10. Dragon Dreams
"A dragon, maybe," said the assistant medical examiner, as he picked up with gloved hand what he judged to be a human forearm, or rather the charred remains of one, and dropped it into a labeled plastic bag.
"A what?" asked Lead Psychic-Detective Jeffrey Benson, startled out of his fond thoughts of making love to Marion last night, which he had been using to mask out the emotional impact to the squad that this latest grisly murder scene was causing. This was the third murder this week, each more upsetting than the one before it. The victim had apparently been clawed, burned, and torn apart, with blood and guts and bits and pieces thrown all over the apartment. The stench of burned human flesh was ungodly.
He hadn't been idly daydreaming of Marion. Because his psychic empathic ability led him to perceive the dismal feelings that this scene produced among the entire forensics team, of necessity he had to deliberately balance his deliberations on mayhem with escapist thoughts. It was a skill he had acquired early in life, so that he could accommodate some of the more disturbing consequences of his psychic abilities.
Doctor Frank Sullivan laughed. He was used to dealing with the various quirks of his psychic co-workers. "Just trying to get your attention, Jeff. This time I'm agreeing with the Chief; this one had to be done by a Psy. I can't think of any manual or mechanical means, from machete through mulching mower, that could do this to a man."
Jeff sighed. It was a conclusion that he had tried to avoid making, though he saw no way around it. On the other hand, he couldn't think of any psychic means to do all of this destruction either. "This was definitely a male victim then?"
"You haven’t been paying attention, have you? I shagged a testicle about ten bags ago." Sullivan glanced towards the door, where a lab-tech was busy retrieving evidence bags to carry them down to the van. The bags were opaque, thank God, and Jeff hoped that he would never see their bloody contents again. Photos he would see at most, if this case ever came to a trial, but not the real thing.
"What have we got so far, Jeff?" asked Chief June Marks, when she appeared abruptly at the doorway. She was immaculately dressed in a white pants suit, and obviously didn't intend to come into the blood-spattered apartment, which suited Jeff just fine.
The two of them walked together slowly down the hallway of the apartment building, past other Psy-cops and Normal cops, who were still interviewing terrified neighbors as they huddled in their apartment doorways. Most reported hearing a loud crash, a few seconds of screams, some deep snarling and thrashing about, and then another loud crash mere seconds later. Jeff could sense their fear and confusion, but nothing suspicious. This probably wasn't an inside job.
"One victim again, Chief: male; presumably Peter Fordham, the resident. Fordham was single, forty-five, and unemployed."
"Fordham? That name sounds familiar."
"Right; you probably heard the name on TV news. Another celebrated Keenan Institute graduate, like the previous two victims."
"A child rape-murder creep that got rehabilitated at Keenan and then released, like the other two?"
"Right. Same everything, only this murder is even messier and more suggestive of a Psy Master."
"Why more suggestive?" Marks asked.
"The skills and raw power involved. In a matter of seconds something apparently broke in through the brick wall of a third-story apartment, burned and ripped a guy to shreds, then exited through another wall. I suppose it had to be a Psy Master, but I can't imagine even a Master having the required level of multiple skills and power. Maybe a gang of them could do it; I don’t know. But that would be even more of a disaster politically, wouldn’t it? What's our cover story this time?"
"Bomb, like the other two times,” Marks revealed. “But I don't know how long the press will buy it; this time too many residents heard too much. A cover-up is already being hinted at by some of the news reporters, judging from what we see them posting on the Net. They're going to work themselves up into a feeding frenzy, I can feel it coming. But we have to stick with the cover story; we have no other choice. I've had calls from the mayor and several city council members. If the public finds out that a psycho Psy Master is on the loose, the repercussions could be worse than a thousand serial killers."
Jeff nodded, but wasn't so sure that their policy of lies was the right policy. By circumventing the truth, how would the general public ever learn and accept the simple fact that Psy-power didn't always go hand in hand with good intentions? The public genetic programs of the past century had resulted in a quarter of humans having measurable psychic powers of some sort. A few people were even telepathic, able to cure disease, fly, or levitate small objects. A very few, so-called Masters, had multiple powers. Of course 'Master' was an incredibly unfortunate choice of terms; it magnified ten-fold the fears of Normals that weren’t Psy.
