The Nightmare Charade (19 page)

Bollinger came to get me for my dream session with Eli the following night. She pounded on the door hard enough to make the poster boards on the wall shake and threaten to fall off. I jumped up from my chair, startled by the noise. I must have dozed off. After a fruitless day trying to learn more about Corvus, I'd been researching Nightmares. But as I expected, there were very few ways to determine if a person was one.

Bollinger pounded again. “Come on, Destiny Everhart. You're going to be late.”

“Hold on,” I shouted back, scrambling to reapply the glamour on Bellanax.

“I would think,” Bollinger said as I opened the door, “that someone as into her boyfriend as you claim would be more eager to get there on time.”

I folded my arms, Bellanax already going hot against my skin. With an effort, I held back a scathing reply.

“Let's go.” Bollinger headed down the hallway not bothering to make sure I was following. Not that I would've considered staying here even for a second. Bollinger or no, Eli was waiting.

On the long walk over there, I made plans of what I would say and do—namely greeting him with a kiss the moment I stepped through the door. Forget Bollinger. She couldn't stop us from kissing.

Eagerly, I climbed up the stairs to Eli's dorm. When she pushed the door open, I stepped forward, expecting her to wave me inside first, but she went in ahead of me. I had just long enough to spot Eli already stretched out on the sofa, when Bollinger waved her wand and said, “
Hupno-drasi
.”

The spell struck him dead center in the chest. His eyes snapped closed, and he slumped against the sofa, his head lolling to one side.

“Why did you do that?” Outrage pulsed so hard through me I started to shake. Bellanax became a hot iron against my wrist. The incantation of a curse rose in my mind. All I had to do was say it.

No,
I thought as much to Bellanax as to myself. Beads of sweat broke out on my temple at the struggle to keep the sword glamoured.

“No time to waste,” Bollinger said, turning to sit down in the chair nearest the door. “I have duties waiting as soon as this is over. So please, get on with it.” She motioned toward Eli's prone body.

I forced my anger to calm. It wasn't wise to bring that into the dream. High emotion on my part could skew the dream—and Eli and I had a lot to explore and discover tonight.

Taking a breath and letting it out slowly, I climbed on top of Eli. He was deeply asleep and already dreaming, his eyes shifting back and forth beneath his lids and the
fictus
coming off him like a sweet, irresistible scent. Still, I held off entering the dream long enough to lean forward and press my lips to his. It was a small intimacy, but it was better than nothing. Once inside the dream, we wouldn't be able to touch at all.

I closed my eyes, sloughed off my mortal body, and descended into the dream. As always, the world swirled around me in an explosion of color and sensations, a thrilling descent into a place of unknown possibilities. I could arrive anywhere, no landscape too farfetched or impossible to be made real by the power of the dream.

But when the world finally formed around me, I found myself in a very familiar place—the school gymnasium.
Well that's just disappointing.
I turned in a circle to take in the scene. Climbing structures and barricades, of the sort that we used regularly in phys ed for combative magic study, were scattered over the yellow wood floor from one wall of bleachers to the other. These same structures were also used in gladiator games.

Which was exactly what was going on around me right now. More than a dozen boys roamed the floor, in between and over the structures. I didn't recognize any of them, thanks to the protective gear they wore, including beetle-like black helmets. But nevertheless, I could tell they were all boys.

“What's the deal?” I said, hands on hips. Did this mean that there weren't
any
girls trying out for the gladiator team? Or was Eli's subconscious a playground for repressed sexism. I voted on the former and resolved to ask him about it once I found him among the chaos of flying spells.

I launched myself into the air, employing my favorite dream-walking pastime—flying. In seconds I was near the ceiling, the game floor spread out before me like a giant chessboard, each player easily visible now. In seconds, I spotted Eli. He was in the far corner, crouched behind a short square structure. I couldn't exactly say how I knew it was him, given the helmet. It might've been intuition, or perhaps he was just more physically present than the other players. This dream was his party, after all.

