Waking Nightmares

by Christopher Golden

  The most important thing was that the crisis had passed. The patients who had erupted in violent rages had been restrained and sedated, though not without injuries to themselves and to members of the staff. Alarms had sounded. People had bled. Bones were broken. Pinsky was dead, but no one was going to cry for a homicidal maniac with so much blood on his hands. They were very lucky no one else had been killed while the orderlies and the rest of the staff were getting the whole thing under control.

  “If you think of anything . . .” the lieutenant said, all furrowed-brow business.

  Jenny smiled, wishing that the left side of her face weren’t swollen and bruised. “You’ll be the first person I call.”

  If the lieutenant had even the tiniest clue there might be some flirtation in her tone, he didn’t show it. Her timing was not ideal. The truth was, she couldn’t even really put her heart into flirting with the guy. The night’s events had gotten under her skin too much. But she did want to know his name, for future reference.

  She was about to ask for his card when she saw Marlon coming out of the secure area. He spotted her and hurried over, a worried crease to his brow.

  “Dr. O’Neil.”

  “What’s up, Marlon?” she said. “I don’t like that look.”

  “You’ve got to come and see Gregory Wheeler.”

  Jenny frowned. “What is it? Don’t tell me he’s gone rabid all of a sudden?”

  Marlon glanced from Jenny to the lieutenant and back again. “It’s probably better if you come talk to him.”

  “Talk to him?”

  “Can someone enlighten me?” the lieutenant asked. “My officers are still gathering information, but I don’t think there was a Wheeler on the list of patients who had outbursts.”

  Jenny started walking. Marlon and the lieutenant caught up and the three of them hurried into the secure area, that propped-open door still troubling her. She paused a moment to release it from the magnetic catch and let it swing closed, hydraulics hissing.

  “Greg Wheeler is a paranoid schizophrenic. Badly delusional,” she told the lieutenant. “He’s in the last room on the hall.”

  “Where the window shattered,” the lieutenant said. “He’s a kid.”

  Jenny almost corrected him, not about Greg being a kid—his parents were on the way down—but about the window. It hadn’t been Greg’s room where the wall had been so badly damaged, it had been Pinsky’s. But then she remembered that the window had shattered in Greg’s room. The frame was charred and the metal grate that covered the glass had been blackened. Lightning had hit the building in more than one place, but at least in Greg’s case, it hadn’t done more than break a little glass. If the wall had blown in, the boy might have been killed.

  They passed police officers and security guards, nurses and orderlies. Many patients had been put in restraints in addition to being sedated. Some had been moved to other wards. Workmen were already in the damaged room boarding up the hole in the wall until more permanent repairs could begin. Pinsky’s charred remains had already been taken to the morgue. Several nurses tried to talk to her, but Jenny asked them to hold their questions for a few minutes. Police radios buzzed with static, and she thought she heard frantic voices.

  “Seems like the police department is having a rough night,” she said.

  “Chief Kramer has his hands full,” the lieutenant confirmed. “I’ve never seen a night like this. Crank calls. Heart attacks. People hallucinating all kinds of things.”

  “How can you be so sure they’re hallucinating?” Marlon asked.

  The lieutenant glanced at him. “If you heard the stuff they’re reporting, you’d know.” He glanced back at Jenny. “So, yes, we’re stretched pretty thin. Now that things are reined in here, I’m going to cut most of my guys loose. I’ll leave an officer here until morning, just in case anything else happens—”

  “God forbid,” Marlon said.

  “—and you can call me if you have any questions.”

  The lieutenant produced a card and handed it to her. Pleased, she pocketed it, then turned all of her focus on the mystery of why Marlon had dragged her down here in the first place.

  They arrived at Greg Wheeler’s room. A nurse stepped aside to let them through the door. Greg had been restrained earlier, so Jenny was surprised to find him sitting in a chair. His hair was combed and his clothes—a top and pants not unlike the scrubs the staff wore—seemed neatly arranged on him. When she walked into the room, he turned to look at her and a gladness filled Jenny, because she could see just from the look in his eyes that he knew her.