Fed by the inevitable incidents of psychic committed felonies and other misdeeds, anti-Psy and in particular anti-Master sentiment had nearly reached critical mass among the Normals. Dozens of innocent Psy-capable citizens had already been murdered by cults of panicky crazies that claimed that a Psy conspiracy was occurring.
There really was a conspiracy, but it was a Government conspiracy against truth, not a Psy conspiracy to take over the world. Unfortunately, the current policy of official denial of any wrong doing by Masters magnified suspicions by orders of magnitude. If word got out now about a rogue Psy Master, riots or worse could result, June Marks was right about that much. But how would society ever adapt if it didn't face this thing head-on? He shook his head. It was another insolvable problem, just like the hundreds of others that had plagued humanity since creation.
"Is there something about our public policy that you disapprove of, Jeff?" asked Marks.
Jeff smiled. "I'm supposed to be the one with the empathic Psy-powers, Chief." She wasn't smiling in return, externally or internally. He could sense the intense pressure that she was under, and didn't want to be at the receiving end of her well-known temper. He had seen enough of that five years earlier, when the two of them had almost started a personal relationship that would have gone well beyond business.
A relationship that he rejected. She was a Normal; it would have never worked. Since then, he always called her 'Chief,' to ensure proper decorum, while she still always called him 'Jeff,' perhaps to show that she held no bad feelings about it. Of course everyone usually called him by his first name anyway, so maybe it meant nothing.
He politely turned away from her and honestly tried to not read her feelings, though doing so was about as uncomfortable and impossible as holding his breath. An empath was an empath. "I don't really disapprove, Chief, I just wish that things were different. Why propagate the myth that Psys of Master class are angels instead of just people with normal faults and weaknesses?"
"That's just what people are afraid of Jeff, Masters with the faults and weaknesses of a Hitler."
"This Psy is more the Jack the Ripper type."
Jeff could sense June sober even further. "If it's a Psy Master at all,” she said. “Have you heard anything about Psys having nightmares? Maybe nightmares about ancient beasts?"
Jeff was taken aback. "Are we still talking about this case?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Confidentially, there have been unsubstantiated reports over the years of Psys going psycho while dreaming, and sometimes causing horrible violence."
"All people dream, Chief; it doesn't mean squat. Dozens of lab tests have shown that psychotic activity doesn't happen during sleep, period. What you're talking about sounds like Psy-phobic nonsense." June claimed she wasn't phobic, but with the exception of the anti-Psy cultists, that's what almost everyone said. Yes, it was politically incorrect to be Psy-phobic, but Jeff wasn't convinced that deep down Normals were so accepting of those with powers. He suspected that practically every non-Psy person was Psy-phobic to some degree; suspicion of people that are different from one's self was too ingrained in the psyche to simply dismiss with logic or good intent
ions. He knew because he could sense the fear and suspicion and even hate in hundreds of Normals, every day of his life. Even in June. That's one reason he cut off their affair before it actually started.
"Just keep an open mind, Jeff," she said, as she walked away. It was exactly the same thing she said to him five years ago, Jeff recalled. He couldn't decide if she was now referring only to the case or also to the two of them.
He returned to the crime scene, where he was relieved to find that Doc Sullivan and his crew were finishing up with the last body parts. They'd still be blotting up blood and other nasty fluids for days, but that wouldn't bother the Doc much. However, Jeff sensed an unusual uneasiness in his Normal friend Sullivan. "What about that dragon crack you made earlier, Doc? Where you serious? Why a dragon?"
"Just a goofy notion that Marion mentioned, Jeff." Marion Gray was the group's only Psy Master Detective and Jeff's current lover. Besides being great in bed, she was full of half-baked notions about ghosts and demons, some of them probably correct. "Maybe she's on to something. A flying, fire-breathing monster dragon could explain a lot of this, right? Look here." Sullivan pointed out one bloody smudge among many, eight feet up on the wall. It looked for all the world like a gigantic bloody clawed hand or paw-print.
Jeff shrugged. "Something to throw us off the track maybe?"
