The Nightmare Detective

by K Childs

  Lady Winchester was knitting a fine lace shawl. It was a complex pattern that would take weeks to finish. Charlie would have been able to identify the intricacies of the stitch, but they all looked the same to me.

  “Inspector, please come in, we’re having tea brought,” Mary waved me into the parlour and I sat down beside her with a nod.

  “Thank you. Do you mind if I read in here?”

  “Not at all,” Elizabeth murmured. She glanced up from her knitting, “What are you reading?”

  “An old research tome. I’m afraid it’s slow going. It’s mostly Latin.”

  “I hated Latin studies,” Mary grumbled.

  “Our tutor was the worst. Mr Taggerty. From Scotland,” Elizabeth explained. “He was far too quick to mumble and fall asleep. Even lost Mary’s homework during one of his naps and blamed her.”

  “That’s awful.” I’d gone to a public school and missing homework was a canning offence.

  “Quite.”

  The maid arrived with a tray of tea. It had four cups on it, and I gave her a smile she returned with a modicum of suspicion.

  “Has the Duke already gone into town?” I asked the maid politely.

  “Yes, Ma’am. Said he would be at the post and then visit with Lady Brighton.”

  The two Ladies in the room stiffened at this.

  I pretended I hadn’t felt the sudden drop in temperature. “A friend?”

  “Lady Brighton? Oh, yes, Ma’am.”

  The maid finished arranging the tea and cookies and left us.

  “I didn’t think she’d have the gall to be back in town,” Elizabeth hissed, knitting forgotten.

  “You’re not a friend of Lady Brighton?” I kept my voice placid and light as I could.

  “She’s an old friend of the Duke’s,” Mary began by way of explanation. “She and Elizabeth are somewhat at odds.” The desperate look that passed between them was full of concern on Mary’s part and a cool dismissal on Elizabeth’s face.

  Elizabeth’s fists crumpled her crochet. “That woman is nothing but a home-wrecking menace. There’s more than a few rumours about her. No respect for another woman’s claim to a man.”

  “But she’s close to your fiancé.” I drew over Elizabeth’s

  remark.

  “Too close, I’m afraid.” Mary sipped her tea. “Lady Brighton has a reputation for improper conduct.”

  I sipped my tea. “That’s troubling.”

  “You know something else?” Elizabeth feigned a

  disinterested tone.

  “I shouldn’t like to concern you, but the Duke did say he’d take dinner at the hotel, he won’t be back until morning.”

  Mary made a disgusted noise. “I thought the Duchess did away with Brighton last time she came snooping around town for His Grace.”

  “Something ought to be done,” I said.

  “The Duke is a grown man. I should think if he wants to marry Lady Brighton, his mother won’t be able to stop it.”

  “Surely not,” Mary snapped. “He’s engaged to Elizabeth.”

  “He’s set a date, and committed then?” I felt sick manipulating her like this, but Elizabeth Winchester might well be my dragon. A little manipulation into revealing herself would be the least of her worries once we caught her in the act.

  Elizabeth’s hand shook as she took her tea and looked out the window. “He will.”

  “As long as you are confident. You can wait until he comes back in the morning and ask him about it then. You’re far more patient than myself.”

  “Why do you say that?” Elizabeth asked.

  Mary fell quiet. She listened as a mouse.

  Setting my teacup down gently, I glanced towards Lady Elizabeth through my eyelashes. “If my fiancé were having dinner alone with another woman in a hotel, I’m not sure I would approve. I’m far too hot-tempered to do that.”

  Elizabeth’s mouth firmed. “He’ll break our engagement over my dead body.”

  I had nothing to say to that. She didn’t seem angry enough to rush to action. I floundered out an, “Of course.”

  Elizabeth looked down at her knitting. Her brows drew together in a frown. “Damn, I dropped a stitch.”

  She wasn’t angry enough. How did she maintain such a calm façade after what I’d just dropped? Darrien had assured me that Lady Brighton was a name that had sent Elizabeth into a rage.

