Dreamonologist

by Gregory Pettit

  “The Sons can take care of that. The Chapter Master has, grudgingly, agreed to provide all of the agents that we have to put down the vampires tonight.”

  “Can they? There are fifty of them, and what, maybe one hundred agents left? Is that genuinely enough? With Edward Sloane leading them? You’re angry that we lost Christian. How many more will you lose tonight if you try to go up against that many vampires head on? My plan will get the Sigilum to help put them back to sleep,” I said. I felt bad about using my friend’s death like this, but the stakes were too high to keep on the kid gloves.

  Mia didn’t respond. She knew I was right, so I continued. “There’s also your little problem with needing the trigger word for the geas, to get the Chapter Master back under control.”

  Mia’s nostrils flared slightly, but she fought the flush down from her face, putting on an air of icy calm. “There’s only one person who can fix that.”

  “I know. I have Henry on board.”

  The words hit home, making Mia raise an eyebrow in surprise. “Okay, is there anything else?”

  “Yes—there’s one more thing that I can offer you. Closure.”

  “You have piqued my interest, Julian,” Mia said, somehow fully composed again. She sat back in the chair and crossed her long legs. “Please, tell me more.”

  So I did, sketching the plan out over the course of three or four minutes.

  “There’s no way that you could ever pull this off, and even if you could, I don’t know why he would ever consider helping you,” Mia said, taking a demure sip of her latte.

  Mia had a point. I had sent her adoptive father into a portal to oblivion—but she’d helped me. I could use that. Even if it did make me feel as soiled as a frat boy’s bedsheets. I leaned forward and stared into her storm-gray eyes. “I can give you closure. I could take a personal message and bring a reply. Could you trust Henry with that? You’d have a chance to say good-bye,” I said.

  “I need a guarantee. You could tell me anything,” she replied.

  “I swear on my hope of recovering Olivia that I will tell you the truth,” I said, referring to the one thing that she knew I cared about above all others. Still, it all came down to trust, and that was in short supply. She eyed me up and down, so I held my head high, meeting her gaze.

  “If I find out that you’ve lied to me or used me, then I’ll end you. Even worse, I’ll let Paula have you. She and Christian had…history,” Mia said, threatening me without batting an eyelash.

  I put years of corporate negotiations experience to use and kept my reaction in check. Always be closing. “So it’s a deal?” I asked.

  Mia was quiet and studied me for a minute. She took a sip of her latte again, pursed her bow of a mouth, and nodded. “It’s a deal. But I’m going to keep the strike force from the Sons ready and waiting. If you fail—in any part of your promise—then you’ll be on their target list.”

  “If I fail, then I could be so lucky.”

  Mia gave me a flat look. “Highgate Cemetery. Two hours.”

  ◆◆◆

  The sun was still high in the sky, but clearly past its zenith, as we gathered near the entrance of the most famous cemetery in the country. The cemetery was famous to the nonsupernatural world because it was the final resting place of celebrities like Karl Marx and Douglas Adams, as well as containing extravagant architecture such as a faux Egyptian temple and a multimillion-pound mausoleum. To the supernatural world, it was infamous because the fabric of reality there was more like the wet tissue paper of reality. That had made it the perfect place for Brown to inter the vampires and the perfect place to carry out my plan.

  I was pacing from one side of the path to the other in my trench coat, gladius strapped to my hip, and sweating like a pig in a bacon factory. Dana fanned herself while sitting on the hood of Badger’s Merc, wearing a floral-print maternity dress. Mia was attired in black combat fatigues that hugged her curves, and she sat in the shade of a huge, old oak tree, pretending not to be bothered by the heat. Badger leaned on a centuries-old tombstone, twitching his walrus-like mustache and patting at the perspiration on his brow as he oiled his trusty .38 revolver. Cooper waited in the car, sunglasses on and a hoodie covering his face.

  “He isn’t going to show,” Mia said when we’d been waiting about fifteen minutes.

  “He’s going to show. He’s had a long time to think about what he did. He wants redemption even more than you do,” I said.

  “Not everyone cares as much about their failures as you do about yours, Mr. Adler,” Badger added from his perch.