"We aren't on any blasted track, unless you've been holding out on me. We have no living witnesses. We have horrific carnage caused by unknown instruments, too irregular for knives or anything else I've ever seen. We have no prints except that goofy bloody paw print that I just showed you. And we have no blood or spit or hair or dandruff or anything else to genetically type, other than the victim's remains and contamination that we cops have introduced."
"I've assumed that we're not suspects."
Doc shook his head. "Hopefully not. I guess we have motive, what with all the victims being child murderers and all, but how would any of us physically do this crime? And that leaves us with nothing forensics-wise, so far, except the infrared imaging."
Jeff perked up. The Doc had somehow been holding out on him, despite his mind-reading abilities. "You've got an image?"
Sullivan couldn't hold back a smile. "This is the first case where we arrived in time for good IR readings. We just might have something, but don't get too excited. It will take a couple more days to enhance it fully, then we'll see. Come on, I'll show you." He walked with Jeff downstairs and outside to the forensics van.
After closing the door to shut out unwanted sunlight and reporters, he deftly made one-fingered keyboard entries at the van's VISI-COM console. On the main display, a high resolution flat-screen that occupied half of one inside wall of the van, a fuzzy image of the murder scene appeared in shades ranging from cool gray to hot red. Body parts and fluids were light pink, and a powered-up VISI-COM set showed up dark pink. The rest of the scene was gray, with one notable exception. An enormous bright-red blob filled the middle of the room, towering over the scene. Lighter red smudges extended from the blob through the enormous holes in the apartment walls.
Jeff whistled. "It's huge, whatever it was. Will image enhancement clear this up?
"Don't know yet. infrared is funny stuff. Whatever it is, it's at least ten-times man-size and hot as blazes, but I couldn't say now if it's a living body or a Psy-energy orb or swamp gas or what. Does it look like anything to you? A dragon maybe?"
Studying the image again, Jeff noticed features that perhaps suggested a reptilian head, wings, and tail. It could be a hot bodied dragon at that, he realized. Or any number of things. A flock of chickens maybe, with hot-wings. He shook his head. "Nothing for sure but a hot blob, Doc."
Returning to the scene one final time that day, Jeff encountered Marion Gray. She stood in the middle of the room mumbling, her open, unfocussed eyes bulging, hands clutched and outstretched, in what he could empath was a deep psychic trance. It was odd and against policy for her to be doing this without having Jeff of another empath on hand, but then Marion was Marion. A Normal lab-tech stood to one side recording her every sound and gesture for later interpretation. Two other Normal techs just watched silently. Being non-Psy, this probably seemed like black magic to them, and he could sense their relative indifference to her safety.
Suddenly Marion was shouting incoherently and spinning in circles wildly. Jeff could empath her growing terror. She was in big trouble. He and one of the techs closed in to grab her and try to snap her out of her trance, but invisible forces that felt like impossibly strong and hot winds threw them back violently. Jeff fell and landed in a puddle of putrid murder victim slime and blood. "Shit, Marion!" he shouted, "snap out of it!"
Another tech had fetched a wastebasket half-filled with water to throw over her. The water steamed away even before it hit her, but Jeff took it as a sign that this was the needed approach; Marion's clothes were starting to smoke. In seconds he was in the hallway outside the apartment, frantically wrestling out a fire hose. He could hear Marion screaming in pain as her clothes burst into flame.
The high-pressure blast of water extinguished the fire, but knocked the small woman across the room and silenced her. When Sullivan and Jeff reached her she was unconscious and terribly burned. They rushed her to the nearest hospital in the forensics van, but it was no use. She was dead.
Later June found Jeff in his apartment, drinking from a bottle of scotch and wringing in his hands the sweater that Marion had worn just the night before. Marion could have sensed the past, present, and future by inspecting a person's clothing, Jeff could only sense an empty void. "I'm sorry Jeff, I know that you were very close to her."
Jeff didn't even acknowledge her presence. He remembered seeing on VISI-COM once that a century ago fraternization between fellow workers was frowned upon. Maybe that ancient practice had some advantages. He couldn't believe that Marion was gone.
"The press is going nuts, Jeff, absolutely ape-shit. The mayor is too. They all want more blood, ours. Do you have any idea what happened?"
