Dreamwalker

by C. S. Friedman

  I looked around and saw her a few feet away, also pinned in place by two goons. There was blood on her face, but maybe not her blood; it looked like she’d managed to slash one of her attackers across the cheek. Good for her. Next to her Devon was still struggling, and I saw one of his captors punch him in the stomach with so much force that he gasped in pain, then doubled over and vomited.

  We’d been caught. It was over. The rats had herded us right into this trap, and we had fallen for it.

  Tears came to my eyes, but I fought them back. I wouldn’t let these bastards see me cry.

  A chill blue light suddenly filled the room, stronger and sharper than the light from Isaac’s lamp. Now I could see that there were many men in the room, maybe nine in all. The one who was holding the light was dressed in the same kind of long grey robes the Shadow at the Gate had worn, though this man didn’t look nearly as unnatural. Someone else was standing behind him, his face hidden in the shadows.

  “Search them,” the man in the robes ordered.

  The goon on my left grabbed both my arms and jerked them behind me, forcing my body taut as the other one ran his hands over me. All over me. I shuddered as his hands moved roughly over my body, feeling for weapons. My arms, my torso, my legs … his hands lingered on my breasts, and I could see a smile flicker across his face as he plucked the precious fetter from my shirt and threw it over his shoulder. I tried not to let him see how terrified I was, but he wasn’t fooled. He ran his hands up the insides of my thighs, watching my face as he felt between my legs. Horrified, I realized that if he wanted to rape me in front of all these people there was nothing I could do to stop him. A sudden wave of sickness came over me, so powerful that I thought I would follow Devon’s lead and vomit.

  Then the man let go of me and stepped back, taking up his station once more at my side. You could see from his face how much he was enjoying my terror. Damn him. Damn him.

  In his moment of lechery, however, he’d been less than thorough. He’d found all the weapons and tools I’d had on me, but he hadn’t bothered to remove the papers in my pocket; I still had Sebastian’s map. And he’d been so focused on mauling my breasts that he’d missed the small round pendant tucked into the center of my bra.

  I still had the codex.

  All of the other things that Devon, Rita and I had been carrying were now piled on the floor in front of the Shadow, including Sebastian’s stealth ward. The burlap bags had been emptied, and all our alien treasures had been spilled out, with Devon’s iPhone on top of the pile. One of the men retrieved the fetter lamp and the stealth ward and put them on the pile next to the phone—at which point the person standing behind the Shadow stepped forward to pick up the lamp, and as he did so I saw who it was: Isaac.

  I lunged forward with such unexpected force that the goon on my left side lost his grip. “You son of bitch!” I yelled, struggling to get close enough to claw his face with my nails.

  But the guy who’d lost his grip punched me in my stomach, so very hard it drove all the air from my body. I tried to draw a breath but my lungs wouldn’t obey me. I would have doubled over if the goons who were holding me allowed it, but they didn’t, so my stomach muscles clenched in a spasm of frustration, which made the pain even worse. I swallowed back on a rising tide of bile. Its bitterness seared my throat.

  Through all of this, Isaac didn’t move.

  He looked just like the Shadow beside him. The same colorless skin, the same empty eyes. I hadn’t known the signs well enough to recognize them. Had Sebastian suspected what he really was? Is that why he’d insisted we leave Isaac behind? Had the kids in the Warrens guessed the truth?

  Isaac was like a rat in their midst, playing them all for fools. Playing us for fools.

  Now I understood why he’d been so calm in the Warrens. The raiders would never have killed him. They wouldn’t have killed us if we were under his protection. It had all been a sham.

  When he saw that I could finally breathe again, and was able to focus on his face, he said very quietly, “You didn’t really expect it to be that easy, did you?”

  “You bastard!” I spat. “You sold us out.”

  “No. I returned to my family.” His expression was as serene as a corpse’s. “Just as you advised me to do. Because you were right, Jessica: the bonds of blood are stronger and more meaningful than any fleeting passion. I returned to my Guild because of you.”

