Dreamonologist

by Gregory Pettit

  So we filed dutifully from the room. Vir had put on a brave face for the meeting, but I could see the lines of pain that showed at the corner of his eyes, and he excused himself to head to one of the ready rooms to catch a nap. Paula, of course, didn’t deign to speak to me, so I made a beeline back to my desk. I’d been working nearly an hour on adjudication criteria for a bulk order of myrrh (what the hell was that for?) when I felt a strong hand clamp down on my shoulder. I caught a reflection in my monitor and tensed, but forced myself to turn slowly. I didn’t want to show any fear to the man behind me—I had the feeling that he was just as much a predator as any bloodsucking fiend, and no predator respects weakness.

  “Good afternoon, Edward,” I said. “I’m surprised to see you so…early.”

  “Mr. Adler. I understand that you’ve had contact with an acquaintance of mine. This rather changes the nature of our previous discussion. I was hoping that we might have a more…productive chat in light of this new information, ja?” Sloane said, his broad forehead crinkling as he pasted on a toothy smile. It reminded me of a shark.

  “I’ll need to be back for three.”

  “Mr. Adler, I’m sure that I won’t take so much of your time.”

  So I pressed send on an email to Jack about some photos, and at Edward’s suggestion we visited an American restaurant on Cooper Lane above the Rising Sun pub. We were less than two hundred yards from St. Paul’s, but there wasn’t a tourist in sight, the restaurant being full of other business lunchers, and no one paid us any special attention. We made small talk, and I ordered a rack of Memphis-style ribs before the monster hunter got down to business. “You have seen Cooper twice since we met?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, but that isn’t the only time. He was the person that interjected himself into the operation to apprehend the Choker.”

  Sloane’s nostrils flared, and he visibly bristled at my words. “That thing is no person. Gerald Cooper is the very definition of a monster, and he must be destroyed.”

  “Cooper delenda est?” I quipped.

  To my surprise, Edward threw his great, leonine head back and roared with laughter. When he focused on me again, his blue eyes almost seemed…merry. “Ahh…it is nice to meet a young man who can hoist me on my own petard. But, Mr. Adler, it is true. We must destroy Cooper. He is the key to solving the vampire issue permanently. As long as he is free, we are at risk of an uncontrolled, uncontrollable outbreak.”

  “I’ve probably killed two or three hundred vampires in the Dreamscape. I know that there’ll be differences between them and the real thing, but it doesn’t seem like it should be that hard. Cooper, for example, went up like a torch in the sun. How is that uncontrollable?”

  Edward looked at me and took a drink of brandy before speaking. “Let me fill you in on some of those differences between the phantasms you fight and the real thing. Cooper is a master vampire. What that means is that he can make more of his kind, and he can control those that he makes and any that they in turn make. Exponential growth.”

  I thought about the information for a minute, but it wasn’t adding up. “If that is true, then why aren’t we hip-deep in vampires? Why haven’t they hunted down and devoured every human?”

  Sloane nodded. “A very good question. And it gets to the heart of what a vampire is. Like all things, the curse of the vampire is rooted in science. Some of it is science that we don’t understand yet, but what I and other researchers have come to understand is that vampires are attuned to an antientropic dimension. It is a place where the natural tendency is for order, stability, and longevity. It is that connection that gives the vampire its powers: to stop aging, to heal wounds, to mold the world around the creature to its will, for muscles to be developed that allow the creature to move faster, be stronger. It is all down to the attunement.”

  “So why does that stop them from spreading like a cold on an airplane?” I asked.

  Sloane drank some more brandy while I gnawed on an excellent pork rib, and he made me wait nearly a minute before answering. “It is obvious, Mr. Adler. The connection runs through the master. He can only control so many lesser vampires at once, so most masters limit the number that they allow to be infected. On top of that, the more vampires there are, the weaker each individual lesser vampire is. So you see, it is a self-regulating system. Except Gerald Cooper refuses to self-regulate. He dreams of glory and power—and he’ll brook no competition. He wants London to run red.”

