THE NIGHT OF NEVER-ENDING TEARS
WHEN ARCHER, KAYLIE, AND NICK ENTERED BALTIMORE, the once beautiful city looked as though it had been through a war. It had.
But, Archer thought, it was a war of people’s own making. Buildings burned out of control, wrecked cars littered the roads, and the Inner Harbor was awash in trash. Waking up to the reality of it all would likely take most people to the brink of madness. Beyond it all, however, was one who needed to answer for his crimes.
“You’ve got it, right?” Archer asked as they turned the corner on Pratt Street.
Kaylie frowned. “Archer, we rehearsed it a hundred times.”
“It’s a bonzer plan, mate,” Nick said. “We’ll give it a burl.”
“No,” Archer said. “This isn’t something we try. We do this, or . . . or the whole world pays.”
Each busy with his or her own thoughts, the Dreamtreaders spent the rest of the walk to the Dream Tower in silence. They entered through the revolving doors, and Kaylie happified the guards at the desk and outside the elevator.
They stepped inside, and the elevator doors closed.
“Floor please?” the automated voice asked.
“Communications,” Archer said.
The doors opened, and more than a dozen guards trained their assault rifles toward Archer, Kaylie, and Nick. Three seconds later, the rifles fell from their hands, and the guards sat down to suck their thumbs.
“Bonzer!” Nick laughed.
“Promise me, Kaylie,” Archer said. “Promise me you’ll never happify me.”
“It’ll cost you,” Kaylie said coyly. “Fortunately for you, I’ll accept cash, check—actually, I just accept candy.”
Archer laughed. “Let’s get our friends.”
The communications center was awash with muted colors from all the fiber-optics in the tall racks of network hardware. “Razz?” Archer called. “Amy? You guys in here?”
Amy came tearing around a tall battery backup system and tackled Archer with a hug. “I thought you’d lost,” she cried. “We’ve been up here so long. I kept hearing things. It was scary.”
Razz tangled in Archer’s hair. “Oh, you’re back! You’re back!” she squeaked with excitement.
Archer felt the blush run hot to his face. “I . . . um, Amy,” he said. “Thank you, but, uh . . . can you let go of me?”
Amy laughed, released him, and backed up a step. “I was just happy, is all,” she said. “Yep.”
Kaylie used a little will to hover up to Archer’s height and grab Razz. “C’mere, you little fluffy critter, you!”
“Hey, unhand me!” Razz squealed halfheartedly. “Well, I am rather fluffy.”
“Bonzer job here,” Nick said. “You cut the Veil.”
“I knew you could do it,” Archer said.
“But . . . it’s gone now, Archer,” Amy said. “I can’t make things with my mind anymore.”
“You’re better for it,” Archer said. “Be glad.”
Nick gestured toward the elevator. “Archer,” he said, “we’d better be on our way.”
After dropping Amy and Razz at the main floor, Archer told the automated elevator, “Beneath.”
“Floor restriction. Initiate recognition protocol or choose another floor.”
Archer nodded at Kaylie who placed her will-enhanced palm to the scanning screen. “Protocol Wind Maiden One,” she said.
The elevator began its descent, and Archer said, “Figures she’d use that as a password.” No one laughed. Not even Archer. When the doors opened in Kara’s cavern below, Archer knew they would face their most dangerous enemy of all.
When the doors finally parted, Archer immediately noticed the distant sound of crying, a kind of tremulous sob echoing in the cavern. The Dreamtreader trio charged past the barracks and armories, across the open floor, and halted at the Inner Sanctum.
Kara was there on her knees. Bezeal held the flaming Vorcaust in his green hand. “Give it to me, now!” Bezeal hissed. “You failed . . . in everything! The Shadow Key belongs to me.”
“I’m telling you,” Kara wailed, “I don’t have it.”
“Of course you do,” Bezeal growled. He raised the whip.
“She doesn’t have it, Bezeal!” Nick yelled.
Archer stepped forward. “We do.” He took the key, pushed it in the keyhole, and said, “Scath, get inside, right now.”
