Osric seemed stuck in shock as he gazed around himself in amazement. It was break enough for me to scoot out of his hold and stand up, shaking my hand until a mound of fairy dust emerged. I threw it into the air, allowing it to rain down over me. I glanced down and smiled at the metal chastity belt I’d constructed for myself—ha, I’d like to see the son of a bitch get through steel. A similar steel band protected my breasts from his intruding hands and although I probably looked like some bizarre Amazonian warrior or straight off the set of Mad Max, I lacked only one small but vital detail.
I closed my eyes one last time and pictured my Op 6, heavy in my hands, and at the feel of the cold steel in my palm, I smiled.
I opened my eyes and watched Osric as he realized I’d turned the tables on him and this was my dreamscape. He snarled but didn’t make a move for me. Instead, he got down on all fours and his back arched as bristly fur burst from his spine, covering his entire body completely. His rib cage busted out and doubled in size as his fingernails ripped open, growing into long, hooked talons. He glared at me as his nose flattened into the landscape of his now furry face, and, in its place a snout began protruding, his teeth falling out of his mouth as canine fangs replaced them.
He was bigger, broader, scarier than any wolf I ever remembered seeing and I had to wonder if it was due in part to the Dreamstalker blood coursing through his veins or maybe it was just an illusion granted by the dreamscape. Either way, I aimed my Op 6 at the wolf.
Before I could squeeze off a shot, there was a sound like the air inhaling itself and I watched in shock as the sky zipped open, spitting out a man. The man dropped from the heavens and landed with a roll on the ground, coming to stand with his back to me as he faced Osric.
“Leave her the fuck alone,” he screamed and Osric growled, leaping for him. The man didn’t even pause to get his bearings and, instead, with his arm raised high and grasping a sword, he met Osric and thrust the sword into Osric’s side.
Osric screamed out in agony and shook his head, simply disappearing into the earth, leaving only his blood staining the ground where he’d vanished. In a split second, Osric reappeared behind the intruder, now in his man skin, and with his arm around the man’s throat. He rotated the man until they both were facing me and that was when I recognized the intruder.
“Quill?” I demanded, dumbfounded, with a sinking feeling in my gut as I tried to figure out how Quill had inserted himself in this dreamscape. He had to have drunk the blood of a Dreamstalker—the answer was obvious.
Quill didn’t say anything but blinked himself in and out of focus, disappearing the same way Osric had, and then reappearing behind him. Quill landed a foot into Osric’s lower back and Osric went down with a cry of pain. But, after rolling onto his back and pushing up with his hands, he soared five feet into the air before he started coming down again, his hands drawn around a blade.
The tip of the blade was aimed at the top of Quill’s head.
I raised my trembling hands, aiming the Op 6, and thought the words “slow motion” and before Osric’s blade could impale Quill, I squeezed the trigger. Time sped up again and at the instant that the tip of Osric’s blade met Quill’s hair, the bullet from my chamber penetrated the blade and it burst into a thousand pieces.
Osric fell against Quill, minus his weapon, and they both rolled on the ground, yelling and punching one another. Realizing this could go on forever and not wanting Quill to usurp my fight, I imagined a thick wall separating the two, building brick upon brick as it grew in seconds, towering to an unimaginable height, the top disappearing into the clouds. Side walls and a rear wall were quick to follow and seconds later, Quill was confined.
I could hear Quill screaming on the other side of the wall, bashing his hands into the concrete ineffectually. Osric glanced at the wall curiously as I extended both my hands, aiming the Op 6 at him. Osric brought his attention from the wall to me again and I smiled, nodding at him.
“Come and get me, you ugly piece of shit.”
And he did come for me, he charged me with all the fury of an enraged elephant. I wasn’t sure if he noticed the gun in my grip or not but when I fired, the look of shock on his ugly face was priceless. He glanced down at himself, watched the bullet penetrate his stomach and looked back up at me in surprise before his eyes went slack and he fell on the ground, disappearing into the earth, hopefully never to return.
