Collin knew he wasn't awake, but his skin crawled with the awareness of danger all around him. He appeared to be in some kind of building, surrounded by crooked doors of varying slants and sizes. The appearance was rudimentary, as if a child had built the structure from cardboard boxes. The walls were grey, covered with soot, and a spotlight seemed to follow Collin's movements, so that everything outside of his immediate range was cast into shadow.
From somewhere, he could hear a child crying.
He took a step forward.
"Who comes?" A deep voice rumbled. A dark mist began to gather and take shape in front of him.
The shape it took was of a deformed creature, somewhat human, but with the features misshapen and askew as though they'd been thrown on from a distance. One eye rolled around nearly in the center of the thing's forehead, the mouth was a slash up high on the cheek. The nose was only a nostril because the rest of it had melted into the blob that should have been a face. There were ridges of bone where there should have been none, and Collin felt the weight of the creature's malevolence like something heavy clinging to his spine. This must be Logan's world in the Dreaming, the place he went when he slept that tried to keep him, and this demon was the gatekeeper. Why Collin was currently a part of it, he had no clue, but suspected Logan's intoxication had left him a little more helpless than usual, and perhaps this was his way of asking for help. Collin shuddered as he looked around, trying to determine which way was out.
"I said…"
"I come. I've come for Logan. Where is he?"
The demon began to circle him slowly, appraising him. Collin remained motionless as the child continued to wail in the distance.
"What do you want with him?" The creature asked.
"I've come to take him home." Collin had no idea exactly what to say to a demon, as he'd never expected to encounter one, but he figured it was probably safer to go with his gut, rather than argue the logic of this illogical situation.
"He belongs here, with us. We are his home." The demon said; its hot, rancid breath singed Collin's cheek as it hovered uncomfortably close behind him.
"Where is he?" Collin persisted, but refused to turn his head.
The demon glided around in front of Collin once more. The arm it stretched sideways was impossibly long; it had too many knobby bends and ended in one oversized claw.
"He is there."
Out of habit, Collin reached for his gun and found his empty holster. He frowned as the demon chuckled. He had no idea how he was going to find anything here, but it seemed he wouldn't get anywhere unless he went through the large, cockeyed doorway to his right. Although Collin longed to wake up and be done with it, Logan would certainly be lost. If that happened, regardless of who actually inhabited the physical body, Collin would have to kill the mage. There would be no way to tell if he'd been taken over by a demon until it was too late. Collin didn’t want that for Logan, and though he'd claimed otherwise, he really never had.
The crying seemed definitely to be louder the closer he got to the door. He shored up his resolve and crossed the threshold into the darkness.
At first, Collin's earlier light-source didn’t seem to be working, because the world around him remained completely black. He shuffled cautiously forward, keeping his arms out in front of him far enough to keep from running into anything, but close enough so that nothing could rip them off.
Gradually, the darkness began to lift, and he found himself in what appeared to be a living room full of antiques. Looking around, he began to realize it was his own childhood home. There was mom's old rocking chair, the rust-colored shag carpet and faux bricks on one wall; and on the others, mom's needlepoint proverbs and the half-finished tapestry she'd worked too long and hard on to keep packed away. He could see the side of the huge walnut grandfather clock that used to send him running whenever it struck midnight. The child's crying had stopped, and the silence was punctuated only by the regular, low click of the grandfather clock's pendulum movement.
An older man emerged slowly from what would have been the kitchen, and he smiled broadly when he saw Collin, his blue eyes sparkling.
"Collin, my son…I'm so glad I've finally found you!"
"I don’t know you," Collin said sternly, though he believed that he recognized the man's features as some he saw in the mirror every day. His dark hair was mostly grey, but it was easy to see that he'd been a very attractive man in his youth.
The man offered an apologetic smile, "Forgive me, I am Walter Adams, your father."
Collin narrowed his eyes, realizing this wasn't real, but feeling like he had no choice but to play along until he got past this checkpoint.
"I have waited for this day for over thirty years." He shook his head sadly with a sigh, "I only wish I could have been there for you when you were a child, to watch you grow up..."
Collin shifted impatiently, "What? No riddles? Just a simple 'I am your father' and you expect me to fall for it?"
"Wally, was that Collin's voice I heard?"
