Waking Nightmares
The Shadow Saga [5]
Christopher Golden
Ace (2011)
* * *
Rating: ***
View our feature on Christopher Golden's Waking Nightmares.
Peter Octavian, once a vampire, now a powerful mage, has been living a quiet life in San Francisco. But when the barrier that used to prevent demons and monsters from entering the world have fallen, Octavian is compelled to do what he can to hold back the darkness.
Review
'The pacing is always pedal-to-the-floor, the main characters are larger than life and the demons and other assorted monstrosities give Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos a run for their money' Barnes & Noble Online 'Something wicked this way comes in Christopher Golden's WAKING NIGHTMARES. An intriguing thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat, it highlights the nightmare that has been unleashed in Hawthorne and which the police are ill-equipped to handle. In a race against time, Keomany and Peter, along with several other secondary characters, must discover the source before Hawthorne is consumed and the terror spreads beyond the town limits to the rest of the world. Readers get glimpses into several lives as they are affected by the circumstances and must piece together the puzzle along with Peter and Keomany to determine the nature of the threat. A thrilling page-turner, WAKING NIGHTMARES is a great addition to the spring/summer reading collection' Romance Reviews Today ' A thrilling horror tale' scifibulletin.com 'Whether a reader has been waiting for Peter Octavian's return or just wants a good horror adventure, WAKING NIGHTMARES is a satisfying read' assignmentx.com
About the Author
Christopher Golden is the author of more than twenty novels, including the critically-acclaimed Strangewood, and six nonfiction projects. He has worked in the comic book field for both Marvel and Dark Horse, and his short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. He received the Bram Stoker Award for his nonfiction work, Cut: Horror Writers on Horror Film. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two sons. Visit his website at www.christophergolden.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
EPILOGUE
“Horror-fantasy epic is a difficult beat to hit—but Christopher Golden’s sprawling saga of vampires, demons, and dark sorcery is nothing less.”
—Mike Carey, author of the Felix Castor novels
“Christopher Golden was writing kick-ass urban fantasy before the genre even had a name. The Peter Octavian novels are smart, fast-paced, lyrical, and vicious.”
—Jonathan Maberry, author of The King of Plagues
Praise for Of Saints and Shadows . . .
“Golden’s book is the template for a score of books that have been published in the years since its publication. Many of those books have been bestsellers. Reading Of Saints and Shadows again, I was amazed how many elements now familiar in the vampire and thriller genres appeared in Saints first. Golden’s imagination and expert plotting wove these elements into a startlingly original book, as exciting to read now as it was when it first appeared on the rack.”
—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead in the Family
. . . and for the Peter Octavian novels
“A delightfully different take on vampires . . . sure to stand out in the current crop of urban fantasy.”
—Kelley Armstrong, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Waking the Witch
“Christopher Golden has reinvented the vampire myth into nonstop action, suspense, and fascinating dark fantasy. [He’s] an imaginative and prodigious talent who never lets genre boundaries hold him back.”
—Douglas Clegg, author of the Vampyricon trilogy
“One of the best horror novels of the year. Filled with tension, breathtaking action, dire plots, and a convincing depiction of worlds existing unseen within our own.”
—Science Fiction Chronicle
“Harrowing, humorous, overflowing with characters and plot contortions, abundantly entertaining.”
—Douglas E. Winter, Cemetery Dance
“[Golden’s] work is fast and furious, funny and original, and I can’t wait until his next book.”
—Joe R. Lansdale, author of Devil Red
“Golden combines quiet, dark, subtle mood with Super-Giant monster action. Sort of M. R. James meets Godzilla!”
—Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy
“A breathtaking story that succeeds in marrying gore and romance, sex, and sentiment. A brilliant epic.”
—Dark News (Paris)
“The most refreshing books in the vampire genre since Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire, [Golden’s novels] are completely in a class by themselves.”
—Pathway to Darkness
“Passionate . . . excellent . . . Golden has written one of the best . . . a deep probe into the inner workings of the church and a surprise explanation for vampires. Brilliant.”
