The Nightmare Maker Page 9

  “But that doesn’t make any sense, Jules. If I pretend for a minute that I believe your story, then it’s obvious what you have to do.” My heart leapt, and I gripped the edge of my seat. “If you want Dana back, then you have to enter the oblivion.”

  My short-lived optimism crashed and burned like an EU Mars probe, and I slumped down into my seat. Nothing I’d ever cast into the dark void had ever returned.

  “But Toscan…I would umm…die?” I said, slurring slightly.

  “Oh yeah. I guess I hadn’t thought that through completely.” He stared down into his beer, the excitement of a few moments earlier dampened by his modest proposition that I should commit suicide. “But if you get your hands on any of the conspirators, then you could still get information out of them. They might know how you can enter the nothingness and return. Besides that, I can’t believe that the mysterious group you want me to look into isn’t connected to the Reddertons somehow. I’m sure that I can dig out some kind of leverage for you…” He trailed off with a note of renewed interest creeping into his voice.

  “I don’t have any better plan, and if you say that this is all connected, then I’ll believe you, buddy. But can you look into the—”

  A woman at the next table raised her voice to interrupt me. “This is ever so tedious to listen to,” she said. “I’ve only been here a few minutes, but I can’t take any more of this ‘mysterious group’ nonsense. Call us the Sons of Perseus.” The voice carried the same unmistakable cut-glass accent that I’d heard the day before, and I whirled around so fast that my chair spun. This woman, Mia, had tried to kidnap my daughter earlier in the day, and I wasn’t about to let her waltz out of the bar without providing a damned good explanation.

  “Stop right there! You’re going to explain to me what the hell you think you’re doing trying to take my daughter!” I yelled, all eloquence and subtlety as usual. I put an arm on the chair and rose unsteadily to my feet, my couple of drinks going straight to my head. My eyes were a bit blurry, but in the gentle light of the pub she looked just as stunning as she had the day before; whatever disguise she had worn at the nursery had been cast away, and long brunette curls cascaded down her well-tanned, bare shoulders. She also looked puzzled, but for just an instant.

  “I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request,” she purred, recovering her composure. Her cherry-red lips formed a mischievous smile as she turned on her heel, causing her pleated dress to twirl so close to me that I could almost reach out and touch it. Which I tried to do. But my hands didn’t want to take orders at the moment. I attempted to take a step forward, but fell to one knee instead. In the background, I was pretty sure I heard the publican saying something about cutting us off.

  “You drugged me…you bitch…” I concentrated as hard as I could and managed to lift my head just enough to look into her gray eyes as she glanced back and gave a fairly eloquent shrug.

  I blinked a couple of times, and then I crashed the rest of the way to the floor as she started walking away. The last thing I heard before the lights went down on that little scene was a parting shot from the all-too-female agent of the inaccurately named Sons of Perseus.

  “Au revoir et bonne chance, mon Orphee.”

  Chapter 11 2300, Tuesday, September 29–1200, Wednesday, September 30, 2015

  I opened my eyes. As consciousness slipped away, I was curious to see if being knocked out with a wicked Mickey Finn would send me to the land of dreams. The fact that I suddenly found myself on a marble parquet floor instead of dumped in an alley somewhere hinted that it had. The second and, frankly, more decisive hint came when three velociraptors rounded the corner.

  I’d had to deal with plenty of these as a kid, but thankfully they had tapered off in the early 2000s; I hadn’t seen one for years until that damned movie came out last summer. The thing I’d been unpleasantly reminded of when they first reappeared was how fast and smart they were. Given that what I faced now was all based on the subconscious expectations set by Hollywood, I was glad that it had been a Spielberg movie; if it had been a Michael Bay film, then they probably would have had frickin’ lasers strapped to their heads.

  My first reaction, honed by a nearly interminable fight for survival against the alien creatures of the puca’s realm, had been to use my gifts to fade into the background. After a few moments though, I had to admit that I was a little curious. With everything that had happened in the real world, I couldn’t work up the same level of concern about the fate of dreamers that I had before, but I did wonder just how much juice I could muster nowadays. Time to play.