Penny came from the same location that the man—or whatever Walter was—had entered the room. She was wiping her hands on a dishtowel, one Collin recognized from his childhood. When he was five years old, he'd made a scrawling attempt at a Christmas tree on it using permanent marker. Collin could even see where the red ink had bled into the faded green after years of washing. He knew his real mom still had the dumb thing and brought it out every December, but how this demon knew about it was beyond him.
"Oh sweetheart, isn’t it wonderful? Walter has come back, he wants to try and make up for lost time."
"Sure," Collin scoffed, though he could swear he smelled turkey roasting in the oven.
"You will stay for dinner, won’t you dear? We all have so much catching up to do!" Penny grinned widely…maybe a little too widely, but Collin couldn't be certain. None of what he was seeing made sense, yet he could find no evidence to dispute this as being as real as it seemed.
He began a more in-depth examination of his surroundings as Walter began to speak,
"Collin, I hope you can forgive me for not being in your life. You, of all people, understand how mages are treated. Although I wanted to very badly, I could not stay."
"Oh? What's changed?" Collin was beginning to get frustrated. So far, not a carpet fiber was out of place, nor a foreign hair stuck on any lampshade.
"I'm an old man, I'm dying, and I wanted to see the man I helped bring into this world before it was too late."
There it was. He'd barely noticed because of the gaudy old English style, but the clock's numbers were backwards.
"It's too late," Collin turned towards the creatures who were masquerading as his parents.
The fake Penny looked confused, "Collin, honey, what are you saying?"
"I'm saying that you two can go back to hell." He turned, intending to try and find a way out but the demons charged him, mouths splitting open in rows of sharp teeth. Claws broke through their fingertips as the skin split and peeled back.
The imps made horrible screeching sounds that scraped at the inside of his skull. He looked around for something to make them stop. Collin's hands curled around the fireplace poker. His mom had always wanted a house with a fireplace and that had been her silent protest until she got one. The iron certainly felt hard and cool enough to be real, and when he whacked Wally upside the head, the spatter of black was a perfect response to the injury inflicted. Wally stumbled and reeled, holding his head as the blood rushed from the shattered bone of his temple.
Although he hated to do it, the mom demon had to be taken care of next, and quickly, as she charged Collin.
He thrust out his arm and she ran into the tip of the poker, the point going into her eye and only stopping because it was hung up by its hook.
The demon screeched and stumbled back, but Collin had a feeling his success wasn't going to be so easy. He began attacking them both in earnest, swinging the poker like a bat and cringing at the sound of shattering bones, and the spattering of stinking ichor.
His last swing spun him completely around and he barely caught himself from landing flat on his face. The poker was gone, the room was gone, and, thankfully, Wally and Penny were gone. His hands, which had been coated in the demon's blood, were now perfectly clean, and he turned them over, noting that his palms were red and tender from squeezing the poker so tightly.
"You always were so good at solving mysteries."
He knew that voice, and watched, stunned, as Marian materialized slowly from the darkness.
There was no physical manifestation of a room here to search for clues to this ruse, so he'd have to try to find the incongruity on Marian herself. He raised himself slowly to his full height, surprised at how much seeing her, or what looked like her, still affected him. But why shouldn’t it? He'd loved her more than he'd ever loved another woman, and in the end, it still hadn’t been enough for him to keep her from walking out the door.
Collin began to see the living room of his Victorian house materializing around him, but it wasn't his house, it was their house, when Marian was still a part of his life.
Collin began slowly walking around. It was preserved at a time when they hadn’t yet purchased furniture for the living room; a time when they were still so much in love, shortly after Collin had been accepted into the Templars. There was plastic sheeting on the floor, and paint cans near roller-trays, and he could smell the bitter, muddy scent of latex drying on the walls.
This mirage was good, and the phantom smelled like Marian; her vanilla and rose scented perfume, mixing warm and inviting with her own personal fragrance. Collin closed his eyes, resisting the urge to press his face to her lovely neck and breathe her in.
"The only one that's baffled you was our relationship…how you could have seen the signs and done something differently to make me stay."
"I know why you left." He said to the fake Marian; if he couldn’t explain himself to the real thing, at least maybe he'd feel better talking to her demonic clone, "I wasn't there for you like I should have been."
