House of Blood

What would it be like to wake up to this every morning for the rest of her life?

She sensed that King wanted that.

She smiled at the memory of his fairy-tale analogies.

Me, she thought. A queen.

Imagine that.

She sensed other things about King, as well. Things gleaned from the unique bonding of the out-of-body experience. Insights few humans could ever perceive. The most readily apparent thing was the change under way inside him. He maintained a convincing facade of menace, but she had a notion his heart wasn’t in it anymore. He’d reveled in his nature for centuries, glorying in sadism and cruelty, but wasn’t it possible even truly evil beings could grow bored with their existence?

It wasn’t as if she’d read his mind. But these things had been easy enough to intuit. In the altered state of incorporeal consciousness, feelings and thoughts possessed something close to form and substance. Subtle permutations of light and color, hot and cold. She’d detected the strongest indications of his changing mood during their tour of the long-vanished underground society in England. This she’d discerned as a darkening of her perceptions, like a lens with a filter over it, and a chill that penetrated to the core of her disembodied essence.

A strangely appealing possibility resonated in the wounded regions of Dream’s battered psyche. She recognized deep depression when she encountered it, and the concept of a depressed demon or spirit was intriguing.

Well.

More than intriguing.

She sighed.

She also found it romantic. Romantic, that is, in the manner of gothic dramas and Shakespearean tragedies. She had always had a weakness for the doomed figures in plays and fiction. They spoke to her in ways the characters in modern trifles could not. The writers of old seemed more keenly attuned to true suffering, and they’d evoked that quality in timeless, compelling ways. Her favorite had always been Hamlet, with its incomparably dark climax of blood, poison, and treachery.

She had to remind herself that King was not Hamlet. It was tempting to fall prey to such an analogy. A leap like that would make reconciling her knowledge of King’s brutal deeds with her desire for him too easy. But King possessed none of the prince’s haunted nobility. Oh, he was handsome and suave, and his home dazzled you with its beauty, but the pretty picture was rife with imperfections.

He was a killer.

More than that, he was a sadist who killed for pleasure.

And he did it on a grand scale.

So, then, how would it feel to wake up to this sweeping vista of pastoral beauty every morning?

But she knew the answer to that question, didn’t she?

It would be akin to waking up one morning to find you’d suddenly become the devil’s concubine. A favored whore allowed to wallow in all of the world’s most sensual pleasures while all around you time’s doomed souls cried out in the eternal torment of molten hellfire.

Unacceptable.

No part of her could fathom being a willing part of an existence like that. It went against her pacifist instincts, which were deeply ingrained. She’d even felt a twinge of regret at the sight of Dan’s vandalized Beetle. She’d long ago stopped caring much about her own well-being, but she would not give tacit approval to acts of subjugation and brutality by consenting to be King’s mistress. Her self-esteem had taken a lot of hits in recent years, some quite crippling, but most of her more admirable traits had remained intact.

Her benevolence, for instance.

And her compassion.

Her basic goodness.

She would die before allowing King to destroy whatever good was left in her.

Hell, if things had gone as she’d originally planned, she wouldn’t be alive right now. Her brains would be splattered all over the walls of some hotel room. Dream shifted in the wicker chair, recrossed her legs, and shuddered. The image lingered in her mind, alluring, Technicolor vivid. She saw herself with the Glock jammed like a big black cock in her wide-open mouth, the back of her head a ragged, bloody mess. The vision filled her not with horror but a sense of long-sought peace finally attained. The ruined body she imagined was an empty vessel, no longer home to the tortured soul that had inhabited it for nearly thirty years.

It astonished her that something so grisly could be so beautiful.

But, to her, it was.

She was still deep in contemplation of the image when she heard footsteps behind her. King stepped out onto the balcony. He flashed her a small, knowing smile. A lover’s smile. She couldn’t help returning it. And seeing those dark, soulful eyes did something to her, triggered a spreading warmth that made her tingle in all the sensitive places he’d so deftly pleasured the night before.

Right here.

Right now.

Amazing. She could know all the things she knew about him, even the dimly sensed plans for her friends, unspeakably vile things, and still she desired him.

He went to the railing, grasped it the way Dream had moments earlier, arched his head to the sky, and inhaled deeply of the clean mountain air. Dream’s gaze, saturated with bald erotic need, studied the impressive figure his body cut against the gorgeous scenery. He wore khaki trousers with the cuffs rolled up over bare ankles and feet and a white button-up shirt open over his muscled torso. His sleep-tousled hair stirred in the gentle breeze, and he ran a hand through it, brushing it back from his brow.

Dream’s hand went to the sash around her robe.

The need was almost more than she could bear.

He turned around and leaned against the railing. He didn’t so much as glance at the hand slowly tugging at the sash. Well, a man-or thing-like King would never be anything less than impeccably smooth and unflappable.

He smiled again. “Did you sleep well?”

Dream willed her hand away from the sash. She picked up the cup of coffee instead, brought it to her mouth, and took a casual sip. “With the exception of one troubling dream, yes.” She smiled. “That bed is amazing. I’ve never felt so comfortable.”

He frowned. “Tell me about the dream.”

She set the coffee cup down and folded her hands primly in her lap. “Well, I’m not sure if it really was a dream. I think I might have been … traveling … again.”

King nodded. “It’s possible.” He unfolded his arms and gripped the railing behind him. “It’s also rare. Humans usually aren’t capable of spontaneous sleep forays so soon after their first experience. In fact, only a small percentage of your race is capable of what you did last night at all. The ones who manage it possess a common trait, an unusual sensitivity to the nuances of the world around them, the little holes in the subtly interwoven planes of the physical world and the spiritual realms. You are one of those people. I sensed that upon first setting eyes on you.”

A flicker of something like sheepishness briefly creased his handsome features. “Actually, I’m being disingenuous. I sensed your presence before you even arrived. I am capable of many things, but that degree of acute psychic awareness isn’t something that happens often. I knew well before you arrived I would be encountering a woman of rare gifts.”

Dream arched an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

King shrugged. “It is. You are that rarity of rarities, Dream, a human with an untapped well of amazing powers. You are capable of so much, and you never knew it. You need only to get in touch with those abilities, to develop and hone them. If you can do that, there is no limit to what you can do.”

She tried not to smirk. “And you’re the teacher I’ve always needed, right?”

His eyes glittered with confidence. “Yes, Dream. I am.”

She felt something like defiance come to life within her. The feeling was welcome. Invigorating. A reminder of her essential humanity. “Well, Ed, allow me to introduce you to a radical concept-maybe I prefer to leave those powers untapped. Maybe, and here’s the real kicker, maybe I prefer being a normal chick.”

His expression darkened. “You have never been normal, Dream. That’s a ridiculous statement.” He smiled, but there was no humor in it. “I can sense the truth of your soul, and the truth is you have always felt apart from others of your race. You have many friends, close ones, but there’s a missing connection, a vital component they lack. You’ve never known what it is, but I’ll supply the answer. It’s that sensitivity, Dream, that ability you have to see beneath the surface of things. To see truth. Learn what I have to teach you, and you can know bigger truths. The eternal ones. The secrets of the gods, Dream. Surrendering your humanity is worth that, I think.”

Dream snickered. “Yeah, I’m real good at divining hidden truths, Ed. Hell, I’m so good at it I didn’t know my boyfriend likes men.” She tapped a temple with a forefinger. “My powers of insight are astounding, are they not?”

King didn’t say anything.

His gaze settled on some vague middle distance.

He’s mad at me, Dream thought.

The notion was at once thrilling and frightening. She was in what she had to assume was the rare position of being courted by this creature. The thing wanted her to join him here, to become a willing part of his insane world, which likely was the only reason something dreadful hadn’t happened to her yet.

The line of thought again made her think of Karen and Alicia. She suspected she couldn’t help them if they were in trouble, but she nonetheless felt compelled to ask after them. “Ed, I want to ask you a question, and I hope you respect me enough to give an honest answer.”

She saw his gaze retreat from the middle distance and flicker with curiosity. “Like is the mildest of words for what I feel for you, Dream.” He smiled. “I think it might be something much more.”

She arched her eyebrow again. “You think you love me, Ed?” King’s claim was startling, and it derailed the other line of inquiry. “You can’t be serious. You only met me last night. And I’m not… like you.”

He sighed deeply.

Dream couldn’t imagine a more weary sound.

And he really did look tired. She examined him closer. His eyes. The set of his features. His posture. She was sure what she was seeing wasn’t as simple as physical exhaustion. His eyes reflected a weariness of the soul. The perception supported her suspicion about his state of mind. She experienced a frisson of recognition, the opening of a previously closed door in her mind.

It felt like precognition.

King looked away from her. “No, Dream, you’re not like me. You won’t live for a thousand years. You won’t see empires rise and fall. Imagine it, Dream. A life so long you’ve experienced everything there is to experience many times over. Except, of course, love.” The haunted quality in his voice made her shudder. “You want honesty, Dream? Here’s honesty. I kill. It’s what I do. It’s my purpose. I can’t change that, nor do I wish to. As long as I inhabit this world, I will continue to do what I do.” He sighed again. “I may have killed you last night had our time together not been so transcendent. Now I know what a waste that would be. What a travesty:”

Dream shivered. “So my fate’s not still up in the air, Ed?”

King’s gaze came back to her. “I will not kill you.”

Dream held his gaze. “I’m not afraid to die, Ed. Do you know that?”

He studied her for a moment, holding his head at an angle. “I sense it, yes. I suppose it may be one of the reasons I find you so … compelling.”

He pushed away from the railing, came to the wicker chair, and knelt before her. He took her left hand in his, turned it so the wrist was facing out, and traced the little white scars with the tip of a forefinger. Dream shuddered at his touch, which possessed the maddening ability to turn the scars into a new erogenous zone. “Your willing flirtation with your own demise touches me. I don’t believe suicide is the act of cowardice so many of your kind proclaim it to be. It bespeaks a rare bravery, an unflinching zeal to know the bliss that lies beyond this decaying world.”

It bespeaks a bunch of self-justifying mumbo jumbo, Dream thought.

As she should well know, since she’d expressed similar thoughts to a long succession of therapists, albeit not quite as poetically. She was smart enough to know when a man was preying upon her weaknesses. It was the creepy, devious, underhanded tactic of a raving asshole, but damned if it wasn’t effective.

It was exactly what she’d always wanted to hear.

Her eyes brimmed with tears.

Her shoulders shook.

His arms encircled her and she sobbed on his shoulder for several minutes. The embrace felt good, natural, comforting-the safest place in the world to be. The insanity of the notion-safe in the arms of a monster?-was irrelevant. For the time being, there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

When the sobs finally began to ebb, she reluctantly broke the embrace. “I’m sorry!” Her voice was subdued. “That happens to me a lot. It’s like I have no fucking self-control.” She sniffled. “It’s embarrassing.”

King’s expression was solemn. “You’re beautiful, Dream. Everything about you is beautiful. Even your anguish, which is only the product of your wounded heart.”

That was laying it on a little thick, but she let it pass. “You said something about the ‘bliss beyond this world.’ Were you talking about…” She hesitated. The notion sounded silly even in her mind, but she weighed that against everything else she’d experienced and plunged ahead.”… an afterlife?”

He nodded. “I was.”

She swallowed hard. “What’s it like? Do you know?”

That faraway look stole back into his eyes for a moment. Something about the question troubled him. But his expression sharpened and the perception went away. “I have some sense of it, Dream. I know this. When you get there, assuming you get to the right place, you will be at peace. You won’t hurt anymore. You will actually feel exalted, removed forever from the troubles you once knew.” A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “It’s certainly something to look forward to.”

She frowned. “But what about hell? Don’t the bad people go to someplace bad?”

He showed her his solemn expression again. “Depends. Humans, for instance, can wind up dwelling within any number of the infinite planes when their physical bodies die. Some of these are pleasant places. Some of them are akin to what you think of as ‘hell.’”

Dream’s lips were pursed. “So … what about… things like you? Do you have more control over where you wind up than humans? Or are you even mortal?”

That troubled look flashed and disappeared again. Something was definitely bothering him. “I do, Dream. And I am mortal. My gods have protected me for centuries, and I have served them well. They are the death spirits, the most powerful of all gods. When I die, my ascendance to paradise will be assured.”

Paradise, Dream thought.

What a lovely word.

At once corny and rich with the promise of a better place.

She put a hand around King’s neck, stroked the edge of his jaw with a thumb. “I can never be your queen here, Ed. I can’t condone murder. Or sadism. You say you won’t kill me, but you’ll have to if we stay here.”

King frowned. “We?”

The idea coming together in Dream’s head disturbed her on many levels, but it seemed fitting in a way that was final and unquestionable. “Yes, Ed. We. I won’t help you hurt people, nor will I be content to stand by while you do it.” She drew in a deep breath, steeling herself for the leap she was about to make. “But I would love to be with you forever in that other place.”

His face expressed a wide range of emotions in a few seconds. Surprise, anger, stupefaction, perhaps even fear. “Dream-“

She cut him off. “That’s the only way we can be together, Ed. You implied you were in love with me.” She wasn’t sure she believed him, not knowing what she knew about him, but she had to go with it. “If you were telling the truth, you’ll do this with me.”

