Chapter 34

I was having the nightmare again. The Blood Moon hung red and swollen over my head. Coleman stood by my sister’s bed, a dagger in his decomposing hand. He looked at me, half his face sloughing off as he leered. He lifted the blade.

I screamed and tried to run but tripped over the hem of my gown. A gown trimmed with delicate ice roses. I’d never worn a gown in the dream before.

“Alex! Alex, wake up.”

Falin was suddenly in the dream, standing beside me. He shook my shoulders. “Wake up.”

I blinked at him. The Blood Moon vanished. So did the bed and Coleman. But I was still standing in the exact same spot, Falin holding my shoulders. PC pawed the air in front of me.

I looked around. We were surrounded by shadows with no discernible source. And nothing else. I took a step forward and loose sand shifted under my feet. Where in Faerie is a desert of sand and shadows? I frowned. And why could I tell there were shadows in the darkness? I didn’t know, but I did know that the shadows were somehow separate from the darkness.

“Where are we?”

Before Falin could answer, a scream shattered the darkness. My head shot up as a man in striped pajamas hurtled through the air, headed straight for us. His arms flailed around him, but that did little to slow his free fall. I ducked, which wasn’t the most rational decision, but how often did people fall toward me? Not exactly a situation I prepared for. When the man was still a dozen or more yards over our heads, he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared.

I straightened, gasping for breath I didn’t remember losing. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know,” Falin said, staring at the sky, “but he’s done that a couple of times. He never hits the ground.”

Right. I grabbed PC, cuddling him in my arms. The trembling dog didn’t object to the attention. “Where are we?” I asked again.

“If I had to guess? The realm of nightmares.”

Oh, now that sounded like a fun place. “How did we get here?”

Falin shook his head. “When I woke to your screaming, we were already here.”

Perfect. Had someone brought us here? But who? The Shadow King? And, more important, why?

“How do we get out?” I asked, searching the darkness and shadows for a door, or even a wall.

The darkness looked exactly the same on every side.

“I think we’re picking a direction at random,” Falin said, and then pointed left. It looked as good—or, really, as creepy—a direction as any.

The powder-fine sand shifted under our feet as we walked. We had to stop at one point as a troupe of clowns with bright hair and fake noses chased a woman across our path, leaving behind the sound of squeaking shoes in their wake. Then we passed a man in a dentist’s chair which appeared to spring right out of the sand. A teenage girl stood butt naked in front of her locker as groups of teenagers stood around her, laughing. A small boy huddled under his blanket, clutching a stuffed tortoise as something with gleaming claws and slimy scales crawled out from under his bed.

“They aren’t really here, are they?” I asked as I watched walls attached to nothing close in on a cowering man. Both he and the walls vanished as the walls fell over him.

“Yes and no. They are real human psyches dreaming. But physically? No,” Falin said, keeping a hand at the small of my back. I wasn’t sure if the contact was for my benefit or his. What would his nightmare be? I probably didn’t want to know.

“No chance we’re just dreaming at this point, huh?” I asked as an airplane dove toward the sand, disappearing on impact.

“The same dream? You, me, and the dog?”

Okay, he had a point.

The shadows around us had been pressing closer. I thought it was probably my imagination—after all, I still wasn’t convinced there even were shadows—but between one step and the next, the shadows surged forward. A solid wall of darkness sprang up around us on all sides. There is an old saying about an abyss and the abyss staring back. This darkness stared back.

I swallowed, clutching PC tighter. Falin unsheathed his daggers. The blades gleamed, as if reflecting light I couldn’t find. I fought my enormous skirt, trying to reach my own dagger, but with PC clutched in one arm, reaching the top of my boot was no easy matter. My heart hadn’t exactly been at a calm and steady pace before, but now it crashed so loudly I could hear nothing else. I wished I wasn’t able to see either.

There were shapes in the darkness. The mind tends to try to shield itself from what it can’t handle, so it accepted only pieces. Dozens of claws here, three-inch-long fangs there, some patches of molted fur, a large pus-filled abscess, scales. The nightmares pressed closer. This is where I pinch myself and wake up, right? Except I couldn’t seem to make my body move. My mouth hung open, but I’d long since run out of air from screaming.

The darkness loomed closer. Then the nightmares poured over me. I lost sight of Falin as dozens of rough hands grabbed at my skin and tangled in my hair, my gown. I huddled around PC. He whined, a loud, high-pitched cry of panic.

I lost the ground to darkness. Lost any sense of up or down. There was just darkness and creatures. I felt like I was flying, or sliding, or maybe the nightmare realm moved around me. I didn’t know. All I knew was that the nightmares had found me. And the nightmares were taking me.