convulsing with hysterical laughter. Marcy hopped off the bed and made a beeline for Dream. There was a wild gleam in her eyes, a hint of something wicked. She slid onto Dream’s lap and pushed her tongue between her lips. Dream’s initial reaction was shock bordering on revulsion. This wasn’t her thing at all. But the cocaine was working on her now. She felt wild and up for anything. So she let Marcy kiss her, even started kissing her back.
Then she heard something.
A click.
She broke the liplock with Marcy and turned her gaze to the hotel room’s front door. The brass doorknob moved. The motion was slight, careful. She heard another click and knew someone was breaking in. She pushed Marcy off her lap and got to her feet as the door swung open and two men rushed into the room. One was a middle-aged man in a cheap suit. The other was a wiry, black-clad kid with scraggly hair that hung in his face. The older man had a.38 clutched in a beefy fist. The kid brandished a large and quite lethal-looking knife.
The older one kicked the door shut with the heel of his shoe and leered at them. He dropped a lockpicking tool into a suit poc ket. “Party’s over, bitches.”
Dream opened her mouth to tell the intruders they were messing with the wrong people. But the words never made it past the tip of her tongue. Things started happening. She saw it develop like a slow-motion scene from a cheesy ’70s cop movie. But the impression was a false one. It was happening fast. Too fast. She felt a hot surge of panic as Ellen rolled off the bed and made a grab for Marcy’s Glock, which was on the nightstand now. The wiry kid flipped the blade in his hand and snapped his arm back. His arm came forward as Ellen brought the gun around. A scream filled the room. Marcy. The knife was a blur as it spun through the air. The blade buried itself in Ellen’s side. Her finger jerked on the Glock’s trigger, squeezing off a reflexive shot that sent a bullet whizzing by Dream’s head. The bullet punched a hole through the television and Ellen dropped to the floor.
Marcy screamed again and rushed to her sister’s side. The man in the suit aimed his gun at her back. He was going to kill her. Dream understood this in a flash. Anyone close to the Glock was a threat. She saw his finger begin to exert pressure on the trigger. A thought formed in her head.
The man in the suit edged close to the door and reached for the doorknob. Dream focused her will again and the doorknob turned hot in the man’s hand. He shrieked and let go. The scraggly-haired boy’s fingers were moving toward another concealed weapon, something tucked in the waistband of his pants. The grasping hand was missing two fingers. It was the same hand that had sent the knife on its lethal trajectory toward Ellen. A grin that hinted at madness spread across the boy’s face as his fingers slipped beneath the dangling tail of his shirt and emerged with another knife.
The switchblade snapped open.
Dream looked into his eyes and felt his pain. He’d suffered immensely in the past. But any good he might once have harbored had been eradicated through torture and brutalization. This impression formed in less than the space of a second. She knew, then, that the interlopers were no ordinary predators.
Another wail of anguish spiraled out of Marcy’s tortured lungs.
Dream rushed the boy and seized him by the wrist. She pried the knife from his fingers with ease. And she thought of Ellen as she slammed the blade into his abdomen. Poor Ellen. The girl she’d once victimized and whom she’d come to regard as a friend. She’d blossomed in the two months they’d spent on the road, becoming stronger and more confident. And now she was crumpled on the floor. Maybe already dead.
The boy’s only reaction to the pain was a wince. His grin remained in place as the fingers of his other hand came around to claw at her face, grasping for the soft tissue of her eyes. Dream swatted the hand away and slammed him against the dresser, rattling the mirror mounted on the wall behind it. She yanked the knife out of his stomach and punched it in again. And again. The mirror’s reflection showed her a black-haired, wild eyed woman in the grip of a murderous frenzy. A woman who had embraced madness and had no desire to turn back. Not anymore.
She threw the boy to the ground and straddled him. His eyes turned glassy. But still there was no fear reflected there. He grinned. A soft burble of laughter emerged between pale pink lips.
The man in the suit made another move toward the door, but Alicia intercepted him. The gun he’d discarded was in her hand now. She whipped it across the man’s face and blood leaped from his smashed nose. She dragged him further into the room and threw him down at the foot of the bed.
Dream shifted her attention back to the boy. His grin broadened and he even stuck his tongue out at her. Dream forced his mouth open and plunged the knife inside. The pain at last took its toll on the boy. He tried to jerk his head out of her grip, but he failed to budge her at all. Blood bubbled from his mouth, along with a mewling, inarticulate plea. Dream turned his head carefully to one side, allowing the blood to flow out rather than letting him choke on it. Then she pushed the blade into each of his eyes, penetrating just enough to blind him. More mewling. More inarticulate pleas. She worked on him with the knife for a long time, molten rage driving her to mutilate the body of her friend’s murderer in the most obscene ways possible.
