The Dream Thieves

He gestured now at the tumbling dragon and night horror.

Releasing him, Ronan scrambled to the car. He pulled open the back door. It was empty.

“He’s not in here!”

“Boom!” shouted Kavinsky. Another car had just gone up. The flames were glorious and rolling, bubbling out of the car like thunderclouds. As Ronan slammed the door shut, Kavinsky scrambled up onto the hood of the Mitsubishi. He was shaking and ecstatic.

Pressing one hand to his concave chest, he fetched his white sunglasses from his back pocket with the other. He put them on, hiding his eyes. The lenses mirrored the furnace around them.

On the opposite end of the strip, the fire dragon screamed its dreadful scream again. It tore free of the night horror.

The creature turned directly toward them.

And suddenly, Ronan saw it. He saw how every car but this one burned. How the dragon had destroyed each of Kavinsky’s dream things here at the strip. How now it came at them, a frenzy of destruction. The night horror flew after it, less graceful, a bit of ash tossed in a nuclear wind.

He heard thumping, barely audible over the chaos.

Matthew was in the trunk.

Ronan bolted around the back of the car— no, no, that wasn’t right, he needed to open the trunk from inside the car. He darted a look at the dragon. It was flying directly for them, purposeful and malevolent.

Fumbling along the driver’s side door, he popped the trunk. As he tore around the car, he saw Matthew kick the trunk open the rest of the way. Rolling out, his younger brother stumbled drunkenly, clambering up, hand pressed against the car for support.

Ronan could smell the fire dragon, all carbon and sulfur.

Ronan dove for his brother. He dragged him away from the car. He shouted to Kavinsky, “Get down!”

But Kavinsky didn’t look away from the two creatures. He said, “The world’s a nightmare.”

Horror clawed its way up inside Ronan. It was precisely the feeling he’d had when he realized Kavinsky was going to blow up the Mitsubishi at the substance party.

Dust swirled up from the dragon’s wings.

Furious, Ronan shouted, “Come down, you bastard!”

Kavinsky didn’t answer.

There was that whoof he’d heard in the dream, that clap of wings against air. Like an explosion taking all the oxygen from a room.

Ronan wrapped his arms around Matthew and ducked his head.

A second later, the fire dragon exploded into Kavinsky. It went straight through him, around him, flame around an object. Kavinsky fell. Not as if he was struck, though. Just like when he’d taken the green pill. He crumpled to his knees and then slumped gracelessly off the car.

A few feet away, the fire dragon careened into the dirt, limp.

Non mortem, somni fratrem.

Across the dirt track, one of the Mitsubishis, still smoldering, crashed resoundingly into one of the buildings. Ronan didn’t have to see the driver to know it was Prokopenko. Asleep.

Which meant that Kavinsky was dead.

But he had been dying since Ronan met him. They both had been.

Dying’s a boring side effect.

The pair of white sunglasses lay in the dust beside Ronan’s toe. He didn’t take them. He just held Matthew tightly, unwilling to let him go yet. His brain kept replaying the image of Matthew climbing out of the trunk, fire hitting the car, Kavinsky falling —

He’d had so many nightmares of something happening to him.

Overhead, the albino night horror flapped. Both Matthew and Ronan looked up at it.

Tck-tck-tck-tck.

Both beaks chattered. It was a dreadful thing, this night horror, impossible to understand, but Ronan was done being afraid. There was no fear left.

With a shudder, Matthew pressed his face into his older brother’s shoulder, trusting as a child. He whispered, voice slurred, “What is it?”

The night horror barely checked itself as it regarded its creator. It flapped upward, spinning two or three times as it did. It was headed into the night — where, it was impossible to say.

“It’s all right,” Ronan said.

Matthew believed him; why shouldn’t he? Ronan had never lied. He looked up over Matthew’s head as Gansey and Blue began to head toward them. Sirens wailed from close by; blue and red lights strobed through the dust like lights at a club. Ronan was suddenly unbearably glad to see Gansey and Blue joining him. For some reason, although he had arrived with them, he felt as if he had been alone for a very long time, and now no longer was.

“That thing. Is it one of Dad’s secrets?” Matthew whispered.

“You’ll see,” Ronan replied. “Because I’m going to tell you all of them.”

63

The Gray Man couldn’t think of a way to get rid of the other treasure hunters without having to confront his brother.

But that was unthinkable.

The Gray Man thought about the card Maura had drawn for him. The ten of swords. The absolute worst it could get. He had thought that it meant leaving behind Henrietta, but now he knew that although that was terrible, it wasn’t really the worst thing that could happen to him.

The worst thing had always been his brother.

You’re going to have to be brave, Maura had said.

I’m always brave.

Braver than that.

For so long his brother had haunted him. Taunted and teased

him from hundreds of miles away, even as the Gray Man studied and trained and became ever more dangerous in his own right. He’d let him take everything from him.

And what, really, was keeping him from facing his brother now? Fear? Could he be any more deadly than the Gray Man? Could he really take anything more from him?

The Gray Man thought of Maura’s smile again. And he thought of the fuss and noise of 300 Fox Way, of Blue’s bright banter, of the tuna fish sandwich at the deli counter, the haunted blue mountains calling him home.

He wanted to stay.

Persephone had patted his knee. I know you’ll do the right thing, Mr. Gray.

As he drove, the Gray Man stretched one hand into the backseat and dragged his gray suitcase onto Greenmantle’s meters. Driving one handed, glancing from the rain-slicked road to the case every so often, he first found his favorite Kinks album.

He put the disc in the CD player.

Then he fetched out the gun he had hidden in the kitchen cabinets at Pleasant Valley Bed and Breakfast. He checked to make certain that Calla had not cleverly removed all the bullets. She had not.

He got off the interstate.

He was going to stay. Or he was going to die trying.

In the rearview mirror, he saw two cars get off the interstate behind him. Up ahead were two bleary-eyed truck stops— nothing said exhaustion like the wide-awake lights of a truck stop. He chose the larger one.