  Greg smiled the disarming smile that she had come to recognize over the years. He only smiled like that when his paranoia had retreated, when he could like her and trust her. With that look on his face, he seemed like a completely different kid, sweet and intelligent and a little sad.

  “Wow. Looks like there’s at least one person around here who’s having a good night,” Jenny said.

  Greg nodded, smile broadening. When he spoke, he was animated and a little goofy, and he offered her a self-deprecating grin and a shrug, rolling his eyes. He spoke to her as he would a friend—and why not, they had known each other more than long enough to be friends.

  Except he wasn’t speaking English.

  Jenny stared at him. It wasn’t gibberish, either. The words had a cadence and rhythm and a repetition of certain sounds and even phrases that made her feel certain it was an actual language, but it wasn’t any language she had ever heard before.

  “What the hell is this?” the lieutenant asked. “Where’s this kid from?”

  Jenny glanced at Marlon.

  “Greg’s from Salem,” the orderly replied. “Right down the street.”

  “What’s he speaking?” the cop asked.

  Jenny thought that was a damn good question.

  CHAPTER 9

  OCTAVIAN wasn’t sure if the After Midnight Café had been designed to have a retro, fifties diner feel to it, or if it had just been that long since anyone had updated the décor. He and Keomany sat across the table from the vampire girl, Charlotte, in a red vinyl booth. In life, the vampire had been beautiful, with copper-red hair that hung in unkempt curls past her shoulders, and blue eyes that sometimes seemed to reflect back the colors around her. She had asked for his help, and Octavian would not turn her away, not even in the midst of this crisis. But she had him on guard. He read her fear and anxiety as genuine, but there was more to her than just that.

  One look at her, and he knew she was hungry. Charlotte had an addict’s smile, twitchy and unsure, nervous energy making her fidget in her seat. Yet he could see the struggle going on within her as she tried to hide that hunger from him.

  “When was the last time you ate?” Octavian asked.

  Charlotte glanced at the menu in front of her, eyebrows knitting in frustration.

  “I’m not talking about anything on that menu,” Octavian added, his voice lowered.

  Beside him, Keomany sat up a bit straighter. He knew she had met vampires before, but despite that—and in spite of her intimacy with magic on an elemental level—she had no experience that would allow her to form an opinion about Charlotte. That would have to be Octavian’s job.

  “Are you saying—” Keomany began.

  “Too long,” Charlotte interrupted, glancing nervously at Octavian and then, almost demurely, down at her fingers. She alternated between drumming them on the table and scraping her nails against the plastic edging around the menu.

  Octavian narrowed his eyes, growing very still. “You said you understood who I am.”

  Charlotte gave a hollow laugh. “Who doesn’t? I mean, who of us?”

  “I’m not one of you anymore,” Octavian replied.

  She shrugged. “As if it’s that easy. I’ve heard about you. Read about you. Add in the time you spent in . . . well, in Hell . . . and you were a vampire longer than anyone. Long enough to evolve into whatever the hell you are now.”

  Irritated,
Octavian bared his teeth, just the way he had sometimes done in the days when they were sharper.

  “This conversation isn’t about me, except to establish that you understand who you’re dealing with. I’ve never heard of you, never met you, never seen you before. You’ve admitted that you never signed the Covenant, and that makes you rogue. I could kill you right now and be well within my rights. International law is on my side. It practically demands that I end you.”

  “Fine,” Charlotte said, leaning forward on her bench, red vinyl crumpling as she moved. She tugged down the front of her tank top, revealing an expanse of white cleavage and lacy black bra. “Go for it. End me. Or, y’know, let me answer the questions you brought me here to answer.”

  Octavian bristled, but Keomany put a hand on his leg, under the table. He looked at her, saw the concern in her gaze, and he exhaled. What had gotten into him? Chaos? That made a certain amount of sense. The chaos that was quickly spreading through Hawthorne and saturating the community might well affect the people within its sphere of influence, even those connected to the supernatural. Perhaps, he thought, it would affect those individuals most of all.

