“Are you deaf?”
The shadow laughed a thick and ugly sound. It ricocheted through the cave, echoing into a thousand repetitions until I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears. But, I couldn’t—my hands were still firmly secured against the cave wall.
“How about a few hints first?” the entity asked but didn’t wait for a response. “Six years ago you got me locked up in Banshee.”
“You’ll have to do better than that,” the woman scoffed. “I’ve sent a lot of criminals to Banshee, you dumb shit.”
The entity was suddenly up in my face, its hand wrapped around my throat, tightening its hold. I couldn’t breathe and felt myself flailing against him.
Focus on her, I told myself.
Picturing the woman, she was suddenly before me, the shadow man’s hand wrapped around her throat as he leaned into her.
“Domestic violence,” the shadow started. “Beat the shit out of my stupid girlfriend. The next thing I knew, this pretty little fairy with her long gold hair was in my face, threatening to shoot me if I didn’t cooperate.”
And suddenly I remembered. I remembered it as if it were yesterday. Images of another time, years ago came pouring into my head like jumbled film reels.
The bastard attacked his girlfriend, yes, on the basis that she’d argued with him. He beat her up so badly, she ended up in Splendor Hospital for weeks. I wasn’t even sure she was going to make it through the ordeal. But, she was a Swan Maiden which meant she could take the form of the swan and, when she did, the swan helped heal her injuries. Had she been any other creature, aside from a vamp, she wouldn’t have survived. After I visited her countless times, urging her to tell me who did this to her, she finally squealed and I went after the bastard.
I called for backup as I left for her boyfriend’s house which was in the middle of the projects of Splendor, in a seedy little dump known as The End Of The Road which was fitting because it was located at the end of the town limits of Splendor, situated at the base of a large mountain. But, even the beauty of Mount Magnus couldn’t detract from the filth of The End Of The Road. Trash lined the dirt streets and the craggy outlines of burned-out trees with only crows as tenants gave the place a haunted, doleful feel, as if Nature had given up on the hell-hole.
The arrest, itself, wasn’t difficult. I merely knocked on the ramshackle door and as soon as the bastard answered, I went into detached cop mode although I wanted to pound his face in. The smell of dog was thick in my nose which meant he was a were. Wolf or not, he was a masochistic son of a bitch, needing to feel like a big man so he beat up his swan girlfriend. It was doubly bad because Swan Maidens were known for being nothing but placid, beautiful and elegant in their subservience. Needless-to-say, I hadn’t believed his excuse that she’d argued with him—swans didn’t argue, they just didn’t have it in them.
I detested men like him and it was all I’d been able to do to keep my temper in control. Even though it might have been hard to believe, my temper had actually cooled over the years. Back then, I was a firecracker and just about anything could and did set me off.
“Are you Osric Cassius?” I asked and my voice was cool but calm.
“Yeah,” he answered and scoffed down at me, like I was anything but a threat. He was sorely mistaken. “Are you here to ride me in your hot little cop outfit, slut?” he snickered and eyed me up and down until I wanted to vomit right then and there.
“No, you asshole,” I started, feeling my famous temper rising within me. “I’m here to arrest your pathetic ass for putting your girlfriend in the hospital.”
It wasn’t traditional cop lingo but I was new back then and not exactly traditional. Quillan had worked with me over the years on my temper and I’d come a long way.
Osric laughed and lunged at me. I pulled my Op 6 out and before he knew what to think, he was staring down at the gun, probably wondering if I was trigger happy and hoping the answer was no.
Like I mentioned earlier, the arrest hadn’t been difficult, Quill had arrived moments later and we’d thrown Osric into Splendor’s holding cells before the Netherworld had sent for him and days later, he’d ended up in Banshee.
Apparently, he’d been released.
Lucky me.
Fourteen
“Osric Cassius,” the woman in the pink tube top muttered to the shadow that loomed before her.
“Ding ding, right answer, bitch,” the shade seethed back, undulating as if the sound of his name on her tongue sent him into a state of ire.
