Waking Nightmares

by Christopher Golden

  Miles looked at Keomany, but the earthwitch still stood in a strange vortex of wind she seemed to have summoned. It kept the hot, sticky rain off her, and he wondered if that was the point. Through the rain and the veil created by that wind, he could not read her face.

  Charlotte stalked back and forth at the edges of the action like a predator awaiting the outcome, looking for an opening in which to attack.

  Two shots hit Dunne in the back before Chief Kramer finally shouted for them to cease fire.

  “Damn it, Norman, I want that fucking chest!” the chief shouted, approaching Dunne, keeping his gun trained on the man.

  The fisherman hummed to himself, less a melody than a chant, and rocked a little, making Miles think of his cousin Angie’s autistic son. But he made no move to surrender or give up the box, and Miles knew he would not. Black fluid like oil dripped from the entry and exit wounds in his back. Whatever control Navalica had over Dunne—he figured it must stem from the man’s discovery of the chest—it was complete. The poor son of a bitch wasn’t even human anymore. He should have been dead, and Miles thought Dunne would have been much better off if that were the case. Better to be dead than to live as some kind of black-magic puppet.

  “Norm, don’t make me!” Chief Kramer barked, bending over slightly, the tips of his shoes practically bumping into Dunne’s back. He aimed his gun at the back of the fisherman’s head.

  Miles took a couple of steps forward. “Don, what are you doing?”

  “What has to be done. Hawthorne’s dying all around us, Miles. Being murdered. And if what’s in that box can help me stop it, then I’ll do whatever it takes to—”

  “You can’t execute the man!” Miles said. He looked to Keomany and Charlotte for backup, but received none.

  Chief Kramer turned toward Miles, gun wavering, not as though he had changed his mind but as if he were trying to decide which of them to shoot.

  “Are you nuts?” the chief asked. “This isn’t Norm Dunne. Did you see his eyes? We just shot him a dozen times and all it’s done is turn him into a petulant child. Reality’s called a time-out, Professor. If you aren’t willing to do what has to be done—”

  Dunne shot out a hand and grabbed Chief Kramer’s wrist and twisted even as the chief pulled the trigger. The bullet whined past Miles’s temple. The two officers jockeyed for position, shouting to their boss, but Dunne dragged Chief Kramer to the pavement with him, pulling his gun hand into the same embrace in which he held the iron chest. The chief shouted, trying to extricate himself. He jerked and pulled the trigger, and an exit wound blew open in Dunne’s back, even as the fisherman darted his jaws forward and bit deeply into Chief Kramer’s neck.

  With a backward jerk of his head, Dunne tore out the chief’s throat with his teeth. Blood spurted from the gaping wound, spraying Dunne’s face. The fisherman let go and curled around the iron chest again, snickering to himself as the chief’s body jerked and flopped over, blood gouting from his throat.

  Miles stared in shock, drowning in guilt. If he hadn’t interrupted . . .

  The remaining two cops started shooting again. Charlotte didn’t wait for them to stop. The vampire girl leaped through the rain and landed in a crouch beside Dunne. The chief had wanted to handle this his own way, officially, but now his life was spilling out onto the road, and all bets were off.

  The goddess’s influence had given Dunne an inhuman strength, but vampires were superhuman. Charlotte jammed the heel of a boot down onto Dunne’s neck, grabbed his right arm in both hands, and yanked up so hard that bones broke and tore through his skin as she peeled his grip off the iron chest. His black, chaos-tainted blood splashed her boots and she stood there on top of him, the rain plastering her clothes to her tight, perfect body, her red hair a wet veil hiding half of her face, mouth open in a sneer that revealed her fangs, which were much more prominent now, like needles jutting from her mouth.

  God forgive him, he had never seen anything so arousing.

  Charlotte pulled the iron chest from the grasp of Dunne’s remaining hand, but as she started to turn away, the ruined man leaped to his feet and snagged her hair in his fist. The vampire girl glanced at him as if the attack meant nothing to her, but then a look of alarm crossed her face and she put the chest under one arm, prepared to fight him.