"We both made mistakes, but we can start over, all you have to do is walk out that door," Marian pointed behind him to the front door of their house…his house.
"It can't be that simple," Collin said, both in response to her suggestion, and the suspicion that this demon wouldn’t just walk away if he told her no.
"I've never stopped loving you, Collin…Tim was just someone to run to when my best friend couldn’t hear what I had to say."
She smiled, but tears were sparkling on her auburn lashes.
This one had every freckle down pat, every little nuance of Marian from the way she cocked her head to her habit of pulling the same strands of hair behind her ear, even though they'd never grown long enough to stay put. If he didn’t find the inconsistency soon, he might be tempted to consider what she had to say, but that was obviously the point.
"Do you still have the ring?" Collin asked, surprised by the tremble in his own voice.
"I've never taken it off," Marian held up her hand proudly and showed him the half-carat diamond solitaire he'd bought her. It was a perfect replica, except that he'd never had a chance to give it to her. Her initial engagement ring had been a cheap mood-ring he'd gotten from a gumball machine; they were so poor that it seemed like it would be forever until they got married. After Collin was promoted and started to earn a decent wage, Marian still refused to take it off, despite her finger turning green.
Collin smiled coolly.
The demon shrugged, realizing she'd taken a gamble and lost. When she blinked and reopened her eyes, they had gone completely red.
"So I'm not Marian…I can still help you get her back...or make you forget her." The demon caressed his cheek.
Collin bit his tongue as his regret, logic, and desire battled it out. He gritted his teeth, "I don’t make deals with demons."
"Have it your way; if you wish, you can die here, or you can leave and go on with your life—only better."
"It won’t be better. It will just be another lie." Like the one he'd been telling himself over and over about Logan. Maybe all mages weren't alike; and it didn’t necessarily mean that he thought Logan was good, but maybe his motivations weren't so different than any other human being's. If he could put his hatred aside for just a little while, then maybe he could start to see things a little more clearly, and along with helping him understand Logan, it might just tell him a few important things about himself.
"As you wish, human."
Marian grew iridescent bat-wings as the façade dissolved before Collin's eyes. He hadn’t expected that a demon could be so beautiful; she looked like a shimmering example of every gorgeous woman he'd ever imagined all rolled into one. He guessed that's exactly what she was—a creature who thrived on fantasy and desire, and manifested them as needed. Despite her beauty, she sure did pack a wallop. Collin reeled from the blow to his jaw, and dropped hard on his knees to the floor. He tasted blood, and spit out a few pieces of teeth as he tried to get his bearings. The fantasy house had vanished and they were again surrounded by the empty darkness. Without a weapon, Collin was going to have to try to fight this demon with his bare hands. If he lost and she killed him, his body would follow suit in the real world; not a comforting thought. Although he hated the idea of duking it out with a woman, he had to remind himself she wasn't anything of the sort.
Collin charged the demon and managed to knock her backwards, but she stopped herself from falling with a swish of her huge wings. Her beautiful smile belied her evil intent as she hovered several feet off the ground. She dove at him, using her wings to propel herself fast and hard. Collin moved out of the way just before she hit him and grabbed hold of one of her wings as she overshot the mark.
She screamed and tried to dislodge him, beating her wings furiously.
As long as Collin had her in this position, she couldn’t turn around and attack, now all he had to do was figure out how to kill her without letting go. Easier said than done. Despite this only being a nightmare, his muscles were aching and hands were burning from the blisters forming as a result of the previous battle. This demon may have looked female, but she was as strong as a horse and Collin had to struggle to keep himself planted as her powerful wings tried to throw him around. The fastest way he could think of to kill her would have been to break her neck, but that required the use of at least one hand and he didn’t have one he could spare. He felt his best bet, as well as his worst, was to wait for her to tire herself out enough so he could take care of her and try to prepare for his next round of musical demons.
She did seem to be slowing down; apparently, two hundred and ten pounds of lean muscle hanging from her was more than she was used to carrying around.
"Truce!" She gasped as she stopped her flapping.
Collin retained his grip on her wing while he considered the possible consequences of setting her free. She'd probably just get her second wind and come back later to kill him, or else she'd just loiter around in Logan's periphery until Collin woke up, then take hold of the mage's mind. Neither outcome was preferable.