  I ate my food to buy some time to think about Sloane’s answer. It fit in with some of the facts that I’d observed: Cooper had killed the Choker, whom he may have seen as competition. The vampire had definitely displayed the powers that had been described, and the explanation seemed plausible. There was just one piece that didn’t fit.

  “Why is the vampire so concerned about you getting the Sigilum?”

  Sloane smiled, displaying perfectly white teeth, and I thought again of a predator. I couldn’t let my guard down. “Because he should be,” the monster hunter said with a tone of satisfaction. “A Sigilum Dei Aemath, properly made, can be used to control any creature. If I have that, then I can control Cooper and put an end to his threat. I’m sure that you can understand why this is so important and why the Chapter Master is willing to…temper his usual proclivities in regard to your kind in exchange for your help.”

  Sloane had tried to butter me up with the meal, but his real offer wasn’t very compelling. I’d been sold a pack of lies by much more talented men than he, and I had something he wanted. “Why should I trust you? You’re not really offering much more than ‘help us or we’ll lock you up.’ I didn’t agree to that when Mia offered it, and you know it. I want you to match the deal I made with her. If I help you clear off the vampires and the Escapees, then I want a promise that I’ll be given assistance in hunting down my daughter. Getting her back is the most important thing in the world to me. I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back.”

  Sloane nodded. “I know that you still have some time to consider, and you’ve mostly seen me talk. Come with me tonight. I know that you, too, are a hunter of things that go bump in the night. Together we will hunt down one of the last Escapees, and you will get experience far beyond that facile and weak ‘training’ that Mia is providing. Then you will see what kind of man I am and what kind of man you can be, and we can speak more of the Sigilum.”

  “Yeah…about that—what will happen to the Sigilum after you’ve used it?”

  Sloane raised his eyebrows. “Ah, that’s a topic for tonight, Mr. Adler.” I watched him drop a handful of twenties on the table and walk away, his rolling gait looser and springier than it had any right to be. He looked over his shoulder. “Will I see you tonight?”

  I was very nervous about going anywhere with this man, who had threatened me in the past and was working for the bigoted Chapter Master, but I knew deep down that I’d be going in the end. I had too many questions and he had too many answers for me to do anything else. I nodded like a bobblehead. “Ja…er, yes.”

  “Sehr gut. Well, say hello to dear Henry for me.”

  Shit.

  Chapter 15

  1600–1700, Sunday, June 19, 2016

  We arrived at Hampton Court Palace’s sprawling grounds around noon. Huge ramparts of red brick reared in front of us as we faux casually strolled across a bridge lined with heraldic beasts—unicorns, griffins, basilisks, harpies, and more. I wondered how many of those monsters would turn out to be real. With my luck, all of them, and it would be my job to hunt them down. With a toothpick. I was trying to distract myself, but Sloane’s last words echoed in my head—how much did the monster hunter know?

  “Hey, can we expense this?” Vir said, interrupting my train of thought. When no one answered him, he continued, “Seriously. It was like seventeen pounds to get in here, twenty pounds to get into Windsor Castle. It’s not like secret societies pay well, amiright?” I glanced at Vir and noticed him rubbing his wounded arm. I thought he looked nervous,
and I had to remind myself that confronting a hostile, dangerous, magical entity was a rare and frightening occasion for him. He probably felt around me the way I did around Sloane—like I was a newbie, way out of my depth.

  We spent a couple of hours wandering the palace grounds, and I even snapped off a few pictures with my phone to show Dana. We’d done Windsor, but Hampton Court was a beast to get to by public transport from West London. Vir was sharing his culinary agonies—“But if I had a ham sandwich without mayo, then I could eat a bowl of soup too, and still be within my daily calorie limit holy shit he’s over there!”—when we finally found Henry. Vir whirled with his good arm outstretched so that he managed to whack me in my sore shoulder. I lurched to the side, cursing, and knocked Agent Smith to the ground.