  Keomany seemed to fly at them, carried on the vortex swirling around her, oily rain shedding from the wind she’d summoned. She halted ten feet from Dunne and seemed to dance in the wind, bringing one arm forward as if she were throwing a baseball. The wind uncoiled from her, snatched Dunne off the ground, and hurled him with terrible, bonebreaking force into the chief’s police car, shattering the side windows.

  Charlotte cried out in pain, surprise widening her eyes, and grabbed the side of her head where a chunk of her hair had been torn out. Strands of red hair were clutched in Dunne’s fingers as he climbed to his feet.

  Keomany pointed toward the ground. She groaned as though with terrible effort and Miles thought she might be crying, but the ground rumbled and then thick tree roots shot up through the pavement, wrapped around Dunne like the fingers of some ancient wood god, and dragged him to the ground, binding him there. He struggled but could not escape.

  A squeal of tires made Miles whip around in time to see the two surviving cops taking off, their patrol car speeding away into the storm. Without Chief Kramer to keep them on the job, their fear had won out.

  Keomany collapsed to her knees in the rain, the elemental magic she’d summoned gone as though only supreme concentration had kept it within her grasp. Charlotte carried the iron chest over and nearly dropped it in front of her, so keen was she to get it out of her hands. The moment she no longer had possession of it, she changed. One moment she was tantalizing flesh and blood and then she turned to mist, like steam over a city subway grating.

  Charlotte rematerialized a few feet away.

  Keomany stared at her. “Why didn’t you shapeshift before, when he grabbed you?”

  “I couldn’t!” Charlotte said, a frantic edge to her voice. “Something about that fucking box. When I had it in my hands . . . I’m not touching it again.”

  Miles looked from one woman to the other, from earthwitch to vampire, and wondered why he hadn’t run away with the cops. He didn’t belong here. This might be his town, but it wasn’t his world. He should be hiding in his basement right now, like most of the people in Hawthorne were probably doing.

  And then Keomany looked at him. “All right, Professor,” she said. “Your turn. Let’s see what we can learn.”

  For a second he wasn’t sure what she meant, but then she reached out and dragged the chest across the pavement toward her. A chill went through Miles. The vampire didn’t want to touch the chest, and he had already seen what it had done to Norman Dunne, but Keomany wanted him to examine the contents?

  “Come on, Professor Varick,” Keomany said. “People are dying.”

  Miles thought of his mother. He thought of Amber, and her family, and his colleagues and friends who lived in Hawthorne. Last, he thought of Don Kramer, who had already died for this. He couldn’t turn away, but he was no hero.

  “You open it,” he said to Keomany. “And I’ll tell you whatever I can about what’s inside.”

  NAVALICA shrieked, a banshee wail that made Amber clap her hands over her ears. The glass blew out of the windows of Gran’s bedroom. The shriek jolted Octavian, who held his ears and staggered into a bureau. As the blueskinned goddess stood and then began to float above her great-grandmother’s bed, Amber screamed. The goddess, the demon, turned golden eyes toward her and its scream halted abruptly. Navalica smiled, and for a moment she saw Gran in that face.

  “Quiet, girl,” the goddess whispered, but her voice buzzed in Amber’s ears like a nest of hornets. “I’ll tell you when to scream.”

  Fear ran through Amber’s veins like poison. The goddess knew her. She had Gran inside her, or something. Navalica stretched as though waking, and Amber realiz
ed that was precisely what had been happening. The goddess had been sleeping and now, somehow, from within Gran, she had awakened.

  “What . . . what did you do with Gran?” she stammered.

  Octavian moved into a fighting stance, a green light blossoming around his fists.

  “End this now,” he demanded.

  The goddess sneered down at him, sickly yellow eyes brightening. “Kneel, little wizard.”

  “You’ve been gone too long, Navalica. No one in this world worships you anymore,” Octavian said.

  The blue fire of her hair burned higher, a halo of cerulean flame.

  “Oh, they will,” she said, her horrible, hornet-buzz voice stabbing Amber’s ears. “And it will begin as it always has. With chaos.”