"Not in this lifetime," Collin grabbed her neck in a choke-hold and delivered a well-executed twist as he released her wing. He gritted his teeth as he heard the sickening pop of her vertebrae. She gave a little sigh then withered to the ground. As her body hit, she exploded in a burst of iridescent sparkles, similar to the wisp Logan had conjured for Brutus.
"I'm getting really tired of this shit!" Collin yelled into the darkness as he bent over, trying to catch his breath. It swallowed up the sound and he again became aware of the child crying. It was louder, which hopefully meant he was on the right track. Of course, as things seemed to be going so far, the child would turn out to be the biggest, baddest demon yet.
He took a few minutes to try and recompose himself before moving forward, but when he finally did, he was faced with having to duck and twist through doorway after doorway, as the openings were suddenly smaller and tilted at odd angles. Still, the sound was clearer, so he persevered despite being almost certain he was wandering in circles.
The last doorway forced him to crawl, no doubt the demon's not-too-subtle way of trying to make him subordinate.
"You should crawl."
The voice of one of his dead brothers brought a painful lump to his throat. He took a deep breath and rose to face the next threat.
Indeed, his two older brothers—half-brothers—Mark and Andrew, stood before him. But instead of looking like he remembered them, they looked like they had just after their dead bodies had been found. They were wearing their army fatigues, stained with blood and soil, and bore the wounds had that ended their lives.
Mark's death had come in the form of part of his head being blown off in an explosion. Looking at him brought an uncomfortable churning to Collin's stomach, and his heart ached to see him in such a horrific state. Andrew had died less violently, but had suffered longer as a result of the poison gas cloud some mage had conjured. It had tinted his skin a sickly green, and he had a large slick of vomit on his chest.
"We thought you were going to be there for us, that you were going to avenge our deaths by doing the right thing—by making those mages pay." Mark said, curling his upper lip. It forced Collin to get a look at how badly his mouth had been messed up by the blast, and he lowered his eyes. While he realized this was all just demons messing with him, it was starting to have an effect. He was still raw from his mother's confession, and finally having to face the fact that the men he thought were his brothers, knew the truth all along, which made their tormenting that much more cruel. Yet, they were his family, and Collin couldn’t stop loving them. He took in a shuddering breath and tried to remind himself this was all just a dream.
"And now you've got a mage in your house…" Andrew gave him a cold smile, "…and in your pants."
Collin felt the heat of his humiliation flare up painfully, making him queasy, "It wasn't like that…" He muttered through gritted teeth.
"Really? Why don’t you tell us what it was like, little brother? What was it like to have your dick in a witch's mouth?"
"A male witch's mouth," Andrew added to Mark's admonition.
This was the worst one so far, and Collin wasn't certain he could win this battle; in fact, he had every belief that he wouldn’t. It was hard to fight back when he had no defense to their accusations, nor answers to the questions that were plaguing him about his own responses to Logan.
"It's bad enough that you're a fag, but to be a traitor on top of it…" Mark shook his head, his eyes narrowed.
"I am not a traitor," Collin growled, clenching his fists and suddenly feeling like he was a child again, wanting approval from the brothers he looked up to, but receiving only ridicule.
"He defends one but not the other," Andrew observed, scratching his chin.
"I don’t give a shit what you think of me otherwise, but you will not label me a traitor..." He shook his head, "I don’t even know why I'm defending myself to you two dead assholes." Collin's voice grew louder as his humiliation quickly turned to anger, and the wraiths seemed to shrink back. He thought about his father—the real one he'd never met—and wondered if he ever had met him. Maybe he'd been the one to throw the dampening hood over his head and cuff him to his seat on the big, black bus. The thought made him sick to his stomach.
"I don't even know why I thought I ever wanted to be like either of you! All you ever did was listen to every other bigot's bullshit and spit it back out!" As Collin grew more confident in his argument, the demons continued to get smaller.
"In fact, my own ignorance cheated me out of getting to know my real father! I was raised by a man who hated the fact I even existed!" Collin had never wanted to accept it before, but now he realized why he had never been good enough in the eyes of the man he'd called "dad".
The brothers were tiny now, about the size of two-year old children, but they hissed, reminding Collin of Brutus when he'd first found him as a scared little kitten in an abandoned house. He took a few breaths, understanding that to let his anger overtake him would be like handing the demons the key to his soul.