I landed a few feet in front of him. “Hey,” I said. “Are you ready to get going?”

He didn't reply or even turn his helmeted head in my direction.

“Eli,” I said again. “Earth to Eli!”

Again, he ignored me. A second later, he darted around the corner of the structure and threw a dazing curse at an incoming opponent. He passed so close to me that I leaped back, missing a collision by inches.

I shouted his name for a third time. But once again, he ignored me.
No,
I realized,
not ignoring me—he's just too deep in the dream
. It hadn't happened in a long time—normally Eli was aware of my presence the moment I got here—but for whatever reason, his attention was completely captured by this dream.

“I'm really sorry about this,” I said, and then I reached out with my Nightmare magic, caught him by the arms like a puppet on strings, and lifted him into the air.

“What the hell?” He twisted around, his legs thrashing for a second. Then finally he turned toward me where I hovered in the air beside him. “Dusty?”

“That's right. Are you ready to get going or what?”

He pulled off his helmet. “Crap, this is a dream, isn't it?”

I nodded and slowly lowered us both to the ground.

“Sorry,” he said, a sheepish smile crossing his face. “I must've been distracted.”

“No kidding.” I grinned and motioned to the gym. “Don't you get enough of this every day already?”

“What?” He winked. “It's fun. And you know I can't control the content of my dreams. That's your job.”

“Right you are. I guess I should get on it then. Where should we go first?”

“Let's try the police department,” Eli said. “You've been there often enough to re-create it, right? Maybe we'll be able to get a look at the ward where Titus was killed.”

“I'll give it a go.”

“Good, but do you mind giving me a wardrobe change first?” Eli said, motioning to his gladiator gear.

I raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Would you prefer your birthday suit?”

He grinned back at me and took a step nearer, our bodies only a few dangerous inches away from touching. “I'm game if you are.”

A blush heated my skin, burning from the top of my hairline all the way down to my toes. For a second, I almost considered doing it, but no. It would be too great a tease. Besides, I wouldn't be confident enough to show him my true naked body. In this dream world, I would be tempted to present a falsely perfect body—skin tanned and blemish-free, a stomach lean and flat, minus the little pouch just below my belly button.

But I didn't want to give Eli a lie. I wanted to give him me as I truly am, and have him accept me for it, not be disappointed by a dream-world expectation I could never match in real life.

“Maybe next time,” I said, giving a little laugh that rang false to my ears. “Like when we're actually able to do more than look.” I waved at him, willing his gladiator gear to vanish and his usual jeans and T-shirt to take its place.

“It's a promise,” Eli said, smoothing down his new clothes.

His words sent a prickle of anticipation dancing over my skin. I savored the feeling for a moment, and then closed my eyes and concentrated on changing the dream. I pictured the Rush as I'd seen it last, the main cathedral-like room with its haphazard rows of desks and clutter. The dream resisted the change at first, like it always did, but slowly I felt the substance of it give way, bending toward my vision and will.

“Wow, good job,” Eli said a few moments later.

I opened my eyes and understood the compliment at once. Sometimes when I set the scene of a dream, the result was an in-between thing, close to real but not quite, a surreal blend of truth and imagination. This time, however, I was nearly spot-on. The only thing off about the scene was the lack of policemen. I doubted the Rush was ever so empty. Even more strange was all the indicators that people should've been there—a coffee cup with steam still rising from its surface set atop a file cabinet, a half-eaten doughnut on a desk, the red jelly in its middle still wet and oozing. There was even a lit pipe laying on a little wooden stand, smoke trickling up from one end.

Then again, perhaps my magic hadn't worked so perfectly. I doubted any kind of smoking was permitted in the Rush. Too many naturekinds were allergic to the fumes of burning plants.

“Which way should we go?” Eli said, looking around.

“I'm pretty sure the prison is that way.” I pointed ahead at a set of double doors. To the left of them ran the hallway with the interrogation room. Offices filled the hallway on the right.