  She threw her arms wide. Octavian flashed his hands up, green light beginning to shimmer into shape as some kind of shield, but he was not quick enough. Like azure wings, chaos magic spread from Navalica’s arms in a shock wave that cracked the walls and shattered windows throughout the house. Amber was blown backward into the door frame, smacking her head and dropping to the floor. Octavian slammed into the bureau again, then fell to his knees, where Navalica had wanted him from the start. The Reapers trembled and for a second their skeletal forms rippled as if they were only black smoke.

  Octavian tried to rise, blood dripping from his mouth and nose. Navalica flew down from the bed, long black talons slashing his chest. Then she cocked back her arm and drove her talons into his chest, so long that they thrust out his back, tearing through bone and flesh and muscle just as easily as they had his shirt.

  “Oh, my God . . . I can’t . . .” Amber muttered, as she crawled into the hallway, climbed to her feet, and started down the stairs.

  The image of Octavian—this famous sorcerer, or whatever—hanging from the goddess’s bloody talons seared itself into her brain. His eyes had been wide with shock that Amber would never forget. If he could not help them, everyone in Hawthorne would be made to worship this creature or they would be killed. And what happened then? What about the rest of the world? If Octavian couldn’t stop her, could anyone?

  Rushing, heart hammering in terror, head ringing from when she’d hit it on the door frame, Amber gave in to utter panic. She lost her footing on the stairs and fell. Reaching out, she managed to get one hand on the railing, just enough to slow her down and turn her around, and then she tumbled the last half-dozen steps to the second-floor landing.

  Blinking in surprise, she looked around in confusion. Nothing seemed broken. She felt all right. More than all right. She felt somehow stronger as she started to stand.

  Another wave of blue light, of chaos magic, swept down the stairs and slammed into her, but this time she arched her back and let it caress her, shuddering with pleasure, flinching as she came.

  Bent over, recovering, she looked around in confusion. What the hell just—

  She caught sight of her hands. Her arms.

  “Oh, no. Please . . .”

  As she stood there, her skin was changing, darkening, withering. She tried to scream again, tried to cry out, to speak, but her lips would not part to release her voice. She reached up and touched her face and found hardening skin, almost like soft shell, where her mouth had been.

  No!

  She wondered if she would still be herself when the change was complete, when she was one of Navalica’s Reapers. She wondered if she would feel the horror, if she would still be able to cry . . . she prayed the answer would be no.

  Another wave of chaos blasted through the house and again it staggered her, pleasured her. Then she heard a crash that shook the entire house. Splinter cracks raced up the walls. Feeling lighter than before, Amber turned to run into her bedroom, which was just beneath Gran’s. But instead of running she darted, pushing off the ground and flitting across the hall and through the open bedroom doorway.

  She stopped in front of the shattered window, the rain and wind blasting in from outside. The storm had grown so much worse. A web of blue lightning arced across the black sky. As she watched, it struck the Kanes’ house, destroying the façade and setting it ablaze with a fire that the hot rain did nothing to extinguish.

  Above, the goddess Navalica danced across the sky, blue as the lightning, clad only in gauzy veils that whipped around her body in the storm, her three sets of breasts bare. As she danced, she flew toward the center of town, as Amber had known she would. Her Reapers flew around her, capering excitedly in the air, and Amber thought of the wicked witch’s winged monkeys.

  And then she wondered why she was not following. Why was she not capering as well, nothing more than a slave to the goddess?

  Stepping back from the window, she saw herself in the full-length mirror beside her bureau. The sight paralyzed her for several seconds, and then she stepped nearer to the mirror, studying her reflection. She glanced down at her arms and blinked in surprise when she saw that the withering effect had somehow reversed. Instead of black, her skin had turned a wine-color, a deep burgundy, her hair a gleaming shade of plum.

  In her tank top and jeans, she looked bizarre and exotic, almost alien. Her eyes blinked back from within a black shell, but as she moved closer to the mirror she reached up to touch it and found it brittle. The skin at her jawline was dry and cracked and as she dug into it with her nail, she found an edge there, as if she wore a kind of mask.