  “Some of us care about them more,” a voice said, startling me, and my head whipped around to look at nothing.

  “He’s here,” I said to the assembled host. All of their heads pivoted about, and Badger slid gracelessly off of his perch on the tombstone, landing with an audible “oof.” Smooth.

  “How can we be sure?” Badger asked, twitching his moustache in suspicion.

  “Because I’m telling you that he is,” said a gravelly voice with a distinct East End accent. Its owner strolled through the gate of the park that adjoined the cemetery. He was a bear of a man, Caucasian, standing at least seven feet tall and almost two of me across. As usual, he was impeccably dressed; today he was in a bright blue suit, a paisley shirt, and Italian leather shoes. There was a carnation in his lapel—oh, and he also had a hook for a hand. That might have been partially my fault.

  “Jack? Why are you here?” I said, a smile stretching my face at the sight of the man who’d saved my life multiple times in the last year.

  “Well, I’m not here for you, Jules,” he said. “I’m here for Ms. Mia Noel in a private capacity. I believe that she may want to verify that information she is going to receive is true,” he said, flashing me a toothy grin.

  I glared at Mia. “Why thank you, Mia. But you didn’t have to hire Jack.” I put a note of gratitude in my voice, but she knew that I knew he was here because she didn’t trust me—Jack was here to ensure that I relayed the message from her father truthfully. It was probably a smart move on her part. She gave me a shrug and turned her hands palm up. I looked around at the gathered team. We were like The Magnificent Seven. I hoped I didn’t have to be Harry. What a stupid name.

  “Everyone is here now, Julian. Time’s a-wastin’,” Dana said, a bit of a Southern drawl creeping into her voice as it did when she was nervous or distracted.

  “Why did the Grim Reaper turn down an apprenticeship? Because he didn’t want to be interned,” I began, trying to lighten the mood. Mia cleared her throat, and I realized how wildly inappropriate the joke was, even in a graveyard. I rolled my shoulders, wiped the sweat from my brow, and restarted. “Thank you all for coming.” I looked each of the others in the eyes. Except for Henry, who didn’t have any. “I’ve told all of you my plan, and none of you thought it was less than mad.”

  “I believe I described it as Johnny-Depp-on-a-peyote-trip crazy,” Badger added.

  “So just Johnny Depp crazy?” Dana threw in. A very slight ripple of laughter went through the group, and then I was able to continue.

  “But just to be sure that we’re all on the same page, let me go over it one more time. We’ve gathered at Highgate because it is a thin place in reality. Mia, as an opener, is going to further weaken the fabric of space-time. His Majesty, Henry VIII, will use his ability to cross dimensional barriers. On me. He’ll be swapping this me for one from another reality, one in which I did not kill Senior Auditor Brown. According to the many-worlds hypothesis, somewhere there is a world where that outcome occurred, I lived, and a version of me is near Highgate Cemetery right now. Sucks to be him,” I explained.

  “That’s why he brought me. I’m here to keep alternate-world Julian in line,” Dana added.

  “A job that you’re extremely well qualified for, dear,” I deadpanned. “While in the alternate dimension, I will attempt to contact Senior Auditor John Brown and convince him to give us the information necessary to r
eestablish the containment spell on the nascent vampires. I will then come back here in exactly five hours for the return trip.” There were noises of assent.

  Mia broke in smoothly before I could continue. “Mr. Redderton is here to verify Julian’s identity upon said return,” she lied to everyone but Jack and me. We knew the real reason, but she was confident that we’d play along.

  I nodded toward the car in which Cooper was sitting. “Our photosensitive friend will be staying close by to act as muscle against Sloane and any backup that he brings. It doesn’t do any good to get the ritual information if we can’t get the Sigilum back. Once we have the Sigilum back, Jimmy and a few of his friends from the Met are going to provide cover while the ritual, whatever it is, is reinvoked,” I finished.

  The crowd was quiet for a good minute while each person considered just how many things had to go right, with no rehearsal, for this to work. However, we didn’t have a choice, and we didn’t have time for recriminations. What had happened had happened, and if this didn’t work, then we were going to have fifty-plus pissed-off, ravenously hungry vampires let loose on the city by midnight. The only advantage we had was that we were pretty sure that Sloane was going to be here with the Sigilum—all of my other predictions had come true, so it was likely that this would too.

