“Well, let’s just order pancakes then. Oh, wait, we don’t have stomachs.”
“Well, Mr. Best Student, you do something. I’m the one dragging us all over.”
“I told you I can’t put us in our bodies!” Basil crossed his arms and breathed heavily out of his nose. He rose from the table. “I’m useless. My fee remains the same.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Frustrated with herself, Red tugged at her hair. She stepped out behind him. They couldn’t fight each other. “We’re both stressed. We’re stuck in a coma dream with some ungodly force in a top hat after us.”
“And Nevaeh’s back. She is the worst. What was that dress?” Basil shook his head as he whirled around. “Green ruffles? Black sequins? What is this, the Viper Room in ’88? Is she auditioning for a Whitesnake video?”
“She wanted to go out in style. I guess she choose bad bitch at a 1980s prom. We can figure this out. Or maybe Vic already has something. You never know.”
“He’s probably judging a dick measuring contest between those vampires right now.”
She cringed at the inappropriate visual. “I didn’t need that in my brain.”
“You don’t have a brain right now. It’s back in your body which is far more dressed than mine. My arse is hanging out.” He slammed his hand on his hip.
Wincing in sympathy, she looked away. “I didn’t want to say anything.”
He sighed, picking at the waist of his hospital gown. “Kate taught us parlor tricks. Don’t see how that will help us now.”
“Maybe we can find you some phantom pants? Can you wish harder to cover up for both our sakes?”
The lights of the diner flashed. None of the small-town folk seemed to notice. They drank their sodas and ate their chow, chatting with each other, voices fighting with the music.
“I don’t like this.” Basil wrapped his arms over his head, cowering. “This is like a tornado warning.”
Stomach dropping, Red felt a tug around her middle. Her mouth gaped open. She could only blink as the room transformed.
The walls of the diner seemed to melt. They reformed into a dingy whitewashed brick chamber. A single bare bulb flickered in the darkness. Even the ghostly moonlight of the Dreamland seemed dimmed here.
“Where are we?” She asked, spinning in a tight circle. Fingers habitually gripping a stake that wasn’t there. What was happening now? In the Dreamland, fear of the unknown was justified.
“Right where I want you.” The strange man in the top hat stepped into the light.
“Just kill them already, Maxwell,” Nevaeh nagged, appearing at his side.
“Maxwell Baldacci.” Red realized where she had heard the name before Kate had warned her. It had been locked away in memory of a dark conversation with a master vampire on a rooftop high above LA. He tried to use knowledge of Juniper’s warlock enemy as bait to join his side. She had mocked Michel, saying that the warlock was dead, when he tried to give her intel. She should have listened.
“In the metaphorical flesh.” Maxwell smirked at her. “Juniper St. James, you should have stayed lost.”
Nevaeh surged past him, quicker than a vampire, with her shoulders squared like a linebacker. The hate on her face was as clear as the smudged mascara around her eyes.
14
December 23rd, 12:01AM, Dreamland, The Asylum
Nevaeh rushed forward. Rage flashed in her gaze, brighter than the bare light bulb swinging above the brick-walled chamber. Her blackened aura dimmed the sparkle of her sequined cocktail dress.
Pivoting to the side, Red stuck her foot out to sweep the other witch off her legs. Instinct ruled as fervent intention pulsed through her. She could touch Basil, but he was still alive. Could she touch a ghost in Dreamland?
Nevaeh tripped with a snarl. She hopped as she regained her footing and swung her palm up.
“Hey, I can touch you!” Smiling, Red raised her fists in a boxer’s stance.
Basil laughed. “If this is the kind of fight you want, Nevaeh, I don’t think you’re going to win it against a hunter.”
Posing his fingers on his goatee, Maxwell raised an eyebrow. He disappeared, teleporting to stand at Red’s side. “How many handsome chaps will you lead to their deaths, Juniper?”
“Time to go.” Basil paled and grabbed for Red’s hand. The brick walls half faded into his hospital room, prone body on the high medical bed quaked into view, blinking in and out like a broken hologram. “Oh, my god, I’m doing it! I’m taking us there!”