I dropped the gun and felt myself sinking as the meadow began crumbling beneath my feet, the pieces falling into a black void below.
“Quill!” I screamed, watching the bricks of his fortress falling down and disappearing into nothing as they met the crumbling earth below them. The entire structure fell down and dissolved. Quill was nowhere to be seen. I screamed at the sound of bark ripping apart and glanced at the trees as they cracked and broke into what looked like puzzle pieces, disappearing into the abyss. The yellow of the sun faded into a deathly black.
I was waking up, I could feel it. But, I didn’t know what had happened to Quill and I didn’t want to wake up until I knew he was alright. I couldn’t wake up, not yet! I suddenly remembered something about spinning—about imagining the dream me spinning to maintain the hold of the dream.
I brought the image of the woman in pink to my mind’s eye and imagined her turning round and round as if her life depended on it.
I blinked and everything was black around me; there was nothing left.
#
“Dulcie!”
I woke up with a start and sat up, fear pounding through me. I could feel someone tugging at my shirt and glanced to my right, into Sam’s concerned face. I said nothing as my attention darted around the room, which was stark in its whiteness. A man standing in the corner of the room had the same expression I must have had—shock as he tried to register where the hell he was and more, what the hell was going on.
“Dulcie!” Sam yelled again and grabbed my shoulder, forcing me to face her. “What…why are we in the hospital? What happened?”
And that was when it all came pouring back into me—the Dreamstalker, the dreamscape, Osric Cassius…I’d beaten Osric, I’d won and…I glanced over at Sam again.
Sam was alive.
Tears gushed from my eyes as I jumped down from the cot and grasped her in my arms, holding her as tightly as I could. I never wanted to let go.
“Sam, it’s okay now,” I breathed. “You’re safe.”
She wrapped her arms around me and I could feel the hot wetness of her tears against my neck.
“I’ve had the worst dreams, Dulce,” she started.
“Shhh, I know,” I crooned against her ear. “Believe me, I know.”
“Girl, you’ve got a whole truckload of explaining to do!”
Dia’s voice was both angry and relieved. I turned from Sam and smiled at Dia as she dropped her expression of anger, even though I’m sure there was a part of her that was super pissed off with me. And it wasn’t like I blamed her.
She approached me in two strides and I wasn’t sure who reached for the other first but it didn’t matter. We stood in the middle of the room, clinging to one another.
“It’s over, Dia,” I whispered, and she answered me with a hearty laugh.
“I hope to Hades I never have to work with your ass again.”
I returned the laugh as I pulled away and smiled at her guiltily. “I’m sorry, Dia,” I started. “But, I did what I had to do.”
Dia just shook her head but her smile said she forgave me although she probably wasn’t lying when she said she didn’t want to work with me again. And I couldn’t blame her on that count either. I did have a tendency to do what I wanted and needed to, whether it went counter to other people’s plans or not.
“What’s going on?” Sam demanded, her voice nervous.
Dia faced her and the smile on her face widened. “Girl, I don’t have the time for instant rewind.” Then she faced me again. “I was able to track the son of a bitch using my somnogobelinus senses af
ter all.”
I nodded, it wasn’t surprising. “He’d been drinking a lot of Dreamstalker blood. Maybe the more he drank, the easier it was for you to track him.” I paused for a second or two as my stomach started to drop. “Where the hell is he?”
“Dead,” Dia answered and sounded surprised. “I found the son of a bitch in the basement of the hospital but by the time I got to him, he was already dead.”
I nodded, remembering the fact that I’d shot him. It only made sense that since he’d died in slumber, he’d died in reality.
“Who was he?” Dia demanded.
“Osric Cassius,” I answered and heard Sam gasp. I glanced at her and nodded. “I’ll explain all of this to you later, Sam.”
“I don’t know the name,” Dia interrupted.
I shook my head. “You don’t need to—just another asshole I locked up a long time ago—another asshole with a vendetta.”