  I’d been studying, but I was no sorcerer. Mia, on the other hand, had spent years delving into the arcane arts along with her adoptive father, and she sketched out a circle on the ground in chalk, putting a small envelope in the middle. I took a closer look—it was just a plain chalk circle. “What, no symbols, no fancy patterns?” I asked.

  “Do you know of any specific formula for transporting someone from one reality to another?” Mia snapped. “At least I brought a focus object to help you get to the right reality,” she added in a less snippy tone, and then she leaned in and whispered in my ear.

  “I’m ready to do my part,” Henry’s voice sounded from close at hand. I took a deep breath and stepped into the circle. Mia bent down and closed the circle with a final stroke of chalk—a flash of light—I covered my eyes, staggered, and barely managed to stay inside the circle.

  There was a crash, I heard twigs snapping in some nearby bushes, and I heard the rustle and click of firearms being drawn and safeties removed as half-a-dozen people went on high alert instantly. “I’ll be damned!” Jack yelled, and as the spots cleared from in front of my eyes, I caught a flicker of motion in the underbrush.

  “Was that a…wallaby?” I asked, glancing around at the others.

  “Hell yeah it was!” Jack shouted enthusiastically. “I read that some wallabies were spotted here a few years ago, but the officials claimed that they were someone’s pets. I’ll be damned…” he added, trailing off at the end and shaking his head in disbelief. I could only hope that that was the weirdest thing that I’d have to deal with today.

  “Focus, boys,” Mia chided. I glanced at Dana and saw her frown. I stood in the circle and surveyed the scene.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Ready to go?” Henry asked. I nodded and turned to Mia.

  “Now.”

  Chapter 21

  1600–2100, Wednesday, June 22, 2016

  I couldn’t see Henry’s hand touch me, but I certainly felt it. If you’ve ever been in a car wreck where you’ve rear-ended someone, the feeling was similar. An instantaneous, bone-jarringly violent deceleration—except just in my brain. I closed my eyes, my last glimpse showing me Dana focused intently on me, dark-circled eyes feverish, mouth open raptly, and I fell to my knees. When I rose, I was alone. It had worked! Maybe. Maybe I’d just vaporized all of my allies or shown up in a reality where Brown was already dead. Only one way to find out…

  Slightly stunned that I’d been successful, I jogged along the green, winding paths of Waterlow Park, ignoring several panhandlers, and turned the corner onto Highgate Hill. Even though the clock was ticking, I couldn’t help but pause to take in the vista of London laid out before me. The air was hazy with smog in the June heat, but the City rose up on either side of the sparkling ribbon of the Thames, spires reaching for the sky like the points of a crown. It was only when I stopped that I noticed what I was wearing. I had momentarily forgotten that I’d only swapped minds with a version of me from this reality. This Julian had gone down a much gothier path than I had—decked out in black jeans, Doc Marten boots, and a black concert T-shirt. Ew.

  “Nice eye makeup, ginger,” said a teenager walking past. Crap. I balled up my fists—oh yeah, I needed to save London. Focus, Julian. I shook my head and jogged on. I made it to Archway tube station in another couple of minutes. I couldn’t help noticing a few homeless people on the way, and more stores than normal were boarded up. I had a feeling that Mammon had met a very bad end in this reality. Nevertheless, I was pleased to find that this Julian had zones 1–5 loaded on his Oyster card, and I settled down for the journey into the City via the Northern Line. As the train rattled along, I thought about what I had to do next. I’d been so focused on getting to this reality that I had slightly ignored the part of the plan where I had to get rather a lot of information out of Brown, a man whom I’d killed in my own reality. As I saw it, there were three ways of approaching this: trading, tricking, or …damn, what was a word that meant fighting but started with a T? Threatening. Yeah. That was it. First, I considered trading for the info, but that had to be a last resort. All I had was information, and I didn’t have enough of it to get everything I needed…in fact, I only had one. One really great piece of info. Next, I could try threatening Brown to get him to open up, but I had needed literal divine intervention to defeat him previously. Finally, there was tricking. I considered impersonating the Julian from this dimension. I was no Michael Caine, but I was a Julian Adler, which should give me at least a slight advantage in the attempt. Also, if this Julian had let Brown live, then maybe there was a relationship that I could exploit. I could always fall back on one of the other strategies if that failed, but it wouldn’t work the other way around. Tricking it was, then. Hopefully I wouldn’t fluff a line and get myself killed.