Traveling in the Dreamland could mean going to a location or bringing it to you. Yearning to escape, Red threw her willpower into going back to her friends. A mystic tie held her feet to the rough floor. She felt pulled in two directions, stretched tight like taffy before it split.
“I’m faster!” Nevaeh blurred, tense with the focus of an Olympic sprinter about to pounce. She disappeared.
Maxwell waved goodbye, smirking at Basil. “This is a favor. Reflect on that.”
Mouth pitched to scream; the soulmancer vanished in mid breath with the hospital bed, revealing the empty gloom of the chamber behind it.
“What did you do to him?” Red tried to teleport away, but her spirit was anchored in place as if poured in concrete.
“I prefer you friendless and distraught.” Maxwell held out his palm and crooked his fingers.
“I still have friends.” Ghostly heart palpitating, she backed away, even as his will tugged her forward. She tried to focus on the wavering translucent image of Basil’s physical body on the medical bed.
“Stay put. Better yet, let me indulge in some nostalgia.” Shrouded in shadow, the warlock blended into the murk. Only his smirk remained, his white teeth glowing like the Cheshire Cat’s in the gloom.
The gloom morphed. Fuzzy edges became distinct. The square room smelled of ammonia and blood like a hospital nightmare. An unbalanced traumatized aura hung over the room in a smog. Cold from a long dark winter lingered. Her black tank top and jeans were replaced by a rough, loose dress, dingy from dust. Bruises and old cuts circled her wrists. Muscle memory tightened her throat. Primal panic coursed down her limbs. She stilled her trembling legs. Even without a body, goosebumps rippled up her arms.
Red ran to the door, telling herself she could go through it. She thumped against the wood. There was no knob. “Fuck!”
“This is how I like you best, Juniper.”
“I’m not Juniper, you sick son of a bitch! I don’t care what you two had. She’s dead. You’re dead. Get over it!” She pawed at the space where a doorknob should be. Her heartbeat, usually so far away in her body, clapped like thunder in her ears.
“Oh, that is sweet. I had heard you had amnesia, but seeing your slack-jawed ignorance…It’s like a fine cognac to savor. Was this meant to be a mercy or merely make you easier to kill?” Maxwell’s disembodied grin spun around her. Resplendent in a purple suit, his body appeared slowly. He tossed his top hat to the side. It glided to land on a hulking boxy contraption covered in dials and scales. A wood-handled switch jutted from the center. He chuckled as he stroked his goatee. “But then again, this must sound like gibberish to you. What a blessing for Not-Juniper, you don’t have to remember what she did. I remember in technicolor detail how that iron whore murdered my friends, cursed my life force, and then stabbed me. In my favorite suit, no less.”
“Sounds like a good time.” Red pressed herself against the door, willing herself to sink into it and flee.
“Whatever piece of Juniper St. James is in you, I will cut it out.”
The shadows of the room crowded behind the warlock as if backing him up, hovering in a poison haze. A light broke out to shine on a tarnished metal table in the middle of the room. Leather straps lay waiting on the dirty surface.
“This is a dream,” Red said. “You can’t hurt me!”
“Foolish girl, this is the Dreamland, but you are not dreaming.” Maxwell’s laugh bounced off the walls. He slashed his hand through the air, slivers
of yellow currents followed the wake.
She raised her arms to cover her face. Pain cut across her forearms. Blood welled on her pale skin. The slashes were thin, as if she had been cut with a rapier. She scratched at the door, yearning for a doorknob with everything she had. One appeared. She turned it before slamming her shoulder against the heavy door. It cracked open into a dark hallway. She slipped through the crack and sprinted down the hall.
Nevaeh appeared in a glimmer of red behind Maxwell. “Why are you playing with her, handsome?”
His answer echoed on the whitewashed brick. “We’re scaring her to death.”
Panting breath trumpeting in her ears, Red covered the cuts on her arm. Closed doors and barred windows lined the walls. The hallway seemed to stretch forever as she ran. She turned a corner.
