“No need. I called today. Cynthia Redderton and I had a good chat. I don’t know why you didn’t introduce us earlier. They’ve come up with nothing, but she promised to reach out to some other contacts later today. There’s always Father O. What if we got—”
“No.”
Dana narrowed her eyes for a moment, and I thought she was going to let loose with a verbal barrage, but all she said was, “Good night, Julian. Love you.” And she slumped down as though the words had cost her an appreciable amount of energy. In her state, they probably had. She shut the door, and I put down my tools. Soon, I was alone on the bed with my legion of worries and my homework. Without Dana’s help, it took me the best part of an hour to grind through my assignment, copying down extradimensionally resonant symbols. It had seemed odd to me that ink and paper could do anything to the fabric of reality, but Mia had reminded me that the fact that I could see the scrawls meant that they’d absorbed visible light, and light is a type of energy. In any event, they worked, but copying them made my head hurt and my eyes itch. Dana never seemed to have that problem.
Although Dana and I had argued, I was sleeping by myself because she’d wanted a whole bed to spread out on tonight. I’d have taken the spare bedroom, but the salt circle, mystical inscriptions, and other paranormal paraphernalia were set up in the master bedroom. Sleeping without my wife next to me reminded me of the months that she’d been missing and the even more painful months before she’d agreed to come back to me, so I focused on what she’d told me. It was helpful that Dana had visited the Redderton Detective Agency, but I was surprised that she’d run into Cynthia, Jack’s younger sister and the company CFO, right away. I’d known Jack for the best part of a year, and I hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the woman. The news that they still hadn’t made any progress made me grind my teeth in frustration. Jack had agreed to help us pro bono, so I hadn’t expected miracles, but I had expected something. It just underscored that if I was going to find out what I needed to know, I’d have to keep working for the Sons. At least for a little while longer.
Nevertheless, even with my mind made up, I was nervous about going on the mission tomorrow. The extradimensionally attuned individual that we were seeking to capture was known as the Protean, and he had the ability to change his form at will. He was officially rated as a class one because his potential for mass destruction was low, but the Protean had apparently been responsible for millions of pounds’ worth of theft, and seven agents had died arresting him in the late nineties.
Finding him again had supposedly required a particular attuned individual being induced to come out of retirement, and they had the Protean’s location pinned down to a small area of South London. I wondered what it would be like to be able to change your shape…
◆◆◆
I opened my eyes. There were no streetlights around, but the eastern sky was a pale gray that told me dawn couldn’t be far off, and it gave me enough light to make out my immediate surroundings. Initially, I thought that I was in the countryside: hoary old hardwoods rearing up between shadowed boulders and clumps of stone. But I wasn’t mistaken for long—a few more heartbeats brought realization to my mind—those weren’t boulders, they were headstones. I was in a graveyard. Oh joy! I drew my gladius, metal singing against the leather scabbard, and hustled into cover behind a tall oak, concentrating on a memory of not being picked for a game of basketball as a kid. I faded from view, glad to be concealed from whatever horror might be lurking amongst the tombstones. Even for me, graveyards were bad news…
Secure in my hiding spot, I reached out with my Dreamwalker’s senses, searching for the spark of the dreamer’s mind. I didn’t immediately find anything, which was powerfully odd. The dreamer’s mind is integral to the Dreamscape; there couldn’t be a dream without it, and the anomaly stood out like a unicorn at the Kentucky Derby. My nerves already on edge from the task I had to fulfill at work the next day, I felt my heart start to race at the implication that there might not be anyone else in this dream. I frantically poured mental effort and willpower into the search, concentrating on locating the elusive slumberer.
I must have concentrated just a bit too hard, because my consciousness unexpectedly leapt out, and instead of sensing the dreamer’s mind like the rays of the sun on a cold autumn day, I found myself floating above my dream body. Sans spirit, my vessel became visible again and slumped to the ground, my auburn hair and milky skin standing out like beacons in the pale predawn light. Shit.