—LitNews Online
Look for all
the Peter Octavian novels
from Ace Books
OF SAINTS AND SHADOWS
ANGEL SOULS AND DEVIL HEARTS
OF MASQUES AND MARTYRS
THE GATHERING DARK
WAKING NIGHTMARES
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
WAKING NIGHTMARES
An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY Ace mass-market edition / April 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Christopher Golden.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For info
rmation, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47758-8
ACE
Ace Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ACE and the “A” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
http://us.penguingroup.com
This book is respectfully dedicated to all of the
fantastic friends and readers who simply would not
stop asking when Octavian would return.
I hope you enjoy this homecoming as much as I have.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Enormous thanks to my wonderful editor, Ginjer Buchanan, who has always left a light burning in the window for Peter. Thanks to everyone on the Ace team, to Tom Sniegoski for the morning chats, and to Tim Lebbon, Amber Benson, and Ashleigh Bergh for keeping me in line. Most of all, my endless love and thanks to my wife, Connie, and our crazy kids, Nicholas, Daniel, and Lily Grace.
CHAPTER 1
OCTAVIAN climbed out of the professor’s car, hoping they had come to this grimy corner of Montreal on a fool’s errand, that there would be no monsters tonight. Fighting monsters took time—magic or spirits or demons even longer—and he had promised to return to The Red Door before Nikki took the stage tonight. Don’t make me break my promise, he had warned the professor. The man had nodded anxiously and tried to reassure him, but Octavian did not feel reassured.
He stood on the sidewalk in the golden light of the setting sun and looked up at the windows of the third-floor apartment. They were dirty, like everything else in this neighborhood, and the glint of the waning daylight only made the glass opaque and almost sinister.
“So this girl is a student of yours?” Octavian asked.
The professor slammed his car door and thumbed the button on his keychain that made the car chirp, its doors locking automatically. He looked even more pale and nervous than usual.
“Last year,” the professor said. “We’ve stayed close.”
Octavian raised an eyebrow but did not comment. Derek Tremblay had been a professor at McGill University in Montreal for a dozen years. A decade before that, he’d gone to visit friends at Boston College and—after a drug-fueled rave—woken up to find one of those friends dead and himself under arrest for murder. In those days, before the world knew the truth about shadows and vampires and demons, Octavian had been a private investigator in Boston. Helping people like Derek Tremblay, back before he was Professor Tremblay, had been Octavian’s way of trying to make up for the hideous things he had done in his first few centuries as a shadow . . . as a vampire.
“A lot of students in this neighborhood?” Octavian asked, glancing around at the bicycles chained to lampposts, the posters for music events plastered on the bus station, and the old VW bus parked at the corner. Across the street was a coffeehouse, its open door pumping music. Two grungy-looking guys came out as he watched, both carrying skateboards.
“Who else would live here?” the professor asked.
Octavian smiled thinly. There were millions of people who would weep with joy if offered the opportunity to live here, but he knew what the professor meant. There was certainly a Bohemian air in the neighborhood, which spread for several blocks, not far from the university. The Red Door—the music club where Octavian’s girlfriend, Nikki Wydra, was playing tonight—was only a few blocks away. They’d been to The Red Door, or La Porte Rouge, before, and the clientele would fit right in on this street. They were Boho twenty–and thirty-somethings with a passion for coffee, music, peace, and the environment. Octavian figured as long as people like them existed, there was still hope for the world.
Most visitors thought Montreal could be divided into two basic areas: the tourist-friendly Old Town, with its European architecture, cobblestoned streets, and eclectic shops, and the rest of the city, which was much more metropolitan and modern. But it would be too simple to split Montreal between the distant past and the vibrant future, especially when neighborhoods like this one, stuck in the 1960s, still thrived. Vidscreens might show news and advertisements 24/7 in the subway, the underground malls, and bus stations in the city’s business centers, but such technology might as well not even exist here.
So it surprised Octavian all the more when the professor used his own key to open the apartment building’s front door. Tremblay caught himself, but too late. As he pushed the door open and pocketed his keys, he glanced guiltily at Octavian.
“You said you were close,” Octavian said.