  “That’s not what I said!” Tears were coming to my eyes now, and I couldn’t stop them. “Just let my brother go,” I begged. “He’s no threat to anyone. Do whatever you want with me, but please, just let him go home.”

  Isaac said nothing. He might have been stone for all he responded to me. The Shadow beside him gestured to one of the goons. “Tell His Lordship we have the intruders in hand,” he ordered. “The guards can stand down.”

  “I’ll tell him,” Isaac said quickly.

  The Shadow looked at him, one eyebrow slightly raised.

  “I’m the one who told him people were coming. It’s my duty to let him know the matter has been resolved.”

  The Shadow considered that, then nodded. “Very well, Apprentice. You do that. Meanwhile,” he looked at our captors and ordered, “put them in holding until Lord Virilian can decide what he wants to do with them.”

  I tried to watch Isaac as he left the room. I ached for him to turn toward me one last time, to show me … what? That there was some tiny spark of regret in his soul? That he was sorry he’d had to betray us? That it pained him to be the one who crushed my final hopes?

  But the goon who was holding me yanked me so roughly toward the door that I stumbled and nearly fell. By the time I had my feet under me again, and could look back, Isaac was gone.

  29

  SHADOWCREST

  DOWN, DOWN, DOWN WE WENT, deep into the bowels of the earth, past the seven circles of Hell and beyond, into a realm of utter hopelessness. They tied our hands behind us along the way, and while I was lucid enough to remember the Mythbusters trick of pressing my wrists together sideways so that I would have some slack later on, it seemed a futile effort. There was no way we were going to come out of this mess alive.

  The underground complex had been expanded since Sebastian’s escape, and we passed through whole levels that weren’t on his map. The upper ones looked fairly prosaic: Add a few windows and they could have been part of any Victorian manor. But the further down we descended, the less normal things looked. Below the residential area was a maze of shadowy hallways that were half Gothic in style, half … something else. Below that was a level finished entirely in black marble—floor and walls and ceilings and doors—all of it. The faces of the humans who stood guard there gleamed like polished skulls in the fetterlight as they waved us through. I thought I saw ghosts in the lower levels as well, or things that looked a lot like ghosts: wisps of smoke that were formless when you looked at them directly, but resolved into quasi-human shapes in the corner of your eye when you focused on something else.

  For the final part of our journey through Hell we were squeezed into a cage-like elevator, whose rope-and-pulley mechanism was visible through the bars. God alone knew what was powering the thing. Given what we’d learned about this world, I figured there was probably a room full of abbies on treadmills, laboring endlessly in the darkness so that their masters wouldn’t have to climb the stairs.

  As soon as the elevator door was shut, the iron cage dropped out from under us, and for a moment it seemed as if the earth had swallowed us whole.

  And then, at last, it was over. The cage stopped moving and our captors shoved us out of it, and I knew in my gut that the terrible journey had reached its end point.

  We were in a cavern … or something that had once been a cavern, now adapted for the Shadowlords’ use. Some of the natural features were still visible—undulating walls of glistening grey limestone, a few thick pillars that rose from floor to ceiling like ancient Greek columns—but most of the place had been slathered
over with concrete, its gritty flow following the natural contours of the walls and floors. The result was disturbingly organic, as if some vast cave-creature had swallowed us whole, and we were now trekking through its innards.

  They shoved us forward, and we stumbled to a place where alcoves with vertical iron bars across the openings lined both sides of the chamber. A sudden wave of panic overwhelmed me. They were going to lock us in, and leave us down here. In the caverns. In the dark.

  I struggled vainly against my captors as they opened the door to one of the cells, throwing my body about in a desperate attempt to break free. Raw animal panic had taken over. Behind me, I heard someone else involved in an equally desperate scuffle, and then the sickening thud of flesh striking flesh.