“So, now that I know who you are, why won’t you show yourself?” she continued, her voice icy cold. “If I remember correctly, you’re an ugly son of a bitch.”
The shade seemed to shake himself—at least that’s how it appeared with the way the black smoke within the outline of the man began to shimmy this way and that. The sound of roaring wind blew through the cave although I could feel nothing but stagnant air against my skin. After another few seconds, Osric Cassius stood before me and he didn’t look happy.
It was as if I’d traveled back to that night when I’d stood on his doorstep and taken him into custody. He was just as thick and stocky as I remembered, though the time he’d spent in Banshee hadn’t been good to him. Tattoos traveled up his arms and legs and covered the right side of his face. His long, wiry brown hair splayed in shambles around his shoulders, greyed with time. But, his face captured my attention—the rage in his eyes and the permanent sneer on his lips.
He hated me; that was as crystal clear as the savage glint in his eyes.
“Dulcie O’Neil, we meet again and this time it’s on my terms,” he started with a smile that revealed a mouthful of chipped, yellow teeth.
“You aren’t a Dreamstalker.” The voice was my own but hearing it confused me for a moment or two as I had to fight to retain the distance between my sleeping self and my projected self in the dream. “You’re a were.”
“So, you remember me?” he asked and there was a tone of hopefulness to his voice, hopefulness that somehow he was still outlined in my memory— that he stood out from all the other criminals I’d busted and locked away.
The woman nodded and although I planned to focus on questions to ask this bastard; it was like someone had suddenly turned on a fan in my head because all my questions began lifting in the air, spinning around the walls of my mind like a cyclone. I shook the visual away and concentrated, searching for the answers I needed from him.
“You’ve been drinking Dreamstalker blood, where did you get it?” I thought the words in my mind and the woman in the dreamscape spoke them. I was getting better at separating myself from the dream me. I didn’t know why, but I felt that was a good thing.
“What does it matter?” He laughed snidely before bringing his finger to the woman’s nose and tapping for a count of three as he repeated: “You are dead.”
“Dead?” she repeated, trying to continue her ruse of playing dumb, to throw him off the fact that she knew she wasn’t dead, only sleeping.
He nodded. “Right now, you’re living on borrowed time.”
I gulped, I couldn’t help it. But, I had a job to do and so far I was doing a damned good job of it—maintaining the illusion that he was in control, that I wasn’t aware I was dreaming and in having that control, wasn’t aware I could use my magic.
“Humor me,” the woman said.
“Dreamstalker blood is all over the streets of Splendor,” he spat out and took two steps closer, glancing down at her body as he did so. The look of lust oozed from his eyes. “And there’s other creatures’ blood out there too,” he finished, his eyes concentrated on her bust.
The feeling that I had to keep him talking rammed into me but I wasn’t sure why. It was like I was buying time, but to what end, I had no idea.
“How did you find all your victims? All the people who were close to me or tied to me?” she asked.
His mouth lit up with an ugly smile before it morphed into a mere fuming white line across his face. “
I had six long years in Banshee and I spent every second of my time scheming about the day I would meet up again with Dulcie O’Neil.” He wrapped his hands around the woman’s throat and smiled again. “How I would kill her with my bare hands.”
“I didn’t ask about your sentence,” she interrupted. He dropped his hands from around her throat as I breathed an inward sigh of relief. “Answer my question.”
His jaw clenched and he bashed his fist into the side of the cave, causing rocks and debris to crumble to the ground. When he pulled his hand away, there was no blood or injury, which I guessed made sense since this dreamscape was his creation.
The woman flinched and I felt the same reaction in my own body.
“It wasn’t hard to find out about you—pay the guards and they give information,” Osric answered in a non-committed sort of way, like he hadn’t spent years trying to garner the facts about me.
The woman’s eyes went wide and I could feel her shock, my own. “You pulled my ANC file?”