He didn’t say anything, just stared at her.

She pressed him. “You need to do this, Ed. We both do. You know it.”

He relented. “Yes.” But there was doubt in his eyes. “I…”

“Ed? What is it?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

Her hand went to the sash of her robe again. “Do you love me, Ed?”

He watched her part the flaps of the robe, exposing her sun-bronzed body. Something in him seemed to break. Suddenly he wasn’t resisting anymore. He just nodded. She stood up and slipped out of the robe.

She took King by the hand and led him to the railing.

She leaned against it.

Turned her head to the sky and saw an eagle soar over her.

King came to her without hesitation.

Chad awoke with a throbbing headache. No surprise there, given that he’d consumed copious amounts of cheap bourbon and sundry other forms of alcoholic potions. He’d also smoked a bit of the old singer’s faux-ganja. The stuff had a weird kick that was different from anything in his limited drug experience. Lazarus claimed the herb was called Trance and that it grew naturally in the area affected by The Master’s influence. Slaves supervised by the guards cultivated the stuff and brought it back here. Use of the drug was prohibited for slaves, but Overlords, emancipateds, and guards were allowed to partake of it. Apprentices Above were rumored to use it, as well.

Trance.

Now there was an appropriate name. The drug had taken a while to work its magic, but once he began to feel its effects, he knew he was in for a unique experience. It seemed to really enhance the senses and open up doors of perception in ways other drugs were only purported to do. While under its influence, he was conscious of being tapped into the beating heart and lifeblood of the universe. Later, he doubted this, attributing the perception to mere intoxication. On some level, he understood he was only rationalizing the experience, but he was okay with that. Transcendental mysticism, even in the form of dazzling, drug-induced celestial light shows, wasn’t really his bag anyway.

He preferred good ol’ terra firma and alcohol.

And there’d been plenty of the latter.

When the drug’s effect finally dissipated, he’d stuck to what he knew, imbibing at a rate that nearly matched the singer’s almost supernatural ability to quaff spirits. Getting wrecked had seemed the only sane response to the insane circumstances he found himself in, but now he was regretting it. He felt the way he did when he went out on the rare weekend bender with guys from work-remorseful. He was sorry he’d done it, he’d never do it again, and so on. Please God. All bullshit.

Once the rote words of phony contrition were out of the way, he became aware of sensations other than the pain cleaving his skull. There was a sleeping body next to him. His eyes fluttered open and he saw Cindy’s face on his bare chest. Her eyes were closed and she was lightly snoring. She had an arm thrown around his waist and a leg curled over his crotch. They were both utterly devoid of clothing. He had to assume they’d engaged in some sort of sexual activity, but, regrettably, he could remember none of it. And he had to wonder just how “performance-ready” he’d been after giving his liver the workout of its life.

Chad had known guys, lots of them, who told stories about getting blind drunk and screwing bar sluts or strippers. In his experience, though, this didn’t seem possible. Once he achieved a certain level of intoxication, getting a stiffie was about as likely as being invited to a penthouse orgy by a bunch of hot bisexual supermodels.

How, then, to explain this?

He was drawing a big fucking blank on that one, he had to admit.

So, on to other things, like, where were they?

Because they sure didn’t seem to be in the back room of The Outpost anymore. This room was more squalid compared to the relative order and cleanliness of that place. No one had given it even a cursory cleaning in a long time. They were sleeping on a mat similar to ones he remembered from those rare camping excursions with his friends. It was none too comfortable. A gas lamp provided the room’s primary illumination. The walls looked like the walls of a tree house assembled by first-time users of hammers and nails. The boards were crudely fitted, and some were warped, admitting slivers of light from outside. Bugs scurried between the cracks in the wood, including some sizable specimens that made Chad want to jump out of his skin. He detected a faint odor of urine and shit, and he turned his head to the right to see a toilet resembling the ones in Porta Potties. He supposed there would be some sort of collection tank beneath this ramshackle joke of a domicile.

He had a disturbing thought.

Was this where Cindy lived?

He hoped not. Because she just didn’t deserve anything this horrible. Neither did anyone else, of course, but she was the only one he cared about. He studied her sleeping face, at once so beautiful and grubby. He wanted to take a clean, wet washcloth to that lovely countenance and wash the grime from it. He wanted to wash her whole body, erase forever the stain of this appalling place. He would do that for her if he could. He would do anything for her-now that he knew what he knew.

He was, apparently, an unwitting key figure in a conspiracy that aimed to accomplish a seemingly impossible task-the overthrow of The Master and the liberation of the banished people of Below. The conspiracy was built on what seemed to Chad a very shaky foundation, composed primarily of two very ephemeral components: faith in the ability of a resurrected Lazarus to stir the people to action, and a “vision” of the future by a woman few active participants in the conspiracy had ever met.

That was hard enough to swallow.

But then Lazarus told him the woman, whose name he would not reveal, had experienced this vision more than twenty years ago, and that was just too much. The woman had known his name and what he looked like as an adult when he’d been a little kid living hundreds of miles from here. That couldn’t possibly be true, yet Lazarus insisted that it was. The bitch of it was, he believed the old singer was telling the truth. How else to account for his foreknowledge of Chad’s identity?

He marveled at the insanity of it all.

He’d been an almost mythical figure in this place for decades. It was nuts. There he’d been in Nashville, contentedly living his successful urban life, surrounded by nice things and girls eager to fuck money, and all the while a handful of netherworld dwellers had been obsessing over him, praying for and awaiting his eventual arrival.

Awaiting deliverance.

Life could throw you some curveballs once in a while, but this was ridiculous.

Then there was the matter of Cindy, who’d been drawn into the conspiracy after she’d been called upon to nurse Lazarus back to health following a failed attempt on his life. With her connections, she could have attained emancipation long ago, but she chose to remain a slave to further the cause. She functioned as an undercover agent, finding out what she could by keeping her ears open when she was in the company of the Overlords. Her information saved the conspirators several times over.

They could never thank her enough.

An understatement of astounding proportions.

Her final contribution as a slave was volunteering to be in that jail cell when Chad arrived. It was her duty to see to it that he made it Below in one piece. The conspirators couldn’t risk exposing the few guards friendly to the cause. Their assistance would be needed later. So it fell to Cindy to use her ingenuity and daring to get Chad where he needed to be. An arrangement was made and she was there waiting for him.

The rest he’d already known, having experienced it.

The thing he was having a hard time getting his brain around right now was the uprising itself. It was supposed to happen tonight. This huge, momentous thing, a mad, impossible undertaking, and it was set to begin hours from now. Chad became aware of an impulse to run and hide. What these people expected of him wasn’t fair. He wasn’t what he’d call a coward, but he wasn’t really a brave man, either. He knew this. He accepted it. And these people just assumed he would automatically leap to fulfill this fucked-up “destiny” of his. He tried to envision himself wading into battle like Rambo, and he just couldn’t do it.

But then he looked at Cindy’s face again.

And the shame he felt brought tears to his eyes.

Couldn’t do it?

Horseshit.

He had no choice. What was he going to do, adjust to life Below and spend the rest of his years toiling as a slave and living like a fucking caveman?

No goddamn way, buddy.

He would do what he had to do.

He would, however, have to find a way to process and cope with the paralyzing fear that loomed like a storm cloud in his consciousness. That potential wrench in the works would have to be dealt with well before the uprising got under way. He suspected a few shots of the singer’s rotgut right before showtime might do the trick, but he would have to be sure he consumed just enough to take the edge off-it wouldn’t do to go up against an army of guards and shapeshifters drunk off his ass.

That would just get him dead.

Which, he supposed, would spell the end of the uprising.

And the beginning of a massacre of the banished people.

Chad shuddered.

Jesus Christ, he thought, I can’t handle this kind of responsibility.

Cindy groaned and stirred, lifting her head off his chest and blinking sleepily. She smiled when she saw him, hooked a hand over his shoulder, and pulled herself up to kiss him. The physical reality of her mouth on his triggered sense-memory, briefly shedding light on banks of memory obscured by alcoholic blackout.

The shack was her slave quarters. She’d told him that at some point. Since they would be gone from this place forever in less than a day, there’d been no point in seeking other lodging. Besides, there were things here she needed. Faded, edge-worn pictures of her little girl, a child’s drawing on a yellowed piece of construction paper, and a hidden weapon. She’d shown him where the latter was, he remembered that, but the weapon’s location was a bit of information that still eluded him.

He’d been falling-down drunk when they finally left The Outpost late that morning, needing to lean on Cindy to remain upright while they made their way here. All he’d wanted to do at that point was pass out on the mat, but Cindy had other intentions. She gave him something, a powder she said was a derivative of the Trance plant, and made him swallow it with water. The Trance derivative produced a muted version of the smoked version’s trippy effects, but it mainly acted as a restorative.

And, he remembered now, a stimulant.

He’d watched her remove the two ragged articles of clothing she’d had on since he’d met her in the holding facility. “I want to make love to a man one more time.” There’d been a troubling hint of melancholy in her voice. “I want you, Chad.”

And so she’d had him.

He remembered a lovely experience, one that didn’t necessarily rank in the upper echelon of sexual encounters, but a nice one. He suspected the sex would have been better had he not indulged so much, a notion that triggered pangs of regret. He wished his first time with Cindy could have been better for both of them, but she didn’t seem unhappy. Indeed, the opposite seemed true. This smile was the most unguarded, serene expression she’d shown him, and seeing it made him happy.

He smiled. “I know you’ll have a lot to do when you get out of here. Putting your life back together will be a lot of work. But, when you have some time to spare, would you do me the honor of having dinner with me?”

A bit of color entered her cheeks. “Wow… you know, that’s the first time I’ve been asked out since before my husband proposed.” The color faded from her face. “That bastard.”

And then she was crying.

Chad stroked her hair and let the tears run their course. He wanted her to feel safe in his arms, to be the best source of comfort she could imagine. He realized he was falling for her, and the insight made him wonder again why he hadn’t been able to be this way with Dream. Maybe he’d needed something like this-some crisis to test his ability to endure and survive-to shock the selfishness and insensitivity out of him.

He had to admit something like that was long overdue.

Dream was lost to him forever. He’d blown that opportunity by distancing himself from her all these years, and now he’d even ruined what remained of their once-special friendship. It was such a waste. And so unnecessary. But it was reality and he would have to accept it. And learn from it. He couldn’t know what the future held, but he vowed not to repeat the mistakes of the past with Cindy.

When she was done crying, she kissed him again and said, “Thank you, Chad.”

He opened his mouth to say something, but she shushed him.

“Thank you for making me feel human again. I can’t tell you what that means to me.” The smile she showed him was almost shy. “It’s like a little miracle.”

Her words moved him to tears. “Cindy, I-“

He never finished saying whatever it was he’d meant to say.

Because that was when they kicked the door down.

One powerful blow was enough to bring the door off its hinges. It toppled to the floor and landed with a smack, sending a cloud of dust into the air. While Chad and Cindy coughed and blinked dust out of their eyes, guards with visorhelmets and shotguns streamed through the new opening. Cindy was jerked out of Chad’s arms and dragged screaming outside. Chad saw her naked back disappear through the door and lurched off the mat, but the butt of a shotgun connected with his jaw and sent him crashing back against the flimsy wall. The boards bulged but didn’t quite give beneath his weight. His vision blurred, pain roared in his head, and he only dimly perceived the last shotgun-wielding guard’s hasty departure.

Blinding rage obliterated the pain. What had just happened was more than wrong-it was an offense against nature. The fucking thugs had stormed into the room like Nazis, absolutely heedless of the intimate scene they were violating. His mind was a whirlwind of questions: Had someone within the conspiracy ratted them out? Why had they only taken Cindy? Was this possibly unrelated to the conspiracy?

Questions without answers.

For now.

Chad braced his hands against the wall, shook his head to clear the fog, and tried to remember the location of the weapon Cindy had shown him last night. It was no use. Christ, he couldn’t even remember what kind of weapon it was. He was keenly aware, however, that Cindy’s predicament grew more dire every moment he lingered here. He pushed away from the wall, staggered across the room, stumbled going down the step outside the door, and crashed to his knees on the hard ground.

The guards were struggling with Cindy.

She was amazing. She just never stopped fighting. Never gave up. She drove a foot into one guard’s crotch, doubling him over, flailed against the arms that held her, and managed to get free of one guard. She grabbed his visor and tore it off, sank her fingers into his eyes, and released him when he reeled away screaming. The other guard relinquished his hold on her and backed away.

She advanced on him, her eyes alive with feral, predatory fire. The guard was clearly rattled by Cindy’s ferocity, fumbling with his shotgun and dropping it. Chad couldn’t believe it. She was going to pull off another miracle.

Too late, he saw the nut-kicked guard get to his feet. It happened too damned fast.

The guard pulled a handgun from the holster at his waist.

Aimed it at the back of Cindy’s head. And pulled the trigger. Bloody pulp splashed the other guard’s vest. Chad screamed.

