Waking Nightmares

by Christopher Golden

  All those different strains of magic working on him at once, even as death took his flesh and his spirit slipped away, contaminated.

  “Miles, please, you’re scaring me,” his mother said, reaching for him.

  “Don’t touch me!” he snapped, jerking away from her, though all he wanted was to embrace her again. It was what the hunger in him demanded.

  “Miles?”

  “I’m hungry, Mother,” he said, running his tongue over the spectral fangs in his mouth.

  Anguish clutched at his heart. He looked at the window and saw the rain running like thick syrup down the glass. Blue lightning flashed, and hate filled him so completely that for a moment his hunger faded.

  “Chaos,” he whispered.

  Charlotte had been driven mad with bloodlust she could not control. Keomany had only tried to save his soul. Miles understood that he had become a monster, a pit of ravenous gnawing where a soul ought to be, and he knew who was responsible.

  If Octavian and his friends were out there now, trying to kill Navalica, he wanted to see it happen.

  “I’ll be back,” he told his mother.

  “Sweetheart, please,” she begged, reaching for him.

  Miles skittered away from her. “No. Not now. I’m hungry now. But I’ll come back.”

  “When?”

  He shot her a look that he knew would haunt her, but he could not stop himself.

  “When I’ve eaten.”

  As he walked toward the door his thoughts were focused entirely on Keomany. She had tried to help him. Whatever Octavian had in mind to fight Navalica, Keomany would be a part of it. Miles had to find her.

  He went through the door, and for a moment the house shimmered around him, becoming once again that soft gray twilight realm in which he had awoken. No, he thought. I need to be with Keomany. I need to go to her.

  For a second or two, all became gauzy mist around him, and then he blinked in surprise as the world resolved again. He stood in the town square in the midst of the storm, rain passing through him, wind not touching him at all. Wraiths darted overheard, diving in and out of the churning clouds. People fought and fornicated in the street.

  A shout of rage came to him, and he turned.

  Keomany Shaw stood only a few feet away under the awning of the Black Rose Grille, her hands on either side of a sphere of gleaming silver light. She looked as if she were in pain, struggling with intense concentration. Beside her stood a wraith unlike all of the others, the ones Amber had called Reapers. This creature had a sensual female body, nothing like the withered skeletal piping of the others. Its skin was a dark, bruised purple. The wraith had some kind of needle in her hand and was hastily tattooing arcane symbols on Keomany’s face.

  Miles darted toward them. Keomany saw him first. The wraith noticed the way she stiffened and turned, and he realized he knew her.

  Hunger clawed at him, but he forced himself to be calm.

  “Professor?” the wraith said. “Miles?”

  Anger filled him. “Amber,” he said. “God help us, what have we become?”

  CHAPTER 18

  AMBER didn’t have an answer for him. In truth, she felt good. Better than she had ever felt when she was flesh and blood. She would miss her friends—because how could they accept her like this?—but she would not miss the weakness and the worry that came with fragile humanity. Octavian had told her she was beautiful, and now that the shock of metamorphosis had begun to wear off, she felt a constant stirring inside her that had nothing to do with the carnal desires prompted by chaos. She felt as though her life had been a dream and now she was at last awake. Alive.

  But Miles . . . Miles was dead.

  “Are you a ghost?” she asked.

  The rain fell through him. The wind did not rustle his clothing. When the blue lightning cracked the sky, she could see through him. But even as some grave specter, he seemed gaunt and hollow and she took a step back from him.

  “What am I?” Miles asked. He pointed at Keomany. “Ask her! Ask Charlotte!”

  Amber turned to Keomany, who stared at Miles with curiosity and uncertainty.

  “What’s he talking about?” Amber asked, returning to her work, finishing the sigils she had begun to tattoo on Keomany’s face.

  They had all been prepared for this spell. The oils, the tattoos, the memorization of the ritual, words in ancient Chaldean that should not have been simple for her mouth to form, but Octavian had done something to them, almost like a posthypnotic suggestion, putting the spell into their brains like loading bullets into a gun, and all any of them—Keomany, Amber, or Charlotte—would have to do was pull the trigger.