"Not much, Chief. I'm pretty certain that she was getting Psy-feedback from some unknown source, but it was malevolent and impossibly powerful."
"The press is saying suicide, due to guilt."
"Suicide! That's plain nuts! Guilt over what?"
"The murders."
"What?"
"She was a Psy-Master right? Was she with you when the murders occurred?"
"She was sleeping beside me, but the whole idea is crazy, Chief! Marion wouldn't and couldn't hurt anybody. Hell, she had powers, but nothing like what killed her or the other three. She was a low-order Master, and mostly a clairvoyant, you know that!"
"Did you know that all of the victims were non-Psy Normals, and that all of their child victims were Psy?"
"Sure I knew it. Are you suggesting some sort of Psy backlash against Psy-phobic Normals? I think it's more likely to be a coincidence."
"Maybe. You say Marion was with you the nights of the murders?"
"For the last two, yes she was, and I'll be glad to testify to that. Or maybe as a Psy my word isn't any good?"
"Did she sleep peacefully?"
"You think that she could kill those people from miles away while she slept? She couldn't have even done it even awake! Nobody could!"
"Did she talk to you about having nightmares?"
"No. I had some dreams of my own that we talked about a little bit, that's all."
"What kind of dreams?"
"Mostly of me flying around the town, if you must know. And OK, also seeing some sort of death and destruction. Not too unusual, I figure. I imagine that half the staff's having odd nightmare dreams due to the murders. Besides, I've always had a lot of strange dreams."
"Why didn't you mention your nightmares to me when I asked you earlier?"
"Well, for one thing, I'm not sure that what I had could be considered to be nightmares; I seemed to mostly enjoy them, if anything. Haven't you ever had neat flying dreams?"
"Yes, b
ut not ones that also involved mayhem." She paced the room for a few seconds, deep in thought, and putting out too mixed a bag of feelings for him to decipher, then turned to face him again. "You're off the case Jeff, as of now. I'm putting Freeberg in charge. We’ll borrow a clairvoyant and empath team from another district. You take some time off, but be available for questioning and consultation."
She probably expected him to argue, to proudly defend his turf, and to be pissed-off at her for grilling him or something, but he just didn't give a shit. Marion was dead, for Christ-sakes. He shrugged and took a deep breath. "Freeberg's good, but green, and not even a Psy. Should I just sort of phase him in over the next few days? You can tell the press and the mayor he's in charge right now."
She shook her head. "I want you to stay away from the case totally."
"Hey, I'll be all right."
"You're missing the point. In the larger scheme of things nobody gives a shit if you're all right or not, Jeff, and my problems with the press and the brass will always be there no matter what the hell I do. You're a suspect in this case Jeff. You can't have anything to do with working it. Period." She walked out.
Jeff was stunned. Is this what twenty years of police work had come to? Have problems with a case and you get accused of committing the crimes yourself? He personally didn't feel too upset about the murder of the three Psy-phobic scumbags, but how the hell could anyone think that he could murder Marion? And what about this psychic-dream-killer nonsense? Where was June getting it from? Had she made it up? Was she getting back at him for rejecting her by using him as a scapegoat in this case? And/or was she yet another damn Psy-phobe?
After raiding his liquor cabinet, Jeff powered up his VISI-COM. Quit this case? Not a fat bloody chance in hell! He small-windowed several local news stations and set them to provide audio if Marion's name was mentioned. Then he searched the Net for research on psychic powers while dreaming and for murder cases involving dreaming or dragons. He came up blank, until he queried the non-public police webs. He got several hits. None of the cases were solved though. They were obscure, discredited, and spread over thousands of miles and a hundred years. He didn't see how they could possibly be connected.
And how the hell had June come across them? On a hunch, he back-scanned COMs coming from his apartment for the last three days. He found several made by Marion. It was pure hell, seeing and listening to her again, as if she were still alive and not just a peculiar molecular magnetic alignment scattered through a memory cube, but he had to do it.
Suddenly there it was, a call from Marion to June, two days ago, after the second murder. After their first night together at his apartment. Marion asked June if she ever heard about Psy-murders committed while a Psy dreamed about dragons. June said no, but she would check into it.