The bout of lovemaking on the balcony was just the beginning of a day given over to pleasures of the flesh and far-ranging astral trips. Dream felt a flutter of pleasure, a carnal echo, at the memory of her ass balanced on the railing, her legs locked tight around King as he moved against her, her head thrown back and her hair swaying in the breeze. The knowledge of her precarious position had the perverse effect of heightening the sense of erotic exhilaration, rendering her orgasms explosive, overpowering. There was no question a drop down the mountainside would be fatal, and King’s firm grip about her waist was the only thing separating her from a plunge into the abyss. When it was over, they returned to the bedroom and went traveling again. A journey rich with magic and awe. He showed her more wonders of the world. The great wall of China. The Eiffel Tower. South American rain forests.

The bottom of the ocean and the mysteries that lurked there, strangely shaped creatures that glowed like science fiction monsters, shipwrecks recent and ancient, and a great, shadowy presence King called Zarah, the god of the depths. The being was aware of their presence and was none too happy about it. This Dream discerned for herself, and a surprised King attributed it to her unusual gifts, which were developing at an astonishing rate now that she had finally tapped them.

They left the ocean and climbed through the earth’s atmosphere, venturing again into the chilly embrace of space. They flew low over the blasted landscapes of Mars, danced around the rings of Saturn, and passed through the unfathomable heat of the sun. They followed a communications satellite in its unwavering geosynchronous orbit of the earth. Then they were back in their bodies, consciousness and living tissue merging like a revelation of sensuality, and they were at each other again, intent on ravaging every square inch of the other’s flesh, a mad pursuit of the ultimate carnal cleansing.

Then, again, more traveling.

Followed by yet more lovemaking.

King’s enthusiasm was unbridled. He’d completely surrendered to the first real new experience he’d had in who knew how long.

He found Dream enthralling.

He loved her.

She didn’t doubt that anymore.

But he was afraid of her, of that she had no doubt. Afraid of her and everything her inexplicable hold over him might mean.

Several hours later, when neither of them had any more energy for fucking or astral-tripping, Dream made the pronouncement she’d been avoiding.

“It has to be tonight.”

He sighed and didn’t say anything for a while. Then he said, “Think of what we could have here, Dream. A hundred more years, maybe more, of days like this. We don’t have to go to Paradise. We can create it right here.”

Dream slipped out of his embrace and sat up on the bed. “Are you already breaking the vow you made to me, Ed? I know you don’t know a lot about love, so I’ll give you a little lesson. This is what’s known as a violation of trust.”

He laid a hand on her back and she flinched away.

He sat up next to her, slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Tonight, then.”

She settled into his embrace. “It has to be this way”

He stroked her hair. “I know.”

But his voice sounded distant.

That distance bothered her, but she believed he would ultimately keep his word. This conviction was based on more than something as nebulous as trust. The knowledge had shape, substance, was something that newly awakening part of her could feel. She could almost hold the truth of his promise in her hands like an orange. Peel away that orange’s outer layer of skin, however, and what you had in your hands was a squishy mass of fear.

This fear was enormous.

It was the fear of death-and the possibility he might be wrong about what awaited them on the other side. Though he didn’t want to acknowledge it aloud, she knew the possibility existed.

This might break him.

But she didn’t believe it would.

King left the room around midafternoon to “meditate” in his study. Dream didn’t question his need to be alone for a while. He’d lived so long, was close to immortal, and now he was hours away from dying. He needed time to marshal his thoughts and strengthen his resolve. Also, he’d already told her how the deed must be done. The gods, his death spirits, had to be involved, and he would need to commune with them. And there would be certain preparations only he could tend to.

The ritual he described sounded beautiful and appropriate.

She looked forward to it.

But now that she’d been alone for a time, her thoughts finally turned back to Karen and Alicia. She hadn’t seen them all day. Nor had either of them come looking for her. She had to assume something horrendous had happened to them. The thought did much to disperse the lingering field of charged eroticism that hung over her like a haze. Shame, her old friend, came roiling back, taunting her with accusations she couldn’t deny. She’d known her friends were in danger, yet she’d been unable to tear herself away from the hottest fuck of her life to go help them.

How appalling.

How unforgivable.

Dream was a normal woman in at least one regard-she liked sex. A lot. And she reveled in it when it was good. But she’d never known what it was like to be truly drunk on lust. Until now. Because only intoxication, of the overwhelming, good-sense-obliterating, falling-down-in-the-gutter variety, could explain her debauched behavior. Acts of grand atonement were obviously in order. One such act, the removal of her worthless soul from this miserable coil, was in the works. But there was one other thing she could do right now-go looking for her friends.

The certainty that the gesture was too late coming didn’t sway her.

The attempt was morally mandatory.

She got off the bed, found the travel bag Ms. Wickman had brought in at some point, and unzipped it. She felt around for the Glock, panicked for a moment when it wasn’t where it should be-tucked beneath the jumble of bras and panties crammed to the right-and experienced an ensuing sense of relief when her hand closed around the pistol’s cold plastic grip. She extracted it, dropped the bag, and stood up to examine the alien contraption. She’d never used a gun in her life, but she was able to discern that this particular gun had more than one safety mechanism. She experimented a little and settled on leaving two off and one on. A full magazine of ten bullets was in place.

Fine.

She could figure out the fucker’s basic operation. But there were other variables, important ones, that were a mystery to her-like, could she control the gun if she had to fire it? She was worried the recoil might be more than she could handle.

She would just have to pray and hope for the best.

But she had other concerns, as well.

Like, would she have the nerve to use the gun if she had to, even in self-defense?

She didn’t know.

That, like everything else, she would find out when the time came.

She set the gun on the bed with the barrel pointed away from her, pulled on the clothes she’d worn the previous day, and retrieved the gun. She held it at her side, the barrel pointed at the floor, her nervous finger outside the trigger guard.

She took a deep breath and walked out of the room.

The hallway extended before her like an endless corridor of hell. The passage was dimly lit by glass-covered candles in wall sconces. Dozens of closed doors loomed like silent sentries to either side. Dream’s capacity to experience fear began to rejuvenate itself. Sure, she wanted to die, even planned on it, but that was meaningless in the face of something so unfathomable. She was sure the hallway hadn’t seemed quite so long the night before, but it was possible her perceptions weren’t to be trusted, she’d been so intent on King and her desire for him.

Bullshit, the voice of rationality told her.

You know what you remember. It’s like Karen said, you saw what you saw. You’re a chick with a lot of problems, but you’re not insane.

And you don’t fucking hallucinate.

The hallway was different. Longer. Darker. Had there been candles in sconces last night? Dream didn’t think so. She was sure there’d been electric lights. There’d been a lot of doors to a lot of rooms, but she didn’t think there’d been quite this many. Okay, so what? She was faced with an inversion of reality that only mirrored what she’d seen outside King’s bedroom. She accepted that the substance of the house was fluid, malleable, and she had to assume the changes occurred due to subtle fluctuations in King’s mind. Some he controlled, some maybe he didn’t, the supernatural equivalent of brain farts. A disturbing notion occurred to her-what would happen to you if you were in one of the rooms that disappeared when King’s mind hiccuped?

She shivered.

She stood still in the doorway of the bedroom a moment longer, willing herself to be calm, and reestablished her connection with that thing inside her, the awakening power center. The connection was instant, and it was like a slap in the face. She touched that mass of knowledge again, the tangible fact of King’s vow to her, and held it firmly for a moment before coming back to herself.

Thus steeled, she ventured into the hallway.

She tried the first door she came to, her free hand closing around the doorknob. But it was unyielding when she tried to turn it. The same was true of the next door. And the next. And the next. Door after door after door until she’d tried dozens of them, all with the same frustrating result. She was near the end of the hallway now, could see the landing around the corner that led to the spiral staircase.

Well.

Again with this shit, she thought.

It hadn’t been a spiral staircase last night. Of course it hadn’t. It had been a regular old staircase. Straight up to the goddamn landing. And now it, too, had altered its shape and dimensions in accordance with the overall creepy-manor motif.

You can’t let it bother you, she reminded herself.

There were only a few doors left.

The pattern of failure remained unchanging until she was three doors from the end of the hallway. She reached for a doorknob that wasn’t there. The door stood open, and she heard sounds of human activity in the room. Panting. Groans. A woman’s voice. Two people. She was sure the other person was a man. She was also sure they were having sex. Hence the groans. She was hesitant to spur an act of coitus interruptus, but she didn’t see that she had a choice.

Somebody had to help her.

So she stepped into the room.

And saw right away that the room’s occupants weren’t having sex.

A nude man was locked in a pillory. Dream had never seen one outside of movies, but she recognized it for what it was instantly. The man’s head and hands were visible through holes, and his scarlet rear end quivered on the other side. A lithe young woman with hair so blond it was nearly white cocked her head to one side and stared at Dream with open curiosity. She had on black garters, stiletto heels, and a black leather bustier. A corner of her mouth turned up.

She spoke to Dream. “Hell-o, pretty?

She twirled a cat-o’-nine-tails.

“Will you join us?”

Dream numbly backed out of the room, the Glock forgotten at her side. She stood in the hallway and watched the blond approach her. The girl’s blue eyes were chilling. There was nothing like a soul behind them. Just a dark center of evil. Dream intuited this the way she’d read Zarah’s malevolent thoughts. She knew it. It was fact. The lovely girl was a monster. And her smile was insidious. An invitation to debasement.

The girl’s fingers curled around the edge of the door.

“Good-bye, pretty.”

And she threw the door shut.

Dream shook with relief.

Relief so profound she wasn’t aware of the door opening behind her until it was too late. She whirled around in time to feel Ms. Wickman’s hand closing around her wrist to peel the Glock from her hand.

King’s cruel-eyed housekeeper brandished the weapon in her face.

“My, my.”

Dream tried to speak, but she was shaking too hard.

“Shush, dear.” Ms. Wickman placed the Glock’s muzzle against Dream’s left temple, pushing her head to the side. “I wonder what The Master would think of this, eh? Skulking about his home, the home he so generously opened to you, with a firearm.”

Dream again tried to say something, but the austere woman clamped her free hand about Dream’s jaw and slammed her against the wall. The woman leaned against Dream, her face so close she could feel her breath.

“I’m not a stupid woman.” The muzzle pressed so hard now it scraped her temple. “I know something is amiss.”

Dream whimpered.

“The Master is in trouble.” She laughed without humor. “I suppose it had to happen eventually. I further suppose there’s nothing to be gained by killing you, though I would derive great pleasure from doing so. There may even be something to gain by allowing you to live.”

She detected something in Dream’s gaze then, some subtle flicker of knowledge.

“Oh, I keep my ears to the ground, young lady. You see, I serve The Master and I am loyal to him, but my loyalty has its limits.” Her lips grazed Dream’s mouth, making the captive girl quiver. “I will weather this storm.”

She relinquished Dream. “So go, whore. Enjoy hell.”

Ms. Wickman turned away from Dream and disappeared around the corner to the landing. High heels clicked down the winding staircase, echoing like pebbles dropped down a well. Her mocking laughter was the deranged laughter of hell’s warden.

Dream, demoralized and scared shitless, slumped to the floor.

And she stayed right there until she had the shaking under control.

Her friends were dead.

No way they’d survived the night in this place. Anger began to displace Dream’s terror of the strange housekeeper. Whatever shred of illusion she’d been clinging to was irreparably tattered. She didn’t want to join King in some redeeming eternal afterlife.

What she felt for him wasn’t natural.

That was so clear now.

He’d done something to her.

Some kind of… sex magic.

Yes, he would be capable of that.

Dream tried to get a grip on her warring emotions.

It was tempting to let anger guide her actions now, but she saw immediately how counterproductive that would be. She had to remain focused on the goal. Had to maintain the illusion of conspiracy with King. He needed to keep right on believing she wanted to be with him.

Until he was dead.

Until they were both dead.

Defeated and devoid of hope, Dream got to her feet and returned to King’s room.

In its true form, the house on the mountain existed in a state of stasis. The dilapidated structure consisted of matter suspended. For more than forty years, the old beams that made up the house’s sagging skeletal infrastructure did not decay. The rot that had already begun could not progress. The water stains that made the kitchen ceiling droop did not spread. In the living room, the property’s old caretaker sat on a plastic-covered sofa, his throat slit and his head cocked to the right. The perfectly preserved body had been there since January of 1960. The plastic cover and the man’s overalls were stained with blood that had never coagulated.

This house, the true house, was a kind of purgatory.

Cold, unchanging, and invisible.

It provided the framework for the illusions created by the creature that had invaded and forever changed this forgotten slice of land back in those final pre-Camelot days. The dimensions and appearance of the illusory house changed daily, sometimes in a subtle way, occasionally in a very drastic way. The power that created the illusions and kept the true house out of view was immense, stronger than the forces of the natural world.

The illusion was unassailable.

The true house impregnable.

Untouched by time.

Until today.

When something stirred.

Somewhere, perhaps in one of the empty upper rooms, a board faintly creaked.

A sigh was almost audible.

The sound of something very old and very tired awakening one more time.

The gunshot knocked Cindy off her feet, lifting her momentarily off the ground. Chad knew next to nothing about guns, but this one was powerful. Cindy flopped face first on the ground and didn’t move. Didn’t even twitch. The bullet had taken out most of her brain. Chad watched with slackjawed horror and disbelief as the guards retrieved their wounded colleague and departed.

