Vincent rolled off the couch and crashed to the floor. He curled into a ball, shielding his head from another strike. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes, half expecting to find Locke, staff in hand, standing in the middle of his living room.
Not Locke. Daniel!
His head throbbed fiercely—and not just where the staff had hit him. His stomach rumbled ominously. He must have had worse hangovers, but none came to mind. The next several minutes were measured by the steady throbbing between his temples.
He slung an arm slung across his eyes in an attempt to block out the morning light, tried not to think about anything at all. His plan was foiled, however, when his insides suddenly rebelled, and he was forced to make a run for the bathroom.
With no food in his stomach, it didn’t take long for the dry heaves to run their course. He splashed water on his face and returned to the living room, stopping when he spotted the lava lamp standing, undamaged, on the speaker by the recliner.
Boden and his people were never here. Neither was Clementine. It was just another damn dream.
The relentless pounding in his skull made it difficult to sort out which events had happened while he was awake and which had occurred while asleep. The last thing he remembered happening to him in the real world was the argument with Jerry. Then there had been a phone call from Boden too, but he wasn’t sure that that actually had happened.
Vincent replayed Leah’s message.
“Hey, Vincent. It’s Leah. I wanted to check in…again…and, well, I’m probably overreacting, but I just had a very strange conversation. I was trying to reach a professor who has done research on various sleep phenomena, but a man named Boden called back. He was fishing for information. I didn’t tell him anything about you, but…I don’t know…he gave me the creeps. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about…just…be careful, I guess. Anyway, I’m on my way to this family thing, but I’ll have my phone. Please give me a call when you get this.”
Vincent frowned.
That would explain why I had a nightmare about Boden.
He tried to remember what he and Boden had talked about on the phone, just in case it had really happened. He came up with nothing. But details from Boden’s dream visit were crystal clear.
Daniel said Boden and his friends can enter dreams. If they did actually come to me in my dream, it was because they were looking for Daniel…only Boden called him DJ for some reason.
But how can any of this be possible?
The bottle of whiskey sat next to the answering machine. The repulsive tang of its contents filled his nostrils. Vincent gagged, but nothing came up.
I’m going nuts. That’s the only rational explanation.
He grabbed the whiskey bottle by its neck and looked around for the cap. His search took him to Jerry’s bedroom door. He knocked. Jerry deserved an apology for the awful things he had said. But what Vincent needed more than forgiveness was a genuine conversation with a living, breathing human being.
I’ll even tell you about the latest twist in The Dream so you can update The Master of All Things Fantasy.
Vincent knocked again. No answer.
The bottle was halfway to his mouth before he caught himself. He set it down and picked up the phone. A primal impulse to call his mother came over him, but he dialed a different number instead.
After three rings, Leah’s voice informed him that she was unable to answer the phone and invited him to leave a message after the tone.
“Damn it…uh, sorry, this is Vincent. Something happened last night. Boden called…at least I think so…and I had The Dream again. Daniel…my brother…” He sighed. “It’s complicated. I just need to talk to you, Leah. I think something really bad is happening to me. I…I…”
He hung up. Before he could talk himself out of it, he pushed the opening of the bottle against his teeth and swallowed a mouthful of whiskey. It stayed down.
What if Danny isn’t dead? What if he really did pretend to be angel so Mom would keep him on life support? But why would he invent Valenthor and Locke and Destiny? Unless he’s playing make-believe because he has nothing better to do.
Vincent took another drink of whiskey.
No, Daniel always has a reason. He’s always been a schemer, and if he somehow got superpowers…if he really can go into people’s dreams…then he’d find a way to profit from it.
Unless he’s the one who’s lost his mind.
Vincent paced back and forth. If everything Daniel had said was true, it didn’t explain what he meant when he promised that Vincent would see his daughter again. Clementine was dead, not comatose. Perhaps it was a lie he came up with on the spot to keep Vincent from going to the police.
No one would believe me, especially not Mom. She still thinks the whole Daniel-shooting-a-cop incident is just one big misunderstanding.
I’m the only one who’s ever seen Daniel for the lowlife he really is.
Vincent took another gulp, then another.
I’m the only one who can stop him.
* * *
Suzanne Fortune’s fingers hovered above the keyboard. Keeping her eyes fixed on the screen, she tentatively tapped a key with her pinky. Q appeared. She swore under her breath, backspaced, and made another attempt to find the Z.
X showed instead.
With a heavy sigh, she looked down at the keyboard to locate the troublesome key. So close! While it was tempting to revert back to the two-finger, never-look-up-from-the-keyboard method that had served her for countless reports before this one, Suzanne returned to the home keys and looked back up at the screen.
I’ll never finish my book if I don’t learn how to type faster.
Under other circumstances, Suzanne might have felt guilty practicing typing while on the clock. But for one thing, she would become faster in the long run, which, theoretically, would make her a better receptionist and save the hospital money. For another, she wasn’t even supposed to be working that weekend.