  But we were all as helpless as fish in a net, and eventually the three of us were thrown inside a single cell and the door was slammed shut behind us. The loud metallic clang resonated through the cavernous space, drowning out the softer click of the lock as it closed.

  They left then, without further word. I lay on the concrete floor where I had fallen, trembling as I waited for the moment they would turn out the lights and leave us to the mercy of the cavern’s suffocating darkness. I didn’t think I could handle it. But endless seconds passed without that happening, and when I realized that the lights were going to stay on, some of my sanity returned.

  I struggled to a sitting position and looked around. Our cell was one of half a dozen fashioned out of natural alcoves that flanked a long, narrow chamber. If you stood in the middle of the chamber you might be able to see into all the cells, but in our current position the undulating walls of the cavern obscured much from view. The only lighting came from a handful of glow lamps embedded in the ceiling and, because of their positioning, some parts of the alcoves were lost in shadow. I peered into each in turn, struggling to see if anyone was inside them. If this was the place where prisoners were kept, logic said my brother must be here. But nothing moved in the darkness. No one called my name.

  “C’mon, girl, let’s get these ropes off.”

  Someone took hold of my shoulder and tried to pull me back from the bars. I shook him off.

  Across from us was a long, narrow cell whose depths were mostly in shadow. I squinted to shut out the glare of the nearest light, willing my eyes to adjust to the darkness. It seemed to me there was a deeper shadow near the back that didn’t quite match the rest of the rock, but it was still. Too still. A live person would have been moving by now, wouldn’t he? We’d made enough commotion on our way in to wake the dead.

  “Tommy?” I called out tentatively. There was no response.

  So I yelled the name. Why not? What did we have to lose anymore, by being heard? My voice resonated back from all the empty spaces surrounding us. I could hear an edge of hysteria in the echo.

  The shadow stirred. My breath caught in my throat.

  I heard Rita and Devon come to the bars, but I didn’t turn to look at them; my eyes were fixed wholly on the figure moving toward us. It paused in the darkness, and I saw blue light glint from its eyes as it blinked. Then suddenly it lurched toward us, with the kind of inarticulate cry a wounded animal might make.

  Please God, let it be Tommy. Please.

  My brother hit the bars of his cell with the force of a bird flying into a plate glass window. His skin was pale and his eyes were grey pits of exhaustion—he looked like death warmed over—but he was alive. Alive! I wanted to reach out to him, but the ropes on my wrists kept me from even trying, so I pressed my face between the bars of my own cell, wanting to get as close to him as I possibly could.

  “Jesse!” he rasped. His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been sick. “I knew you would come for me! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”

  “Hey, kid,” I whispered back. Ever since the night I’d watched the video on his computer I’d dreamed of what I would say at this moment, but now that it was finally here I was almost too overwhelmed to speak. “I couldn’t leave you here alone, could I? Who would help me figure out my video games?”

  “It’s you they want.” His voice cracked as he spoke. “You know that, right? Something about your dreams.”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. Shutting my eyes for a moment against the sudden tide of guilt. All that Tommy had been through in this terrible place had been because of me. “I figured that out.”

  “I didn’t tell them anything. I figured that as long as they stayed focused on me they wouldn’t go after you, so I kept feeding them stories. To give you time to rescue me …” The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “Of course, when I pictured that, I imagined you would be on the other side of the bars.”

  Despite myself I smiled. “Damn! I knew there was something we got wrong.”

  “How long has it been?”

  I sighed. “A week, I think. I’ve lost track of time at this point.”

  “A week? Jeez.” He shook his head. “We are gonna be soooo grounded when we get home.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, and then I cried, and then I laughed and cried some more. Eventually I slid down to the ground with tears pouring from my eyes, and when Devon and Rita finally got the ropes off my wrists I lowered my face into my hands and just let it all flow—all the sorrow, all the fear, and all the joy that I felt in discovering that, although my baby brother had been a prisoner of monsters for a week, he was still every bit as much of a snarky smartass as before. It was a good thing that there were bars between us at that moment, because if there hadn’t been I would have grabbed him and hugged him so hard that all his anti-contact neuroses would have been squeezed out of him like toothpaste from a tube.