They didn’t spare him so much as a backward glance.

Grief beyond his ability to contain welled out with a force that shook him, and he turned his head heavenward and wailed. Hot tears spilled down his cheeks and trickled into his mouth. Later, he wasn’t sure how long he remained there like that. It might have been only a few minutes or as long as a half hour. Cindy’s shack was one among a row of dozens. This was where the slaves lived. Their quarters. Some of them emerged cautiously from these decrepit dwellings to see what the fuss was about. Chad only began to recover when he became aware of their presence.

And he saw what they were seeing.

The obscenity of Cindy’s nude, unspeakably defiled body.

A shell that had until moments ago housed a vibrant, galvanizing life force. The soul of a woman who had gone to great lengths and placed herself in jeopardy to bring him safely to this place. A woman he’d known for so brief a period of time but had been well on the way to caring a great deal about. And now she just didn’t exist. The ruined home of that precious soul leaked blood and tissue on the ground. The magnitude of the loss triggered another spasm of grief, and he lurched to his feet, staggered back into the shack, and returned with a tattered blanket.

He covered her body with the blanket.

And slumped next to her on the ground. He was only half-conscious of his own nudity, but modesty was an absurd concept in the face of something so horrific. He supposed the impulse to cover a dead woman’s body was also something of an absurdity, but she deserved some slight measure of dignity, at least, so he made this little gesture. And he continued to sit there with her, feeling impotent, powerless, unsure of how to proceed. He experienced the expected thirst for revenge, but he had no idea how to go about exacting these theoretical acts of reprisal.

He later supposed he might have stayed there next to the body indefinitely had it not been for the intercession of Jack Paradise.

Jack Paradise, not the name bestowed upon him at birth (surprise, surprise), had lived Below for fifteen years, the last nine as an emancipated slave. As an ex-marine, he should have been a prime candidate for membership in The Master’s underground police force, but Paradise made it clear he would be no one’s thug. The act of resistance should have earned him a ticket on the express train to heaven, but the great drill sergeant in the sky must have been smiling on him that day, because, hey, he was still here, in the flesh and bigger than life. Big being the key word in that phrase, since he was impressively built and well over six feet tall.

The leaders of the conspiracy had him in their sights from the beginning, and he’d assumed a leadership role soon after being recruited. He was good at things the others didn’t have a clue about, practical things like strategy and identifying which guards might be sympathetic to their cause. Jack had an outsized personality, but he was shrewd and honorable. Lazarus may have been the movement’s inspirational figure, its messiah, but Jack was its Patton. The conspiracy had eyes almost everywhere in those closing moments before the uprising began, and Jack was summoned to the scene of Cindy’s death almost immediately.

His first look at the brave woman’s ruined head made his expression grow hard.

Cords of muscle in his big arms tensed with a need to lash out at something.

But he remained steadfast.

And got to work.

Chad, of course, had no idea who the big guy was, but he sensed he was there to help. Something in his general demeanor told him that-the stance of his body, the way his face became a slab of granite at the sight of Cindy’s body.

Chad detected compassion in the man’s eyes when he turned his piercing gaze on him. “I promise you one thing, the motherfuckers who did this will die tonight.” He extended a hand to Chad. “Here, let’s get to work.”

Chad took the proffered hand and was promptly hauled to his feet. The man then knelt over Cindy and arranged the blanket over her head and the upper portion of her body. Then he lifted her off the ground, beckoned to Chad with a tilt of his head, and carried the corpse into the shack. Chad, still numb but nonetheless intrigued by the appearance of this superhero, followed him through the door.

The man placed Cindy gently on the mat, found a crumpled bedsheet with holes in it, and covered the lower half of her body with it. Then he took one of her lifeless hands in his, kissed the back of it, and muttered something Chad couldn’t decipher. He closed his eyes, squinted hard, and breathed deeply.

Then that steely gaze was back on Chad, focused and intent. “Get dressed, Chad. We’ve got a revolution to start”

Chad searched for his clothes.

He wasn’t surprised that the man knew his name.

That was hours ago. Chad had since learned who Jack Paradise was, and the man instilled more confidence in him than Lazarus ever could. He radiated spirit and ability. He was a compelling figure with a lot to say. Paradise advised him to compartmentalize his grief and anger. Not forever. Later he would see that his anger, if properly channeled, could be a useful tool. It might provide him the courage to stride brazenly into the belly of the beast.

Paradise took him back to The Outpost, where Lazarus awaited in the back room. The old singer was visibly shaken by the news of Cindy’s death. His face was puffy and his eyes were red. His breath smelled of alcohol, but the odor wasn’t as strong as Chad was afraid it would be. He embraced Chad and patted him on the back. Chad held the old man in his arms and tried to heed Jack’s counsel.

Compartmentalize.

Compartmentalize, goddamn it.

Easier said than done.

There were others in the room. More coconspirators. Two of them looked cut from the same mold as Jack. Another was a stoop-shouldered man at least a decade older than Lazarus. One was a woman Chad recognized, one of the whip-wielding emancipateds outside the sex club. And there was a young boy who looked to be about the age Chad had been when Dream intervened on his behalf so long ago. Chad felt a flash of incredulity that a kid was a member of this inner circle, but a closer look revealed eyes that reflected intelligence and sturdy conviction. The look was enough to tell him the kid was grittier than he could have dreamed of being at that age.

Jack made the introductions. “You all know who Chad is, but he’s at a disadvantage, so I’ll do the honors.”

He nodded at the woman. “This is Wicked Wanda.”

The woman’s expression was grim, her mouth a tight line.

“Wanda and Cindy were close, Chad. Confidantes, you could say.”

He then introduced the brawny men Chad thought of as Jack Clones, and they were indeed ex-military Their names were Shaft (as in Richard Roundtree) and Joe (as in G.I.)- Shaft was an imposing black man with a gleaming bald dome of a skull, and Joe looked like a strapping farm boy from the heartland.

“This geezer here is Jake Barnes.”

Barnes chuckled. “Geezer, my eye.” His gaze swung in Chad’s direction. “Don’t let my posture fool you, boy. I’m still ass-kicking capable.”

The kid was the last to be introduced. “And this is Todd Haynes, still wet behind the ears and barely out of his diapers.” Paradise tapped his skull. “But he’s got more going on up here than the rest of us combined.”

The kid’s serious expression never wavered. “I’m a genius. That’s just a fact of IQ testing. I’m counting on you to return me to the land of higher education and government grants.” He started to smile. “And I’m as tough as any of these assholes.”

Chad believed him.

Paradise clapped his hands, a signal that the formalities were at an end. “Okay, down to business.” A grim tone entered his voice. “I know you’ve all heard what happened to Cindy, and I have the sad task of confirming it. She’s dead. Early indications are it’s a retaliation for the death yesterday of a certain vendor we all know.”

Chad groaned.

He heard a murmur of other voices.

“Elvis Kennedy had friends you don’t trifle with. He was a bastard, an evil pervert, but he should’ve been left alone.” He smiled, a fragile expression that wavered on the fine edge of a sad exhalation. “Cindy’s sense of moral outrage finally outweighed her good sense. Perhaps she was emboldened by her emancipation, or maybe it was the nearness of our time of reckoning that prompted her action. But we can’t know what was in her mind, so conjecture is useless.”

He sighed.

Somebody sniffled.

Chad looked at Lazarus.

Paradise continued, “We don’t need to say a lot of words about Cindy. We know what kind of person she was. Brave and honorable. Invaluable to the cause. Everybody in this room loved her, including yours truly, but we must resist the temptation to succumb to grief.”

He moved to the center of the room, where he slowly surveyed the faces of everyone present. Chad could tell he was looking for chinks in the armor, subtle hints of weakness or anticipatory jitters. When he appeared satisfied with the resolve of his compatriots, he picked up his train of thought.

“Everybody here, with the obvious exception of Chad, knows what he or she has to do tonight. We’ve prepared for this day for years.” He glanced at Lazarus and Jake Barnes. “Some of us have waited decades for this day. We’ve worked too hard and come too far to be derailed by this tragedy. Failure is not an option, friends.”

His voice dropped a few notches and his eyes narrowed. “Destiny doesn’t take time off for grief, and neither will we. Not yet.”

Chad looked around the room and saw heads nodding. Paradise again assumed the manner of a motivator and master strategist. “The Gathering begins in a few hours. Slaves and guards from the outer perimeter will begin arriving sooner than that. Let’s be ready? His gaze fixed on Lazarus. “Ready for resurrection?” The old singer looked at the floor and sighed. He scratched the thick beard that was so much whiter than the grizzled images Chad recalled from old magazines. He drew in a big breath and exhaled it. His shoulders straightened, and he looked at Paradise. His eyes glimmered. “Yes, I’m ready.” Paradise smiled. “Let’s go over it all one last time.” And Chad began to see The Outpost’s back room for what it really was. A war room.

The time of the Gathering was drawing close. The banks of stadium lights began to dim, an approximation of the onset of night. Chad followed Wanda and Todd Haynes as they pushed their way through the milling slaves en route to the “square,” a place he was made to understand was what passed for a downtown in the hobbled-together community.

The square was a big open area between buildings. There was a platform for speakers at one end and a big tent behind it. Chad imagined Lazarus waiting in that tent, perhaps remembering what it was like to wait backstage before a concert. Since he knew the singer wasn’t in the tent, the image failed to coalesce. The old man was in a private room in one of the buildings that bordered the square, and he would be escorted to the stage directly from there when the time arrived for his moment in the spotlight.

There was a pit in the middle of the square. It was filled with the charred remains of previous Gathering bonfires. Chad saw slaves wheeling carts of fresh wood toward the pit, and he wondered how many of them, if any, were conspirators. That got him started examining the faces of everyone he saw, trying to decide who was a comrade in arms and who wasn’t. He’d been told that the weekly festivals were doses of uninhibited debauchery. He saw people drinking, but what he saw didn’t look like the initial stages of drunken carousing. A lot of people had bottles, but they were sipping from them. Nursing them. They looked like people who knew they had to be careful how much booze they consumed, like a bunch of designated drivers at the periphery of a massive pub crawl.

On the other hand, maybe he was seeing things that weren’t there. Maybe he’d seen one too many political thrillers in his time. In any case, he figured even a little paranoia was a dangerous thing.

Don’t assume anything, he thought.

Stick with what you know.

The rest of it’s out of your hands.

They circumvented the pit area on the way to the platform, where they joined a growing throng of people awaiting some imminent event. Chad stood off to the side of the platform with Todd and Wanda.

“What’s happening here?” he asked them.

Wanda stood there with her arms folded under breasts, her gaze turned away from him. “What usually happens is Below’s version of a vaudeville act. That’s first. You get actors, if you can call them that-they’re bad-who mock the power structure in skits so puerile you’ll swear they were written by five-year-olds. Controlled rebellion. Safe pseudoanarchy. Meshes with the whole concept of the Gatherings as an anesthetic of the spirit. Then, at some point, some of Below’s weakest, most pitiful people are brought onstage for public humiliation. It’s a crowd participation affair, with a panel of judges weighing suggestions from the crowd on the best ways to abuse the poor bastards. It’s the ultimate irony. The slaves, who have long been subject to acts of casual sadism, are encouraged to find a kind of catharsis in being sadistic to other slaves.”

Chad understood now why the woman had been Cindy’s friend.

She was sharp.

He said to Todd, ?I thought you were the genius.”

The kid smirked. “I am.” He slipped an arm around the woman’s waist. “I’ve just been rubbing off on her.”

Chad gawked.

He couldn’t help it.

Below was an awful, barbaric place, was probably earth’s closest approximation of an actual hell, but where else would a kid like Todd have a chance of getting laid by the likes of foxy Wicked Wanda?

Wanda was looking at him now. Perhaps she sensed what he was thinking. “I’m sorry if I’ve been abrupt with you, Chad. I loved Cindy, and …”

She didn’t have to say it. “I was with her when she died.”

She dropped her gaze. “Yes.”

“I couldn’t have saved her, Wanda.” He felt a dangerous edge of emotion rise within him. Compartmentalize, he thought. Compartmentalize. Oh, bullshit. “It just happened too fucking fast. I’ve never felt so useless. I would’ve given my life for her.”

Wanda looked at him again. “I believe you. I know there’s nothing you could have done. But I can’t stow my grief away like Paradise. I just can’t.”

Chad nodded. “I know.”

Chad’s own grief resurfaced. He was so consumed with angst he didn’t immediately perceive the flutter of excitement that rippled through the crowd. Then he looked up and noticed how many more people had gathered around the platform. The bonfire was already lit and crackling to life. He saw a few more obviously drunk people now. Armed guards patrolled the perimeter of the square, and Chad again thought he was able to discern who was with them and who wasn’t. Some of the guards, maybe most of them, projected an air of casual indifference. But a few of them seemed anxious, alternately studying the crowd, their fellow guards, and the nearby buildings.

They were waiting for something.

The uprising, Chad thought.

And Lazarus.

It was almost time.

The crowd was stirring. There was an excited babble of voices. Chad had a vague sense of something approaching. Then he saw the crowd part, and Jake Barnes emerged to climb the stairs to the platform.