Hell, Marion had talked to both Sullivan and Marks about this dragon crap, and never seriously discussed it with him! Why? Why would she talk about Psy matters behind his back to Normals? He tried to remember Marion's last couple of days; everything that she did and said. He remembered her anxiously asking him about his dreams the morning after her first night with him at his apartment.
He had laughed when he told her about them. They were odd, vivid, and mildly disturbing upon reflection, but he knew that he was right to make light of them. They were only dreams, mere shadows of the mind.
Marion hadn't laughed. She had been the one to suggest that he might be dreaming about being a dragon, based on what he described to her: flying, glimpses of wing and tail tips, and breathing fire.
Most of it he simply couldn't describe to her though; maybe he was ashamed to. While in the dream he felt incredibly wise and powerful. He also felt totally ruthless. He was above any law or compassion for life or anything but all consuming self-purpose. That self-purpose was for anything he wished. Hoards of gold or the crushed skulls of enemies, he could have whatever he wanted in the dream. So OK, he remembered tearing evil enemies apart, but it was only a lousy dream. It wasn’t real. But then, Marion was clairvoyant, one of the best. What had she seen that she hadn't told him?
He fell asleep still pondering how his strange dreams could be related to the murders. Of course they couldn't possibly be his logic again and again comforted him. But that night he again dreamed that he was a dragon. It seemed more real than ever. He could feel the wind on his scales, the night air filling his great lungs, and the contractions of massive muscles that drove powerful wings. He roared in exultation and heard the sound echo through the city. And he wanted revenge.
"Revenge on who?" asked the voice. "Who tonight? More psy child defilers? You saw a list; you know who and where they are. Kill them. Kill them all."
"There are too many," Jeff answered.
"Kill them at the source then," said the voice.
"Where?"
"Where they nest, kill them there! You know where."
"They sleep in alleyways and shelters and hospitals. They live in homes like anyone else. There are thousands of them.”
“Start with the place with the list. It is where many of them nest.”
"Yes," roared the voice that was his but not his. He flew towards their nesting place. His wings beat so hard that thunder followed in his wake, while this great lungs gulped air and exhaled fire in a screaming roar. He felt whole, complete, and joyous; for this was life as it was meant to be, life filled with power.
Ancient memories flooded his mind, of great battles fought with fang and claw, of mating on the wing among ice covered mountain peaks, of magic that could control lightning or stop aging, of pain and finally death and a cold dark night that seemed to never end. In him surged magic learned over countless centuries, but first he needed release from death. Then, after long ages of waiting, there were suddenly new opportunities. Psy-capable, dreaming humans. Enablers.
The building was only material, he flew through it almost as easily as if it were air, scattering chunks of stone and steel as if they were mere hailstones with his mighty wings. The ugly man creatures were nested there all right, scores of them, screaming and dying. He tore them with claw and cooked them with fire, smashed their puny bodies with his tail and crushed their skulls between his teeth.
The COM woke Jeff. It was Whitmore, his man at the Keenan Institute, using a hand-held voice-only communications device. The hospital was being attacked by a monster. Doctors, nurses, patients and security guards were being slaughtered. Whitmore had emptied his own gun shooting at the attacking nightmare beast to no effect. Send more men, he screamed. Whitmore must have been COMing the Station, and the system also called Jeff. Jeff overheard the Station assure him that help was on the way.
Jeff windowed in the local news channels as Whitmore babbled on almost incoherently about a dragon. One station showed Keenan live from an over-head hover-copter. The hospital looked like it had been bombed, and was totally engulfed in flames. Sirens and hideous screams filled the air, and Jeff could see the flashing lights of emergency vehicles converging on the scene on land and in the air from all directions. Whitmore screamed and his voice channel abruptly went dead. In a daze, Jeff switched off the news channels.
June's face suddenly filled the screen with a priority call. "Jeff, you're awake? Good. Stay awake and where you are, we'll be right over." Before the screen snapped blank Jeff glimpsed Freeberg's face in back of June's. They had been too far away to empath, but their intent was clear. They were coming for him.
His head was spinning as he staggered from his bed and to the kitchenette sink for water to splash over his face. This couldn't be happening, his involvement via dreams must be some sort of self-delusion. Maybe it was a guilt-trip for not being able to solve the crimes? But why the dragon?
