“And don’t rely on luck,” Logan added, “Luck is fickle. Rely on your instincts instead, your body.”
“One thing I’ve learned about the Twilight is that the laws of physics don’t apply.”
“Some rules will.”
I nodded, then shut my eyes and set my head on the armrest. Almost immediately Damon’s magic fell upon me, relaxing my muscles pushing my mind down, down, down into the world of sleep. That he had this power to begin with was incredible, although I was already so tired, I was pretty sure if he’d have given me a few minutes I would have fallen asleep on my own.
My body floated a little, felt lighter with every passing second, and then I opened my eyes, and I was standing in the hallway again. The dim light from the gothic fixtures on the walls was enough to see by, but not enough that the entire corridor was illuminated. In fact, I couldn’t see the wall at the end of the tunnel, there was only darkness there—darkness, and cold.
I looked around. There were no doors on the walls to either side of me, and only more darkness behind me. Curiously, there wasn’t a wall at my back as there had been the last time I entered the Twilight. I wasn’t sure why this was different this time, but I tried not to question it too much.
I took a step forward, then another, and another, following the hallway and watching it stretch ahead of me. I thought maybe this was because I didn’t know where I was going, didn’t have a destination in mind, or maybe I did, and maybe I was already on the path to that dark place where I had encountered the jester.
I shut my eyes as I walked, made a fist with my hand, and imagined my fingers closing around the cold, black and purple rod. A slight tremor ran through me, followed by a cold sensation that moved from my chest, through my arm, and into my hand, but when I opened my eyes, the scepter was there, gripped tightly in my hand.
I swallowed hard. Ahead of me, the lights in the hallway began to gutter out and die one set after the other, like something out of a nightmare. My heart started to race. I knew I couldn’t turn around and go back, but there were also no doors on either side of me that I could slip into. I was stuck here, and in a manner of seconds, I would be in the dark. Quickly, I tossed the scepter from my right hand into my left and tried my hardest to summon my lantern into existence, but the darkness surrounded me before I could do it.
By the time the soft, silvery glow of my light began to grow, I had already been in the dark and the cold long enough that my heart was going mad inside of my chest. I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear anything except for a soft, breathy wind, and could only feel the cold wrapping around me like invisible, ethereal tendrils.
I pulled my lantern up, but the light barely penetrated the dark ahead of me, then I heard it; the jingle of the bells dangling from a jester’s cap.
“And just who are you that I might find myself here?” the jester asked. Its smooth, honeyed voice was coming from directly behind me.
CHAPTER NINE
The jester’s voice washed over me like the hands of a dead lover, a sensation that made my heart race with want but also caused my skin to prickle over with goose-flesh. I didn’t give it a reply, instead I started running, holding my lantern ahead of me just so I could see where I was going. Beneath my feet the floor was the same one as it had always been, which at least gave me something familiar to hold onto.
Behind me, the jester’s bells were jingling. It was chasing me, but it wasn’t sprinting; I got the impression that it was simply walking, and able to keep up with me by just doing that.
“Who are you, little one?” it asked, “Are you a fly, or a spider?”
I said nothing. Instead I focused on where I was running to, trying to visualize a destination in my mind, but I didn’t want to enter the dreams of another person, I wanted to stay inside my own dreamspace, and as long as I was in here, I had power. What I needed to do was hide, and the best place for me to do that was—lights appeared on the other end of the hallway, illuminating a door. I ran toward it, shoved it open as quickly as I could, and spilled through it, shutting it as I went.
Without thinking, without stopping to examine my surroundings, I kept running, kept moving, making a left turn, then a right, then another left. I lost count after a while, and when I thought I had put enough distance between myself and the jester, I stopped and let myself rest against a stone wall. It was smooth and black, like marble, but dull instead of shiny. This narrow hall of stone I was in was short, ahead of me I had a choice to turn left or right, because I couldn’t go back. Above me, a grey, cloudy sky roiled and rumbled, flashing occasionally with purple light.
“Harlequin, why do you hide?” it asked, its voice distant but somehow still close, dangerously close.
The sky grumbled. “You summoned me to this place, why?” the jester asked.
I moved down the corridor and made a left turn, trying to put a little more distance between myself and it. “What are you?” I asked the sky.
“Ah, the Harlequin speaks,” it said, “But she is rude, and has interrupted my feeding. Why should I answer her questions?”
“Because I’m the one with the power to bring you here.”
“You have power, yes, but I sense you do not know how to wield it. That is a dangerous proposition, but perhaps not more dangerous than denying my desire to gorge on the most succulent of dreams I can find.”
Gorge, not eat—but gorge. “You’re not going to do that anymore.”
“No? And you are going to interfere, little one? Tell me the story of how you plan on doing this, and how your wonderful little mind sees the outcome of such a course of action.”
“I see me sending you back to the hole you crawled out of.”
The sky rumbled again, quick, staccato bursts that almost sounded like laughter. “But, dear, that is exactly what I want to do. I was awoken, and now what I wish to do is return to my slumber, but I am hungry, and I cannot.” Its voice went a little lower, and deeper, towards the end, and I could have sworn it sounded like it was salivating.