Wanda leaned over to whisper in Chad’s ear. “Jake is a sort of emcee. He’s a popular fixture at Gatherings. The Overlords consider him one of their own.” She chuckled. “They’re about to experience the mother of all paradigm shifts.”

Jake waved to the cheering crowd, then held his hands out palms down in the universal shushing gesture, and stepped to the podium. A silence punctuated by expectant murmurs ensued, and Jake surveyed the crowd in the smiling, almost arrogant manner of a benevolent king.

He cleared his throat and leaned toward the microphone. “Good evening, and welcome to this week’s Gathering.”

A surge of enthusiastic applause necessitated another shushing gesture on Jake’s part. “Good to see all of you so fired up.” He cleared his throat again, adopted a more overtly serious tone. “Now, I know you all have certain expectations of these things. You come to have a good time and forget your troubles. Given the sad circumstances of your lives, that’s understandable.”

More murmurs.

Voices raised in confusion. Barnes had already deviated from the standard opening statement in a startling way. The old man’s opening words sounded like a prologue to a deeply philosophical, ruminative speech, which would be the antithesis of anything the bulk of his audience was expecting. They were geared up to hear the sarcastic comments and jokes that peppered his usual patter. Chad saw more than confusion out there. There was concern. Some slaves appeared worried their weekly dose of “fun” was in jeopardy. A guard at the square’s perimeter directed a comment to one of his colleagues and the colleague shrugged, a the hell if I know gesture.

Barnes slowly surveyed the sea of faces before him, appearing to take the measure of everyone in attendance.

Some fidgeted beneath his gaze. Others looked angry. Someone called out, “Spit it out, for Christ’s sake!”

A smattering of boos ensued, but there was a sense that the heckler spoke for them all.

Barnes smiled. “Patience.” The old man took a deep breath and expelled it in a slow, deliberate manner. “Tonight is a momentous night.”

Wanda hooked a hand around Chad’s elbow. “Come.”

Chad, perplexed, frowned at her. “What? He’s just getting started.”

But he allowed Wanda to pull him along. “So are we,” she said.

Chad looked at Todd, who was strolling along ahead of them. He realized then where they were going-the big tent he thought of as “backstage.” Two guards were stationed outside the hanging flaps of the entrance. They were stolid behind their visors, shotguns positioned across their chests. They projected an aura of steely efficiency and ruthlessness, and Chad cursed his mind for selecting that moment to replay the image of Cindy’s brains splashing the guard’s vest.

Todd stopped to say something to the guard on the right, who barely seemed to acknowledge his presence. Wanda’s hand closed on Chad’s elbow, and they drew to a stop several feet outside the tent. “Calm down.”

“I’m calm.” But he’d said it too fast.

Wanda smiled. “Okay, Chad. But keep this in mind. We’re already in a restricted area. The people of Below know not to come back here.”

Chad frowned at the guards. “Yeah?”

“Yes.” She nodded at the guards. “Ours, Chad. Don’t worry about them. I have a more pressing concern. I need you to tell me something.”

Chad sighed. “Sure.”

The crowd’s rumblings were growing louder. Chad heard the old man say something about the Russian revolution and tsars. He was setting the stage for something extraordinary, and some in his audience were beginning to sense it.

Wanda’s smile was gone, replaced by an expression that was all business. “I need to know if you have a weak stomach, Chad.”

He didn’t really have to think about that one. “Not anymore.”

She nodded. “Good.”

Chad saw Todd disappear through the hanging flaps. Wanda pulled him forward again, and they stepped between the guards. He saw her hands curl around one of the flaps, and he experienced a sudden, vivid jolt of precognition. Something he really wasn’t prepared for awaited him inside the tent. What, he didn’t know, but it was going to be really, really bad.

He swallowed hard. “Wanda-“

“Easy, Chad.”

Then they were inside the tent and the back of his throat felt a tickle of bile. Chad put a hand to his forehead, squinted, and tried to take it all in. “My God …”

The inside of the tent was a charnel house. He saw bodies. No way to tell how many, because they were in pieces. Blood pooled and ran in rivers on the ground. The victims all appeared to be middle-aged Caucasian men. The men who’d done the killing stood in a loose circle around the mutilated bodies, all of them wielding still-dripping machetes. Their clothes and faces were spattered with blood. Chad recognized just one of them-Shaft, the only black man in the room.

Chad wavered, his head going fuzzy, but Wanda’s grip around his elbow tightened, keeping him upright until he steadied himself. “What happened here?”

Todd came toward him with a machete. “The beginning, Chad. The uprising’s first victory”

Wanda said, “These men were the Overlords, Chad. All of them.”

Shaft sneered. “Assholes never knew what hit ‘em. Was over in minutes.”

Chad flinched at the motion of Todd’s arm, but then he realized the kid meant to give him the machete. Chad took it with great reluctance, holding it lightly by the end of the handle. He wanted to tell them he wasn’t up to hacking people to pieces, but he knew there was no room for queasiness in this equation.

Todd nodded at another gap in the tent’s canvas wall. Chad looked and saw a shadowy set of steps he assumed led to the platform’s stage. “Our men hid in there, waiting for Jake’s verbal signal.”

Shaft chuckled. “Tsars, it was.”

Chad shuddered. “Jesus… how could you kill that many people so fast?”

Another man said, “You do what you have to do.”

Chad could only nod.

He’d heard that before, of course.

He realized then how clearly he could hear Barnes in the tent, almost as if the old man were standing right next to him. The old man was saying something about the inevitability of change, that no order lasts forever. Chad wondered how long what remained of Below’s power structure would allow the now openly treasonous diatribe to continue. The crowd grew quiet as Barnes talked of the sacrifice made by Lazarus. The memory of the revered figure still possessed the power to instill a measure of solemnity. But new murmurs arose as the old man alluded to the Christian tale of their messiah’s resurrection.

The murmurs grew in volume, became a babble of agitated voices.

The old man couldn’t be saying what they thought he was saying.

Could he?

Chad was only dimly aware that Shaft had gone to work with the machete again, severing the few remaining strands of tissue that still connected a blood-flecked head to a mangled body. The head came loose with a stomach-clenching snap. The black man similarly liberated another head. He grasped both of them in one hand by strands of long hair, and he moved toward the stage entrance.

“If you can believe in revolution …” Barnes bellowed. “… you can believe in resurrection!”

A dramatic pause followed. His voice dipped in pitch! when he resumed: “People of Below, I give you revolution!”

And Shaft dashed up the stairs to the stage.

Chad imagined him holding the severed heads aloft for all to see.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

And then pandemonium.

Wanda closed a hand around Chad’s, forcing him to tightly grip the machete’s handle. “Whatever happens, hold on to this.”

Then she moved with Todd to the stage entrance. The others huddled around them, listening while war erupted outside. There was a cacophony of gunfire. Huge, jarring sounds. The percussive thud of shotguns and the amplified firecracker beat of automatic weapons. Chad sensed that the flash point of the conflict was at the perimeter of the square, where so many of the guards were. Guards shooting guards. It seemed an insane way to start a war. Wouldn’t the anonymity of the visorhelmets make it impossible to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys? He heard women screaming, men yelling, and children crying. Their obvious terror shook him. Being in this tent made him feel like a general at some safe encampment well behind the lines. But he realized he’d been escorted to this place so he’d be out of the line of fire. He was their savior, the one promised in a vision, and they would protect him.

Until he was face-to-face with this thing they called The Master, that is.

At which point he would be on his own.

Chad looked at the machete in his hand and gripped it a little tighter. The hand holding it tingled strangely, as if being charged with a mild electric current. He tried to still the trembling in his arm, but it was difficult. He didn’t feel like a demon killer. These people were looking to him to be a hero, but he didn’t feel the slightest bit heroic. He just felt afraid and anxious, like a heart patient about to go under the knife.

The shooting stopped. Chad released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and some of the tension drained from his body. Then he realized the battle wasn’t really over. He could still hear gunfire, but it was intermittent and far away, and he imagined a building-to-building fight deeper into the community.

Footsteps pounded down the steps and Shaft reemerged into the tent. His eyes gleamed and his muscles twitched. Chad was sure he’d never seen a more highly adrenalized countenance in his life. “It’s on! We took some hits, lost some of our guards, but our side’s element of surprise was too much for the fuckers. They’re in full retreat now, and our people are hunting them through the village.”

Wanda’s eyes shone with tears. “We’re really doing it. I can’t believe it. Oh my God …”

Todd threw an arm around her and drew her close. “Yes, we’re really doing it.” His voice was charged with excitement. “But we’re not done yet.”

Chad swallowed another lump in his throat. “So … what now?”

Shaft said, “We get up on stage.”

He disappeared through the stage entrance again and the others followed him. Chad girded himself with another deep breath, then followed them into the semidarkness. Ten steps took him up through a sliver of light to the stage. He hadn’t been on a stage of any sort since junior high, a memorably unnerving performance of a class play. He’d known then he wasn’t cut out to be an actor or any other kind of performer. He didn’t like all that attention focused on him. He didn’t like crowds of people. Hell, to be honest, he didn’t like people in general. But that was an impersonal dislike. He’d always been able to hate the bulk of people around him because he didn’t know them. He didn’t know these people, either, but he experienced a profound empathy for them that surprised him. The stricken looks on their horrified faces touched a long-dormant part of him, a part he realized Cindy had reawakened.

The perimeter of the square was littered with bullet-riddled bodies. Most of them were fallen guards, but a few were those of unlucky citizens who happened to be caught in the cross fire. Guards without helmets lined the front of the stage and patrolled the perimeter. Chad saw discarded visorhelmets here and there around the square, and he realized now how the movement’s guards distinguished themselves from those still loyal to The Master-by ripping their helmets off and casting them aside.

Chad studied the faces of the guards close to the stage. Their features were grim, intent, the faces of noble men charged with a sacred duty they were determined to see through. It no longer mattered that these same men had done some awful things during their time Below. Somewhere in each of them lurked the remains of a true human heart, a soul capable of empathy and compassion, and somehow Jack Paradise had sought them out, tempting them with the promise of redemption.

Looking at them boosted Chad’s morale considerably.

The square itself was still congested with milling slaves and emancipateds. Chad sensed the volatile energy of the crowd. They looked like they were waiting for something else to happen, for the proverbial next shoe to drop, and they remained wary of the helmetless guards. But the prevailing mood of agitation seemed dangerous. Chad feared what might happen if that agitation wasn’t properly channeled.

Shaft gripped him by the shoulder and pointed to a nearby building. “You think these people are worked up now, keep your eye on that door.”

Chad squinted and saw an open doorway flanked by guards. The door was a dark rectangle, but he thought he detected a hint of movement somewhere in the darkness. Then he saw Paradise, G.I. Joe, and Lazarus emerge into the artificial twilight. The guards fell in behind them and escorted them to the stage. The crowd was slow to notice the approach of the old singer’s entourage, but when they did spot him they seemed to turn as one to observe their arrival.

A hush fell over the crowd.

Chad noted looks of confusion, incredulity, astonishment, and joy. Some of these people simply couldn’t believe what they were seeing. A few of these had witnessed the old man’s assassination. The word “miracle” spread through the crowd like an aural ripple on a human sea.

The singer’s escort arrived at the side of the platform, where the old man ascended a few steps to the stage. He strolled to the podium with his head held high, his face the triumphant mask of a returning conqueror. He shook hands with Jake Barnes, who leaned over the microphone to utter a parting remark: “People of Below… I give you resurrection.”

Then Lazarus stood alone at the podium, gripping its sides and studying them with the mute confidence of a god. Some of the long-suffering slaves dropped to their knees. The crowd grew quiet, awaiting the old man’s first public words in years.

There was utter stillness.

No more murmurs.

Barely a breath.

Lazarus smiled. “Friends …”

A susurration of reverent joy rippled through the crowd.

It really was him.

There could be no mistaking that voice.

A look of humility crossed the old singer’s face. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to stand before you here today. It is a miracle.” He paused to clear his throat. “I have returned to lead you home.”

The outburst of joy the remark triggered sent a tingle down Chad’s spine.

Then he heard an approaching rumble and turned his head to the left. A transport truck emerged from a side street and rolled up to the front of the stage. The diesel blast of its engine pierced the square’s atmosphere like a giant’s belch. Jake Barnes clapped a hand on Chad’s shoulder. “That’s your ride out of here, boy”

Lazarus resumed speaking. “I do not promise an easy exodus. The tunnels will be an ordeal. The shapeshifters rule that realm, and the danger they present is considerable. Some of us will die on the path to freedom.”

He sighed.

His face was a study in solemnity.

“Friends, I ask you-are you willing to pay the ultimate price for the chance to be free again?”

The cheer this time was a roar of affirmation.

Lazarus, whose big voice critics had once ascribed god-like qualities to, bellowed loud enough to be heard above the crowd: “THEN FREE YOU SHALL BE!”

This time the crowd’s response was like a battle cry.

Fierce and determined, a voice of collective yearning.

Chad realized he was shaking again.

But it wasn’t fear causing the trembling.

It was battle fever.

The machete’s handle thrummed in his hand.

And then hands were on his back, urging him to the side of the stage-toward the stairs.

Toward the transport truck.