  I exited at Tottenham Court Road and switched to the Central Line for the last quick hop to St. Paul’s. If the view of the City’s skyscrapers from Highgate Hill had stopped me in my tracks with awe at what had been accomplished by modern man, the soaring dome of St. reminded me of the City’s history and resilience. The cathedral had risen up after the Great Fire of 1666, and even though it had taken thirty-five years, London had been rebuilt even more magnificently than before. Suddenly, the weight of what I was trying to do lifted, just a little. Even if I failed, the City would survive. But I didn’t want thirty-five years of suffering either, so I put shoe leather to pavement and trotted the last quarter mile to Temple Avenue.

  When I arrived at the Temple Avenue headquarters of the Sons of Perseus, I immediately noticed that the frontage was unblemished, bearing none of the scars that it had picked up in the jailbreak that Senior Auditor Brown had engineered as cover for his gambit to slay Mammon. I guessed that probably wasn’t something that would have happened in a world where Brown and I had both survived. I walked up to the front entrance like I belonged, and the guard behind the desk buzzed me in.

  “Mr. Adler,” he greeted me. “Master Brown is in his office. Shall I call him?” the security guard asked. Although he looked like any of a hundred thousand other overworked security guards in London, I knew that he was actually a decorated SAS veteran who had served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. I also knew that he could kill me deader than a flat cat on the highway in an instant with the pistol he had concealed just behind his glass-and-chrome desk.

  Nodding, I flashed a smile. “That would be great, mate.” I settled into one of the acrylic ball chairs in the lobby. A few minutes later, John Brown hobbled through a door plastered with the name of the publishing house that was the front for the Sons’ headquarters. He limped up to me, leaning on a walking stick that made him look like the sorcerer tha
t I knew him to be, but besides that accessory, he was as nondescript as ever: medium height and build, with a forgettable face and mousy-brown hair threaded through with gray.

  “Julian, it’s a pleasure to see you, but I thought that you were working on your independent project,” Brown said, holding out one hand and smiling the indulgent smile of a teacher toward a favorite student.

  “I’m just fine, John,” I said, taking his hand. The moment we touched, I felt a pulse of heat run through my body like I’d just eaten a habanero pepper. John suddenly locked eyes with me, and his grip on my hand turned to iron.

  “That’s excellent to hear, excellent. Why don’t you come along to my chambers, and we can discuss whatever it was that brought you here, Mr. Adler?” he said, phrasing the sentence as a friendly invitation, which was belied by the steely formality in his voice as he said my name.

  This man, or at least a version of him, had been responsible for the disappearance of my wife, burning down my house, sacrificing my friends and coworkers, and had personally kidnapped my daughter. Not only that, but his schemes had led to well over a thousand deaths in my reality. The last thing I wanted was to acquiesce to this spider’s invitation to come into his parlor, but I’d called in every favor I had to get the opportunity to speak to him, so I couldn’t chicken out now. I shrugged and slumped after Brown, trying to keep up the goth front and wondering how many deaths my acquiescence to Brown in this reality had avoided.

  We breezed past the blind, elderly woman guarding the door and cut across the familiar open-plan office. I noted that a different name adorned the plaque on the door to what was Mia’s office in my version of London, and I guessed that was one death that hadn’t been avoided. John Brown took me all the way to the back of the office and then through a pair of large, mahogany doors that led to a staircase up to the executive floor. We were met at the top by a secretary with a couple of cups of coffee, and we proceeded into a large room with an imposing, well-built desk of dark wood that would have made a Greenpeace activist weep. I sighed in pleasure as a perfectly air-conditioned blast of air ruffled my hair and dried the sweat on my forehead. Brown took a seat behind the desk and motioned me to sit.