  If she was plotting a swift murder spree, she hid it well.

  Mary finished her cup of tea and took up the patch on the quilt she was embroidering. “Perhaps a charity piece, then, Lisa?”

  Elizabeth paused. She looked at the otherwise fine craft in her lap and nodded. “Yes, we’ll donate them to the parish.”

  “Lisa and I make a trip to the parish every year to donate blankets for the veterans.”

  “That’s wonderful work. How long have you been in

  charity?”

  Mary shrugged. “A few years now.”

  Elizabeth set her work down. “I think this will be the last year we go together, Mary.”

  Her tone was sharp. Mary nodded, her eyes downcast.

  How much did Elizabeth know about her friend’s relationship with her fiancé? They would certainly not be sitting here so demurely if Elizabeth knew it all. Mary was wise to hide it from her. Or perhaps downplay her involvement with the Duke.

  Stupid to have gotten herself involved in the first place.

  I reflected a little on the picnic I’d had with him. Refusing had felt extremely rude and foolish. Was his seduction of Mary the same?

  If Elizabeth was anything but mildly perturbed, she hid it well.

  I didn’t want my tactic to seem obvious, so I read for an hour with the two women gossiping beside me. I itched to depart as soon as I had painted the picture, but this had to seem natural. Dragons were smart beasts, and if I wanted to lure Elizabeth into the trap, she needed to believe that I had no idea of her true nature.

  I finally finished the account of an ancient Celtic dragon that had been slain during the Norman invasion when the supper bell rang.

  “Thank you for the company; I’m not feeling well, and I’ll have the maid bring my supper to my room.” I gave them a small wave and swept out of the parlour.

  The Duke safely tucked in the coach house with Simmons after booking a room at the Cardigan hotel on behalf of Lady Anabell Brighton. Our stage was set. While the house was settling down to dine, I slipped out and made my way down to the village. The dragon appeared from the Dreamscape; I didn’t know much about them, but it seemed this one didn’t favour a direct confrontation. I was betting Elizabeth would wait until the lovers were asleep. The trap would ensure she took her true shape, and then I’d pounce.

  The room booked in Lady Brighton’s name was adjacent to mine, and I took some chips for supper from a street vendor while I sat in the hotel and watched the road at the front for my dragon.

  I warded the Brighton room with chalk. Runes of revealing and a strong cut-off from the Ether. It was my best effort, and I doubted Elizabeth would be able to hold her human skin with such powerful enchantments.

  Ben joined me to let me know the Duke had retired.

  Hours crawled by. Cardigan was not a big town, and the hotel was above the pub. At a little after nine, the pub called last rounds and six local tradesmen stumbled out and bid a cheery farewell. The pub owner closed the outside down and locked his door.

  I eased my cramped legs and drank cold, cheap tea from downstairs.

  A little after ten, when lights were turning off, I lowered my candle so it wouldn’t catch the window. A shadow crept over the castle bridge and came straight for the hotel.

  “Ben. Someone’s coming. Go and rouse the locals.”

  He slipped away, into the night.

  I watched the window. The faint glow of the candle was winking down, and I turned my head slightly when the flame flickered and hissed.

  Gree
n Etheric mist poured out of the candle. For a moment, I stared, dumbfounded, then the room tilted and immense pressure rocked inside my skull. I didn’t need to put my goggles on; the suck of the demi monde dragged me under. A narcoleptic sway took my body.

  I opened my eyes in the Dreamscape to the rumbled bellow of the dragon.

  The room rocked with a hazy dark glow, a construct of my mind. Like a moving ship, I struggled to my strangely uncertain feet and concentrated until I had a long silver blade in one hand.

  Green fog swirled around my feet and the door flew open before I even touched the knob.

  A woman screamed.

  My mind struggled to stay focused in the Dreamscape; the hotel swayed and shook under my feet. Too much sensory input. I smelled copper; my head must have hit the floor. Sudden jolts to the brain can pull an Oneironaut out of the Dreamscape easily enough.