  But it required the final sigils, the last two, which could only be done in the presence of the goddess’s heart.

  Amber jabbed Keomany with the bone needle. “What is he talking about?”

  Keomany flinched as if waking. She had been watching the Reapers that circled above them, diving in and out of clouds, attacking people in the square and stripping some of their essence, then flying to Navalica to keep her fed even as the goddess and Octavian fought, magic splintering the sky above them.

  “Charlotte lost it,” Keomany said, almost robotic, the soul cage holding Navalica’s heart crackling in her hands. “The chaos took her over. She killed him. She murdered Miles.”

  Amber shrank back from her, cringing with sadness. She turned to Miles’s ghost.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “What am I?” Miles demanded, staring at Keomany.

  “I don’t know.”

  Miles laughed at that. “I sure as hell do. I’m a goddamn vampire.”

  “That’s not possible,” Keomany said. “You’re a ghost.”

  “This whole universe came out of chaos,” Miles said, looking at Amber now, reaching for her, caressing her skin. “Chaos is where new things are born.”

  Ghost or not, she could feel his touch, and she yearned toward him, wanting that comfort. But then his ghostly lips peeled back and she saw his fangs, long, sharp, shadowy things.

  “I’m hungry,” Miles told her, and his sorrow was more than she could bear.

  Something black swept by at the edges of her vision, and she turned. The wraiths had come for them. Octavian and Navalica fought, their magic tearing apart the storm itself. Charlotte had gone for the iron chest. The Reapers had come for their goddess’s heart, and Keomany held the soul cage, had to keep it safe.

  “Amber?” Keomany said, her voice pleading. With the soul cage in her hands, she could not fight back.

  “I’m here,” Amber said. These horrid things with their curved blades and their bodies like black piping . . . once they had been her family, her ancestors. But now they were monsters. She turned to Miles and pointed at the Reapers. “If you’re hungry, see what they taste like.”

  Miles turned toward the Reapers, opening his mouth impossibly wide, and his face took on a monstrous countenance. His spectral form rippling, he rushed at them, and Amber wondered if he would be able to make contact . . . but only for a moment, before he collided with the nearest Reaper. It swung its sickle daggers into his ghostflesh, but the blades sliced harmlessly through him. Miles wrapped a hand in its tattered clothing, grabbed it by the throat, and drove his fangs toward its narrow chest. The wraith cried out in an unearthly shriek of pain, and Miles tilted back his head and swallowed a piece of it down. Black mist jetted from its chest like blood.

  The hungry ghost tore out the Reaper’s throat and sucked away more of whatever her ancestors had become. Not blood, and not ghostly ectoplasm, but maybe some combination of the two. Amber wondered what Miles truly hungered for, what would sate a vampire ghost. Could he drink blood? Eat the flesh of the living? Would it fill him?

  The wraiths fell on her then.

  Grimly determined, Amber fought them. Sickle blades glanced off her burgundy skin, scratching but not cutting. Two of them grabbed hold of her, but she twisted around, breaking their limbs, and she knew they had no chance a
gainst her. They could not cut her and her strength was so much greater. And she had Miles on her side, whatever he was.

  “They’re weaker now!” Keomany called to her. “Navalica’s fading. Just keep them away until . . . until Charlotte comes.”

  Amber glanced at her, but Keomany’s focus was entirely on the crackling silver magic of the Hittite soul cage she held between her hands, as though it might at any moment explode and kill her.

  Three other Reapers dropped down from the roiling storm clouds. Miles caught one as it tried to dart past him, and Amber cringed at the sound of its unholy, inhuman screams as the hungry ghost devoured it.

  She grabbed one of the Reapers by the throat and crushed it, even as it tried to cut her, blades slashing her clothes to ribbons, leaving her all but naked. Purple sparks shot out where the curved knives scraped her skin.