I’d done something similar the previous fall when trying to scout out the hideout of a wicked sorcerer, and I’d been practicing it occasionally in the real world since, but I didn’t like the idea that body and spirit could be split accidentally. However, since it had happened, I made the best of it and flung my consciousness forward, searching for the dreamer.
Without the need for caution, I covered ground swiftly, scanning through acres of graveyard in only a few seconds. I was just passing a gnarled oak tree when I spotted the vampire. Of course. More vampires. The creature was about fifteen feet from the ground, tucked into the V where the trunk and a large branch met. I ran into a lot of vampires in the Dreamscape, and although they took many forms, from young Kiefer Sutherland to rat-toothed Nosferatu, they were all dangerous.
This particular specimen was definitely on the heartthrob end of the spectrum. The creature was shrouded in shadows, but I could still make out details: blond, curly locks going down to his shoulders, alabaster skin stretched tight across rippling forearms, broad shoulders, fingernails curved into adamantine talons, and the telltale fangs, dripping saliva from an open, panting mouth set below a pair of aviator sunglasses. At night.
Twigs snapped in the middle distance, and I shoved my consciousness forward, scanning the trees for any further supernatural predators. The foliage was empty, but the source of the sound soon became clear—a man in late middle age, cane in one hand and flowers in the other, was ambling down the path, presumably to drop them on his wife’s grave. Although I still didn’t feel the expected presence of the dreamer’s mind, this had to be him, and if I wanted to warn him of the impending monster attack, then I needed to get back to my body.
I mentally hurled my perception back toward my physical manifestation, took a moment to glance at the vampire still perched motionlessly in ambuscade, and rocketed across the remaining distance. I snapped back into my dream body with the same sensation in the pit of my stomach that you get when you go over a sudden hill at sixty miles per hour, but I forced the feeling down and was on my feet, stumbling forward, a few seconds later.
Puffing, on unsteady legs, I rumbled around a bend and saw the man strolling along, not thirty yards from the tree where the vampire was crouched. I tried to call up a memory to add some speed to my lumbering gait, but I just couldn’t pull my thoughts together well enough to accomplish the feat. So I fell back on a more mundane solution to my problem.
“Hey! Look out, there’s a goddamned vampire in that big oak tree!” I shouted, cupping my one hand to my mouth while gesticulating wildly with my gladius in the other. It had been a long day.
The man paused, and I realized that he was broader across the chest, and maybe not quite as old as I had originally thought. “Ah, thank you very much, young man,” he said with just a hint of a Germanic accent that I couldn’t quite place. With a surprisingly fluid motion, he spun his cane upward, and three feet of polished steel gleamed in the light of the moon.
There was a curse from above me, and I skidded to a halt on the muddy ground, not sure what was going on. During my moment of hesitation, the old man lunged, extending his blade in a classic fencer’s stance—directly at me. Taken off guard, my instincts had me moving before my brain could fully grasp what was going on, and I twisted to my left. Instead of hitting my heart, the flashing metal pierced my right shoulder, sending a jolt of numbness down my arm, and I fell to the ground.
The stabbing had hurt, but, as I kicked my legs out to scramble backward, I
was utterly baffled. I’d never, not once in nearly thirty years, had the dreamer attack me directly. The man, still holding his bouquet of flowers, lunged again. Heart pounding—for now—I tried to pull my fear together enough to fling it out at my attacker as a blast of force, but my confusion kept the attack from coming together. The sword descended, and I flinched, turning—then there was a blur of motion and a clatter of metal on stone. When I rotated back, the vampire loomed over me.
“I have finally found it! At last, I can finish what I started, abomination!” the old man bellowed, his words echoing off of the tombstones around us. I’d been bait!
“You stupid asshole,” the vampire muttered as he reached down, and a hand like a vise wrapped around my wrist. An electric jolt ran down my arm, and I went limp as the leech swung me around, flinging me toward the old man with a flick of his wrist.