"Because that is what I am, human; or rather what I was and am BECOMING again," said the impossibly deep voice, from in his apartment. Jeff scrambled for the gun next to his bed, then made his way towards the voice. His picture window was busted in, he noticed. Standing astride the shattered glas
s a dragon filled most of his living room. Its hideous head with its terrible, red-glowing eyes, white, dagger sized teeth, and red, split tongue scraped the twelve-foot ceiling, as did its folded wings. Jeff shot it three times between the eyes with his 7.7 mm Cole Special.
"I am already dead, fool," said the dragon. "Humans are such idiots when it comes to these things. When it comes to anything fundamental, really."
"What the hell are you, and what do you want?"
"I want what you have already given me, human. As to what I am, that is even more obvious."
"Dragons are mythical beasts."
"How quickly you humans forget your betters, or try to. You are infants terrible, that is your only charm."
"Why me?"
"Your weaknesses, your hate, and your dreams link you to realms used by the dead. But mostly it was pure chance. I have thus used humans beyond counting."
"Why are you here while I'm awake, and why are your thoughts now separate from mine?"
"Joint thought while you sleep is no longer necessary, human. The path to this realm is well beaten."
"Be gone!" Jeff shouted, waving his arms.
The dragon may have smiled. "Next would you mind spouting poetic words of exorcism and make pleas to your puny gods, human? That may further serve to amuse us while we wait."
"Wait? Wait for what?"
"For your non-psy friends to arrive. They plot against us. I will destroy them, as I destroyed that other."
"You killed Marion. Why?"
"She would have tried to stop us, and I am not yet done with you, human. Besides, her psychic bumbling was offensive. But most of all, you cared for her; that was reason enough."
Jeff raised the gun again, but did not fire.
"I cannot yet taste of flesh or blood, but terror and death feeds me, human. And revenge is sweet."
"Revenge for what?"
The dragon snorted fire. "Stupid, ignorant fools, all of you. Of late you play with The Forces, yet you are blind and deaf; that much hasn't changed. Hordes of stupid vermin, you killed us OFF one by one, as you now kill yourselves, sealing your fate."
"I don't understand what you're talking about."
"I am not here for your understanding, thief of worlds, I am here for your misery. And to see humans die." The beast smiled and turned its head towards the apartment door.
Loud knocking erupted, then June's voice. "Let us in Jeff, we have to talk."
"Go away, it's a trap, it wants to kill you," shouted Jeff. The dragon blocked his path to the door with monstrous body and tail. "For God's sake June, trust me! Leave now!"
The door swung open, unlocked by police over-ride, and June and Freeberg bounded in, guns drawn. In an instant the dragon had Freeberg in its mouth, crushing him and shaking him as a dog might shake a rat. As his blood sprayed the room, Jeff and June both fired dozens of rounds into the dragon with no effect. Killing the man wasn't enough; the dragon threw his mangled body to the floor and tore him to bits with its hand-like clawed front paws, while it breathed fire to seer him and fill the room with the hot sick smell of burned human flesh.
"Get out, June!" Jeff shouted, but she could only stand shaking and staring wide-eyed at the spectacle, pulling again and again the trigger of her now empty weapon.
The dragon flicked a wing tip at her, knocking her to its other waiting wing tip, then into a huge clawed hand that enfolded her entire torso. "I'll kill this one slow, Jeff, as your kind killed mine and took my world." It reached out with its other clawed hand and almost gently tweaked June's left leg, breaking bones as she screamed in pain.
With rage beyond fear and reason, Jeff launched himself at the dragon, hopelessly pounding at steel-hard scales with puny human fists and feet.
"Stupid human! So, you've overcome your fears at last! But you can't stop me!" taunted the dragon.
Jeff took a step back, drew out his gun again. The dragon smiled in triumph as Jeff put the barrel into his own mouth and pulled the trigger. June dropped painfully to the floor at the same instant as Jeff's lifeless body.
The grinning dragon vanished instantly but was not vanquished. Not while there were still more dreamers to dream with and kill as he grew ever stronger. The fading sound of a dragon’s roar echoed through the city.
****
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