He nodded, his disheveled hair obscuring half his ugly face before he pushed it back. “And I searched the Internet. Your information was out there, easy to get.” He snickered. “And it wasn’t like I didn’t have all the fucking time in the world to get it.”
I swallowed hard, realizing the corruption of the ANC wasn’t just limited to Quillan duping us all at Splendor Headquarters but, from the sound of it, Banshee had its own problems. I could only wonder how much higher up it went. That was, if I survived this whole ordeal.
Osric stepped away from the woman and ran a mitt-like hand through his hair as he walked toward the mouth of the cave and back again, as if his thoughts were racing with such intensity, he wasn’t sure what to say next and needed to pace just to expend some energy.
Before I could blink, his face was suddenly up close and personal with mine and his eyes radiated a deep, red luminosity, glowing with the fires of hatred.
“You destroyed my life, bitch! You sent me to Banshee for six fucking years and the guards had a field day with me. They beat the shit out of me on a daily basis but it was worse at night.” I could smell the decay on his breath and it was the smell of death. He brought his face so close to mine that I could feel the scruff of his unshaven face against my cheek.
“At night the guards and some of the inmates used me as their woman.”
Shock waged through me, from my head to my toes and I cringed, I couldn’t help it. I had no idea what Banshee was like—I’d never been to the Netherworld, but his story actually made me start to sympathize with him, and feel pity for him. I closed my eyes.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” he ordered and gripped the woman’s chin, yanking her head up at an unnatural angle until she had no choice but to look at him. “Now I’m going to do to you what was done to me, day…and night.”
And just like that, my former sympathy was washed right out of me and replaced with vehemence and ferocity. There was no way in hell I was going to let this disgusting bastard anywhere near my body. Before I could respond, his fist connected with my gut and I felt myself capsize as pain reverberated up my stomach, and culminated in an undulating throb in my head. I couldn’t breathe, and felt like I needed to collapse against the floor but the manacles kept me in place, searing my wrists as I lurched forward.
Osric grasped a fistful of my hair and pulled me up, pushing me against the cave wall. His face was in mine again, his breath assaulting my sense of smell until I wanted to pass out. “You can bet your ass that swan bitch of mine is dead—she was the first one I looked up once I was released.”
I gulped. The Swan Maiden was dead. I could only hope she hadn’t suffered but seeing the cruel look in his eyes, I had to imagine she had.
And, I was next.
Osric held his hand out and I watched in horror as the ends of his fingers began growing translucent, a dull grey filling in as the flesh disappeared. He flexed and closed his hands as steel sprouted from his fingertips, elongating into nasty blades. He laughed as my eyes went wide.
You’re in a dream, I screamed to myself. None of this is real.
I had to beat the fear, to pull myself from thinking that I was actually experiencing this and to recognize it for what it was—fake, counterfeit, imitation –nothing but a sham.
My eyes slammed shut and when I opened them, I was the outsider looking in, the voyeur to the woman in the pink tube top. I breathed a pent-up sigh of relief. I was still in control.
“Nice, Osric Scissorhands,” the woman laughed in a biting tone. “Looking for some hedges to trim?”
Osric’s face blanched and seconds later, he was fuming—turning as red as a Huber Demon.
“You think it’s funny now, Dulcie, but how funny is this?”
When Osric rammed his finger blades into the woman’s arm, shredding her flesh, it was only a numbness I felt—not the true feelings of pain that the visual would have warranted. The woman screamed out and fell forward again but Osric held her up with a deep, sardonic laugh. He stabbed his finger blades into each of her thighs, ripping the blades in and out again as the gold of her blood dripped down the dull steel, staining the cave floor below. She cried out in agony but I only felt a fraction of her pain.
Suddenly, the manacles around my wrists disappeared and I wondered if my own subconscious had issued the command or had Osric seen to it? He watched the manacles break away without surprise so I could only imagine he’d been the release mechanism. And that was a good thing—I didn’t like the idea of orders issued without my being aware of them.