A flurry of weeping, cursing, hissing shadows fled between the Dreamtreaders, Kara, and Bezeal. They disappeared into the Inner Sanctum, and Archer turned the key. The slab door shut with an echoing boom.
“Saved me a step,” Bezeal said. “Thank you, Archer.”
“What happened to your rhyme?” Archer asked.
Bezeal hissed in reply. “Hand . . . me . . . the Shadow Key!”
“I don’t think so,” Archer said.
“Boy, do not trifle with me,” the merchant snarled, his voice thick with menace. “The Shadow Key is mine.”
“Not from where I’m standing,” Archer said, holding up the key and waggling it.
“Insolent child,” Bezeal sneered. “Think you’re powerful because you unmade the Rift? Pitiful. Your beloved Waking World is ruined.” “Not ruined,” Kaylie said. “We’ve got our anchors back. We won’t get fooled again.”
“Only a matter of time,” Bezeal whispered. “Now, give me the key, or I will slay all four of you . . . where you stand.”
“Slay us?” Nick echoed. “Now what a spewing mad thing for you to say. I ought’a punt your sorry rump into the next galaxy, fair Dinkum.”
Bezeal’s eyes turned blood-red. His voice dropped an octave, and the entire chamber turned suddenly cold. “I will shred you,” he whispered. “For the last time, give me the Shadow Key.”
“Now, Kaylie!” Archer yelled. “It’s our only chance!”
Kaylie threw her hands forward and snapped open the portal to the Dream. Kaylie dove through, followed in a heartbeat by Archer and Nick, but before she could close the portal completely, Bezeal slipped through as well.
Crimson tornadoes slithered down from the turbulent sky, and Old Jack towered high over the Dream landscape. The three Dreamtreaders were waiting when Bezeal appeared.
“Thought you could escape?” he hissed. “Fool, you’ve ventured into the wrong realm. I will trap you here, and your mortal bodies can rot in the Waking World.”
Archer stepped forward. “I didn’t think you would follow us,” he said. “But I guess I’d better give this to you.” He held out the Shadow Key.
Bezeal’s Cheshire grin appeared briefly, but vanished, and his eyes grew very small. “You give it . . . freely?” he asked, moving cautiously toward Archer. “Think you that Bezeal will grant you mercy?”
“Just take the key,” Archer growled. “And shut up.”
Bezeal snatched the Shadow Key from Archer’s hand, and then clutched it to his breast. “There will be no mercy,” he hissed.
“It’s not going to do you any good here,” Archer said, crossing his arms. “The Shadow Key, I mean.”
“I control the Scath,” Bezeal said. “And the Masters Bindings . . . and they are such good bait.”
“Well, that’s what Archer’s talking about,” Nick said. “See, you’ve got no Shadowkeep. Rigby’s gone, and Kara won’t ever come back. You don’t have a Nightmare Lord.”
Clutching her Patches doll, Kaylie stepped forward. “You see, Bezeal, we’ve beaten you. We’re Dreamtreaders, and we hold the power here.”
Bezeal’s eyes turned red. He began to tremble. “Your power is—”
“And,” Archer interrupted, “we know who you are.”
Speaking once more in that horrible voice, Bezeal said, “If you knew me, you would know there has always been a Nightmare Lord. No. 6 Rue de La Morte was but one Shadowkeep; there have been thousands of others. And I have been there for each and every one of them.”
As if a mantle of dark thunderheads had rolled over the landscape, the ambient light of the Dream dimmed, and a faint, red glow surrounded Bezeal. “You call me Bezeal,” he said, and his silhouette began to grow, “but I have worn many other names.”
“Kaylie, don’t look,” Archer whispered urgently.
Nick physically turned Kaylie around and ushered her back. Even Archer stepped back.
Taller now than any of the Dreamtreaders, Bezeal was still growing. “Some have called me Belial. To others, I was Beelzebub. I’ve even been named such a banal moniker as Old Scratch. But would you know my real name, Dreamtreaders? Think you that you could bear to hear it spoken from my lips?”