  “You filthy dolt, Adler. Don’t touch me again. Senior Penitent Sharma, you need to apprehend Henry immediately!” Paula snapped, slapping away the hand that I had proffered to help her up.

  Stung by her words, I was about to throw back a biting retort, something about Paula’s hand still having blood on it for her failure with the Protean, but I heard Vir’s voice whispering into my ear, “I can’t do this. Help me, man. He’s over there—in the maze.”

  Of course he was in the maze. Vir was referring to an ancient, trapezoidal maze made of yew trees that had been planted over three hundred years ago. People had been known to get trapped in there for hours. Even worse, I’d had to deal with half a dozen Maze Runner dreams when that damned movie came out, and I’d gotten a lifetime’s fill of labyrinths. Yuck. Why couldn’t Henry have decided to loiter in the cafe or next to a sun-dappled, burbling fountain? “While Vir is trying to catch Henry, I’ll go over to the maze to block the entrance, just in case Henry tries to run for it,” I said for Paula’s benefit. She squinted at me in what I assumed to be suspicion, but she sat next to Vir and, gingerly, put an arm around him. Immediately Vir changed from a weird guy sitting on the ground to one half of an uninteresting couple.

  “Henry? Henry Tudor?” I said quietly into the empty air near the entrance to the maze.

  “Ahh…tis ye again. The young slayer of monsters,” I heard a deep voice say from empty air. I managed not to jump, mostly through the expedient of being too sore and tired to react.

  “You need to be quiet so that that woman doesn’t hear you,” I said between clenched teeth while peering aimlessly at the yew trees in front of me.

  “Her? She’s got none of the canny power, boy. She’ll not be able to hear mine words. You, though, are one of the few who can. So if your little brown friend”—I cringed, but he was five hundred years old—“fears us, I’ll just have to give my warning to you. You were not afraid to face the leech, and your heart is true, so hear my tale and my warning for you.

  “My problems all started with that witch, Anne Boleyn. I’m not exaggerating either, boy. That woman really was a practitioner of the dark arts—at least in my world,” he said.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Yes, I meant what I said. I’m not from your world. At least not from this version of it, but I’m getting ahead of myself. You see, I was a devoted Catholic and loved my first wife, Catherine, but she couldn’t give me a son. So I made my terrible mistake. In my cups, I spoke rashly to Catherine about her inability to provide me a male heir. Her lady, Anne, overheard us.”

  I noticed that the late monarch’s words weren’t actually registering in my ears; instead, they appeared directly in my head, and maybe that was why he seemed to be speaking modern English. As the king continued speaking, images formed in my mind’s eye, and it was more like I was recollecting my own memory than having a story told to me. Belatedly, I tried to interject, to make Mia’s request, but I found myself sucked into the memory…

  ◆◆◆

  I’d had the servants allow the hearth fire to burn low by the time Anne found me in my fourth-favorite sitting room in the palace at Whitehall. I’d been reading a treatise on jousting when the young woman rapped on the door and stuck her head in.

  “Good evening, Your Majesty. I couldn’t help hearing your complaint against my lady tonight,” she said, letting herself into the room without even a by-your-leave. I wish to the God that I’ll never meet that I’d acted on my impulse to tell the impudent woman to go away, but I thought that perhaps Catherine had sent her to me on a pretext.

  “Indeed, a most unfortunate slip of the tongue. Please convey our most sincere apologies to my queen,” I said, but instead of carrying out my command, she took a seat near me and leaned in much closer than propriety would allow.

  Now, I’d had a dalliance with her sister, Mary, but being honest, I wasn’t interested in the much-plainer Anne. Therefore, I opened my mouth to order her out, but she gave voice to the one thing sure to get my attention. “I can guarantee you a son,” she said, her dark hair casting deep shadows around her face.

  “I already have Henry Fitzroy; I don’t need another bastard,” I said, referring to the strapping young lad of twelve years that I’d gotten upon my mistress, Elizabeth Blount.