Tumbling a dozen feet, I smacked against an onyx obelisk; groaning with pain, I spit out a mouthful of blood. Unable to move, I could only watch as, bizarrely, the old man leveled his flowers at the monster. The alabaster-skinned vampire froze, his body preternaturally still. Somewhere a bird tweeted, and the first rays of the sun painted the boughs above me. There was a blur of motion, and a twang cut through the early morning air. A flock of sparrows broke cover at the noise, and my eyes involuntarily snapped in their direction for a moment. When I looked back, the monster was on the ground, three inches of wooden crossbow bolt protruding from his chest. The man, moving more confidently now, loomed over the monster, and I could see that the flowers had been concealing a small, carbon-fiber crossbow. The dreamer lifted a foot; the vampire raised one trembling arm to ward off destruction, but the size-twelve brogues that stomped down brushed aside the limb without effort and drove the bolt the rest of the way through the creature’s chest. Blood fountained from the monster’s mouth, and its feet beat the ground in the irregular seizures of death.
Just for a split second, I saw a newspaper. The headline read: Bloodsucking Bastards: Outbreak continues, hundreds dead as capital quarantined. The date on it was June 24. Then everything went red.
◆◆◆
I awoke—to pain. My entire universe was nothing but the agony in my skull. It was like someone had poured sulfuric acid into both ears and then grabbed my head and pounded it against the wall. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. My flailing arm hit a bedside lamp, which fell to the ground and shattered. Dana burst into the room a moment later and switched on the lights.
“Oh my God, baby,” she said, her hand going to her mouth as my spine arched into a bow, taking my midsection off of the bed. Every part of my body was spasming as my cranium tried to explode, so Dana grabbed on to my torso and forced it back down. After what felt like thirty years but was probably closer to thirty seconds, the cramp let up, and I collapsed into bed. My head still hurt, but I pushed the pain to one side, wanting to tell my wife what had happened. That hadn’t been a normal dream, and she’d want to know about it.
Panting, I flopped my head sideways to look at her, my gaze drifting across the swell of her belly before I summoned the muscle control to speak. “Don’t…know…what that was. Dreamer…attacked me. Used me as bait…”
“It didn’t have anything to do with Olivia?” she asked, her hazel-brown eyes shining with unfallen tears.
My lips were already open to tell her that it hadn’t, but a sudden tingling flowed over me, and I pursed my mouth. “I…I’m not sure.”
“Tell me everything,” Dana said, her back going ramrod straight and her voice changing from “caring wife” to “world-class research scientist” in a heartbeat.
◆◆◆
“And then the vampire fell to the ground, dying,” I said, finishing a detailed account of my dream ten minutes and two aspirin later. Dana had asked a number of questions during the retelling, some of which I’d considered already, but others showed discrepancies that hadn’t even pinged on my mental radar. For example, why would the vampire have thrown me instead of using me as a human shield? And why would the vampire dying cause me to wake up? My wife was an incredibly intelligent woman—no, I’ve never been able to figure out why she picked me either.
“That wasn’t a normal dream, Julian. I’m worried. You’re going out tomorrow to hunt down a cunning, dangerous being, and the night before you go, you get a dream like none you’ve ever had before. That seems like too much of a coincidence to me,” Dana said, her eyes darting around the room.
“I know. But if we assume that this is the start of something more, that means someone was able to interfere with my Dreamwalking. To do that, they’d probably need to be close by…” I trailed off, ice going down my spine and my eyes moving involuntarily to the darkness of the hallway, ignoring the reinforced windows I’d had put in the year before.
Head still spinning, I levered myself out of bed and wobbled toward the door. I had no clue what I’d do if there was something there—I could barely walk, let alone find the concentration to manifest any of my abilities in the real world. But I was a man, damn it, and stupid, foolhardy bravery is in the certification requirement. I leaned out into the hall, floorboards squeaking under my lanky frame, I looked right, I looked left—and I squealed like a stuck hog as a hand grabbed my shoulder.