The professor nodded. “Yeah.”
Neither man needed to elaborate. If the professor had a sexual relationship with one of his students, that was an issue for the university. Their reason for being here tonight—if the professor and his young girlfriend were right—concerned Octavian much more. Enough to take time away from Nikki to accompany Tremblay on this errand, despite the distance he had been feeling in their relationship of late.
The foyer smelled of mold and piss. Someone had painted the walls within the past few years but had just slathered the latex on top of the old, peeling paint without doing much scraping. If not for the cat on the stairs and the mail stacked on a table just inside the door, the place would have seemed abandoned.
Cooking smells wafted from the closed door to the first-floor apartment. Octavian nodded for the professor to lead the way and they started up the stairs.
The professor had his key to the girl’s apartment building, on the same ring as his car keys and the key to his own place. He unlocked the apartment door, swung it open, and stepped inside.
“Viviane?” he said quietly.
Octavian followed him into the apartment and the professor shut the door. The day had been warm for September, and the air in the apartment was musty and close. Not quite stifling, but it must have been almost unbearable earlier in the day. No air moved. No breeze. The place was closed up tight. If the professor hadn’t told him the girl was home, he would have thought the apartment was empty.
The professor pocketed his keys and ventured into a small living room full of mismatched furniture. Based on the décor and the overall tidiness of the place, it was clearly an apartment without a permanent male presence. Chinese paper lanterns hung from the ceiling above the sofa. A light hummed in the galley kitchen, as though the bulb might burn out at any moment.
“Viviane?” the professor said, a bit louder now, as he started toward the short hall that led deeper into the apartment.
Octavian resisted the urge to check the time on his cell phone. Nikki would be doing sound check right now. He had hours before she went on stage. Plenty of time for whatever darkness lay ahead.
A door clicked softly open down the hall. The professor halted, letting his young girlfriend come to him. Viviane emerged from the shadowed hallway tentatively at first, but when she saw Octavian, her expression turned hopeful.
“Hey,” the professor said, reaching for her hand.
Viviane let him pull her into a quick embrace but barely seemed aware of his kiss. She wore a McGill sweatshirt and pajama pants and looked as if she hadn’t showered in days. The dark circles under her eyes, visible despite the deep chocolate hue of her skin, suggested she hadn’t slept in at least as long.
“Is this him?” she asked.
Octavian nodded. “I’m him.”
Viviane smiled, and suddenly she didn’t look so weary. But then the smile faded as she remembered what awaited them in the other room.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, approaching him and holding out her hand. “I’m Viviane Chenot.”
“Peter Octavian,” he replied, shaking her hand. “And it’s no trouble. I’m in Montreal for a few days anyway.”
Viviane was nodding. “That’s how Derek tracked you down. He saw on Nikki Wydra’s Twitter that she was playing at La Porte Rouge tonight—”
>
“I explained it all to him,” the professor interrupted.
“Yeah,” Viviane said, nodding. “Sorry. Of course you did.”
Octavian always thought it was interesting when people referred to Nikki by her first and last name, but that was her public identity. She wasn’t a celebrity by any means, but to people who liked the kind of music she played, she was famous enough. And to them, she was Nikki Wydra. Names of famous people were like that; they held weight. And that was indeed how the professor had known Octavian would be in Montreal tonight and had tracked him down—through Nikki’s Twitter page. Octavian hadn’t seen Derek Tremblay in more than twenty years, but the professor knew what Octavian had been up to in that time. A lot of people did.
“It’s no trouble,” Octavian said, trying to soothe the girl.
It was not quite a lie. Nikki had not been entirely pleased with his leaving her to meet Tremblay, but neither was she selfish enough to have attempted to stop him. Her career had become more and more important to her. The time they spent apart had grown more frequent thanks to her music and to his work. Whenever unexplained supernatural phenomena appeared, he would get a phone call. Sometimes he had to get involved. When the two of them were alone together, without the pressures of the outside world, it was easy for her to forget that he was supernatural, and for him to forget that she was not—that she was ordinary and mortal and could not imagine some of the things he had seen and lived.
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