Chad felt a welling of tears. He doubted he could quantify how infinitely sad what was transpiring made him. It was wrong. An unforgivable offense against the universe. Which was a melodramatic thing to think, he realized, but he believed it nonetheless. He was seized by a desire to bring this place down. He wouldn’t be satisfied with just his own escape. Not anymore. He would settle for nothing less than complete destruction. An inferno. The oppressed rising up to mete out a justice every bit as ruthless as the vile transgressions against humanity this underworld’s powers-that-be seemed to engage in as a matter of routine.
But that was ridiculous.
He was a systems analyst, not a revolutionary.
How could he hope to change anything down here?
When Cindy and the guard emerged from the tunnel, she seemed reluctant to look at Chad. He met her gaze once, tried to transmit a message of concern and empathy, but her eyes flicked instantly away.
The guard who took Cindy into the tunnel sent Coleman away. “You’ll be boarding the next transport run when it leaves, which should be within an hour. You and your slave will be taken Below. You will be carrying documentation verifying your status as an emancipated slave.”
Then he was gone, leaving Cindy and Chad standing there unguarded.
She said, “See? I know what I’m doing.”
Chad nodded. “Sure.”
But there was a distance in his tone, a faraway look in his eyes.
He was thinking about liberation. About throwing off the shackles of oppression. He was also thinking quite a bit about retribution.
Eddie was dreaming again. Yet again. But the images weren’t as vivid this time. They were fleeting and halfformed. That sense of lucidity and pseudoreality was gone. In its place was an odd mixture of physical lust and a swirling sense of impending disaster. He saw bodies burning in a pile, heard screams so loud and so anguished they pierced his eardrums like serrated knives. The stink of death was everywhere. And, in the middle of it all, appearing and disappearing-then reappearing again-was the woman from his earlier dream.
Dream.
A hauntingly beautiful image glimpsed here and there through a fog. Or it might have been smoke, the billowing black smoke of a conflagration. Although he couldn’t tell exactly what was happening, he sensed the woman was in extreme danger. Something terrible was about to happen to her, something unspeakable, and, this was the creepiest part of it, she seemed to welcome it, to even embrace it.
He saw the woman again, more clearly than before. She was again wearing the flimsy, sheer blue dress she’d shed in his previous dream. She seemed less threatening in this dream, not quite as apt to turn into a yellow-eyed beastie. He wasn’t sure why that was, but he would later decide he was getting glimpses of a fluid possible reality. The woman’s fate wasn’t decided yet. He sensed she was vulnerable, susceptible to ideas she wouldn’t normally entertain. She stood now on the precipice of a great corruption. Soon she would either surrender her soul to darkness or give up her life trying to fight whatever was threatening her.
This dream, what little he would recall of it upon awakening, was suggestive of things that might happen should she pursue the latter course. A dark shadow, enormous and distended like a shadow puppet, emerged from the smoke to loom behind her.
Eddie opened his mouth to scream out a warning … … and awoke with a start.
Giselle looked up from her writing table when he sat bolt upright in the bed, gasping hard like a runner at the end of a marathon. The images from the dream became fuzzy and dispersed like bubbles blown into a breeze, but he retained a sense of what he had seen and of what the images meant. He looked at Giselle, who, with a tip of a quill dimpling a corner of her mouth, resembled a biology student studying a particularly interesting specimen through a microscope.
He heaved one more heavy sigh and said, “I am having some seriously fucked-up dreams.”
He reconsidered the admission instantly. Broaching the subject with her was the kind of mistake that registered in the upper reaches of the stupidity Richter scale. Wasn’t it possible she was the one who’d turned his head into some kind of psychic antenna? “That is, ah, I mean, it’s probably nothing, and, uh …”
Giselle set the quill down, folded her hands primly in front of her, and said, “In what way are these dreams … ‘fucked up’?”
Eddie said, “Well-“
And then it came back to him, the memory of the astonishing event that had sent him reeling back into unconsciousness. She had spoken. Upon emerging from the secret passage, the mute girl had opened her mouth and sounds had emerged.
Words and sentences.
He stared at the sleek contours of her lovely face-and again experienced inappropriate erotic urges-and recalled images of a bloody flap of flesh sliding down her mouth, a tongue excised from the mouth of an emaciated old man.
The images, as well as the persistent desire to kiss her red lips, quashed his train of thought. “Um …”
There was a glint of amusement in her eyes, a glimmer of secret knowledge. “Your desire for me disturbs you.”
Eddie swallowed hard. “Ah … well…”
She laughed. “You can’t understand why you are so drawn to a woman whose deeds you find abhorrent.”
She’d nailed that part of it, Eddie had to admit. “That about sums it up.”
He shrugged. “I suspect you of literally fucking with my head, altering my brain chemistry somehow. I don’t understand it, but… there you go.”
“Nor do you need to know the specifics of it.” She got up and walked slowly toward the bed. The long skirt swirled about the ankles of her boots. “My powers are rooted in obscure rites and ancient magical practices, things you are too simple to comprehend.”
She climbed onto the bed, hoisted the skirt to thigh level, and sat astride him. “You saw me do something horrific, saw it in a dream, but what you don’t know about is the higher purpose behind the ceremony”
She wriggled her ass against his crotch and grinned at the automatic physical reaction the stimulation caused. Eddie’s heart fluttered. He was having difficulty focusing on anything other than pure sensation, but he managed to say, “Come on, a higher purpose behind murder. You’re kidding … right?”
She tilted her head back, pinched her nipples hard through the fabric of her dress, and said, “No … you have a destiny to achieve, Eddie.” Her face was flushed with lust, her porcelain flesh tinged a deep red. Her breathing quickened as she moved more rhythmically against him. “The ceremony… is symbolic. Restores my speech for a short time. I did it to facilitate quicker… communication between us, to…”
Eddie managed a hoarse mutter: “What destiny?”
Her only reply was a low moan.
Eddie shifted uncomfortably beneath her, but the movement only served to further stiffen his cock. He sighed and became still. It felt like there was a stick of dynamite wedged between their bodies.
Though it disturbed him to look into her eyes-especially when they were so close-he did so now. “You know, magic didn’t make that happen. I’m a guy who likes women. A lot. And you are one lovely piece of ass.”
Giselle licked already moist lips. “Oh?”
Eddie nodded. “Yeah.”
Giselle laid her wrists on Eddie’s shoulders and clasped her hands behind his neck. “Tell me more about these dreams.”
He slid a hand along one of her thighs. “Um … now?”
“Tell me everything.” One of Giselle’s hands came away from his neck and cupped his jaw. The hand squeezed, forced his mouth open, and for one long, delicious moment their mouths joined. During that moment, every concern he had-even the need to escape-was obliterated by the totality of the erotic fever gripping him. Then she withdrew her tongue, pulled her head back, and said, “Everything. Leave nothing out. Starting with your escape from Below.”
Eddie was breathing hard. “Jesus … I can’t even think with this … thing … between us.”
Giselle’s eyes flicked downward, then she met his gaze again and smiled. “I seem to have created a