The woman fell to the ground, landing in a pool of her own blood. There was a horrible smacking sound as her head hit the dirt and she just lay there for a minute or two while Osric stared down at her, smiling at his conquest.
He lifted his leg and landed a well-placed kick into her midsection. She doubled over and grasped her stomach, her eyes wrenched tight with the pain.
How the fuck much longer am I going to put up with this? I demanded as the pain began to sink into me, becoming ever clearer and more pronounced in its throbbing.
I’ve had enough, I answered my own question.
The woman was huddled over on top of herself, both her hands hidden from view. Glancing up, she made sure Osric wasn’t paying attention and smiled as she realized his gaze was wholly riveted on her ass. She shook one of her hands only slightly, but it was enough to create the fairy dust in her palm that would serve up some payback. Once the particles appeared, she released her fist, the particles falling to the ground below. Allowing them to sink into the pool of her blood, she imagined a white light of wellness suffusing her, a light only she could see.
I could feel myself growing stronger, with the pain dying away as healing invigorated me. The blood was still pooled beneath me but no matter, my body was healing itself, replenishing itself with new blood to make up for the loss.
The woman stood up, unsteady on her feet but standing all the same. Osric watched her with surprise in his expression, even though he made no motion to stop her. It was as if he wanted her to meet him on his level.
“You want more, baby?” he crooned with a hideous sneer on his face. “Cause you’re about to get some.”
He pulled his fist back and smashed it into her face, sending her toppling backwards, and landing against a rock that wedged itself into her back. She cried out and rolled away from the rock but before she could try to get back onto her feet, Osric was on top of her, his hands tearing at her shorts with an urgency that frightened her.
“Get the fuck off me,” she yelled and pulled her fist back, landing a blow to his temple. Her arm shook with the effort and Osric flew back about three feet, his back hitting the side of the cave wall. He fell forward and landed against the ground, shaking the dirt out of his hair as he stood up. He glared at her with complete and utter shock in his eyes.
She stood up and her chest heaved as she inhaled, her hands balled up in fists at her side. She was strong in this dreamscape, stro
nger than she would have been in reality. And now Osric was also aware of the fact.
“So, you’ve been holding out on me, haven’t you, bitch?” he seethed. “Good, it will be more fun this way.”
And suddenly he was flying towards me, his arm transformed into an axe as he swung it at my head. I felt my dream body suddenly pulled backwards as I imagined a pair of unseen hands, grasping me and pulling me out of the path of the axe. The back of my head hit the wall of the cave and stars danced before my eyes momentarily. I closed them and forced the stars to subside, demanding my unwavering vision to return. I tumbled to the ground and before I could take another breath, Osric was on top of me again, his hands digging into my thighs, trying to rip my shorts away from me.
“You aren’t strong enough for me!” he screamed into my face and smacked me hard across one cheek. I could feel viscous blood as it languidly streamed from my busted lip.
“Then why haven’t you killed me yet?” I yelled at him.
“I control this dream,” he spat out and grasped the waistline of my shorts again. “And I haven’t killed you yet because I have other ideas.”
“How much Dreamstalker blood have you drunk, you son of a bitch?” I yelled while wrestling his hands away from my shorts.
“Enough,” he shrieked down at me. “You’re no match for me—I’ve got the power of the Dreamstalker in my blood and you are nothing,” he spat at me and his voice was level, even. He threw my hands off his own and in a split second, reached for my tube top, ripping it in two. I glanced down at my bare breasts and felt the heat of humiliation burning my cheeks.
Before I could respond, Osric’s eyes were all over them and a second later, so were his hands. The fact that his attention was distracted allowed me to focus on changing the dreamscape so I could throw him. I’d let him know he wasn’t dealing with a weakling.
I imagined a field of poppies, orange and beautiful. The sun was shining and birds flew from cherry tree to cherry tree, singing their trills for spring. I opened my eyes and found myself blinking against the bright sunlight.