Maxwell waited in the center of the hall; a long white lab coat draped over his purple suit. Nevaeh glowered behind him.
Red spun around to go down the other side.
Two orderlies in dirty leather aprons and surgical masks blocked her way. Zombie red eyes, blood shot and crusted, fixed on her.
“It’s time for your treatment. You’ll be so much happier after the lobotomy.” Maxwell called out. “Lucas Crawford isn’t here to save you this time.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” Red called over her shoulder, summoning as much hunter swagger as she could. “He’ll come for me.”
“That’s an old tune, but you never sang it so gratefully before.” He raised an eyebrow. His lips pressed in a thin line of contemplation. The first sign of doubt in his eyes. “You really don’t remember.”
There was only one way.
Running back down the hall, the light from the surgery room guided her forward. Red visualized Lucas, his beautiful gray eyes and impish smile, and yearned to be with him. Even before she’d met him, she had dreamed of him saving her. Somehow, she knew he would always find her, if she got close enough.
The grim hallway disappeared and the brick under her feet turned into hospital linoleum. She didn’t stop running until passing through her own body laying comatose in the private hospital room. The illusion of the dingy dress falling aside to reveal a dark top and jeans.
The golden net of protection over her physical body twitched. A rain of poisonous-looking hail slammed into it, bouncing off and pivoting to strike again. The net blocked most of the swarm, but gnat-like orbs still whizzed over her helpless body.
She put power behind her intention to not die tonight. Listen magic, you don’t always like me, and I don’t always like you. But we’ve got to work together. Obey me for once, she told herself, beckoning the coiled energy within. In the Dreamland, she could see the fiery sphere behind her belly button. She visualized tossing a thread of her magic into her protection spell and the one around Basil. Energy seeped from her to strengthen the defenses.
“What’s happening, Vic?” Quinn walked through her spirit to stand by the hunter.
Flinching, she shifted her shoulders before doing a double take. On the bed, her body shook, legs jerking and eyes blinking. Tears streamed down her temples from the corner of her eyes.
“I thought we vanquished the Bell Witch.” Lucas pulled the iron dagger from his jacket.
“Get a doctor!” Kristoff pressed on her shoulders to stabilize her convulsions. “I told you that Batts was trying to tell us something.”
Red gasped at the cuts appearing on her body’s arms. Kate said that time moved differently in the Dreamland but didn’t mention the delayed reaction on their real bodies. Red closed her eyes and visualized the web of protection around her body harder. Stay up, damn you!
A purple siren light went off in the room.
“Shit. She is being attacked!” Vic looked up, gaze narrowing at the vampires.
Eyes a predatory amber, Kristoff focused on the blood dripping from her arms.
Lucas glared at him, flashing fang. “I’ll take your eyes if you don’t put that look away, boy.”
“I’ll get the mage doctor. Keep them from fighting.” Quinn sprinted from the room.
“Great. I’ll break up the dog fight from my chair,” Vic muttered through gritted teeth. He leaned over to press a towel to her closest arm. “If you two can’t be helpful, get the hell out!”
Red stepped through him and leaned over to her body. She gasped as she contacted her own skin. Blood stained on her spectral fingertips. She couldn’t get into her body; a barrier blocked her. But she could touch it. Her hand went through when she tried again. She focused and touched her arm again. It felt like she was trying to press through memory foam. The blood moved under her fingers.
Vic lifted the towel. “She’s bleeding.”
“Where is that damn doctor to zap her with some mojo?” Lucas called over his shoulder.
“What’s that?” Kristoff leaned forward, his hands clenching behind his back, nostrils flaring at the scent of blood.
Ignoring him, she concentrated on interacting with her comatose body. Using the spilled blood like ghoulish finger paint, she wrote a single word.
Vic read it. “Warlock?”
“Thank god!” Red felt herself growing tired from pouring her will into manipulating the physical world. The connection with her own blood was slippery. It was more like the magic in the blood cells reacted to her, not the blood itself. She couldn’t give them a full memo of the shit that she and Basil had dealt with. Hoping that they’d figure it out, she started writing two other words on the next arm.