“What are you saying?”
“What I am saying, dear child, is that I am awake, and before I can sleep, I must eat. If you wish to try to deny me, then I shall have to start with you.”
I kept moving down the labyrinth and made a right turn. “Oh yeah? How about you come down here and try it.”
I had no idea why I had just said that, and instantly regretted having done so, but then again, I was already in here with that thing and it had already said it would eat me, so it wasn’t like I could antagonize it any further. More grumbling, rolling laughter. I heard the bells now, too, jingling past what I imagined was the other side of the wall I was standing on. Again, I moved, going forward from where I was standing and this time making a left, a right, and another left.
“Tell me, Harlequin,” the jester’s voice floated above the labyrinth walls, echoing like thunder. “How is it that a little one like you came upon the scepter you hold?”
I glanced at the scepter in my hand, then up at the sky. “I’m not going to tell you anything,” I said.
“That’s a shame, little one. I have much use for Harlequins. Your kind is so rare.”
“Use?” That got my attention.
“You are denizens of the Twilight realm, you walk through and command this plane as it is your birthright to do so. You have the power to protect me while I sleep, while I dream, and in return I could grant you so many things.”
“So, how about you just go to sleep, then?”
More jingling, closer this time. “Alas, as I have said, I cannot sleep, not until I have had my fill. But perhaps then… if you would release me, I would spare you and those you love, and when it is done, I shall find you again and you might help me sleep. How does that sound, little one? Oh, the fun we could have.”
“There’s no way I’m going to let you kill whoever you want and then help you.”
“Then in that case…”
This time, its voice didn’t sound like it was radi
ating all around me, like surround sound at a movie theatre, but from directly behind me. A breeze pushed through the narrow stone corridor, tugging my hair around my face and causing the little bells on the jester’s cap to jingle light. Slowly, deliberately, I turned around, my heart pounding inside of my chest, my vision trembling, my ears ringing.
Then I saw it.
Before me, dressed in the same black and purple spandex outfit that it had worn at our last encounter, a tall and impossibly thin figure stood hunched over, with arms so long its knuckles reached the floor. This time I was able to take in all of its details, from the gold trim of its purple jacket to the sharp, claw like nails that stuck out of the white, silk gloves it wore.
On its face lay a full faced mask made from porcelain, with two black holes for eyes and smiling, red lips. From behind its dark eye sockets, two fine red points appeared. The Death Jester was here, in front of me, in all of its gruesome glory, like a creature from right out of the worst possible nightmare I could ever conceive.
“Hello, little one,” it said, though its porcelain face didn’t move.
I backed up a step, then another. My mask, which had so far kept me hidden whenever I had entered someone else’s sleeping mind, including the jester’s, no longer afforded me the same protection. I would not be able to hide from it as I had been able to so far, not even if I turned and ran deeper into the labyrinth. It had me, and in a few moments, it might just kill me.
Out of options, I held the scepter up toward it. “Stay back,” I warned.
The jester didn’t move. “Do you know what that is?”
I didn’t answer.
“Of course not,” it said, “Because you are little more than a frightened animal, fighting for her life but too stupid to understand that she is already dead. I am here, inside your mind, and you cannot hide even in this labyrinth you have created.”
It took a step, its bells jingling. “I mean it, stay back,” I said.
The jester stopped, and then the labyrinth began to fell away, the walls seeming to evaporate into fine mist that just floated off into the clouds. Soon there weren’t even any clouds left, there was only blackness. My stomach churned. I backed up again and fell, but I fell onto my bed, on my back. I scrambled up to the headrest like a child as my bedroom, at t least the room I was staying in while I was a guest at Eli’s house, began to grow all around me.
First the bed came into focus, then the ceiling came down from the sky, then the walls rose up from the ground, every little detail falling perfectly into place to recreate the bedroom I had been able to call my own for the past week, right down to the window and the flowing, semi-transparent curtain.
It was night out, and I remembered this scene because I had experienced it earlier on when I had woken up from the dream in which Brishan had encouraged me to go back to the apartment. I had thought there was someone standing in the corner of the room, staring at me from the shadows, but it had only been a chair on which I kept a couple of things.
Now, from the shadow in the corner of the room, two fine red dots appeared, and I certainly did feel like a child whose only layer of protection from the boogeyman was the bedcover itself.
“You know so little, Harlequin,” it said, “You only live because my curiosity has been peaked. What is your name?”
I almost gave it my name, but I was able to stay strong. “You don’t scare me.”
“On the contrary, you’re terrified of me, and that’s fine. I like that. It feeds me. Even now I’m savoring your essence. The way your emotions taste, so raw and rare, it’s so tempting, so appetizing, I can hardly control my urges, but… I’m still curious. You are a Harlequin, you wield the scepter, and yet you know nothing. How?”
It knows what this thing is. It must. I wanted to know too. The jester was right, I had no idea what the thing in my hand was or did, and the records we’d found so far were sketchy at best, but it knew what the scepter was, and maybe it could tell me more about it, more about Harlequins. At the same time, what if it was lying? Keeping me talking while it feasted on my essence as it had those other people who died of heart attacks.
