No doubt the peach fuzz on the boy’s chin had brought him pride before his possession. Now it competed with thick tufts of ankou fur.
    Lips set in a hard line, Keoni had to wonder at the justice. This straggly precursor to manhood was all the boy got? No. He and his brahs or the other dream-guardian squads should have caught the ankou pack while they were in bane form and confined to the Dreaming; they could’ve prevented this family from suffering these