  The waitress arrived, cutting off whatever any of them might have said next. They ordered coffee all around, and Keomany asked for a slice of cheesecake. Somehow, that seemed to calm them all. There was something absurd about eating dessert in the middle of such chaos and hostility. Perhaps Keomany knew it, because she smiled and asked for three forks.

  Octavian frowned as he noticed she was cradling one hand in her lap, and he realized she was still feeling the effects of her contact with the wraith earlier tonight. The trouble at the Troubadour, and now encountering Charlotte, had distracted him enough that he had nearly forgotten. Keomany had not complained, but watching her now, he knew that he would need to follow through on his earlier insistence that she rest tonight. He would cast a spell that would hopefully draw out whatever taint might be in her, or simply help her heal if it was only a matter of numbness and aching after the wraith had touched her. By morning, she ought to be fine. He needed her to be fine.

  When the waitress departed, Charlotte opened her hands as though in supplication.

  “Look, can we start again?” the vampire girl asked, her red hair falling across her face. Another day it might have made her sexy, but Octavian thought that tonight, the effect was altogether different. She seemed vulnerable, and very alone.

  “Why don’t we start with what you’re doing here?” Keomany asked. “This whole town is falling apart. Peter and I are here to help, but the last thing we expected was an unregistered vampire.”

  Charlotte sank back into her seat. For a moment she looked like a truculent teenager, but then she softened, making herself breathe when she didn’t need to—a cleansing breath, Octavian thought.

  “None of this is my doing,” she said. “I mean, if that’s what you were thinking, you can unthink it. I’ve got nothing to do with this, except that I was in that club listening to the band when these people started trying to kill each other. It was that sudden, y’know? One second everyone’s just listening to the music, maybe chattering about the thunder because they could hear it over the band, and then—like someone fired a starter pistol—they’re going at each other, kicking and punching, grabbing anything they can use as a weapon, just tearing into each other. Fucking rabid animals.”

  Octavian smiled, reaching up to scrape his palm thoughtfully across the stubble on his chin.

  “Okay,” he said. “But that brings me back to my first question. It’s been a while since you ate. You’re as twitchy as a junkie looking to score. Were you at that club hunting?”

  Charlotte tried to smile again but succeeded only in baring her fangs. “I don’t hunt humans.”

  Octavian could practically hear the unspoken ending to that sentence: anymore.

  “Look, just because I’m what you call a rogue, that doesn’t make me a monster.”

  “Then why aren’t you registered?” Keomany asked. “And how is it that you need our help?”

  Charlotte nodded. She scratched at her arms and fidgeted a bit. “There you go,” she said. “That’s where we need to be in this conversation.”

  The waitress arrived, delivering their coffees and Keomany’s cheesecake. As requested, she laid three forks on the table, but when she walked away, no one touched the cheesecake.

  “Go on,” Octavian urged.

  Charlotte hesitated, holding her coffee cup in both hands as though to warm her. The rain pounded the plate glass windows of the café. The lights flickered from the storm.

  “You swear you won’t kill me?” the vamp girl asked.

  Octavian stirred sugar into his coffee and raised it to his lips.

  “No,” he said, taking a sip, letting the heat of the drink sink into him. “But I promise I’ll hear you out.”

  For the first time, Charlotte looked truly afraid of him, and a dreadful sorrow filled her, as though she had been hollow before and now that sadness was all that she could contain.

  “I promise you’ll get a running start,” Keomany told her. “But that will have to be good enough.”

  Octavian glanced at her sharply, but Keomany ignored him. She stared at the vampire, rubbing her numb hand as if it had fallen asleep.

  Charlotte glanced around, scratched her arms again, and ran her tongue over her fangs before nodding. “All right, fine. Whatever. It’s not like I have a lot of other people lining up to help me.”

  She took a sip of her coffee, unsweetened, and grimaced at its bitter strength, but she did not add sugar or cream.