  I had shown up, as always, gladius in hand and trench coat draped over my lanky frame. A small effort of will told me that the terrified dreamer was cowering in a closet on the other side of the apartment. A slightly larger act of concentration, as I tucked a hand into my coat pocket, brought a dog whistle into existence. The creatures were so close that I could smell their predator stink, like a mix of crocodile and spoiled meat.

  “Hey, Denver,—how’s your hearing?” I asked loudly, which caused the three man-sized predators to whirl in surprise. I sucked in a lungful of air and blew on the whistle as hard as I could…and apparently the dreamer hadn’t seen the same documentary that I had about dinosaurs having excellent hearing, because my whistle did sweet F-all. The nearest overgrown lizard lunged toward me, and its wickedly sharp teeth snapped shut mere millimeters from my face. My eyes widened in surprise, and I jumped back, banging the wall so hard that its veneer cracked and splintered. Okay, maybe playtime was over.

  “Back!” I accompanied the shout with a lash of pure rage, eschewing the intermediary of memory to quickly hit the three predators with as much power as I could. Skipping the lens of memory meant that I could strike more quickly, but I’d pay for it in exhaustion in the morning. A burst of electric-blue light leapt from my hands and smashed into the man-sized dinosaurs with a sizzle and the actinic reek of ozone.

  The creatures convulsed, shrieking with pain, and their claws rasped on the marble as they tumbled across the room, embedding the smallest raptor halfway through a wood-paneled wall. I wrinkled my forehead in confusion—that much power should have blasted them into drippy little pieces. Even worse, the creatures were now much, much closer to the dreamer whose mind had created them, and in the way of nightmares, they were drawn toward their creator, heads swiveling instinctively in his direction. I’d seen a man die in a dream last night, and while I didn’t think that would happen if I let the raptors go, I couldn’t risk it.

  Throwing the useless whistle on the ground, I charged, needing to reach them before they could all get back on their feet. I covered the distance to the first of the green-scaled raptors in two bounds and caught a powerful kick in the ribs as I closed. Even with the beast still on its back, I should have been eviscerated by the wicked claw on its heel, but my coat’s long-developed protection held, and I followed up with two sharp thrusts. The gladius slipped between the creature’s ribs; it hissed in pain and cocked its head at me. Turns out, dinosaurs can look surprised.

  As fast as I had moved, the big lizards were faster. I grunted as the smaller of the two hit me in the side, 150 pounds of viciousness slamming me to the ground, but it lost its footing before it could go for the kill. I used up a bit more luck as the second dino flew over my head, its snapping jaws closing on empty air where my neck had been a moment ago. I rolled over and over across the floor while I listened to black-nailed talons screeching on marble as the dinos tried to get some traction. With the time that I had bought at the cost of some bruised ribs, I imagined a pair of .45-caliber Smith & Wesson M1911 pistols strapped to my hips. With complete conviction, I reached down to draw the weapons and was rewarded when their matte grips filled my palms.

  The two raptors seemed to sense their danger, and while one flung itself across the room at me, the other bolted in the direction of the dreamer, who was still huddling in the closet. I drew and fired in one smooth motion, my hands a blur and my chest
still as I held my breath to help my aim. The nearer dinosaur closed the distance to me in a blur of churning legs, its mouth looked as big as a basketball, and I could have counted all of its teeth. I squeezed the trigger…and my first round smashed through one slit-pupiled yellow eye, turning the back of its head into hamburger. Dead or not, the dinosaur’s momentum didn’t slow, and it hit me like a load of bricks.

  “Oof!” I exclaimed in triumph as a big stinky carcass flopped on top of me, fountaining blood and gore. I tried to draw a bead on the remaining predator, but the dead thing’s thrashing threw off my aim, and two bullets went wide, digging furrows out of the wall and then spanging off of the marble floor with a shower of sparks.

  It cost me five precious seconds to win free, and before I could take more than a step toward the other room, I heard a man scream. I ran, remembering Usain Bolt at the 2012 Olympics moving at the pinnacle of human speed.