Was I dying? Would I know? Was I already dead?
“What I know,” I said, “Is that you are a mistake I’m going to undo.”
“Ah, so it was you who woke me. Yes, this changes things, little Harlequin. I have been searching for you, and now you have brought me to your sacred place, to your own home within the Twilight. I think I will take from you only a little at a time and make you watch while I satiate myself on the dreams of others, then perhaps I shall take you with me into the dark, and we can dance together for eternity, you and I, for you woke me up, and as such you must suffer the ultimate consequences, but if you give me the scepter, perhaps I will spare you.”
It took a step out of the shadows and began to advance, then the scepter in my hand started to vibrate, and I wasn’t sure why, but the jester’s bells jingled at the same time and it stopped moving. I stared at the scepter, watched the eyes on the porcelain doll begin to glow red, then turned my attention to the jester.
“I think if you could have killed me, you would have already,” I said. “I think you’re stalling, bluffing, trying to make me let go of this because you can’t touch me as long as I wield it.”
“You think you know this world, Harlequin, but you know nothing of it. You are food, cattle, unimportant.”
“Then kill me. Do it. I dare you.”
The jester didn’t move, it just looked at me from across the bedroom, its tall form hunched over, knuckles dragging along the floor.
I stood on the bed, pointed the scepter at it, and the jester stepped back, throwing its hands up as if to shield itself. In my mind I imagined a huge metal safe closing around it, and sure enough, I watched these massive metal walls rise up from the floor and envelop the jester. From inside, I heard it scream with rage. Thunder rumbled on the other side of my window, and the whole bedroom seemed to shake. Then I heard it bash the inside of the metal case once, twice, again and again. Every time it did, a flash of purple lightning would light the bedroom up. Thunder would follow.
“As long as I have this in my hand,” I said, “The only dreams you’ll be entering will be my own, and as long as you’re only entering my dreams, you won’t be hurting anyone else.”
“Let me out!” it screamed, and though its voice was muffled and distant, I was able to pick up the dual tone I had heard once before. It was the harsh, bass-heavy voice of the demon instead of the smooth, honeyed voice of the angel, and it showed this creature for what it really was, despite the front it tried to present.
“The only way you’re getting out is if you leave the Twilight, because this is my realm, and I make the rules.”
The metal case stopped shaking, the thunder receded, and the lightning flashes stopped after a while. When it was all over, I let myself sink into the bed and then fall onto the pillow, but the impact woke me up, gasping for air. Someone grabbed my shoulder and pushed me gently on my back. I rubbed my eyes. Faintly I could hear the sounds of sparrows chirping.
Morning already?
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” Eli said.
I opened my eyes and looked at him, for a moment believing I was still in the Twilight, believing the jester would explode out of Eli’s body like a jack-in-the-box and gorge on me as it had said it would. But Eli remained Eli, Logan was next to him, and at the foot of the sofa, Damon was there too. He had his eyes closed, and his hands draped across my legs.
“I’m… alive,” I said, almost surprised to hear myself speak, but my voice was hoarse and rough.
Eli passed me a glass of water. Distantly I became aware of the enticing aroma of cooking bacon and eggs. “Here, drink this,” he said.
I took the glass and drank. “Thank you,” I said.
Eli nodded and took the glass from my hand. “So… how did it go?” he asked, “You’re still alive, so I’m guessing it went well.”
“I don’t know. I think—I think I stalled it.”
“You didn’t kill it?”
I wanted to laugh, just as the jester had, but I didn’t. Instead I shook my head. “No. I saw it, we spoke, it knows I’m the one that woke it up, it said it would come for me, but I think… I think the scepter drew the jester to my dreams like a lightning rod. I didn’t kill it, but I may have stopped it from killing anyone else tonight.”
“I’ll check with the office, find out if anyone else has been reported to us.”
Damon stirred, then snapped awake and looked at me, his eyes sleepy and red. “Andi, you’re okay,” he said.
I sat up, and the scepter and my mask rolled off my chest and fell to the floor. Eli went to pick the mask up, but an electric shock snapped up against his finger. “Jesus,” he yelped, “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I leaned down, picked them up, and set them on the coffee table in front of the sofa. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, it was just like a static charge.”
“Probably best not to touch her Talismans anymore, then,” Damon said.
“The scepter isn’t mine.”
“Talismans choose their Mages. The mask definitely chose you, but perhaps the scepter has too. I think congratulations are in order.”
“Also, breakfast,” Eli said, “You’ve gotta be hungry.”
I nodded and stood up, then I followed Eli out of the living room and into the kitchen. I didn’t agree with Damon that congratulations were in order, though. If the scepter had chosen me, if it was mine, then I had also inherited the responsibility of keeping the Death Jester from killing anyone in their dreams, that meant it would visit mine… probably every night. Could I really do what I had just done every single night? I could already feel the sluggishness in my muscles, the feeling you get when you haven’t had a good night’s sleep.
As I sat at the table I decided yes, I could do this every night, because people’s lives were depending on me, but also because I had Eli, Damon, and Logan; they would take care of me so I could take care of everyone else. That was just the way things had to be, now.
Harlequin Dreams_A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy Page 10