  “Hey.” Devon prodded me. The urgency in his voice brought me back to myself. “Someone’s coming.”

  I wiped my face with my sleeve and hurriedly got to my feet. I felt more strength in that moment than I had for days. Never mind the fact that we had no fetters and no plan. Whatever came at us now, Tommy and I would face it together.

  Footsteps were approaching. One person, it sounded like. I drew in a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. Then he entered the chamber, and I stiffened.

  Isaac.

  Rita spat out a curse as soon as she realized who it was; I’m not even sure it was in English. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her looking around for something to throw at him. Of course there was nothing. We were helpless.

  I just glared at him. I wondered if he really grasped how much I hated him at that moment.

  Calmly he looked toward Tommy’s cell, like one would look at a caged animal in a zoo. “So this is the infamous little brother? The one you risked your life to save?”

  “Don’t touch him,” I snarled.

  He put up his hand to reassure me; it was the kind of gesture one would use to calm an angry dog. Then something seemed to draw his notice. He looked around the chamber, startled. It was as if he expected something to be hovering in the air, that wasn’t there. “There are no shades … ?”

  “You mean the ghost things?” Tommy asked. “I sent them away.”

  The look of surprise on Isaac’s face gave me perverse satisfaction.

  “What do you want with us?” I demanded. “Haven’t you done enough damage? What’s left to do now, gloat? The fact that I can’t get out of this cage to wring your neck doesn’t mean I’m going to jump through hoops to amuse you.”

  He turned toward us. Well, he turned toward me, really. I got the sense Rita and Devon were peripheral to him.

  “This place isn’t the same as it was when the Green Man was prisoner here,” he said quietly. “There are things stored here now that are of great value to the Shadows … and anything that we value, the shades of the dead guard for us. You would never have seen such sentinels, nor heard them coming. You would have walked through halls that seemed utterly empty, confident in your secrecy, while in fact your every move was watched and reported upon. And if you had dared to enter those places which are off limits to the living—they’re never marked a
s such, because those who live here know all about them—you’d have been killed on the spot. Not captured. Not questioned. Just killed. Maybe then your dead spirits would have been bound in service to the Guild.” He glanced at Tommy. “Maybe you’d even have been forced to stand guard over your brother, so that no one else could save him.”

  “Great,” I growled. “So everything was hopeless from the start. Things could be much worse than they are now. Got that. Thanks so much for the update.” I glared. “Anything more?”

  He looked back at me. There was a turmoil in the back of his eyes that I could not put a name to. “You couldn’t have gotten down here on your own,” he said. The volume of his voice had dropped; no one outside this chamber would be able to hear what he was saying now. “The Shadows had to bring you down here themselves. There was no other way.”

  Devon drew in a sharp breath. “Are you saying … that you arranged all this … to help us?”

  “Bullshit!” Rita spat. “You played us. You won. It’s over. Go back to your friggin’ undead playmates and leave us the hell alone.”

  But I was looking in his eyes. I saw what was there.

  “Show me,” I whispered.

  He took out a key from his pocket.

  The room fell utterly silent. In the distance I could hear a single drop of water fall from the ceiling to the floor. Softer than a pin falling.

  “You came back to Shadowcrest to help us,” I murmured.

  “No, I came back because I belong here,” he corrected me. “This is my world, and everything that has meaning to me begins and ends here. Sooner or later I would have tired of wandering and returned to my people. You were the one who made me realize that. Of course, it might have been years before that happened, but then I realized that if I came back today,” his eyes held mine, “I could help keep you alive.”

  I had nothing to say. Even if I’d had the right words, I don’t think I could have gotten them out past the lump in my throat.