She wasn’t bitter though. Her husband was on the road, and she didn’t have a good reason not to take the shift so her coworker could go to a baby shower. Suzanne smiled. She had been to enough baby showers in her life to know she would rather take an extra shift than watch a young mother-to-be spend an hour unwrapping gifts.
Anyway, Sundays tended to be quiet. Not that the coma ward saw much excitement any other day of the week. The nurses station’s second-hand radio played a classic Aerosmith song at a handful of decibels, keeping the ghoulish silence at bay. Sometimes she wondered if the patients’ odds of waking up would improve if the floor weren’t so damn quiet.
Slowly, she typed another line, successfully navigating the QWERTY without a single error. Her self-satisfied chuckle caught in her throat when she caught the reflection of someone else’s face in the monitor. She spun her chair around and was confronted by a handsome, if aloof, face.
How can someone so big sneak up on anyone?
“I didn’t know you were in today,” she said.
Levi cut an imposing figure. The nurse was only a few inches taller than her husband, but somehow he seemed to take up much more space. His frame was muscular but not exactly chiseled. Attractive though he was, Suzanne could never get past the coldness of his dark brown eyes.
“Suzanne.” Levi punctuated the obligatory greeting by dropping a manila folder on the stack of files next to her computer. Without another word, without even making eye contact, he turned and walked away.
She watched him go, wondering what strange thoughts percolated behind his mannequin-like expression.
Maybe I could make him into a character…a villain.
She returned to the pile of reports, but it was too late. Her thoughts had already strayed to her private world—an ancient realm of knights, elves, and magic. Progress was slow lately, and though her self-taught typing lessons bore part of the blame, she knew the real reason why the last few scenes had taken so long to write.
She didn’t know what was going to happen next.
The squeak of a shoe against the polished floor made her look up. A man was leaning against the counter. His eyes were bloodshot, and by the looks of it, his hair hadn’t been acquainted with a brush in days. “Haunted” was the word she would have used to describe him on paper.
And somehow, the man did remind her of the reluctant hero in her book.
“Hi, I’m, ah, looking for Danny…Daniel Pierce. Can you tell me what room he’s in?”
The guy stank of booze.
“Mr. Pierce doesn’t get many visitors,” Suzanne said. “What is your relation to the patient?”
“I’m his brother. Half-brother, actually.”
Suzanne sat up a little in her chair. “You’re Vincent. Eve’s other son.”
He looked away. “Yeah, I’m Vincent. Wait a minute. She’s not here, is she? My mother, I mean.”
“No, not yet.” Suzanne had forgotten that by picking up the Sunday shift, she would have a chance to chat with her friend. She looked at her watch. “Mass won’t be over for an hour or so.”
Eve wasn’t kidding when she said she and Vincent had drifted apart since he moved out. I’m sure he would have bolted out of here if I’d told him she was here.
Suzanne pushed the clipboard closer to him. “You’ll have to sign in.”
He took the pen and slopped his signature on the page.
“It’s Room 307,” she said, taking the clipboard. “Down that hall and take a left.”
Vincent quickly turned around and hurried away. She watched him stagger down the hall—making a valiant attempt at walking a straight line—and almost crash into Levi, who was coming from the opposite direction.
Poor Eve…one son in a coma and the other one drinking his life away.
Suzanne was making a mental note to call her own son after work when Levi’s deep voice wrenched her attention back to the present.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Whuh? Oh, that was Vincent…” She checked the sign-in sheet. “…Cruz. He’s here to see Daniel Pierce, his brother.”
For the first time in the five months she had known Levi, something akin to emotion flickered across the man’s face. Then it was gone. He deposited another file folder on her desk and walked away.
Suzanne wondered what Eve would say, later, when she signed in and saw that Vincent had visited Daniel. The two women had spent many a Sunday afternoon trading stories about their children, and Suzanne thought Eve would be thrilled to learn that Vincent had finally taken the time see his brother.
Of course, if Vincent is still here when Eve arrives, she’ll see how drunk he is, which would break her heart.
She recalled Eve saying Vincent used to have a problem with drinking. Apparently, he had fallen off the wagon again. She wondered if her protagonist, also a recovering alcoholic, would relapse before the end of the book.
Suzanne wanted him to redeem himself, but maybe it would add more tension if Valenthor hit rock bottom before he became a true hero.
Not that there are likely to be a lot of taverns in the Wild Lands between the untamed frontier of the human empire and the ancient homeland of the elves.
“Call the police.”
At first she didn’t recognize Levi’s voice—or his face, which was damp with sweat and more animated than she had ever seen it.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“He tried to kill the patient,” Levi said, “but I stopped him.”
“Who—”
“Vincent,” he said. “Tell the police he came to kill his brother.”
Suzanne picked up the phone but couldn’t decide what came next. At last, her fingers pressed 9-1-1. She looked up, knowing she would need more information when someone picked up and started asking her questions.
What did he mean by “I stopped him”? Are Eve’s boys all right?
But her questions, as well as the police’s, would go unanswered. Levi was gone. At the end of the hall, the elevator began its descent.