She laughed but my mouth had suddenly gone dry as the memory of Quill interrupting my fight with Osric met me like a nightmare. Quill had been in the dreamscape which meant he had to be somewhere nearby and hopefully wasn’t hurt.
I started for the door before glancing back at Dia and Sam. The guy in the corner seemed like he was still shell-shocked and I offered him a quick smile. “I have to go find someone, Dia,” I began as she looked at me with a question in her eyes. “Can you check on Jenny and the others? I’ll be right back.”
“Dulcie!” Sam said and her voice was panicked.
I faced her and smiled. “Sam, I gotta go but I’ll be back in a second. Everything is okay. Just listen to what Dia says.”
Dia frowned at me before she glanced at Sam again. “She needs to listen to her own advice.”
But, I wasn’t concerned—I rounded the corner and ran down the hallway, stopping to glance in every room as I searched for Quill. There was no sign of him. I nearly ran headlong into a nurse as she made her rounds and I grasped her arm, my expression wild, I was sure.
“Have you seen a man around here—tall with wavy blond hair?”
She shook her head. “No, are…are you okay?”
I nodded and released her, not sparing her another glance but continued down the hallway, checking each room as I did so. I couldn’t shake the thoughts that maybe something had happened to Quill when the dream world had disintegrated. Or, did something happen prior to that? Had Osric hurt him somehow? I didn’t want to learn the answers. All I wanted to do was find Quill, healthy and alive.
I didn’t wait for the elevator to take me to the second floor but, instead, threw open the door to the stairwell and took the stairs two at a time. When I reached floor two, I blasted through the doors and ran down the hall, glancing in each of the rooms, dodging nurses and doctors left and right.
There was no sign of Quill on floor three and now on floor two.
Luckily, Splendor Hospital wasn’t a huge medical center—it only had the three floors and after I’d exhausted all three, I scouted the basement. Finding nothing that would lead me to Quill, I started my search outside. I had to make sure he was okay; that’s all that was going through my head.
The light of the streetlamps lit my path and I searched the perimeter of the hospital, my gaze traveling back and forth from the manicured trees, to the bushes running the border of the hospital, to the benches that periodically broke the monotony of the landscape. There was no sign of him. I leaned against the wall to catch my breath and felt a scream growing in my throat. What did it mean that I couldn’t find him? Had he already taken off? Or was it worse than that—was he hurt somewhere? Tears of frustration blinded my eyes and I beat my hand against the wall.
“Looking for someone?”
I glanced to the right and watched him step around the corner, bathed in darkness. I wanted to run to him and throw my arms around him and hold him tight but I knew I couldn’t do that. Instead, I just stood there, staring at him.
“Thank you,” I said breathlessly. “Thank you for risking your life for me.”
He chuckled but the sound was sweet. “Anything for you, Dulce,” he answered and pulled his jacket closer around himself.
There were so many things I wanted to say to him, so many thoughts and words flying through my head but I couldn’t get my mouth to form around any of them.
“You take care of yourself, my little warrior,” he said with another chuckle and simply walked back into the darkness from whence he’d come.
Fifteen
After a few hours I was able to get Jenny, Travis, Shirley and Sam discharged from the hospital and Sam drove us back to my apartment where I explained the whole Dreamstalker situation to her in finite detail, starting with the fact that all the victims were connected to me personally—down to the fact that our Dreamstalker had really been Osric Cassius and even though I struggled to get through it, I also told her about the Mandrake and the fact that I’d seen Quill again.
“Wow, if I didn’t think you were truly my best friend before,” Sam began, scratching Blue’s ears as he sat beside her on the couch. “I definitely do now.”
I laughed and nodded, watching the rain as it poured outside and channeled into little rivulets on my living room windows. “Yeah, I’d say we’re definitely on this trip called life together.”
I held up my glass of red wine and swished the liquid inside the glass while thinking about everything that had happened over the last week.
“So, I have to ask you, Dulce,” Sam started mysteriously before a huge grin overtook her mouth. “What in the heck happened to your hair?”