Toward, yes, destiny.

The Master emerged from the meditative trance he entered when he wanted to commune with the gods. For centuries this had been an effortless process, a thing he did with the unthinking ease of an opera maestro going through vocal warm-ups.

That had changed.

Oh, he could still enter the meditative state instantly, but what was different now was his relationship with the death spirits. Often they seemed reluctant to commune with him. There had been times in recent weeks when he’d feared they didn’t wish to communicate with him at all. He was afraid they were abandoning him, a possibility with ominous implications.

The gods were enamored of power. They fed on people, places, and things that were suffused with energy. The death spirits, his gods, loved dictators, the military-industrial complex, politicians, corporations bent on circumventing EPA rules, and the more prolific serial killers. They derived energy from the dark deeds of their hosts. He’d fed them well for most of a millennium. The swath of terror he’d cut through this world was impressive by any standard. His numbers didn’t quite match those produced by human genocides, but those were intensely concentrated outbursts of brutality that burned out after a few years. His strength was implacability, a steady slaughter maintained throughout the ages.

He was the death spirits’ most loyal servant.

And what was his reward?

Silence.

Hateful, maddening, terrifying silence. He alternately raged and despaired into the void as he beseeched the beings he’d once almost considered equals. Now they seemed unreachable. Uncaring. He knew the reason for their retreat, an awful truth he could no longer avoid. He’d been weakening for years. Perhaps even for decades. He had more than a hundred years remaining in his natural life cycle, but he suspected they would not be good years. The time left to him might well be a grim slide into senility and dementia. The illusions created by his power might morph beyond his ability to control, perhaps even become dangerous to him. The prospect of a descent into the indignity of advanced age and madness was more than he could bear.

These were the reasons the human woman’s dark invitation tempted him so. A premature ascendancy to paradise seemed infinitely preferable to a steady, sure decline on this wretched plane. It was the notion of time’s relentless progress-and the ravages it might wreak upon him-that decided him.

He wanted to die with Dream.

She was evolved so far beyond the rest of her race that he wondered whether she was really human at all. He theorized a sexual coupling between one of Dream’s long-ago ancestors and another of his own kind, a union resulting in a kind of human/Master hybrid. The important genes, the ones encoded with his kind’s power, remained dormant for reasons he couldn’t fathom. But there they lurked, awaiting discovery. No other possibility seemed feasible. He’d assumed genetic differences rendered conception between the species an impossibility, but he’d never put this to the test.

He tended to kill the women with whom he copulated.

He regretted that now.

He wished he’d met Dream-or at least a woman very much like Dream-hundreds of years earlier. A life spent in the company of such a creature would have been fascinating. He envisioned lost generations of babies. Human/Master babies. A family. A kingdom ruled by others of his own kind.

He grimaced at the cloak of melancholy that enveloped him.

He would have no family on this plane.

But he would have eternity with Dream.

He knew this because, after a silence of days, he’d finally established contact with one of the death spirits. Loth, one of the lesser death gods. It scarcely mattered that he was still being ignored by the supreme spirits of that realm. Any contact at all by this point was cause for rejoicing.

You wish to die? Loth asked him.

Yes.

And you expect passage to the plane of your choice?

Yes.

There was a pause as the god considered it.

You have served us well through time. We can do this for you. However, we desire a final sacrifice in exchange. Might you have something suitable in mind?

The Master didn’t hesitate.

The people of Below.

Loth, who resembled a bloated gargoyle in The Master’s mind, seemed almost to smile.

Why, yes, that is acceptable.

However, should you fail to deliver the banished people unto us, you will find yourself transported to a realm bearing no resemblance at all to the paradise you seek.

I will not fail.

And then Loth was gone.

The Master never sensed the rumble of revolution Below.

What remained of his powers was concentrated elsewhere.

And he had preparations to begin.

Alicia woke to pain like nothing she’d ever known. Her body was awash in it. Hundreds of little razor nicks dotted her flesh. That bitch had done this to her. That awful hag had done this unspeakable thing to her. Cutting and cutting her with the dispassionate manner of one slicing roast beef. And then pouring things into the wounds. Making her scream and thrash against her bonds. All while poor Karen was made to watch from the floor while that other apprentice stood over her with the gleaming broadax.

Karen.

Shit, she didn’t want to think about Karen.

But she was powerless against the hideous memories. They unreeled in her head like scenes from a depraved snuff film. She saw again what the shapeshifter did to her on the floor. Violating her. Then she saw what the broadax did. The blood. She saw that over and over.

Alicia cried.

The worst thing of all, the knowledge she wanted to somehow excise and cast forever out of her brain, was the memory of her own role in Karen’s death. That memory she just couldn’t abide. It made her want to die.

Which was ironic, since it was her own inability to endure pain and torture that had doomed her friend.

She saw Ms. Wickman’s leering face in her mind. Heard her asking, “Would you like a little more perfume in your wounds, dear?”

“NO!” A shriek.

“Just a little?”

“NO!”

“Not even to spare your friend a little pain?”

A long pause punctuated by her own whimpers.

Ms. Wickman tipped the little bottle toward one of the fresher razor nicks.

Alicia screamed.

A sound Ms. Wickman mocked.

She seized a handful of Alicia’s hair. “Answer me.”

Alicia was sobbing again by this point. “N-no …”

The utterance made her feel pitiful, pathetic, like a coward.

Ms. Wickman set the perfume bottle on the nightstand and retrieved the straight razor. She smiled as she unfolded it. “And this?” She held up the shiny, blood-flecked blade for Alicia to see. “Would you like another taste of this?”

Again, the same pathetic denial. “No.”

Ms. Wickman clucked. “Not even to spare your friend?”

Alicia watched the madwoman twirl the blade, and she simply hadn’t been able to bear the thought of it piercing her flesh even one more time.

So, yet again, in a voice so small she could barely hear it, she said, “No.”

At which point Ms. Wickman got off the bed and took the broadax from the apprentice. She propped it over her shoulder and made sure Alicia was looking at her before she said, “This is the part of my work I really enjoy.”

Then she underwent a startling transformation. She snarled, her eyes bulged, and she hefted the broadax high above her head. She looked more like a savage beast than a human being. She brought the ax down in an arc that was straight and true.

And here, to taunt her again, was the result of that blow.

Karen’s blood-spackled face was her first sight upon awakening. Her friend’s head was on a tray propped on a folding stand next to the bed. The Asian girl’s once gorgeous long hair was sticky with coagulated blood. The vision filled Alicia with shame and grief beyond measure. Hot tears spilled down her face and moistened the dried blood on her pillow.

I did that, she thought.

I killed my friend.

There was no denying it.

She was a monster.

She didn’t deserve to fucking live.

Almost as if sensing her thoughts, Ms. Wickman opened the bedroom door and stepped into the room. Alicia looked at the gun in the woman’s hand with something close to relief. She prayed for a bullet to the brain. For a quick, violent, explosive end to this orgy of terror and loss.

Ms. Wickman smiled at her and set the gun on a bookshelf, then she came to the bed and picked up the straight razor. White teeth sparkled through grinning lips as she said, “I want you to know I’ve enjoyed our time together. I’ve had such great fun.”

Alicia managed a weak “Fuck you.”

The awful woman laughed.

Then she moved to the foot of the bed and slashed through the bonds at Alicia’s feet.

The howls of the shapeshifters grew louder and more frenzied as the convoy of transport trucks wended its way through the dark tunnels. The truck Chad was in was bringing up the rear. He sat on a bench with Lazarus and Jack Paradise in the vehicle’s rear compartment. The opposite bench was filled with guards stripped of their visorhelmets. Jake Barnes was riding up front with the driver. The old man was in communication with the driver of the lead vehicle via walkie-talkie, and he occasionally fed them updates through the small window at the back of the cab.

“The kid’s telling me there’s still no sign of the beasties,” the old man said. The “kid” in question was Todd Haynes, who was at the wheel of the lead vehicle. “He thinks maybe they’re in retreat.”

Chad shook his head. “Wishful thinking.”

Paradise said, “Yeah, they’re louder. Retreat, my ass.”

Chad sighed. “Yeah.”

They would not pass through this dark maze of horrors without first having to survive a brutal, decimating clash of some sort. Chad clutched the machete tighter in his hand, felt its unnatural power suffuse him, and somehow knew he would be safe as long as he possessed this weapon. Nobody had to tell him he’d been given this particular weapon for a reason. He suspected he was meant to use the long, curved blade on the being they called The Master. The suspicion exacerbated the hot lump of fear that sat inside him like the melting core of a destabilized nuclear reactor, making him sweat and twitch.

Jack Paradise nudged Chad with an elbow. “How’re you holding up?”

Chad shrugged. “Given the likelihood of dying in a few minutes, about as well as possible, I guess.”

The set of the ex-soldier’s features was grim. “Hey, Chad, I won’t lie to you. A lot of our people are about to die. The guys ahead of us will take the brunt of the assault and most of the casualties, and they volunteered for that duty. They’re gonna make sure we get you where you have to be.”

Chad sighed.

Another flicker of guilt twisted his insides.

And the howls of the shapeshifters grew louder still.

Dream stood again at the balcony railing, her face turned into a breeze that made her blond hair swirl about her head. The cool air felt good on her body, which was clothed only in a flimsy blue nightgown. The sheer material of the garment felt good, too, like a ghost lover’s wispy embrace. She ran her hands through her hair, sniffed air redolent of rain, and watched the last of the day’s light yield to night’s inexorable descent. Russet hues gave way to charcoal gray, then, finally the black canopy of night. The beauty of the progression made her shiver, and she wrapped her arms tight about her bosom. Her breath caught in her throat and tears welled in her eyes.

She’d just watched the last sunset of her life.

With a last shiver of regret, she turned away from the dark vista of the valley below and returned to the bedroom. King stood shirtless at the fireplace, his back turned to her as he stared at the dancing flames. She approached him and laid a hand between his shoulder blades. He turned into her embrace, wrapped his strong arms around her, and held her close.

“I love you, Dream.”

She felt the erection pushing against his trousers.

“I love you, too.”

But the words were like a blasphemy in her throat.

She was pledging love to a murderer. To a monster. She didn’t love this vile creature. She hated the goddamn thing. Her harrowing trip through the hallway and the humiliating encounter with Ms. Wickman had brought that reality home with a clarity no amount of sex magic could ever obscure.

But her hatred of him was irrelevant. She’d failed her friends, dooming them with her acquiescence to King’s desires. She couldn’t help them now. But she could honor their memory by making sure the same thing never again happened to anyone else. She wasn’t worried about Ms. Wickman or any of King’s other apprentices, sensing they would flounder without their Master around to guide and control them.

She reached into King’s trousers and curled her fingers around his cock, making him groan. She curled a leg around him and laid her head on his chest. His warm body felt good against her, comfortable and safe, a haven from life’s tribulations. She couldn’t imagine a more bitter irony. Despite the revulsion she felt for him, she began to feel aroused.

But that was okay.

She even welcomed it.

She would use sex the way he used it, as a method of control and manipulation. She would ravish him, make him feel so much pleasure he wouldn’t sense her deception until the moment of his death. She kissed him, tasting his tongue, biting his lip, and raking the hard flesh of his back with her nails. She pushed his trousers down and urged him to the floor, where he went without hesitation, lying flat on his back with his penis pointing up at her.

She smiled.

Lifted the hem of her nightgown.

And took control.

For a while.

Eddie’s eyes snapped open as he awoke from another startling dream.

Another dream that maybe wasn’t a dream at all. His eyes sought Giselle, who was sitting at the writing table.

His throat felt tight. “They’re coming,” he rasped. She smiled. “I know.”

The transport truck slammed to a halt, dislodging some of the rear compartment’s occupants from their seats. Chad felt a sense of deja vu as he pitched forward. The machete was jolted from his hand, clattering toward the end of the compartment. He scrambled after the weapon, closed a hand around its handle, and panted.

“What the fuck?”

The voice of Jack Paradise. Panicked, straining at a wirethin edge of tension. It was disconcerting to know that even a man as imposing and stolid as Paradise could experience such terror. Then again, terror was the only rational reaction to what they were hearing.

The howls of before had given way to growls and screams. And tearing sounds. Chad imagined lupine teeth shredding human flesh. He was shaking, his nuts were shriveling, and there was absolutely not a goddamn thing he could do to temper the terror that threatened to swallow him. The sound track of savage slaughter grew more dissonant, a rising crescendo of agony and fear. He wanted out of this truck, wanted to find some dark corner into which he could crawl and hide, then a hand seized the back of his shirt and yanked him to his feet.

He turned to stare into the blazing eyes of Jack Paradise.

“Out of the truck, boys and girls.” He pushed Chad toward the rear of the truck. “We’re on foot from this point on.”

So Chad went, leaping from the truck to the ground, managing to remain upright via some minor miracle. Paradise was next. Then Lazarus. Then the guards streamed out of the truck and took up defensive positions to either side of the vehicle. Lazarus produced a handgun from his waistband and joined them. There was a frozen moment of stillness, during which the surreal nature of the situation caused Chad to believe he was imagining all this. He glanced in the direction from which they’d come, knowing that somewhere back there was a rear guard of banished people making their way on foot through the tunnels, most of them armed only with sticks and knives. If the advance unit failed to overwhelm the howling monstrosities, those people were fucked.

