“I’m going to help her break the link,” Orrus said.
“Then get it done.”
The cultists’ choice to remain in the open surprised Rob. The arrival of seven more members of Orrus’s group joining them in the moonlight under the bare branches of the trees also surprised him. Tiny snowflakes fell.
Two of the new arrivals, both male, didn’t wear any more clothes than Emily did. The flesh of both of them looked like it was covered with scales as well.
At Orrus’s bidding, Emily sat cross-legged on the ground. The cultist leader squatted in front of her.
As he watched, Rob wondered again at how much all life had changed since the arrival of the demons. Their metropolitan lives—his job at the R&D department at Gardner’s Genetics—was gone. His kid sister had gone from a literature nut studying the works of Neil Gaiman and Ian Rankin to some kind of weird sorceress.
The thing was, Emily was a sorceress. Rob had seen her work magic: move things with her mind, summon fire from nowhere, and read minds with uncanny accuracy. He’d learned to be afraid of her, and he regretted that because he’d felt certain she’d sensed that about him.
What Rob hated most was the helplessness he now felt. When they’d first left the city, they’d both foraged for things to eat. Then, slowly but surely, she’d developed her own interests with the cultists. Even after arguments about it, something they’d never done before, she hadn’t given up her studies of the old books that the cultists had let her borrow to make her own copies.
But he wouldn’t leave her. He’d made that promise to himself when he’d gotten her out of the city and they’d both lived.
Orrus took an object from his robe and put it on the ground between Emily and himself. It looked like a jade figurine of a lighthouse.
“This is my foci,” the cultist said in a soft, soothing voice. “Through it, I will access your thoughts and bring more control over them to you.”
“Yes.” Emily sat in a lotus position. Her hands were upraised on her knees.
“Stare at it,” Orrus crooned. “Stare at the foci and feel the dream within you. Unleash its power. You don’t even have to provide energy to feed the dream.”
Rob thought the man’s words were worthless. It was just noise to make himself feel important.
“Feed the dream to my foci,” Orrus said. “I’ll help you contain and bring it forth. We’ll see your dream together. Then we’ll conquer it and build safeguards for you.”
The jade lighthouse glowed. The lambent green barely showed against the white field of snow.
“People have dreamed of demons before,” Orrus said. “Many times. There’s always a great deal of energy expended to do something like this. Always, unless the dreamer gets the upper hand, the energy only flows one way.”
Rob barely restrained his anger. He couldn’t believe Emily bought into all of this. But the powers are real, aren’t they? It isn’t all crap. But if she hadn’t been messing about with those arcane forces, she wouldn’t have been in the shape she was currently in.
“That’s it,” Orrus said. “Only a little more.”
The jade lighthouse suddenly glowed as bright as a star. Snow around it started to melt, and it sank a couple of inches. The heat was intense enough that the figurine melted the snow for several inches in any one direction.
The hairs on the back of Rob’s neck stood up. His stomach turned sour. This didn’t need to happen. Emily already believed too much in the power of the demons.
“Reach for the dream,” Orrus said. “Bring it forward.”
A green, smoky incandescence drifted up from the jade lighthouse. Figures writhed within the two-foot-wide smoke cloud.
“How many do you see?” Orrus asked gently.
“Two,” Emily said. “The demon and the woman he has taken for his own.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I can hear bits and pieces of their conversations.”
“Concentrate harder,” the cultist said. “I’ll help you.”
As he stared at the smoke and the figures within it, Rob discovered he was able to see as well. The green smoke cleared and became sharper all at the same time. Unbidden, he stepped forward toward Emily.
“Don’t touch her,” Orrus said.
Angered, Rob stared at the cultist.
“If you touch her at this point, you could cost your sister her life,” Orrus told him. “Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Then listen to me. This is very dangerous work. For both of us.” Orrus focused on the glowing lighthouse. Despite the cold air that blew snow around him, sweat covered the cultist’s forehead. “Emily.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where you are?”
Emily hesitated. She frowned a little, and Rob was instantly reminded of the little girl his sister had one day been.
“Underground,” she answered.
“Underground where?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Searching for something.”
“What?” Orrus remained patient.
“I don’t know.”
“Does the demon know you’re there?”
“No,” Emily said. “I don’t think so.”
“You must be aware. Don’t ever lose sight of the demon’s attention. We must always know.”
“All right.”
Rob watched as the lighthouse grew even brighter. The heat reduced the snow around the figurine to a silver puddle. As he watched the smoke, Rob felt himself drawn into it.
Rob guessed that he must have blinked, because when he opened his eyes again, he stood in an underground cavern. When he’d been a child out on his grandparents’ farm, he’d found caves to crawl into. They’d been little holes in hillsides. Formed by shifting rock or from the efforts of other kids in the past, they’d become insect infested and had held curious artifacts from earlier visitations by other children.
He and Emily had joked that they’d been hobbit holes. They’d made up all kinds of delightful adventures of quests and all manner of dangerous foes they encountered. But those holes had only gone back into the hillsides a few feet.
They’d been nothing like the great space he now found himself in. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling thirty or forty feet above him were all solid stone. Rob didn’t know how he was able to