"By the way," Collin bent down over the shrinking ghouls with a leering grin, "I did have my dick in a mage's mouth, and ya' know what? It felt really fucking incredible!"
He jumped back, startled as the duo popped and vanished into thin air; though he may have been equally as surprised by what he'd just admitted to. The enigma that was Logan Grey had seduced him because he realized, better than Collin did, that he could be seduced. It might be interesting to see just how far Logan would push the boundaries of Collin's heterosexual resolve, but that wouldn't happen unless he got himself and Logan out of here soon. It wasn't just the doors and the demons getting smaller, it seemed like this whole world was slowly starting to close in around him.
Collin struggled forward; the sound of the child was growing ever louder. As he came through the last doorway, the crying abruptly stopped, and Logan was standing before him.
"I knew you could do it!" Logan grinned and rushed towards Collin.
"Wait—not so fast." Collin held up his hand, preventing Logan from coming any closer.
"What's the matter?" Logan pouted.
"How do I know you're really Logan?"
Logan folded his arms. He was wearing skin-tight leather but it was white instead of black, and Collin couldn’t deny that it was doing something to him.
"How do you know I'm not?"
"Well, you're about as exasperating as Logan Grey," Collin muttered shaking his head.
Logan offered a smug smile, "Can we go now?"
Although Collin wanted nothing better than to grab the mage and get the hell out of this wherever-they-were, his instincts told him that he'd better make certain, because there was no coming back once he took this man's hand.
Collin began to circle Logan and the mage regarded him with a perplexed moue.
"What is it you're looking for, exactly?"
"I'll know it if I find it."
Collin wasn't finding much except that he'd never appreciated Logan's tight, round ass before he'd actually taken the initiative to look. Truthfully, in the real world he'd been uncomfortable looking at Logan for too long; maybe he'd been afraid that Logan might have picked up on something.
Logan threw up his arms, "Satisfied?"
Collin stood back with a sigh, gnawing his bottom lip as he was beginning to suspect that this was Logan, and his out-of-whack demon radar was wasting precious time. He'd nearly reached out, when something made him turn his head. He spotted a small door across the room to his right.
"What's through there?"
"Probably a gateway to hell; can we please go? It's starting to get claustrophobic in here."
Collin moved closer and crouched near the door, discovering that it was padlocked. He looked over his shoulder at Logan, "Got a key?"
"Do you see any place to stash a key in this outfit? Just leave it, we have to go!" Logan was beginning to get agitated, which was certainly not the mage's style. Collin reached back to put his hand into his pocket and see if he had anything to use as a lock pick, but the sudden presence of his gun solved that problem. He got up and stood back, aiming the pistol at the padlock.
"What are you doing?" Logan gasped, "This is a demon realm, your gun could be cursed—it'll backfire and kill us both!"
"I'm comfortable with taking that chance."
Logan rushed forward but was too late to stop Collin from squeezing the trigger and sending a bullet to shatter the padlock. Collin flinched as the leather clothing dropped— empty—to the floor. A huge albino centipede came wriggling out—frighteningly similar to the thing with Gislain's face—and scuttled off into the darkness.
Collin shuddered and raised his gun as he approached the door, crouching down to crawl inside.
The ceiling here was higher, the room a bit wider, and in the center, under a faint glow, was what looked like a little doll. As Collin approached, he saw that it was a child; its hands bound behind its back and a sack over its head.
"Jesus..."
He knelt beside the small figure who winced slightly and began to tremble. The little boy's limbs were pale and delicate, and Collin wondered how anyone could do something so horrific to a child, regardless of any level of magic. Collin worked to untie the many knots that bound and cut into the child's wrists, worried the fragile bones might break, then he pulled off the sack, and watched the waves of soft, white hair tumble free.
The child opened his one yellow and one colorless eye to stare, frightened, into Collin's face. He couldn’t have been any more than four or five years old, angelic, and Collin knew without any doubt that this was who he'd come for.
"Logan?"
The boy nodded tentatively, showing no recognition of the man who knelt beside him.
"My name is Collin, do you know me?"
Logan shook his head slowly, his gaze never leaving Collin's face.