Then the first shotgun blast roared in his ears.

The guards moved deeper into the tunnel, discharging their weapons at a furious rate, and now the tunnels reverberated with the sound of feral agony.

Paradise’s hand was at Chad’s back again.

But he needed no prompting now.

There was really no choice anymore.

He hefted the machete and went after the guards.

Dream screamed and fell against the huge bed.

The Master came up behind her, seized a handful of her hair, yanked her head back, and entered her. The position he’d conquered her with last night. But this experience had none of that encounter’s intoxicating erotic power. There was no subtlety. No gradual increase of ecstasy. This was pure, desperate frenzy, the act of a once-proud creature on the brink of losing control.

She cried now and braced her arms on the bed, cursing herself for imagining she could do to him what he’d done to her.

How naive.

How goddamn naive.

And now he was screaming.

A sound that reached into her and gripped her pounding heart like the ice-cold hands of death.

The creature’s misshapen head loomed in the darkness, its yellow eyes glittering like bar-window neon. Chad loosed a kamikaze yell and charged forward, leaping over a mangled body. The shapeshifter’s snout opened wide, its lips curling away from rows of glistening teeth. It hurtled toward Chad with a speed that would have shamed a greyhound, but Chad had the machete in motiona perfectly timed blow. The blade thunked into the creature’s thickly muscled neck, stopping it in its tracks.

Chad wrenched the blade loose and watched blood pump from the wound with a primal satisfaction that felt at once foreign and familiar, an echo from the collective unconscious-from a time when his ancestors had lived in caves and killed their dinner with spears.

He lifted the machete high over his head and brought it down hard, bisecting the shapeshifter’s head with one devastating blow. The machete’s handle vibrated with power, and the power coursed up his arms, invigorating him and filling him with strength he shouldn’t possess. He yanked the blade out again and kicked the dead shapeshifter’s falling carcass aside.

Another shapeshifter sprang out of the darkness.

Chad moved without thinking, guided by the power suffusing the machete, and the blade penetrated another mound of thick flesh and matted fur, piercing the creature’s galloping heart with the tip of the blade.

The sound of gunfire was loud in the tunnel, explosive and powerful.

And effective.

The passage was riddled with the bodies of fallen beasts. But Chad didn’t envy the firepower of the guards. The weapon in his hand felt like the most potent weapon on earth. And he was its Master.

The ultimate arbiter of life and death.

Then, all at once, there was quiet.

The guns went silent.

Chad stood panting in the tunnel. He turned in a slow circle to survey the carnage around him. He saw the bodies of Todd Haynes and Jake Barnes. The old man had been disemboweled. Todd’s throat was a bloody mess. Wanda stood weeping over him. Jack Paradise was slumped against the tunnel wall, blood pumping from a wound at his shoulder.

“Keep moving, Chad,” the soldier told him. “You’re not done yet.”

But Chad felt rooted to the spot. The shapeshifters were all dead. He’d killed the last of them. But the victory was spoiled by the terrible knowledge of its cost. Most of the people who’d worked so hard to get him this far lay dead and dying around him. He thought of Cindy. Saw the gun blow her head apart. A fury filled him, and he clenched the machete’s handle so hard he thought it might shatter beneath the force of his grip.

So much death.

So much to avenge.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

Lazarus. Somehow the old singer had made it through this without a scratch. His continued health was pure luck. He’d waded into the battle as unhesitatingly as any of them. “Come on, friend. I’ll get you the rest of the way there.”

Chad looked at Paradise. “You should be there, Jack.”

The ex-soldier flashed a grim smile. “Nah, think I’m sitting this one out, buddy.” He grimaced and slumped farther down the wall. “You don’t have time to waste with me. Get your ass in gear.”

Lazarus retrieved a fallen machine gun. He ejected the empty ammo clip and inserted a fresh one. He seemed way more familiar with the operation of such a thing than a former reveler in the summer of love should have been. Chad could only wonder what the singer’s still-devoted legion of fans would make of this scene.

Wanda turned away from Todd’s mutilated body. “You fuckers aren’t going without me.”

Paradise spoke through gritted teeth. “Just go, all of you.”

So, accompanied by the handful of guards still standing, they went.

And soon they reached the end of the tunnel.

They stood at the beginning of an expanse of cracked tile and cinder-block walls. A thick metal door stood open against the far wall. One of the walls bore a scrawled slogan: “Lazarus is the way.”

Chad led the way across the expanse of tile.

Following the path a desperate slave named Eddie King had taken a day earlier.

Dream sat cross-legged on the bed, shivering with her arms folded over her breasts. The Master was pacing the room, crossing and recrossing it in long strides. His nude body was a roiling mass of spasms and nervous energy. He was distraught. He was raging against everything. The gods. The people of Below. His own mortality. He was a volatile mass of dark energy. He was furious.

He was afraid.

“I can’t do it, bitch! I can’t do it!”

Dream flinched, keeping her head down. She couldn’t bear to look at him, she was so afraid. Still, she found one more reservoir of courage. She managed to say, “Yes, you can.”

He abruptly stopped pacing. He crossed the room in less than a heartbeat, seized her hair again, and screamed, “I CANT!”

Dream trembled. “You can.”

He screamed again, but relinquished her hair. “You don’t understand, Dream. You bitch, you’re just too stupid to understand. The gods have abandoned me. My only way to paradise is a sacrifice I can no longer deliver!”

His eyes brimmed with moisture. The presence of tears seemed to offend and disgust him, and Dream wondered if this thing had ever cried-if it had ever known grief.

Maybe now it knew a kind of grief.

The self-pitying kind.

“Something’s happening Below. Something momentous. Something I can’t stop.” He sounded like a helpless child, whining over a toy taken away. “I can’t do what I planned to do. It’s too late. The banished people are coming to the surface.”

He shook his head at the absurd wonder of it.

Dream climbed off the bed. The soiled blue nightgown fluttered around her waist, and she smoothed it down in one deft motion. She steeled herself, willed her legs to be steady, and went to him. She pulled him into an embrace, stroked his back, and whispered the things he needed to hear.

“Substitute me for the people of Below.”

His head fell against her, and he sobbed.

“Sacrifice me. Then go to paradise alone.”

His body shook with the force of his sobs, and she was again reminded of an inconsolable child.

“But… but I love you.”

Bullshit.

You miserable, selfish, evil piece of fucking shit.

She said, “I love you, too. So … doesn’t that make me worthy… of sacrifice?”

He went still in her arms.

Dream smiled.

His thoughts were almost audible.

Chad and his ragtag army swarmed through the abandoned security office, then into the outer room that was only a basement in the true house. Only a short time ago, The Master’s psychic eruptions had rendered it a surreal obstacle course for a desperate man fleeing the hounds of hell. But the magic was gone from this place.

A short flight of stairs led to a wooden door that stood ajar.

Chad took them two at a time

And was inside The Master’s kitchen within moments.

Wanda and the old singer were right behind him.

Then the guards were in, spreading out and brandishing their weapons.

Alicia experienced a momentary surge of joy as Ms. Wickman freed her of her bonds.

Here was the chance she’d been waiting for.

The opportunity to fight back.

To make this wicked bitch pay for her sins.

But that was not to be.

All the revenge fantasies faded the moment she tried to move. The pain held her down as effectively as a slab of cement. Every open wound puckered, pulsing with pain and incipient infection. So she stayed where she was, unmoving, silent tears of helplessness sliding down her cheeks. She sensed the evil woman had returned to finish her off, and she could only hope the process wouldn’t be a protracted one.

Ms. Wickman lifted her off the bed, cradled her battered body with unnatural effortlessness, and carried her to a chair. She dropped her in the chair with a sadistic lack of concern for her tender condition, and Alicia screamed at the shock waves of pain that rocked her body.

Alicia watched Ms. Wickman open the razor.

The woman approached her.

Slowly.

Drawing it out.

Enjoying Alicia’s terror.

The sharp blade gleamed.

Alicia felt a strange intimacy with that blade. They were so well acquainted. Cutting edge to soft, yielding flesh. So she awaited the blade’s final, merciless caress, closing her eyes as it insinuated itself against her throat.

She felt the cold metal press.

But then the pressure was gone.

Alicia opened her eyes and saw something unfamiliar in Ms. Wickman’s eyes.

Something like … fear.

Alicia became aware of an external sound.

Something outside the room.

Something approaching.

Ms. Wickman’s gaze was riveted to the door as she backed away from her victim. Alicia saw the woman swallow a lump in her throat. She felt a mad urge to scream at the bitch, to ask her how it felt to be afraid.

HOW DOES IT FEEL, YOU HELL-BOUND CUNT!?

But she didn’t have the strength.

Ms. Wickman never looked at her as she retreated to the other end of the room. She stood with her back against the far wall, her eyes screwed tightly shut. Then something strange was happening to her. Her image grew hazy, wavering like something barely glimpsed over the horizon on a muggy summer’s day. The section of wall she was leaning against shimmered. Some weird kind of transmutation was happening, the substance of reality altering around the woman to allow-PASSAGE.

And then she was gone.

She’d gotten away.

The wall looked normal again.

Alicia sobbed. The memory of her rigid belief in a world of solid reality reared up to taunt her.

She’d thought she was so smart.

So levelheaded.

But she’d known nothing at all.

She didn’t want to live in a world where the sort of things she’d seen and endured were possible. She’d survived the ordeal with Ms. Wickman, a miracle others might embrace, but she knew she couldn’t live with the images in her head.

Which left her with only one choice.

To obliterate them.

To that end, fate had finally smiled upon her.

Ms. Wickman had left something behind.

Alicia gripped the armrests of the chair, gathered her strength, and lifted herself up.

She went to the bookshelf and retrieved the gun.

Then she hobbled back to the chair.

Sat down.

And put the gun in her mouth.

Dream’s heart fluttered at the sight of the long, ornate swords brandished by The Master. He’d retrieved them from his study. She saw right away that these were no ordinary swords. The metal no ordinary metal. The blades gave off heat, pulsed with energy. He proffered one to Dream, who took it with reluctance-but reluctance turned to eagerness as she felt the unnatural energy generated by the sword surge into her body, triggering an endorphin rush stronger and more sustained than anything she’d experienced through drugs or carnal sensation.

The Master smiled.

And beckoned her to the center of the room.

He knelt, positioning the tip of the blade against his chest.

Dream knelt opposite him, mimicking his positioning of the sword.

The blade’s tip thrummed against her with its strange magic, suffusing her with ecstatic joy and a marvelous sense of peace. She could almost feel the blade pulling itself into her, parting her flesh without assistance.

YES!

This was what she’d always needed.

Tears of joy ran down her face.

Blood trickled from the nick between her breasts.

The Master smiled. “I really do love you, Dream.”

Dream smiled, too. “I know.”

And maybe he really did.

In a really fucked-up, nontraditional kind of way.

The only way he could.

Not that it mattered.

Only his death mattered.

Our deaths, she reminded herself.

The Master slipped into the Trance of meditation.

The state others could access only by ingesting the plant of the same name.

Loth! he intoned.

The answer was immediate.

You have failed us.

The Master’s ethereal laughter resounded in the shimmering realm.

But I have another offering for you!

And now Loth laughed.

Do you?

The Master’s disembodied sigh rolled through the alternate plane like a gust of hot wind across a desert plain.

I do.

And the admission that followed was almost-almost- bittersweet.

The apprentices occupied the top, most exalted rung of the ladder in The Master’s hierarchy of servitude. For many of them, life as an apprentice was good. Very good. Quite a few of them considered their place here preferable to what they’d known in the “normal” world. Here was a place where they could indulge their sickest desires-and never fear for a moment the specter of legal intervention or retribution.

When these people sensed the unusual disturbance occurring in The Master’s home, they never suspected what was coming. The Master was all-powerful. The Master would always protect them. They had nothing to fear.

So they poured from their upper-floor rooms to see what the commotion was all about.

And learned, too late, that maybe they weren’t so safe after all.

Giselle seized Eddie about the wrist and dragged him out of the room. They were in a hallway clogged with black clad apprentices before he even had a chance to protest.

He couldn’t know, of course, that this was as Giselle had planned it.

She had plied him with the sex magic.

Had provided him the exotic thrills of his darkest fantasies, the ones he never spoke of, that he could never admit aloud, scenarios of bondage and submission.

And it had worked.

Rendered him pliant.

Suggestible.

But she’d thought it wise to leave Eddie in the dark until just moments before the time arrived for him to do what he had to do.

That time was now.

Eddie flinched at the sight of all the apprentices. “Jesus-what’s going on here?”

“Can’t you smell it?” Giselle smiled. “Revolution is in the air.”

Then she was pulling him through the clot of people in the hallway.

Toward The Master’s chambers.

Chad made the second-floor landing faster than he would have thought possible, taking the stairs three at a time. The machete blade glowed with heat, shimmering like a precious ore exposed to a heat beyond fathoming. It seemed to pull him along, taking him where he needed to go through some almost sentient alchemical instinct. He stood panting on the landing and scowled at the wary faces of the apprentices.