  “Ahh…well, if you’d agree to provide me with but a few drops of your blood, then I’ll cast a spell that will guarantee you a legitimate male heir,” she said. I looked at the woman, mouth agape. All knew in my world that the power of witchcraft was real, but still it was death to be caught for a witch. Yet here was Anne, confessing herself to me. I stared at her and couldn’t help but notice the moles on her face and neck—devil’s marks, we called them. She put her hand, bearing six fingers, on mine, and I felt a thrill run up my arm. I knew that she was telling the truth. She had the power to do this thing, yet I hesitated.

  “If I do as you suggest, will you promise to me that I shall end my days upon this world with my beloved Catherine, yet still be blessed with a legitimate male heir?” I asked.

  “Your Majesty, I pledge to you upon my power that you will be married to Catherine when your time on this world ends and that you shall have your male heir,” she said, her dark eyes shining in the glowing embers of the fire.

  “Then pray, God forgive me. I accept.” And so saying, I grabbed my eating knife and slit the base of my thumb, pressing on the cut to draw out a few ruby droplets.

  I had thought that perhaps Anne would ghoulishly lap up the red liquid, but instead, obviously prepared, she pulled out a small glass phial. She deftly collected my donation and left the room without another word, only the swishing of her maroon dress puncturing the silence.

  Not sure what to make of the episode, I laid myself down next to Catherine shortly thereafter. I nuzzled in close to my wife. She was a few years older than I, but she wouldn’t have fallen pregnant seven times had I not found her comely, clever, and Christian in all things. I fell asleep with the scent of her copper tresses in my face—for the last time.

  I knew instantly that something was wrong when I awoke, for not only was I not in my bedchamber, but the sallow skin and bony figure pressed against me were not those of my wife! It was Anne. I sprang out of bed. “Woman, what have you done? How have I gotten here?” I cried.

  Anne rolled over, her pinched face grinning like the cat that had got the cream. “Is that any way to talk to your queen?” she said.

  I was confused, “You know full well that Catherine is my wife!” I shouted so loudly that I feared that my guards might come.

  Anne laughed, a melodious sound that belied her next, cruel words. “She isn’t your wife in this world. I am. I will give you the sons that I promised you.” And I understood that I had been tricked. The witch had kept to the letter of her promise.

  “No, I’ll have you burned for a witch!” I thundered.

  “In this world? I think not,” she said, calmly. “Sit.” I felt my limbs rebel against my will, and I crashed into a chair. She explained that this new world was one of infinitely many and that she had used her craft to find one that suited her purpose: where magic was strong and she and I had been wed. Then, by darkest arts, she had moved our essential beings
, our souls, to this other world, taking over their lives. I tried to move, to rail against her evil, but her will held me captive.

  And thus, I spent years as her slave. But she didn’t bear me a son. First, she bore me a daughter, Elizabeth, a little rival for my own Mary. Then she had a miscarriage, and I could see in her eyes not the sadness that I’d learned to console with Catherine, but fear. After she again didn’t bring a baby to term, she seemed frantic. Finally, one day while sitting on my throne, a puppet to her will, I heard Anne scream. It was the sound that one makes when they realize that their plans, their desires, their hopes have turned to ash forever. Three is a mystical number, and with that third miscarriage her promise to me, made upon her own power, was broken. I felt my freedom return to me like I was rising after a long fever.

  My marriage to Anne didn’t last long after that. I had her thrown into the Tower on charges of adultery. It turned out that witchcraft was no cause for alarm in this strange world that I found myself in, but adultery was still a capital offense for a queen.

  I didn’t see Anne again until it was time for her execution. She seemed surprisingly gay as she went to the block, commenting on her dainty neck. Then she caught sight of me, and she chanted out what I took to be lines of poetry at the time, but what I now know to have been a curse, using the last dregs of her power:

  O death! rock me asleep,

  Bring me on quiet rest;

  Yet pass my guiltless ghost

  Out of my careful breast:

  Toll on the passing bell,

  Ring out the doleful knell,

  Let the sound of my death tell,

  For I must die,

  There is no remedy,

  For now I die:

  Never shall you lie

  with her you loved so well,