"I've come to take you someplace safe, away from here...I've come to take you home."
"But they told me this was my home…" The boy murmured in his high, frightened voice.
"Do you feel safe here?"
Again, he shook his head. He looked at Collin thoughtfully then,
"You don’t look like the others."
"You mean the ones who hurt you?"
"They don’t always hurt me…sometimes one says she's my mommy, but she never kisses me goodnight." He took in a shuddering breath, as if afraid he'd said too much.
Collin smiled, "My mommy always kisses me goodnight."
A tiny smile barely brushed the corners of the cupid's bow mouth, "You're a grownup."
"Yes, and it's up to grownups like me to protect children like you from bad things." Collin felt a lump in his throat; he would have given anything to have been able to save Logan back then—to save any child from such a cruel and inhumane fate. If he ever got out of the Dreaming, he'd be certain to make up for the time he'd squandered in denial.
"There are bad things in the dark," Logan said, his yellow eye scanning the shadows. Now Collin understood the reason behind the lamp being on in Logan's bedroom at night. He was still afraid of the dark. Frankly, Collin couldn’t blame him.
"I know. I'd like to take you someplace where there is light, so the bad things can’t hide and they stay away...will you trust me?"
Collin opened his arms, hoping that Logan could be convinced soon because the walls were again beginning to close in.
Logan looked at Collin's open palms, "How did you hurt your hands?"
"I had to fight some of those bad things so I could come for you."
The child's wide eyes stared into Collin's face for what seemed a small eternity, then he stretched up his arms.
Collin breathed a sigh of relief as he gathered the child against his chest, and crawled out of the door. "Hang on tight, and don’t let go, okay?"
Logan bobbed his head, his tiny fingers clutching at Collin's shirt. Collin gave him a quick, reassuring smile, and then began to run like hell.
The world was literally collapsing in around them as Collin dodged both falling walls and grabbing claws. The demons were like cockroaches, spilling out of every new opening made by this world breaking down. Collin held his gun in one hand, using it to knock back the creatures who were trying to grab the child that he held tightly against his chest. There was a light shimmering ahead, and he hoped it was the exit. All he had to do now was make it there with his tiny passenger.
Something big and black popped up in front of them and Collin shot it without giving it a second thought. He was surprised that the demon went down, though a human wouldn't have survived a bullet through the chest at such close range, either.
The light was getting bigger and brighter as Collin ran ever closer to it. He could feel his heart pounding with the anticipation of getting out of here. Then something slammed him hard into a wall, and his precious cargo was ripped, screaming, from his grasp.
"No!" Collin rushed forward, only to be stopped again by a crushing blow to the chest, and another whack against the wall. It was difficult to breathe and he could taste fresh blood in his mouth, rising each time he gasped for air. His own broken ribs had punctured his lung. This wasn't the first time he'd experienced this sensation, but then he'd been only two miles from a hospital with Gislain and Wahl backing him up. Here he was an entire world away and completely alone.
He raised his gun and began shooting at anything that came his way.
Pow!
A demon fell.
Pow!
Something let out a horrible gurgling scream in the darkness.
Pow!
Another creature was driven back by a shot to the head, but they kept coming.
Pow!
Click.
Collin's heart sank, and the monsters converged upon him, swelling up like a great black wave. Something bit at his legs, other things began grabbing his arms and clawing at his face. A fist, or a head, slammed into his already damaged midsection and knocked the remaining breath out of him, bringing with it blood that filled his mouth and made him choke. He was being torn apart, pieces of flesh ripped from his muscles, and all he could do was stare ahead at the last place he'd seen Logan alive, and know that he'd failed them both.
For a moment, Collin was certain he'd died because the world around him was suddenly filled with a brilliant blue light. A low rumble began behind the swarm of demons that quickly became an explosive wind and the creatures were blown away from his body as if the burst had emanated from within him.
Screams like nails on a chalkboard filled his head and he dropped to the floor, but before his shoulders touched down, he was embraced by warm, strong arms. He peered through his swollen eyelids to see an angel, surrounded by shimmering blue light.
"Logan…" he murmured soundlessly.
Logan pulled him against his body, "Don’t you dare make me regret this," he murmured in Collin's ear. The light flashed to a blinding white, and Collin lost consciousness.