Hellforged

Clyde was still at the desk, eating a sandwich. He swallowed quickly when he saw the door open, then nodded to me.

“Still on duty?” I asked. “They got you working double shifts now?”

“Only temporarily. The new night man is due to start tomorrow. But I don’t require much sleep, Ms. Vaughn. And the extra hours have been welcome.” He cleared his throat. “My daughter is a freshman at Wellesley.” His expression blended pride with sadness.

Clyde rarely talked about himself, but I knew he was the only member of his family who’d been felled by the zombie plague, and his wife had divorced him soon after. I wondered if he ever saw his daughter—or if his tuition checks were their only contact.

As I said good night, I wished I’d given Clyde a bigger bonus at Christmas. Too late now. I’d make up for it on his birthday.

JULIET WASN’T HOME. ALL WAS QUIET EXCEPT FOR SOME muffled, moving-around noises from the upstairs neighbors. It was getting late for her to be out. I wasn’t worried. At Juliet’s age, she could stand a little weak, early-morning winter sunlight. I just hoped the Goons hadn’t pissed her off so much that she’d found some hapless norm and drained the poor guy dry.

What an image.

I drew the blackout shades throughout the apartment in case the sun rose before Juliet got home, then I went into my room to get ready for bed. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, pulled on some sweats, and—

Oh, no. I wasn’t wearing my watch. I’d left it on the bar at Creature Comforts.

Damn it, that watch was expensive. In ten years of demon fighting, it was the only one I’d found that worked in dreams. I remembered knocking on the bar when I’d said that to T.J.

My bedside clock read six thirty-four. They might still be cleaning up. I’d call and make sure it was there. Otherwise, I’d worry that someone had scored a free watch at my expense.

I went into the living room, picked up the phone, and dialed.

“Creature Comforts,” said a chipper voice. Had to be T.J. Axel wouldn’t sound that bright with a spotlight shining on him.

“Hey, T.J., it’s Vicky Vaughn.”

“Oh, hi, Vicky. Did you want Axel? He’s gone downstairs. He was so mad about that Goon Squad cop, I think he’s demolishing a punching bag or something.”

“No, that’s okay. I just wanted to ask if I left my watch on the bar.”

“Yeah, you did. Axel noticed it after you left. I tried to catch you, but you were already through the checkpoint. We’ll keep it behind the bar until you come back. Or I could bring it to you if you’d rather.”

“Would you? That’d be terrific. I need it for a Drude extermination tomorrow night.” I told him where I lived.

“Oh, sure, I go right by there on my way home. But I won’t be out of here for a while. Those Goons made a mess of the storeroom; it’ll take me an hour, probably, to straighten it up. That okay?”

“I’m about to fall into bed. Can you leave it with my doorman? He’ll hold on to it for me.”

After we hung up, I fell into bed, as predicted. Now I could sleep soundly.

Except sound sleep eluded me. I did sleep, and it started off fine—darkness, silence, no dreams. But a sound emerged, an echo of laughter. It rumbled through my sleep, not a dream but not part of the waking world, either. The sound grew and multiplied; other voices joined in, all of them laughing. The darkness rippled, broke into pieces, and tumbled into billows of thick black smoke that stung my nose and eyes. I smelled burning and squinted against the smoke, trying to make out a half-glimpsed figure passing through it.

This shouldn’t be happening. I struggled to gain control. All Cerddorion are lucid dreamers; we know when we’re dreaming and can consciously direct what’s happening. It’s one of the reasons we’re such skilled demon fighters: Demons often enter victims’ dreamscapes to torment them, so we have to be able to control dreams. But tonight, it was difficult. I focused my attention on dispersing the smoke—I tried a strong wind, then rain. I made the wind stronger, until a hurricane blasted my dreamscape. The smoke didn’t thin. Didn’t budge. It was smoke, but it was a solid, heavy presence, like a hundred-foot-high cliff. The laughter escalated, roaring over the screaming winds.

Then, abruptly, it stopped. The smoke cleared as if it had never been there. The laughter fell away, one voice at a time, until a single whisper remained. The whisper faded, then it was gone. All around me stretched the blackness of undisturbed sleep—and an uneasiness that lingered with the merest whiff of burning.

Gradually, I sank deeper into sleep. My body needed it.

As I reached the deepest part of the sleep cycle, the place of profound relaxation, a hideous figure pushed itself into my dreamscape. Its warty blue skin dripped slime, and it smiled, showing hundreds of teeth, each as big and sharp as a dagger. Flames smoldered behind its eyes, and it belched foul-smelling smoke.

Difethwr, the Destroyer. The Hellion that had killed my father—and nearly killed me.

I screamed and tried to back away, but I couldn’t move. My demon mark, the scar on my arm where the Destroyer’s flames once touched me, burned with searing pain. The face came closer. Its eyes flashed. Flames shot out, streaming toward me.

I struggled but still couldn’t move. I couldn’t even look away as the death-dealing flames, the fire that burned both body and soul, shot toward me.

An inch from my face, they halted. The brightness blinded me, the heat singed my eyelashes, but the flames didn’t touch me.

Difethwr laughed. It was the sound I’d heard before, a chorus of individual voices—loud and whispering, high-pitched and low, screeching and cackling and making me want to block my ears.

As the laughter peaked, Difethwr reeled the flames back into its eye sockets. A huge black bird—a crow, or maybe a raven—flew in and alighted on the Hellion’s shoulder. Something dangled from the crow’s beak. The Destroyer lifted a taloned hand, palm up. The crow dropped the object into it and cawed three times, loudly, the harsh sound joining the demonic laughter. Difethwr clenched its fingers into a fist and then opened its hand again, flipping its wrist so that something dangled from a finger. I blinked the spots from my eyes to see what it was.

My watch hung from the Hellion’s claw.

Difethwr flicked its hand, tossing the watch into the air and incinerating it with a blast of its eye-flames.

In a second, I was out of bed, groping for my knife, ready to send the Hellion back to Hell. I snatched the dagger from my nightstand. I spun around to locate Difethwr, then blinked in the pitch-dark room. There was no demon here.

A dream. It was only a dream. And that was very, very bad.

I PACED MY BEDROOM, UNABLE TO THINK OF GOING BACK to sleep. Difethwr had invaded my dream. I should’ve been able to fight the demon, even while sleeping. It was my dreamscape; I should direct my dreams. That was one of the first things I’d learned in my training. The demon fighter is always in control of the dream. Always. But I’d had to wake up to banish Difethwr.

My demon-marked arm itched and burned, telling me my encounter with the Destroyer hadn’t been an ordinary dream. Difethwr wasn’t an image boiling up from my subconscious. Somehow, the Hellion itself had been inside my dreamscape.

And it had my watch. Was that real, too, or just a dream-image?

There was one way to find out. I threw on my jeans, a sweater, and some boots. I felt too antsy to wait for the elevator, so I took the stairs. Galloping down one flight after another, I tried to shake the uneasy feeling that something weird had just happened. I’d dreamed, that’s all. It was so long since I’d done that—usually I chose uninterrupted darkness for my dreamscape—I’d forgotten what it felt like. Nightmares happened. I’d had them as a kid.

Still, as I opened the door to the lobby, I knew I was fooling myself. Something weird was going on. I didn’t know what, and that scared me.

Clyde raised his sunglasses and looked at me curiously. Because their eyes, like their skin, degrade when exposed to sunlight, most zombies wear sunglasses in the daytime, even indoors. “Is something amiss?”

“I came down to get my watch.”