  Would she have been able to stop them so easily before Charlotte took Navalica’s heart? She thought not. It had all hinged on that . . . on Octavian’s plan. She had to trust him. She glanced over and saw him fighting the goddess. The moment she caught sight of them, Navalica gestured and turned the air in front of Octavian into swarms of bees, which made a cloud around him until a blast of tainted orange light erupted from their midst, turning the bees to glass. They fell, shattering on the rain-swept street, and Octavian leaped at Navalica, flaming sword raised.

  Keomany screamed.

  Amber turned, saw a wraith going for the earthwitch, and flitted toward her, flying at such speed that Keomany’s scream had not yet finished before Amber had torn the wraith away from her.

  She raised a fist, about to smash the Reaper’s skull, when it cocked its head and drew back, its smooth carapace face wrinkling in a strange recognition. Its mouth opened and it tried to speak. The word came out a whisper. Two syllables. Her name.

  And she knew. This was her Nana. Her mother’s mother. In her mind, this woman had been dead and buried seven years ago, but she understood the complexity of the magic used to hide Navalica in her family’s midst, and knew that there had never been a funeral. That there had never been a body. God, the scope of such enchantments! At least they didn’t have to do that again. All they had to do was cage the goddess’s heart and reduce her to a withered old woman again.

  “Amber,” the Reaper said, her voice like a gust of wind. And it faltered.

  She could not destroy this wraith. Couldn’t allow Miles to do it, either. But she needn’t have worried. The thing that had once been her grandmother backed away, drifting into the air, and turned toward other wraiths that were flying down at them. It flew around them in a circle, gesturing, imploring.

  And the wraiths began to drift away.

  Miles alighted beside her. Somehow, he seemed more solid than before. The rain still passed through him, he was still a ghost, but he had substance and dimension and his face had new definition.

  “Are you still hungry?” she asked.

  The ghost reached out and took her hand. At first his fingers passed through hers, but then he seemed to focus and he tried again, and this time he grasped her hand, gave her a comforting squeeze.

  “No,” he said. “I’m all right, for now.”

  That for now unnerved her, but it seemed they both had much to learn about their new lives.

  Amber had dropped the bone needle. Now she ran back underneath the awning where she had left Keomany and picked it up. Drying it on Keomany’s shirt, she reached into the earthwitch’s pocket and brought out the jar of dye she needed. And then she began to complete the last tattoo on Keomany’s face, the final element of the ritual.

  “Charlotte,” Keomany said, her voice a rasp, still staring at the soul cage.

  “No, it’s me . . .” Amber said, worried.

  Keomany raised her head and stared past Amber, toward the clock tower. “I know. And thank you for your protection. I only meant that she’s coming.”

  Amber turned, saw Miles a few feet away, guarding them. And then she saw the pale figure flying toward them through the rain, the red hair and broad wings, and for the first time, she believed that they might actually see the sunlight again. That the storm might be almost over.

  OCTAVIAN staggered but managed not to fall. Welts and gashes and burns covered his body. His clothes were scorched and torn. The ritual tattoos on his arms had been almost completely seared away and provided little protection from Navalica’s chaos magic now. But if anyone could stand against her without such defenses, it must be him. He knew he flattered himself to think he might have still stood a chance against her at her most powerful. Even without her heart, her core essence, Navalica had nearly killed him a dozen times in just a handful of minutes. The blue lightning had struck him twice before he had managed to cast a spell that would shield him, and now each bolt glanced away, striking the street a few feet from where he stood.

  Octavian held up the flaming sword he had forged of pure magic. He had inspired the goddess. As the storm above them weakened and her influence waned, she had crafted a sword of her own. He didn’t understand its purpose, but it foamed with rust that dripped from the blade and hit the street, eating through the pavement like acid.

  Navalica gathered herself up to her full height, at least a foot taller than Octavian.

  “You’re a fool to believe you might destroy me,” she said. “You are mortal. I am a goddess. Your small mind cannot comprehend eternity.”

  Her hair blazed with indigo fire. Despite her dwindling power, she had a terrible beauty, and her imperious gaze made something inside Octavian cringe. But he had faced devils and refused to kneel before them; he would not give this bitch his throat.