Lazarus made the landing a moment later.

He took one look at the faces turned toward him.

Saw the corruption that pulsed behind their shiny eyes like bloated parasites. And opened fire.

Giselle threw open the massive doors to The Master’s chambers and Eddie stumbled in after her. He gaped at the sight that greeted him. Two people kneeling on the floor, two lethal-looking swords pressed to their chests.

A suicide pose.

A hari-kari pose.

But that wasn’t what shocked him. What shocked him was the people poised to do themselves in. The guy, who he deduced right away was The Master, didn’t look the way he had looked the last time Eddie had seen him.

In fact, he looked exactly like Eddie.

Only bigger.

And the other was the woman from his dreams.

“Dream,” he breathed.

Yes. Dream. So he had seen the future! Only, she didn’t appear to be morphing shapeshifter-style. There was, however, some change under way behind those heartbreaking, sky-blue eyes.

Something tragic.

Eddie was so saddened by this beautiful woman’s obviously damaged soul that he at first took little note of The Master’s newly focused attention.

On him.

NO!

Dream wanted to scream when the son of a bitch began to stand up.

So close!

She’d been so close to ending his obscenity of a life.

She glanced in the direction of the disturbance, took little note of the pretty, pale girl standing next to King’s doppelganger. The man was a grungier, less thickly muscled version. There was something else different about the intruder.

The unmistakable humanity evident in his eyes.

She moved on instinct when The Master advanced on the man.

The blade seemed to move of its own accord, swooping in a perfect arc toward the creature’s perfectly exposed throat. The blade’s power filled her with a galvanizing energy. She could feel it coursing through her veins like liquid light. She saw how it would happen in her mind, the blade taking his head off at the shoulders.

So she was shocked when his free hand halted her sword’s path at mid-arc.

She realized how strong he was then.

Stronger than she’d ever imagined.

Stronger than nature.

His head swiveled slowly in her direction, turning farther than a normal human head ought to turn. His face was a twisted mask of loathing and-oddly, incredibly-heartbroken betrayal.

Dream wavered for a moment.

Just a moment.

I could have been his Queen, she thought.

In that moment, just that slightest, almost immeasurable nanosecond, she felt she could have become what the creature wanted.

A sadistic mistress every bit his equal.

Reigning here on earth and, later, in the afterlife.

The moment passed.

She would rather die than live a life that repudiated every good thing she’d ever believed in.

Hell, she would just rather die.

Some things never change.

So she relinquished her hold on the sword, felt the unnatural energy blip out of her with a strange fizz, and stepped back, tore open her blue nightgown, and turned her head to the ceiling to await the final killing blow.

The Master let the sword that had almost decapitated him slide from his hand.

He grasped the other sword, the one with which he’d meant to take his own life, and readied it for another use.

The final destruction of the bitch who’d brought this ruin upon him.

Eddie wanted to help her.

To stop this offense against God and nature.

Dream!

She couldn’t die.

But Giselle’s strong hand at his shoulder restrained him. He tried to wrench free, but she was implacable. She shook something from the sleeve of her dress and pressed it into his hand. His fingers curled around it, and he looked down to see what it was.

A dagger.

It vibrated in his hand, pulsed with a strange energy.

Giselle whispered in his ear, “Sanctified by the gods. His death spirits. He knew you were here, Eddie, but he never knew what was in my heart.”

The hand holding the dagger shook.

Eddie strained at the leash.

“Do what you came here for, Eddie. Go to your destiny”

She released him.

And Eddie leapt forward.

The Master was so intent on the murderous rage consuming him, this need to remove every trace of this lying whore from existence, to obliterate her, that he wasn’t aware of the danger hurtling toward him until it was too late.

The dagger penetrated his throat with an electric jolt.

He tumbled to the floor with the human intruder on top of him. A detached part of his mind reeled at the layers upon layers of deceit heaped upon him tonight. Giselle, his pet, had brought this thing here, had set it upon him. He cried out in agony and frustration-frustration at his inability to have foreseen this.

There’d been no hint of any of it.

Not of Giselle’s betrayal.

Not of Dream’s true intentions.

And, most damnably, not of the momentous changes occurring Below.

He raged into the abyss, that horribly echoing chamber of reality’s darkest plane, cried out against the unfairness of it all. He flung the intruder aside and staggered to his feet, casting about for his fallen sword. He was weakened, had perhaps received a mortal blow, but he remained stronger by far than all these infidels combined.

Dream saw her window of opportunity.

It was small.

Maybe too small.

The asshole was looking for his sword. But he was wounded, badly wounded, and he was so enraged he didn’t see that the thing he wanted was right at his feet. Dream already had the other sword back in her own hands.

She didn’t wait.

Not one moment.

The supernatural energy filled her again, with strength-and with the knowledge that she was stronger than he was now.

That he was fucked.

She drove the blade through his chest and pushed it all the way out through his back. He threw his head back and roared like a wounded dragon, a sound so mighty it blotted out the rest of existence for a moment. Dream stumbled away from him, clamping hands over her ears and willing the sound to stop.

He staggered after her.

He was dying.

But he clearly meant to take her with him. She was cool with that. Death couldn’t obliterate the happiness she felt.

She’d won.

And he’d never hurt anyone else again.

Chad charged over the machine-gunned bodies that filled the hallway, threading his way through them with the ease of an accomplished obstacle course runner. He only dimly perceived the shouts of the others behind him. He was rushing toward something, and there was nothing that could hold him back.

The blade knew the way.

The open doors of a massive bedroom stood open before him.

So many open doors tonight.

All of them leading him here.

To his destiny.

Giselle smiled when she saw Chad.

The last element of the dream trinity.

She saw him pull up at the sight that greeted him upon his entry into the room.

And she gave him a little psychic push.

A nudge he never suspected had an external origin.

GO.

Then he was moving again.

Dream.

Chad’s heart hammered, and unalloyed joy suddenly pulsed through him.

GO, came the voice he assumed was that of his own belligerent psyche.

The blade carried Chad forward again.

Rose up of its own volition.

And thunked into the back of the creature threatening Dream.

The Master staggered away from Dream. His hands clawed impotently at the blade wedged like a fishhook in his back. The convulsions that gripped him made the task impossible. His head wobbled on his shoulders like a kite caught in a high wind, and the rest of his body shook like a condemned man riding the lightning. There was a stink of sulfur and burning meat, and his eyes radiated light, reflecting a fire burning from the inside out. His body assumed the consistency of melting wax, and the room’s other occupants began to back as far away from him as the walls would allow.

The strange convulsions increased in intensity.

The creature became a barely discernible blur in the middle of the room.

Then there was a pause.

A blip in reality.

A held breath.

Followed by a wet explosion.

Chunks of the creature’s body thumped against the walls, and a rain of blood and vaporized organs fell on the witnesses to the thing’s demise.

Dream blinks. It’s not right. This isn’t right. He’s dead. But she’s not. She should be gone, too. Shouldn’t be here. But-Chad is here. He looks … changed somehow.

She finds herself accepting his embrace, and she turns her face into the warm crook of his neck and begins to cry. He holds her tight. So tight it feels as if he’ll never let go of her.

EPILOGUE

The Master’s death brought about the return of the true house, stripping away the layers of illusion to reveal an old, modestly-sized dwelling in an advanced stage of disrepair. The dimensions of the house appeared to contract, but the impression of shrinkage was yet another illusion-the structure’s drastically reduced size was just the restoration of reality. Evidence of the vanquished power was manifested in other ways, some subtle, some obvious, like the shapeshifters, who’d only been humans artificially endowed with the trappings of lycanthropy-they reverted to human form now, including the few that hadn’t perished in the tunnel massacre.

The banished people of Below returned to the surface world in a steady stream throughout the night. News of The Master’s demise elicited smiles and cheers, and some of the refugees from that netherworld sought a degree of vengeance by taking their anger out on the handful of apprentices who’d managed to avoid being machine-gunned in the second-floor hallway. By dawn of the next day, the remaining apprentices were all dead, victims of rough justice. Most of them were lynched-their bodies dangled from tree limbs, twisting in the sturdy morning breeze.

Chad didn’t participate in the reprisals.

But he made no effort to halt them.

The apprentices were sociopathic monsters masquerading as real humans-the continued functioning of their lungs was only a waste of perfectly good oxygen.

Let ‘em twist.

He supposed he might even have helped string a few of them up had he not been so completely focused on Dream. He allowed her to cry in his arms for a long time following The Master’s death. She felt so fragile in his arms, like a bird with a broken wing, and all he cared about anymore was taking care of her. He vowed to become the kind of friend she’d always needed. Perhaps, eventually, he could be more than that to her, but, for now, that was all that mattered.

Being a friend.

And seeing her through this season in hell.

Dream didn’t want to ever leave his embrace. She clung to him the way a drowning woman would cling to a piece of driftwood. Desperately. Gripping him by the shoulders so tight that her fingers felt welded to his flesh. As if she were trying to merge with his flesh, become one with him, to seek some ultimate solace in his new strength. Because he was a changed man.

That so complete a transformation could have occurred over a twenty-four-hour period was nothing short of astonishing.

A miracle.

It was like the old Chad, the one she remembered from high school, had been magically restored to her. But this transformation was nothing as simple as that. He was different now. More compassionate. More empathetic. She didn’t need him to tell her these things, to claim that he’d changed, and she didn’t even need the current demonstration of concern.

She could feel the change in him.

She could reach into him and touch it.

The realization was only a momentary surprise. The strange, unknowable creature that had ruled this place had been a master weaver of illusions, but the power that created those illusions had been very real. And he’d told her the truth about her own abilities; they were vibrant within her even now, stirring to life, becoming stronger, striving to become something … new.

Dream meant to develop these abilities.

And use them in a positive way.

She owed that much to Alicia-and to the memory of her other dead friends. A morning search of the second-floor rooms had a revealed a number of shocking, repulsive things, so many it was almost possible to become inured to depravity. But just a glance inside the room where her friends had died had been enough to repudiate that notion. The image of Karen’s decapitated head on a tray was awful enough, but the thing she found most disturbing was the way Alicia had died.

At her own hand.

With Shane’s Glock.

The way she herself had intended to die so recently. The stark, irrevocable fact of Alicia’s suicide repulsed Dream, offended something primal within her. A vital, compassionate woman-a force for good-had been removed from the world, and she would never return. Could never return. It wasn’t right. It should never have happened, and there was no way to change it. It made Dream feel useless. Powerless. And perhaps even a little angry at a friend who now would never have a chance to fulfill her life’s rich promise. The frustration Dream felt was so intense, she sensed she was experiencing what she would later see as a watershed psychological event in her life.

She would be a long time overcoming her grief-perhaps would never overcome so deep a reservoir of loss and regret-but she doubted she would ever entertain suicidal thoughts again.

She had survived.

She had Chad.

And a new sense of purpose-to do good, to make the world a better place.

Those things had to count for something.

As the morning deepened and the sun rose higher in the sky, the people of Below, the former banished people, began the long trek down the mountain. An exultant Lazarus led the way, and he sang to the heavens in his rich baritone, a glorious, soulful sound, a bluesy cry to the angels.

A victory cry.

Hearing it made Chad shiver.

It was the sound of freedom.

Of limitless possibilities.

Arm in arm with Dream, he followed the old singer down the mountain.

He caught the eye of a bandaged and groggy Jack Paradise, who was being supported by the able Wanda Lewis, aka “Wicked Wanda.”

“What do you think happened to that girl, the mute?”

The ex-soldier shrugged, winced. “Fucked if I know. I would like to have gotten my hands on her, though-bitch did a number on me when I first came here.”

A number of the formerly banished people had less-than-fond memories of the mute Mistress, who’d disappeared with the man whose appearance The Master had mimicked during the last day of his life. But a thorough search of the house and environs revealed nary a trace of her. It was as if she’d vanished into thin air.

Just like that other woman …

Somewhere in the Midwest, a black Bentley rolled through the chilly night. A woman in dark sunglasses was at the wheel. A nervous hitchhiker, a teenage girl, sat in the front passenger seat, fidgeting, growing more concerned. The creepy old chick at the wheel had barely acknowledged her presence since picking her up, and now they’d passed the place where she’d asked to be dropped off.

But she was afraid to say anything about it.

There was something … not right… about the woman.

She was smartly dressed in a black business suit. A subtle string of white pearls glittered at her neck, and her dark hair was pulled back in a bun. She looked as if she should be the headmistress at an exclusive, ivy-covered prep school for girls. The hitchhiker imagined being summoned to the woman’s office for, oh, talking in class.

She could see the woman striking her hands with a ruler.

Or worse.

The hitchhiker shuddered.

And prayed the woman would let her out soon.

But the Bentley rolled on.

And the night grew colder.

BRYAN SMITH’S mind became warped at an early age by afternoon Creature Feature shows. Later on, the novels of Stephen King and the films of John Carpenter solidified a fledgling desire to create scary stories of his own, so blame them. Previous publications include Under the Skin and Grimm Awakening. He lives in middle Tennessee with an array of pets and his wife, Rachael. He has been known to imbibe the occasional pint or two of stout or ale. He can be reached at fearscribetn@aol.com, or visit his home on the web at www.houseofblood.net.