I was silent for a second or two before a laugh took hold of me and wouldn’t let go. My hair was now no longer black, but had migrated through a transitory purple only to end its journey as a flat brownish-grey.
Lovely, just lovely.
“About that,” I started and faced her, watching Blue collapse atop her lap as she continued to stroke his head. “Could you fix it?”
Being a witch, Sam could whip up a potion that would wash the color right out of my hair. My attempts to get it back to its golden honey-blond with my own magic had been less than successful.
“Of course,” Sam replied, taking a sip of her wine as the rain continued to trickle down my window panes. Sam put her glass on the coffee table and faced me with a sober expression. “No word from Knight?” she asked, snuggling into the blanket which she wrapped around her shoulders. We were both sitting on my couch, warm and toasty beside the space heater as the wind tore through the trees and the rain continued to pound outside.
At the mention of Knight, I swallowed hard. “No,” I said, glancing up at her. “No word from him at all.” Course, not having my cell phone since I dropped it on the hospital floor might’ve explained that. But Knight couldn’t use that as an excuse for his lack of communication—he also had my home number.
She nodded. “Are you worried?”
“Yeah, I’m really worried.” I sighed, as I thought about how worried I was. I didn’t know much about the Netherworld but from what I’d heard, it sounded like a tough place—wild and uncivilized in many ways. And the idea that Knight had taken it upon himself to lie to the Court of the ANC was unbelievable.
“Why would he have lied to the High Court, Sam?” I asked rhetorically.
“Because he’s in love with you,” she answered, startling me.
“In love with me?” I scoffed. “Please.”
She frowned and shrugged. “Someday you’re going to have to accept the fact that you’re a pretty awesome girl, Dulcie O’Neil.”
I laughed and emptied the contents of the wine into my mouth, wondering how I felt about the possibility of Knight being in love…with me. I banished the thought away as soon as it entered my head—there was no way he was in love with me. Was it even possible for Knight to be in love with anyone? Then that thought led to another one—had Knight ever been in love with someone?
I didn’t dare admit to myself how uncomfortable that thought left me.
“I just hope he’s okay,” I said in a small voice. “Wherever he is, I hope he’s okay.”
And I’d already told myself that if Knight didn’t contact me or show up on my doorstep in the next three days, I was going to the Netherworld to tell the High Court what really happened, that Knight had just been protecting me and I was the one who had let Quill go.
Yes, I realized that in doing so, Knight could be tried for perjury but I hoped his intention of protecting me would be a lesser offense than allowing Quill to escape. No, that was my failure and eventually I’d have to face up to it.
Three days, that was all I was giving Knight…
“Well, if I didn’t say thank you before,” Sam started, shattering my thoughts of Knight. “I’m saying it now.” She grasped my ankle and squeezed it. “Thank you, Dulce, for being such an amazing friend and risking your life for mine.”
I just nodded, feeling tears springing into my eyes. Yes, Sam was my best friend and the closest person to me in the world. I reached over and hugged her for the nth time that evening. Even though she’d asked if she could spend the night because she was afraid to be alone, she’d merely beaten me to it—there was no way I wanted to be alone either.
I pulled away from her and there was an expression on her face like she was in the midst of pondering some involved subject. “Do you think Quill is happy?” she asked in a voice that sounded far away.
I cocked my head as I considered it. “No,” I said, finally. “I think he’s tried to make a bad situation as good as he can. He’s been able to rise to the top because he’s smart and he knows how to play the game, but as to being happy, no I don’t think he is.” And it wasn’t a thought that brought me any sort of pleasure.
“I bet he was happiest when he was working with us at the ANC,” Sam continued. “When you two used to flirt and argue and flirt and argue some more.”
I made a face at her. “We never flirted!”
“Total lie, Dulce!” Sam laughed and Blue lifted his head from Sam’s lap as if to say that he, too, knew it was a total lie. “Do you know that we all used to make bets on whether or not it would be a Dulcie-Quillan flirt day or argue day?”