  The dragon dominated the tiny hall, the wood warping and the ceiling vanishing in the slide of claws and the glare of those awful green eyes.

  A claw ripped through the Dreamscape and sliced down upon me.

  I caught the blow with the sword, using the blade as a shield from the weight of the onslaught. I ended up on my backside against a wall. My physical strength was nothing before the force of the beast.

  Teeth came next and the room filled with a black shadow beast and flashes of green. I got to my feet ungracefully.

  I danced around the room. In the Dreamscape I could be an elegant, pirouetting swordswoman. Ether made that possible, just as it made a dragon able to fit into a room such as this.

  She’d worked out the trick. I didn’t know what had given me away but coming here had been her mistake. Attacking me directly was smart enough, but I was confident in my ability to defeat her.

  I took a claw across the cheek and blood welled on my face.

  A shade chose that moment to stumble into the Dreamscape with us. Pulled into the nightmare, perhaps by the force of the dragon’s power.

  “Get out!” I screamed.

  The shade looked around, dumb, not fully manifested, but unable to hide. I almost caught a glimpse of a woman’s face before the dragon tore her apart. Blood fell across the walls and floor. The wet sound of rending flesh accompanied by my own scream.

  The dragon lashed at me again, driving me back with ease.

  We fell from the window, glass slicing my jacket, the shadowed outline of the monster following me down. The beast stretched out its wings, becoming a behemoth in the open area.

  I landed on the ground, willing myself steady when the wild Dreamscape shifted and rumbled around me. The dragon could influence the Ether better than I; it responded weakly to me.

  She reared back her head, fire brewing in her belly, and I shaped Ether into a stone shield over my head. Heat and smoke flooded over me in waves.

  The quickly-constructed shield cracked and crumbled a few seconds later and I jumped, closing the distance between us. I thrust my sword forward and sliced at her outstretched forelimb.

  The dragon howled. The world shook.

  Ether trembled in the air, a physical weight; the dragon pulled on it so thickly.

  The beast melted into green fog and mist.

  I gasped, clutching my side, catching my breath. I ought not to be winded in the Dreamscape, but my body felt almost fully interred in the demi monde and cold sweat clung to me.

  I woke up.

  The room swam into view in a haze of red.

  I was lying on my side; the candle blown out.

  The door was open.

  Elizabeth Winchester was dead on the ground in front of me.

  Someone was screaming downstairs.

  I hoisted myself up slowly and shakily, breathing heavily, sweating as surely as I had just battled off the dragon. Blood fell down my neck from the mark across my face, painting my side red.

  The balding hotel manager poked his head into the room and screeched, turning about as quickly as he had come.

  There was something awfully wrong about Elizabeth Winchester being dead in this room.

  She had a knife in one hand—the sort you get from any kitchen for cutting meat. Bloody, but not good for hurting someone. I pried the blade from her still warm fingers. I checked her neck for a pulse, but you don’t survive the kind of gutting she had endured. Her lower half was shredded from the stomach down. Animal talons.

  Five talons.

  An alarm bell rang in the town and men in their pyjamas came bursting into the room.

  “Step away from the body.”

  I was covered in blood. Some of it was Elizabeth’s, some of it was mine.

  “My God, you’ve killed her.”

  One of the men grabbed me by the shoulder and the knife Elizabeth had been carrying clattered to the floor. I hadn’t noticed it tangling with my dress.

  “Call the police!”

  “I am the police.”

  It was clear from their hard looks they did not believe a word.

  I started the evening with a clear plan. We’d laid it down neatly and simply and the plan had, at no stage, included me in a jail cell.

  I expected the local constabulary to be a little more understanding that as a Detective Inspector, I had not, in fact, murdered my chief suspect.

  But the locals were in a panic and the innkeeper said I was especially suspicious. I watched the constables as they sorted through my handbag contents, remarking that I must have forged papers and my badge of office. Useless. I’d talked myself raw the ride over and they were of the opinion I was a crazed, hysterical murderess.

  That was all the constables needed to want to talk to me at the station. In cuffs.