“Holy crap, Dana! You’re like a pregnant ninja,” I said when my heart rate dropped below a million beats per minute.
“You’re just deaf. Actually, we must both be deaf and blind,” she said, holding out an envelope. “I found this under your pillow. Someone must have snuck in here and swapped it out for the strand of Ollie’s hair I had put in there.” I shivered at the idea that someone had been in my house without my knowledge and grabbed the envelope out of her hand. Slamming the hallway door, I ripped the envelope open, eliciting a grimace from Dana. Gray dust poured out of the tear, and I raised my eyebrows in surprise; it was the kind of dust that only showed up after a thaumaturgic link, some item used to call like to like, had been used up.
“That pretty much confirms that my dream tonight was a setup,” I muttered as I unfolded a single sheet of plain, A4 paper. Dana leaned in to look, her bump pressing against my side.
My Precious Son,
We are aware of your continued attempts to locate Olivia. To allow you to spend your time more productively, I have been authorized to inform you that, while safe, she is outside of the range of your current abilities. If you truly wish to protect your child, then there is an emerging opportunity to do so. I have put your foot on the path tonight, but besides this aid, the only information that I can safely impart to you is that my grandchild’s safety requires that you gain possession of a particular artifact. An artifact that the others will be seeking for themselves.
I wish you the very best of luck, and please rest assured that my darling, beautiful granddaughter will be kept safe while you are pursuing this opportunity. Carpe diem, Julian.
With all of my love,
Mom
My eyes were wide and the paper in my hand shook as I looked down into Dana’s hazel eyes. I thought of the man in my dream claiming that he had found “it.” She took my hand and looked back up at me, staring deep into my eyes before she spoke.
“That…bitch.”
Chapter 7
1100–1400, Wednesday, June 15, 2016
My head was still throbbing and my throat was thick as the Jubilee Line train whizzed through the tunnels toward Swiss Cottage station. Dana and I had sat up talking until the sun came up. The letter was frightening, but it also offered us a ray of hope, something that I don’t think either of us had genuinely felt in quite a while. However, Dana had only come back to me a few months ago, and I was scared that whatever plot my mother had decided to involve me in might put her in danger again. Intellectually, I knew that she was a grown, intelligent woman who was capable of making her own decisions and who had bailed me out when I was ass-deep in alligators more than once. But she was pregnant, so my overdeveloped hero complex was urging me to go all
Tarzan to her Jane in this monkey business. We’d decided that there was no option except for me to carry on with the scheduled mission to find the Protean, but as soon as possible we’d have to learn what we could about the artifact that my mother had referenced. I also wondered about the headline on the newspaper that I had seen. My mother’s note had driven it out of my mind, and I hadn’t mentioned it to Dana, but I almost never saw any legible writing in dreams, so I figured that it had to mean something pretty significant.
I had to derail that train of thought because when I arrived at Swiss Cottage, I’d be heading to the nearby Alexandra Road Estate, in Camden, to carry out the operation against the Protean. I needed to get my head in the game. The Protean wasn’t an innocent; he’d killed on multiple occasions, and if we didn’t take him in today, it could be months before we could locate him again. If I ran into him, I had to be ready to put him down without hesitation. I’d be keeping people safe—in the real world this time instead of in their dreams.
When the train arrived, I disembarked and whipped out my phone, following the Google Maps directions toward the little blue dot on the screen without looking up.
“You have reached your destination,” my phone said after just a couple minutes of walking.
“Thanks, pho—holy shit!” When I’d heard estate, I’d been thinking of the kind of soulless, gray high-rise block that governments have been shoving poor people into since the end of the last world war. Instead, I was confronted with a rearing double row of ziggurats, palm trees growing out of the small gardens in front of each apartment on the concrete step pyramid. I felt for a moment like I’d been transported to a remnant of Babylon that had gotten lost in time and space. Also, I hadn’t imagined that there’d be so many people around. I was a few minutes early, so I settled down on a bench to wait for Vir to show.
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