And finally he was dead.
Dream stood up and looked at her reflection again. Her thrift-store clothes were covered with blood. Blood was everywhere. She turned away from her reflection and saw Marcy sitting on the floor against the side of the bed, her sister’s motionless body cradled in her arms. She looked up at Dream, her face shiny with tears.
Marcy’s anguish melted some of the hardness that had seized her soul.
“Is she-”
Marcy nodded and sniffed. “Yes.”
Dream felt her own anguish rising up, but she clamped it down. A member of her adopted family was dead and there would be real grief to deal with, but for the moment there were more pressing matters at hand. She yanked the man in the suit to his feet and leaned in close, their faces separated by no more than an inch.
“Who sent you?” Her voice was low, her tone even, but the ruthlessness beneath came through clear as a bell. “Was it Ms. Wickman? It was, wasn’t it? I saw it in that boy’s eyes before I blinded him.”
The man swallowed with difficulty. His bloodshot eyes danced in their sockets. His breath reeked of cheap beer and cheaper cigarettes. He licked blood from lis lower lip and swallowed again. He sensed her implacable determination and understood there was no room for anything but the truth.
“Not Ms. Wickman. She’s gone. Dead.” He licked his lips again and shivered. He was afraid of Dream, yes, but he also clearly feared whoever had sent him. “Another has taken her place. Mistress Giselle.”
Alicia was on her feet again. “The bitch is dead? For real?”
The man nodded. “Yes. And she’s worse than Ms. Wickman. The old broad sent her people after House of Blood survivors. I figured that’d be off with her dead, but no, the new Mistress wants you, too. I don’t know why and that’s the whole fucking truth.”
Dream smiled. “I believe you. What’s your name?”
The man coughed. “Harlan Dempsey. People call me Dempsey.”
Dream heard sirens rising in the night. A lot of them. Drawing closer by the moment. Then a sound of tires squealing in the parking lot. She let go of the man’s shirt and pushed him away. He stumbled over the edge of the bed and flopped down on the mattress. She heard voices in the parking lot. Shouts and commands. Flashing red and blue strobe lights were visible at the edges of the window blinds.
Alicia shot her a worried look. “Dream?”
“It’s okay, Alicia. I’ll deal with it. And after I’ve taken care of things, Harlan here will take us to whatever pit of hell this Giselle cunt is holed up in. Isn’t that right, Harlan?”
Harlan’s gaze flicked from the windows to Dream and back again. He swallowed hard and nodded. “Sure. Yeah. Whatever.”
Dream looked at Alicia. “The quest isn’t over. Ms. Wickman’s dead, but we still have a destiny to meet, okay?”
Alicia nodded slowly. “Yeah. I hear you, Dream. And I’m with you all the way.” She glanced at the front door. The level of frantic activity outside was increasing by the moment. “But are you sure you can get us out of this?”
Dream’s eyes glittered. “Yes.”
Marcy was on her feet now, the Glock in her hand again. “I’ll help you.”
Dream smiled at her. “Thank you. But that won’t be necessary. Just stand back and watch the show.”
She went to the front door and grasped the knob, which had cooled again. Then she steeled herself with a deep breath and opened the door.
More shouts.
A voice squawked through a megaphone, issuing commands she ignored. Dream stepped outside and moved fearlessly toward the array of raised handguns and rifles. She smiled and spread her hands wide. Someone yelled at her to get down on the ground. Then there was a pop from behind her. Marcy at the door, firing the Glock and ignoring her instructions to hang back. Driven by rage over her sister’s death to lash out at any enemy. Fire erupted from the barrels of the guns pointed at the motel room. Dream flexed her will and the bullets went astray.
Then the real fireworks began.
When it was over, the cops were all dead, their cars smoking ruins.
And Dream and her companions vanished into the night before reinforcements could arrive.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The cabin in which Camp Whiskey’s leaders conducted business was twice the size of the next largest cabin. Chad had jokingly referred to the large main room as an echo chamber. But now it felt too small, the air stale and the walls too close. The problem was all the extra people in the room-three Order of the Dragon representatives and several rifle-toting Camp Whiskey guards. The Order people sat at one end of the long wooden table that occupied the room’s center. Jim sat alone at the opposite end of the table, his arms crossed over the front of a thick wool sweater. He and the old man who was the obvious leader of the Order delegation glared at each other across the length of the table. The tension between them made Chad jittery.
So he abandoned his front-row seat at the staredown of the ages, rising from the table to wander over to the fireplace at the rear of the cabin. A fire crackled in