  They didn’t interview me, didn’t listen to my disgruntled hiss to get their hands off me; the four local constables threw me bodily into the back of a clockwork cab and locked the door. No one was listening to my claim.

  We drove for an hour to Aber.

  From there I was tossed, again, into a jail cell with enough room for a small bench to sit on.

  It was unpleasant to be treated like a common criminal. I was half a mind to have the constables and their Sergeant up on charges for assaulting a fellow officer, not to mention a gross lack of procedure.

  I was feeling sore and sorry for myself. I had been sure that Elizabeth was my dragon. Now, she was someone I should have protected but had instead lured to her death. I’d killed her as surely through my fumbling actions as if I were the beast that struck the blow.

  I pulled my sleeve from the cut on my cheek and found it stained with blood, though not as much as before. The wound wasn’t free-flowing.

  I was done talking.

  They hadn’t compared the knife to the talon-marks on the body. It was obvious to me—but the Sergeant had a piggish stubborn attitude I’d rarely seen in others. His word was law; there would be no scenario that did not fit his construction.

  It would take days, if not longer, to be exonerated.

  “I’m a Sergeant from the AOC you bumbling idiot!” Ben’s yell carried through the walls of the small station house and the two constables at their desks winced.

  “Get out! I’ll not listen to a minute more of this drivel!” Sergeant Piggish—Coates, according to the label on his door—slammed the door open so hard that it shook in the frame.

  “You just arrested my DI—in the middle of a goddamn investigation.”

  I’d never heard Ben swear before. It brought a small smile to my face.

  The local Sergeant did something that sent Ben tumbling through the door.

  Ben picked himself up, adjusted his collar and moved back in with the sharp motions of a man about to commit violence.

  The two constables rose and ran into the Sergeant’s office.

  I heard a scuffle—Ben’s infuriated bellow of rage, something breaking, someone else hitting something—and then my Sergeant came out, restrained by the locals.

  “Toss the trash
out!” Coates howled. He was holding his nose and to Ben’s credit, it was bleeding.

  I owed him a beer.

  The constables marched him to the door, and I lost sight of Ben.

  “You are a disgrace, Sergeant,” I snarled.

  “You’ll shut your mouth unless you want me to break something.” He took a baton from his waist where he holstered it like a pistol, waving it threateningly at me.

  I was good at many things, but I was not going to win a fistfight with him. I had about a third of his weight and height, and muscle atrophy made me a rather weak individual.

  I didn’t know why the Sergeant had a problem with me. Suppose I was lucky he hadn’t thrown Ben in the lock-up as well. After the tussle they’d just had, plenty of sergeants might have decided to lock him up for the assault.

  Coates smacked the bars in front of my face, forcing me to flinch back. A cruel smile danced on his face for a second or two. He was a bully in a position of authority and power. The worst kind.

  I couldn’t stay in jail.

  After the last round in the Dreamscape, the last thing I wanted to do was enter again. But needs were a must at the moment.

  I lay back on the bench, closed my eyes, and sank into the Dreamscape.

  The town was larger than Cardigan and boasted large farms and a diminishing mining community.

  The university was the draw for most of the folk around here and I saw it in the Dreamscape. People moved around the grounds of the central building, half-stumbling and muttering to keep themselves focused. I’d never struggled to stay asleep. Waking had always been harder.

  The local police box was not present. Instead most of the houses had melted and turned into a great dark forest. I don’t know precisely why forests are present in every Dreamscape. They are an immutable law of the demi monde.

  The sea rolled in the distance, dark and menacing, lights and strange eons whispered in the sky.

  The Aber University wasn’t warded, although the hustle and bustle of sleeping students kept the place afloat. I had seen this before during my own years studying the craft. Classes conducted themselves through training exercises to regularly focus their abilities. One girl sat on a balcony, rehearsing Shakespeare to a small crowd that watched, bemused below. Perhaps thirty people had better form and focus than the usual shambling shades that wandered the wild Dreamscapes. A class, I surmised.