Eli headed that direction, and I stepped into place beside him, being sure to keep an abnormally wide distance between us. The last thing I wanted was to get ejected from the dream early. Bollinger would no doubt call an end to the session.

The double doors led to a wide corridor lined with windows that looked out on a lawn and an artful arrangement of flower beds. They were the kind maintained by naturekinds, the plants large and vibrantly colored, a painting right out of a fairy tale. Bright sunshine poured through the glass, making the air pleasantly warm.

On the other end of the corridor was another set of double doors, these made with iron bars. Eli tried the lock on it, but it wouldn't give.

“Let me,” I said. I waved my hand over the lock and willed it to open. The dream obeyed easily, and we stepped through.

We arrived in a short hallway, dim and cramped. Ahead was a glass door and to the left and right two more iron gates. Above the one on the left was a sign that read:
WEST CELLBLOCK.
To the right was the East Cellblock. Peering through the bars, I saw a wide corridor lined with prison cells on each side. The sight sent a shiver down my arms, and a sense of claustrophobia began to squeeze my chest.

“Let's try in here first,” Eli said, striding over to the glass door. He opened it and we stepped inside. A reception desk filled the first half of the room. Behind it was some kind of observation post. TV monitors lined the walls on three sides, stacked from the desks to the ceiling. Microphones, switchboards, and other equipment cluttered the tops of the desks. All the equipment looked ancient, the kind of stuff you saw in old movies from the '60s about the space race. If this really was the type of equipment in the Rush, no wonder the animation effect was so bad. This stuff had been absorbing magic and electromagnetic fields for years.

“This must be central control,” Eli said, walking past the reception desk toward the monitors.

I followed him, but stopped as I spotted a massive book sitting open behind the desk. I walked over to it, and in seconds realized it was a prisoner's log.

“Eli, look at this.”

He turned and came back. “Huh. Do you think there's real information in there?”

“Maybe.” Anything was possible inside a dream, especially if this one held dream-seer power in it. There was no way to tell, but I had a feeling it did. The details so far were too good for there not to be something bigger at work.

“Let's find out.” Eli started leafing through the pages. Moments later he tapped his finger against the book. “Got it. It says Titus Kirkwood was being held in cell B-Three.”

My pulse quickened at our good fortune, and Eli and I left the control room and headed for the West Cellblock. Once again, I had to will the locks to open. The moment I stepped inside, vertigo struck me and I froze. The cellblock was six tiers high with narrow platforms set at the base of each tier. Stacked in rowed columns, the tiny cells lining the walls reminded me of upright coffins. The place had a cave-like feel, windowless and dark. Through the bars of the nearest cells I saw rust stains on the walls. Chips and cracks marred the concrete floors as if the prisoners had tried to claw their way free. A sick feeling struck my stomach at the thought of my mother spending her days in this place. She would go mad. Anyone would.

“W-One, W-Two,” Eli said as he scanned the small plaques on the front of the cells. “Huh, it must be just a straight count.” He leaned his head back, trying to get a look at the second tier.

“Hold on. I got it.” I flew into the air, rising up high enough to see the labels on the second level. “You're right. It just keeps going up.” I lowered myself back down.

“Let's check out the other cellblock.”

I nodded, but could already guess that it would be labeled with an “E” not a “B.”

My suspicions proved right. The East Cellblock was a mirror image of the west, the only noticeable difference the labeling on the doors.

“There's another cellblock this way, I think,” Eli said as we left the East Cellblock. The short hallway in front of the command center wrapped around on both sides of the East and West blocks. We followed the hallway and soon came to a set of iron gates labeled:
CENTRAL CELLBLOCK
.

“What do you want to bet these are labeled C?” I said as we stepped in.

Eli didn't answer. I was right, of course, which we both saw at once, but it didn't matter. The Central Cellblock was not a mirror match to the others. A few feet down the corridor lay an iron gate set into the floor. Icy fingers stroked the back of my neck. It could be a doorway to hell or an oubliette filled with the dead, decaying bodies of prisoners thrown down into it and forgotten.