  It was just enough. I burst into the room at the same instant the dinosaur smashed its way through the thoroughly out-of-place plywood door to the closet where the dreamer was hiding. The terrified screaming became one continuous noise, and I felt a tremor run through the floor as the sleeping man approached the edge of being jolted awake by terror. I couldn’t fire without risk of hitting the man, and even though I hadn’t intended in particular to save him, I couldn’t let the riled-up raptor just tear him to bits. So, without slowing down at all, I leapt into the air.

  I probably outweighed the light-boned creature by thirty pounds, but as I landed on its back, the raptor just flexed its knees and reached back with sharp-fingered hands to rake at my face and head. I felt lines of hot pain blossom on my cheek, but I knew that as long as it couldn’t bring its razor-sharp teeth or wicked foot claws to bear, then I had the advantage. So I wrapped my long arms around its throat and buried my head against its neck.

  I noticed the dreamer’s terrified face peering through a hole ripped in the closet door, but I didn’t have time to make out any more than the fact that it was a bald white guy before the dino flung itself backward against the wall to shake me off. The impact knocked the wind out of me, but I had my hands locked in a gable grip, and they held. I wondered just how much of a sadomasochist the man in the closet really was to dream this up, because I was pretty sure that no overgrown lizard had ever known that trick. Great. Ninja dinosaurs.

  A snapping maw tried to reach around for me, but it just couldn’t get the angle, and I slid forward to get leverage against the raptor’s windpipe. The thing realized what I was trying to do and went berserk. First, there was a spin to the left, then it tried to slam me against the wall again, then a spin to the right, and then I lost track. What I did know was that I couldn’t hold on forever against that kind of struggling, and the dino didn’t seem to be especially slowed down by my choke hold.

  For some reason, what popped into my head at that moment was a memory of stepping on the scale a few years back after coming back from vacation and cursing at the number it displayed. Yeah—that could work. I focused on that recollection and felt my trousers starting to get tight as my waistline expanded. It wasn’t pretty, but within fifteen seconds, the creature was noticeably slower. Half a minute and another twenty pounds later, I lost a button, and the dinosaur lost its battle with gravity, collapsing in a heap. I’d swear that the raptor said, “Oof,” on the way down. I quickly grabbed my gladius and put the poor, exhausted thing out of its misery. Letting my concentration go, I rose, once again my normal, lanky self.

  With all of the nightmares slain, this was the point that I’d normally walk over to the corpses, draw my sword and cut open a hole into nothing to dispose of them. I hesitated. Did I really know what I was doing? If I opened the hole and dumped these in, would it make Dana’s life harder? I couldn’t chance it.

  “Thank you, mister. Those things were gonna—” The man started to say something more, but I was already climbing toward the window of the flat. It was time to wake up. I jumped.

  **********

  I opened my eyes. Gray light leaked through heavily curtained windows, so I was only able to discern the barest outlines of the institutional rows of neatly made beds lining both walls of a long, narrow room. I took a step, and cold, bare wooden floorboards creaked. I’d been in this room only a week before and had been woken by mind-searing pain when I’d reached out with my dream senses. I checked my instinct to open myself to my surroundings, but I couldn’t stop myself from wondering how in the hell I’d ended up here instead of waking up wherever my body had ended up after I’d been drugged—and I could only guess that the drugs had been responsible for the ridiculous way I’d acted so far tonight, wasting reserves of mental power tussling with imaginary dinosaurs instead of looking for Dana.

  I was worried. Out in the real world, my body was defenseless. I couldn’t help Dana, or Olivia, or anyone else if I got killed. I needed to wake up. I could come to in just about any situation, but it was better than being defenseless. I could just take a running leap and be out of the window. The fall should wake me up. I hoped.

  I got ready to run, but then, just like during my last visit, the sound of a little girl crying started coming through the door at the end of the room. The more I listened, the more it sounded like Olivia; before I had even made a conscious decision, I found myself running—toward the door. My sight adjusted to the dimness of the room as I moved, and I noticed a sliver of light leaking from under the door.

  “It hurts, Daddy!” a high-pitched voice called.