  Fascinated and disgusted but unable to stop herself, she began to work her fingernails into the flaking edges of her face, and then she felt something crack and give way. The carapace came away in her hands, breaking into pieces, and she let them fall to the floor.

  “Oh, God, what am I?” she whispered.

  She had a mouth again. Lips. Her face had been altered, had become a finer, smoother version of who she had been, a mask of wine-colored porcelain. But not a mask, that was wrong. The carapace, that had been a mask. She could speak. She could smile. This new face was still her.

  But how ?

  And then she knew. Octavian. Whatever he had done to her, whatever magic he had woven inside her to try to reverse or at least slow Navalica’s influence, had instead changed the very nature of her metamorphosis. Instead of becoming one of the Reapers, Amber had become this. But what was this?

  She grabbed the bath towel she had used the day before from the hook on her closet door and wiped away the sticky residue of the carapace from her face.

  “What the hell am I?” she said again, studying her face and her new body in the mirror.

  “You ask me, you’re beautiful,” a voice rasped behind her.

  She spun, the movement making her float a few feet backward. She alighted on the carpet, staring at the bloody figure in her bedroom doorway.

  “Mr. Octavian?” she said, amazed. “I thought you were dead.”

  Octavian stood up straighter. Through the slashes in his shirt she could see the wounds Navalica had made, but they were smaller than she’d have thought, as if they’d already been healing.

  “I survived seventy-seven years of torment in Tartarus at the hands of Temeluchus and his iron hooks, and you think I’m going to let this bitch kill me?” Octavian said, taking a deep breath as he stood, golden light spilling out of his wounds and enveloping him.

  He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them, and for the first time she saw in his gaze how truly ancient he was.

  “Not fucking likely.”

  OFFICER Moschitto had stopped to help the teenage girls who had crashed their car, frustrated by the delay, wanting to hurry after Octavian and Amber, to find out what had happened to the Morrissey family. It wasn’t just his job; Mr. Morrissey had been his baseball coach when he was in elementary school, and he’d always liked the family. Instead, he’d had to see to these three girls. He thought they were seniors at the high school, but he wasn’t sure. One of them was Janey Ebbetson, and he knew for sure she hadn’t graduated yet.

  If he’d had a working radio or cell phone he could have called an ambulance. But
in the chaos, it was up to him to make sure they got to the hospital. The idea of bringing more patients to Hawthorne Union made him want to laugh—a weird hysteria had been bubbling inside him all morning—but he didn’t want Janey and her friends to know what kind of hellish wait they had in store when they got there.

  Janey looked all right. Officer Moschitto smiled to himself. The girl looked more than all right. That skirt ought to be illegal. He tried not to let her see the way his gaze kept straying to her ass as she bent to reach into the car, trying to help her friends. When she glanced back at him he looked away, but his eyes were drawn back again and again to the sway of her breasts against the rain-damp cotton of her shirt.

  The other two girls were injured. The blond, Monica, had smashed her face against the dashboard and her nose looked broken, blood streaming out. The absolutely luscious black girl, Belinda, had smashed her knee on the steering column and her chest against the wheel.

  “We’ve got to get them to the hospital!” Janey said, withdrawing from the car—she’d been in the backseat during the accident. She turned her pleading eyes on Officer Moschitto. “Dude, seriously. I think Belinda has internal injuries or whatever. This is . . . fuck, this is bad!”

  Janey and Monica kept trying to use their phones, as if they couldn’t get it through their heads that as long as the storm raged around them, they would not have a signal.

  Officer Moschitto held the umbrella from his patrol car up to shield himself and Janey; the closeness to her, the damp slippery heat of the rain on his skin, beading up and rolling down her chest between her breasts, had his cock so hard that it hurt. It felt like it had been carved from stone. Really, more than anything, it felt like a weapon, and the urge to show it to her was so strong he could barely restrain himself.

  Janey glanced down and licked her lips. It wasn’t his imagination. He saw her do it, and then she shook her head like she was trying to stay focused. Officer Moschitto smiled and she returned the smile, and they laughed softly together.