  “Perhaps I am more than I seem,” Octavian said, knowing that she was using this momentary respite to muster her strength.

  “You are a gnat.”

  Octavian rarely surrendered to pride. It was foolhardy to reveal too much to one’s enemies. But he burned with embarrassment and guilt over the way the goddess’s magic had undone him, had turned him and Keomany into animals rutting in the street.

  “I am a prince of Byzantium,” he said. “I have brought down warlords and tyrants and popes and stood against the demon lords of seven Hells. I have tasted mead with the fallen in Valhalla and broken the hearts of angels. I have been reborn from vampirism to humanity, and if I have learned anything in my long life, it is that even gods can die.”

  “You will not kill me,” Navalica sneered, but she seemed diminished now. Her hesitation had worked against her. The longer she went without her heart, the less control she had over chaos.

  “I don’t need to kill you,” Octavian replied.

  Her eyes narrowed. “I will not be caged in dreams. Not again.”

  Navalica roared and leaped at him. Ordinary lightning began on the ground and arced into the sky, but the blue lightning she wielded came from above. It could no longer hurt him, but as it glanced off the defensive spell he had cast, it struck the ground, breaking pavement and sending up showers of cerulean sparks, and through the veil of that distraction came the goddess.

  Her sword sliced the air, flickers of acid rust flying. Octavian had learned the mastery of the sword as a boy, and trained with samurai in his years as an immortal. He caught her attack on his flaming blade, sidestepped as fire and acid sprayed from the collision, and parried her with such strength that she stumbled and her blade twisted downward, its point hitting the street.

  Where it touched, the pavement aged instantly, crumbling and falling inward, so that Octavian had to leap away. He stared in dawning unease as he realized what she had done, what magic she had put into the blade. Her sword was entropy. It sped up the natural deterioration of whatever it touched.

  Navalica staggered back, hurling herself away from the hole that opened up in the street.

  Hatred burning in her eyes, she turned on him, and then screamed skyward.

  “Kill him! Tear him open! Devour his heart!”

  From the diminishing storm came no reply. N
o wraiths dropped down from the thinning clouds to obey her commands. Octavian saw Amber flit through the clouds with some kind of apparition beside her, and several of the wraiths moved away from them instead of trying to kill them. More than any attack Octavian could muster, that seemed to shake the goddess.

  Navalica faced him, holding the rusting sword in front of her, and stalked toward him. She began to chant loudly, and a wave of sickly yellow energy flowed out from her, rolling like ocean surf along the ground. Octavian wondered what she would try to set against him now, but he did not have to wonder very long.

  He heard the barking and glanced toward the base of the clock tower, where the dead dogs had been scattered. Now those dogs were up and moving again, but just as dead. They had torn each other apart in a frenzy of violence and now they came at him with their throats hanging open, fur matted with blood, skin hanging in flaps.

  Reanimating dead dogs. It showed how little she had left to fight him with.

  He spoke the words of the spell in ancient Chaldean, so she would hear him and know that such things were no more than parlor tricks. Then, with a gesture, he returned them to death. The dogs collapsed all at once, flopping to the wet pavement without so much as a whimper.

  Navalica screamed. Sword held at her side, she thrust out a hand and chaos swirled around her fingers, exploding toward him. Octavian felt the magic coming at him, so fierce, so powerful that it took him off guard. It would turn him inside out, reversing his entire body, blood and organs bursting. Instinct, and the magic at his core, saved him. He let go of the flaming sword and it vanished as he dropped to one knee and splayed his fingers out in front of him, creating a shield of sizzling emerald light that deflected her attack.

  Stupid, he thought. He’d been arrogant, and such overconfidence could get him killed.

  He did not have to defeat her, only keep her occupied until the others finished the spell to entrap her. It had been his plan all along, take her heart, weaken her enough to confine her anew, then put the iron chest into some parallel dimension instead of at the bottom of the ocean, so that even if it were ever opened again, Navalica could never be reunited with her heart.