  My trot picked up pace, and I covered the last ten yards at a sprint. I gritted my teeth, lowered my shoulder, and bellowed, “Ollie!” I impacted the door with a tremendous, bone-jarring boom, and agony blossomed in my shoulder as the wooden panels refused to give. I staggered away like a drunk on dollar-beer night. Somewhere behind the door, the little girl was screaming. I had to pull it together and get in there! Dazed and hurting, I reached for a memory of being whole and well, struggling to draw my recollections together. I searched for the place inside of myself where memory met will and—

  “Gaaaaaahh!” I awoke. I awoke screaming in searing torment—it felt like someone was taking a cheese grater directly to my gray matter. It would still taste better than Velveeta, I pondered for a moment as the anguish temporarily shut down the reasoning parts of my brain. I’m not sure how long I lay on the floor in the fetal position, and I’m not sure at what point I was sick down the front of my shirt, but when I finally herded my thoughts back into line, I realized that I was in pitch blackness.

  I crawled a few feet and bumped into a wall. I repeated the process a couple more times, quickly discerning that I was in a small room, no more than eight feet square. By happenstance, the last wall that I checked contained the door, but when I reached up, I didn’t find a handle. I amended my understanding—I wasn’t in a room; I was in a cell. The sudden spike in blood pressure that this thought engendered caused my head to start pounding again, and I wondered how much of my weakness was from my precipitous exit from the Dreamscape and how much was from being drugged. I pawed feebly at the door.

  “Let me out…” I rasped, among many similar requests, and collapsed to the floor an indeterminate period later. I wasn’t getting out, so I might as well use my time to think about what I’d learned tonight. Velociraptors were assholes—that was certainly true but probably not useful. I’d also learned of more connections between me and the Redderton P.I., and I decided that there was an angle that I could work. I’d also learned that Mia might not have been the one trying to snatch Olivia; her surprise at my accusation, while short lived, had been genuine. That just added another potential actor to a field that already seemed to be teeming with rat bastards hell-bent on distracting me from searching for Dana. Dana, who could be suffering eons of torment outside of our reality every moment that I was searching for her. Speaking of which, I was never going to be able to find her if I kept ending up in the strange dreams occupied by a crying little girl who just might be my da
ughter. Being drugged and whisked off to this place also told me something—there was more at stake than just someone using supernatural means to off people in their sleep. The organization that had kidnapped me had had no qualms about dozens, maybe hundreds, of people dying in their previous scheme. If they were diverting significant resources to catching the Anarchist, then he was a national-level threat. Somehow.

  I thought about what it all meant. I could tell my kidnappers, the Sons of Perseus, to go to hell. That was pretty tempting, but they seemed unlikely to take no for an answer. On the other hand, I could tell them that I’d fall in line. That would take the heat off of me, and I wanted to hunt down the Anarchist anyhow. I knew how badly they wanted the man caught. The part of me that had been a corporate negotiator latched on to that piece of leverage. I might be able to get some quid pro quo out of this situation. It was time to negotiate.

  Eventually, the door swung open. Light flooded the room, piercing my eyes, and I whimpered in pain and was sick on myself again. A deep voice muttered unhappy words that my brain couldn’t quite grasp, and then rough hands grabbed underneath my arms and half dragged, half carried me down hallways that I couldn’t get my eyes to focus on. We went through a heavy oak door, and I was shoved roughly into a high-backed wooden chair. I dug hands that were curled like claws into the leather-covered arms of the chair, and I used the mental fortitude that I’d developed during a lifetime of Dreamwatching to steady myself, raise my head, and look my captor in the eyes.

  “Holy fucking shit!”

  “I’m glad to see that our files didn’t underestimate the scope and precision of your vocabulary, Mr. Adler,” said the unfamiliar, slightly Mancunian-accented voice of the man sitting behind a bulky, gray metal desk. The speaker was a Caucasian in his early fifties, slender like a cyclist, with medium-length brown hair and brown eyes, and I would have guessed him to have been a couple inches below my own six foot two. Oh—and, according to the memories of the OMG witches that I’d seen when I defeated the puca, he was the same murdering sonofabitch who, with Father O., had orchestrated the chain of events that had culminated with bodies strewn across London and my wife banished to limbo.