Grave Peril

In my dream, it didn’t happen that way.

I felt the fabric of the spell closing around Kravos start to slip. One minute, he was there, in the weaving I was spinning around him – the next, he was simply gone, the spell collapsing of its own unsupported weight.

Michael screamed. I looked up, to see him lifted high in the air, his sword sweeping through the shadows and darkness before him in impotent futility. Dark hands, fingers nightmarishly long, grabbed Michael’s head, covering his face. There was a twist, a wet, crackling sound, and the Knight’s neck broke cleanly. His body jerked, then went limp. Amoracchius’s light died out. The demon screamed, a tinny, high-pitched sound, and let the body fall to the ground.

Murphy shouted and hurled her jar of holy water at the demon. The liquid flared into silver light as it struck something in that writhing darkness that was the demon. The shape turned toward us. Claws flashed out, and Murphy stumbled back, her eyes wide with shock where the talons had carved through her kevlar jacket, her shirt, her skin, leaving her belly torn open. Blood and worse rushed out, and she let out a weak gasp, pressing both hands against her own ruined side.

Malone started pumping rounds out of the shotgun. The demon-darkness turned toward him, a red-fanged leer spreading over it, and waited until the gun clicked empty. Then it simply laughed, grabbed the end of the shotgun, and slammed Malone against a wall, shoving the hardwood stock against the man’s belly until he screamed, until the flesh began to rip, until ribs started crackling, and then shoved harder, until I could clearly hear, even above the sound of Malone’s retching, the bones in his spine start to splinter and break. Malone, too, fell to the ground, dying.

Rudolph screamed, pasty-faced and white, and ran away.

Leaving me alone with the demon.

My heart rushed with terror and I shook like a leaf before the creature. I was still inside of the circle. I still had the circle protecting me. I struggled to reach out for my power, to summon a strike that would annihilate this thing.

And found something in my way. A wall. The same spell I’d meant to lay on Kravos.

The demon stalked over to me and, as though my circle wasn’t even there, reached out and backhanded me into the air. I landed with a thud upon the ground.

"No," I stammered, and tried to struggle back from the thing. "No, this isn’t happening. This isn’t the way it happened!"

The demon’s red eyes glowed. I lifted my blasting rod toward it, pointed, and shouted, "Fuego!"

There was no stirring of heat. No fitful crackling of energy. Nothing.

The demon laughed again, reaching down toward me, and I felt myself lifted into the air.

"This is a dream!" I shouted. With that awareness, I started struggling to reach out to the fabric of the dream, to alter it – but I’d made no preparations before I’d slept, and was already too panicked, too distracted to focus. "This is a dream! This isn’t the way it happened!"

"That was then," the demon purred, its voice silken. "This is now." Then its maw opened up and closed over my belly, horrible fangs sinking in, worrying me, stretching my guts. It shook its head, and I exploded, shreds of meat flying out of me, into it, my blood rushing out while I strained and struggled helplessly, screaming.

And then a grey tabby with a bobtail bounded out of nowhere and whipped one paw at me, lashing it across my nose, claws slashing like fire.

I screamed again and found myself in the far corner of my bedroom, back in my apartment, curled into a fetal ball. I had been puking my guts out. Mister hovered over me and then, almost judiciously, delivered another scratch to my cheek. I heard myself cry out and flinch from the blow.

Something rippled along my skin. Something cold and dark and nauseating. I sat up, blinking sleep from my eyes, struggling through the remnants of the vampire’s poison and sleep to focus on the presence – but it was gone.

I shook, violently. I was terrified. Not frightened, not apprehensive – viciously and unremittingly terrified. Mindless, brain-stem terror, the kind that quite simply bypasses rational thought and heads straight for your soul. I felt horribly violated, somehow, used. Helpless. Weak.

I crawled down to my lab, fumbling in the dark. Dimly, I was aware of Mister coming along behind me. It was dark down here, dark and cold. I stumbled across the room, knocking things down left and right, to the summoning circle built into the floor. I threw myself into it, sobbing, fumbled with tingling fingers at the floor until I located the ring. Then I willed the circle closed. It struggled, resisted, and I pushed harder, forced myself on it harder, until finally I felt it snap shut around me in an invisible wall.

I curled on my side, keeping every part of myself within that circle, and wept.

Mister prowled around the circle, a rumbling, reassuring purr in his throat. Then I heard the big grey cat hop up onto the work table, and over to one of the shelves. His dim shadow curled up by the pale bone of the skull. Orange light began to glide out of his mouth, into the skull’s eye sockets, until Bob’s candleflame eyes blinked, and the skull turned to focus on me.

"Harry," Bob said, his voice quiet, solemn. "Harry, can you hear me?"

Shaking, I looked up, desperately grateful to hear a familiar voice.

"Harry," Bob said gently. "I saw it, Harry. I think I know what went after Malone and the others. I think I know how it did it. I tried to help you, but you wouldn’t wake up."

My mind whirled, confused. "What?" I asked. My voice came out a whimper. "What are you talking about?"

"I’m sorry, Harry." The skull paused, and though its expression couldn’t really change, it somehow looked troubled. "I think I know what just tried to eat you."

Chapter Eighteen

"Eat me," I whispered. "I don’t … I don’t understand."

"This thing you’ve been chasing, I think. The Nightmare. I think it was here."

"Nightmare," I said. I lowered my head and closed my eyes. "Bob, I can’t … I can’t think straight. What’s going on?"

"Well. You came in about five hours ago drugged to the gills on vampire spit, and muttering like a madman. I think you didn’t realize that I was inside Mister. Do you remember that part?"

"Yeah. Sort of."

"What happened?"

I relayed my experience with Kyle and Kelly Hamilton to Bob. Speaking seemed to help things stop spinning, my guts to settle. My heartbeat slowly eased down to something less than that of a terrified rabbit.

"Sounds weird," Bob said. "Got to be something important to make them risk going out in daylight like that. Even in a specially equipped van."