Archer turned his head, but from his peripheral vision, he saw Bezeal’s shape change. The hooded robe was gone. In its place were dark wings, similar to bat wings, but ragged and torn as if from wear. The pinprick eyes had grown to blazing red slashes, and a fiery crown burned in the air above his head. “My name,” he said, “spells your doom, and not just for this world but forever. You know me now, don’t you? Oh, yes, you know.”
A door in the darkness opened, and brilliant white light poured through. Archer, Kaylie, and Nick covered their eyes, but they were not afraid. Now, they were smiling.
Archer saw that Bezeal—or whatever he wanted to call himself—however, had raised a wing to shield his eyes.
“Ah, so that’s where you’ve been hiding all these years!” boomed Master Gabriel, stepping through the door. “I have suspected for centuries, of course, but nothing like a confession to make things certain.”
“You!” Bezeal hissed. “You cannot harm me. The time is not yet nigh.”
“Oh really?” Master Gabriel asked. He drew his sword, Murkbane, and the blade lit with brilliant white fire. “I am afraid you have that quite wrong. Your greatest suffering is most certainly yet to come. But that does not mean you cannot suffer now as well.”
Bezeal held up the Shadow Key and yelled, “Scath, come to your master’s aid!”
“I will take that!” Master Gabriel said, snatching the key away. “And Archer, Kaylie, Nick, I think we can dispense with the illusion now.”
“On it!” Archer exclaimed. He began to call back his will. Kaylie and Nick did the same, and the Dream Realm peeled away a few strips at a time until nothing surreal remained. They all stood in Archer’s backyard, not far from his mother’s cherished well.
“Ha, Bezeal,” Kaylie said. “You’ll think twice before running into any old portal, won’t you?”
Bezeal’s eyes burned. “You . . . tricked . . . me?”
“Delicious, is it not?” Master Gabriel. “It is a very small token, set against your deceit, Bezeal. But let it ring like a clarion bell that your time in the Dream is over. I know who you really are . . . oh, yes, I know you now, and I know your designs. Such delusions of grandeur! From here on, stay in your appointed place!”
“Maybe I will,” Bezeal sneered. “Maybe, I won’t. I’ve deceived the so-called Masters before—even you, Gabriel—I’ll deceive you again.”
Archer, Kaylie, and Nick came and stood at Master Gabriel’s side. “Oh, I am certain you will try,” he said. “But know this: you have very little time left. Your Personal Midnight is coming soon. And, personally, I cannot wait.”
Bezeal rose to his full height, spread his wings, and glared. His mantle of darkness writhed about his form, and he hissed menacingly.
Master Gabriel brandished his sword, and then lifted the tip beneath Bezeal’s throat. “It is time for you to depart,” Master Gabriel said, his voice as sharp as his sword.
Bezeal sneered and started to raise a clawed hand. “You do not command me—”
“Perhaps not,” Master Gabriel said, “but if you do not want to feel this blade, you will do exactly as I say. Into the well with you.”
“What?” Bezeal cried out. “I will not—”
Master Gabriel lowered Murkbane, and the sword flared. “Into the well, now.”
Bezeal hissed and began to crawl away, but Master Gabriel countered every errant move and shepherded Bezeal right to the edge of the well. “Go on,” he said. “Get going.”
Growling like a mongrel, Bezeal clambered over the edge of the well. He hissed once more, and then dropped. There came a splash of water and a bloodcurdling screech. Then . . . silence.
Master Gabriel grinned. “I took the liberty of replacing the water fouled by the Scath with pure water, like the kind your mother drank years ago. I am afraid Bezeal does not find it very refreshing.”
“Can we look?” Archer asked.
Master Gabriel nodded. The three Dreamtreaders surrounded the well and stared over the edge into the darkness. They saw Bezeal shrinking back to his hooded form, and he was sinking in the water . . . falling away into the depths. His triumphant grin was long gone. All that remained now was the darkness beneath his hood—darkness and those small eyes, just a faint glimmer. As he drifted down and away, the glimmer became very faint indeed.