The light flickered in the room.
She cursed. “Not again.”
“Asylum. Dreamlan…” Vic read with worried wonder. “It’s like she was cut off.”
“Take care of me.” She ran out of the room, passing through the wall into another patient’s room and then another. The lights went out in each room as she passed. She knew it wasn’t just a Dreamland blackout when the confused mutterings of the patients and guests sprang up in the hospital. She turned, ducking and weaving, into the hallway and through Quinn as he turned a corner. She cringed, putting her hands up, the shock stopping her.
White coat fluttering, a doctor jogged beside him. “Our sensors are off the charts with mystical energy, Mr. Byrnes.”
“Can you do something about it?”
“I’m a mage doctor, not a psychic. And the medium is being blocked. Terry took one look at her aura and got a nosebleed. Same with Basil Bansko.”
Lucas ran into the hallway, growling. “Quinn, it’s the warlock.”
“Maxwell Baldacci,” Quinn muttered, dark remembrance in his tone.
Red wanted to kick him in the shins and make him explain. Ceiling lights flickered again. The overwhelming presence of the warlock’s evil made her chest feel too tight even without a corporeal body. She had found Lucas, but he couldn’t save her.
Forcing her feet forward, she struggled against the hand of a giant squeezing her around the waist. It pulled her into the darkness.
15
December 23rd, 12:12AM, Dreamland, a Movie Theater
Red plopped into the velvet-padded chair, legs sprawling. A white screen loomed in front of her. Ghostly moonlight sifted over her spirit form like flour on dough. Manacles appeared around her wrists attaching them to the armrests. She jerked her arms, but the manacles wouldn’t budge. A bouncy tune jingled from unseen speakers—let’s all go to the lobby to get some snacks!
After the last few jumps through time and space, she was more piqued than confused. She bounced around from the hospital to Oregon to that asylum hellscape all night. Why not a movie theater? They were in Hollywood after all.
“Down in front!” Nevaeh called out. She sat with Maxwell two rows back, wearing 3D glasses. The empty theater seats spread behind them, silver smoke wafting up from the aisles.
Red couldn’t tell if they were superimposed on the real world or if this was another chamber of torment designed by the warlock. The farther she traveled in the Dreamland, the more she wondered where it be
gan or ended. Not just where, but in whose mind.
“You’re going to make us miss the best part.” Nevaeh shook a box of Milk Duds and popped one into her mouth.
“My delightful ingénue provided some rare insight.” Maxwell tweaked her chin before smirking at Red. “You are a simpl—"
Nevaeh rolled her eyes and cut him off. “He doesn’t know what you are—doppelgänger, descendant, or reincarnation of an actual big bad witch. No one does. I told him that I know acting. If you were this good, you wouldn’t be hunting, honey. You’d be another pain in my ass, stealing my parts.” She put another Milk Dud between her teeth in triumph.
He twirled his fingers. Embers of energy crackled between them. “Do shut up.”
The Milk Dud grew large enough to gag her. She glared at him, trying to spit out the candy lodged on her front teeth.
Red struggled against the manacles. “So, you don’t even know if I’m the right witch? Fabulous. That’s what I wanted this Christmas—to be weirded out by a warlock.”
“Can I speak, or will you two hens cluck through this whole production? I am going for drama here.” Maxwell waved at the screen. The lights faded. “Properly done, before your impertinent interruptions, I would have intoned the litany of Juniper St. James’s sins.”
Michel de Grammont had been the only one to tell Red the darker side of this Victorian courtesan or her mysterious quest for revenge against Maxwell. Beginning to sympathize with the cause, she was ready to send a zombie after him too.
“Yeah, she killed your friends, betrayed the Brotherhood, ruined your suit—I got the highlights.” Red rolled her shoulders and twisted against her bonds. Her stomach sank. She didn’t want to know more. Even if she knew it wasn’t her, she didn’t want to watch her doppelgänger going full villain on merry old London.
Long Witch Night: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 2) Page 14