  “You once knew a vampire named Cortez,” Charlotte said, steadier now that she had the coffee cup to hold on to. She glanced at him and then looked away. “Seventeenth century, I think it was. Somewhere in Italy.”

  “I knew him,” Octavian allowed.

  “Wait, Cortez? As in the conqueror?” Keomany asked.

  Octavian gave her a sidelong glance. “So he claimed. I was never convinced.” He ran his thumb across the smooth ceramic rim of his mug. “What about him?”

  Charlotte glanced out the window, watching rivulets of rain run down the glass. “I had just turned nineteen. My friends took me to this big party at this guy’s house. I had spent my whole life as a good girl, y’know? No sex, no booze, no drugs. They had a fire pit in the back and everyone was hanging out, drinking. This one guy, Nick, took out his guitar and started playing, and the whole thing was just . . . it was bliss.”

  Her eyes began to fill, not with tears but with blood. She wiped it away, idly licking it from the back of her hand, barely even noticing what she’d done.

  “This is stupid,” she said abruptly, shaking her head. “I’m not going to bore you with my human life.”

  Despite his suspicions, Octavian pitied her, for he sensed where the story was headed . . . somewhere that shouldn’t have been possible.

  Keomany had not touched her coffee. Now she put her hands over it, perhaps hoping its warmth would take away the numbness, and shivered.

  “There were drugs. Cocaine. Ecstasy. I wanted to leave but my friends—such as they were—wanted to stay. I got pissed off and left without them. This was in San Diego, okay? Pacific Beach. I guess I could’ve called a taxi, but I decided to walk home, burn off some of my anger. It’s a party town, but that area’s usually pretty safe. Usually.

  “I was so mad, I barely heard the van pull up beside me. Two men—I thought they were men—dragged me into the back. Duct tape, a black hood . . . it’s fucking redundant, right? You’ve watched that scene a thousand times in movies or on TV. It’s trite.”

  Charlotte faltered, licking her lips and once again dabbing at the bloody tears in her eyes.

  “Unless it’s happening to you,” Keomany whispered.

  Charlotte glanced at her sharply, almost angrily. Octavian could feel the pain emanating from her.

  “Yeah,” the vampire girl said. “Damn fuckin’ straight. It’s not trite wh
en it’s happening to you. When you’re screaming and then you can’t scream anymore. When they’re beating you. When they do whatever the hell they want to you. When they play with you.”

  She smiled, and with her long fangs and the blood smeared around her eyes, she had become something terrifying.

  “I survived,” she said, uttering a horrid laugh. “And what was my prize for surviving all of the things they did to me? They said I was tough. They said Cortez wanted survivors. Fighters. And they brought me to him, and he took care of me, nursed me back to health . . . and then he killed me, and made me this.”

  She looked down at herself in disgust.

  But Octavian had forgotten his sympathy for her. He set his coffee down.

  “Charlotte,” he said. “Look at me.”

  The vampire girl did so. The waitress chose that moment to approach. Likely, she meant to ask them if there was anything else they needed, but when she got a look at Charlotte’s face, she made a tiny yelping noise and then muttered something about God as she hurried away.

  Octavian ignored her, focused entirely on Charlotte.

  “What year did you die?” he asked her. “What year were you turned?”

  The girl laughed hollowly. “What do you mean, ‘what year?’ This year. I turned nineteen in February.”

  “But Cortez died in London, during the Blitz.”

  Charlotte frowned. “World War Two?”

  “Yes,” Keomany said. “World War Two.”

  Octavian could feel Keomany staring at him, but he kept his focus on the vampire girl. “Cortez has been dead all this time. Most of his coven died in a single night’s bombing. Whoever turned you, it wasn’t Cortez.”

  The girl looked confused. “Well, whoever he is, he certainly hates you.”

  “So, there’s some rogue out there creating new vampires—” Keomany began.

  “A lot of new vampires,” Charlotte said. “There were dozens just in the one building in L.A. where he kept me. And the guys in the van? They aren’t the only ones. They hunt, have their fun, and pass on the best ‘candidates’ to Cortez.”