stepped back, tore open her blue nightgown, and turned her head to the ceiling to await the final killing blow.
The Master let the sword that had almost decapitated him slide from his hand.
He grasped the other sword, the one with which he’d meant to take his own life, and readied it for another use.
The final destruction of the bitch who’d brought this ruin upon him.
Eddie wanted to help her.
To stop this offense against God and nature.
Dream!
She couldn’t die.
But Giselle’s strong hand at his shoulder restrained him. He tried to wrench free, but she was implacable. She shook something from the sleeve of her dress and pressed it into his hand. His fingers curled around it, and he looked down to see what it was.
A dagger.
It vibrated in his hand, pulsed with a strange energy.
Giselle whispered in his ear, “Sanctified by the gods. His death spirits. He knew you were here, Eddie, but he never knew what was in my heart.”
The hand holding the dagger shook.
Eddie strained at the leash.
“Do what you came here for, Eddie. Go to your destiny”
She released him.
And Eddie leapt forward.
The Master was so intent on the murderous rage consuming him, this need to remove every trace of this lying whore from existence, to obliterate her, that he wasn’t aware of the danger hurtling toward him until it was too late.
The dagger penetrated his throat with an electric jolt.
He tumbled to the floor with the human intruder on top of him. A detached part of his mind reeled at the layers upon layers of deceit heaped upon him tonight. Giselle, his pet, had brought this thing here, had set it upon him. He cried out in agony and frustration-frustration at his inability to have foreseen this.
There’d been no hint of any of it.
Not of Giselle’s betrayal.
Not of Dream’s true intentions.
And, most damnably, not of the momentous changes occurring Below.
He raged into the abyss, that horribly echoing chamber of reality’s darkest plane, cried out against the unfairness of it all. He flung the intruder aside and staggered to his feet, casting about for his fallen sword. He was weakened, had perhaps received a mortal blow, but he remained stronger by far than all these infidels combined.
Dream saw her window of opportunity.
It was small.
Maybe too small.
The asshole was looking for his sword. But he was wounded, badly wounded, and he was so enraged he didn’t see that the thing he wanted was right at his feet. Dream already had the other sword back in her own hands.
She didn’t wait.
Not one moment.
The supernatural energy filled her again, with strength-and with the knowledge that she was stronger than he was now.
That he was fucked.
She drove the blade through his chest and pushed it all the way out through his back. He threw his head back and roared like a wounded dragon, a sound so mighty it blotted out the rest of existence for a moment. Dream stumbled away from him, clamping hands over her ears and willing the sound to stop.
He staggered after her.
He was dying.
But he clearly meant to take her with him. She was cool with that. Death couldn’t obliterate the happiness she felt.
She’d won.
And he’d never hurt anyone else again.
Chad charged over the machine-gunned bodies that filled the hallway, threading his way through them with the ease of an accomplished obstacle course runner. He only dimly perceived the shouts of the others behind him. He was rushing toward something, and there was nothing that could hold him back.
The blade knew the way.
The open doors of a massive bedroom stood open before him.
So many open doors tonight.
All of them leading him here.
To his destiny.
Giselle smiled when she saw Chad.
The last element of the dream trinity.
She saw him pull up at the sight that greeted him upon his entry into the room.
And she gave him a little psychic push.
A nudge he never suspected had an external origin.
GO.
Then he was moving again.
Dream.
Chad’s heart hammered, and unalloyed joy suddenly pulsed through him.
GO, came the voice he assumed was that of his own belligerent psyche.
The blade carried Chad forward again.
Rose up of its own volition.
And thunked into the back of the creature threatening Dream.
The Master staggered away from Dream. His hands clawed impotently at the blade wedged like a fishhook in his back. The convulsions that gripped him made the task impossible. His head wobbled on his shoulders like a kite caught in a high wind, and the rest of his body shook like a condemned man riding the lightning. There was a stink of sulfur and burning meat, and his eyes radiated light, reflecting a fire burning from the inside out. His body assumed the consistency of melting wax, and the room’s other occupants began to back as far away from him as the walls would allow.
The strange convulsions increased in intensity.
The creature became a barely discernible blur in the middle of the room.
Then there was a pause.
A blip in reality.
A held breath.
Followed by a wet explosion.
Chunks of the creature’s body thumped against the walls, and a rain of blood and vaporized organs fell on the witnesses to the thing’s demise.
Dream blinks. It’s not right. This isn’t right. He’s dead. But she’s not. She should be gone, too. Shouldn’t be here. But-Chad is here. He looks … changed somehow.
She finds herself accepting his embrace, and she turns her face into the warm crook of his neck and begins to cry. He holds her tight. So tight it feels as if he’ll never let go of her.
