Dream Stalkers

by Tim Waggoner

  “Start talking or I’ll start firing,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” he growled.

  I jammed the trancer barrel into his eyelid and he yelped as clear fluid squirted out the sides.

  “Where’s Nathaniel?” I demanded.

  He still didn’t answer.

  Jinx, meanwhile, had taken in the blood smears on the walls, along with Mordacity’s remains. His face was expressionless as he knelt on the other side of the Cyclops and leaned his mouth close to the Incubus’ ear. When Jinx spoke, his voice was calm and toneless.

  “Mordacity and I didn’t get along, but he was my friend. You killed him. If you don’t start answering Audra’s questions right fucking now, here’s what I’m going to do to you.”

  Jinx leaned even closer, until his red lips were almost touching the Cyclops’ ear, and then he began whispering. I couldn’t hear what Jinx said, which I consider to be one of the great blessings of my life. The Cyclops didn’t react at first, but then he began to tremble all over. Next he whimpered and repeated “No, no, no,” over and over. As Jinx wrapped up, the Cyclops released a hot stream of urine that spread out beneath him.

  When he was finished, Jinx said, “And just so you know I’m not all talk…”

  Moving lightning fast, he opened his mouth, clamped his teeth on the Cyclops’ ear, and with a single savage motion tore it off. He turned his head and spat, and the ear flew through the air to hit the wall with a wet smack. It hung there for a second before sliding to the floor.

  The Cyclops cried out when Jinx bit off his ear, but then he returned to whimpering. I’d like to tell you that I felt for the one-eyed bastard, but I didn’t. Not in the slightest.

  “Where’s Nathaniel?” I repeated.

  “He’s right here,” the Cyclops said. “He didn’t go anywhere.”

  “Don’t screw with us. He’s not in the room.”

  “Yes, he is,” the Cyclops insisted. “I’ll show you.”

  Even before his body began to blur and distort, I knew what was going to happen, and I shouted for Jinx to remove the anvil. He didn’t question me. Maybe he’d guessed what was going to happen too, or maybe he just felt my urgency through our link. Whatever the case, he pulled a two-foot long hat pin from his pocket and stuck it into the anvil, which then exploded like a balloon, releasing a shower of confetti. The confetti settled not on the Cyclops, but on Nathaniel. Jinx and I helped him sit up. His inmate uniform was still covered with Mordacity’s blood and the Cyclops’ eye jelly, as was his face and hands, but the fabric had been stretched and torn by the Cyclops’ much larger body and now hung even more loosely on him than it had before. He had both his eyes, and they were intact, and the same was true of his ears. I glanced over to where Jinx had spat the Cyclops’ ear, half-expecting it to have vanished, but the grisly thing still lay where it had fallen.

  “His name is Alkandros.” Nathaniel’s voice was weak, but there was a focus and certainty to his words that told me that, for the moment at least, his mind was clear. “He is… was one of the Lords of Misrule. A very long time ago, back when the Lords first came to power.”

  Jinx frowned. “That’s something like three thousand years ago.” He quickly added. “Not that a lunatic clown like me would know something about that. Hyuck!”

  “Hyuck?” I said. “Really?”

  Jinx’s white cheeks turned pinkish as he blushed in embarrassment. “I stand by my totally ineffective fake laugh.”

  Nathaniel smiled briefly. “I’d almost forgotten how much fun it is to watch you two bicker. The bond between Incubus and Ideator is a special one, isn’t it?”

  He glanced at Mordacity’s remains and his expression hardened.

  “I don’t understand everything that happened to me. But somehow Alkandros’ essence entered my body. He was one of the… the…”

  “Discarnate,” I supplied. “You mentioned the word earlier.”

  “I did? Yes, I suppose I did. I’m not entirely sure what it means, though. At any rate, when his spirit first entered me, it tried to take over my body, reshape it into his. I fought him, though. And I’ve continued to fight him all these years.” He paused. “It has been years, hasn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “I thought so. It’s so hard to keep track of time in here. I managed to prevent him from taking over… until today.” These last two words were filled with sorrow, and he gazed upon Mordacity’s remains once more.

  I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that Alkandros had killed Mordacity, not him. But I knew it wouldn’t make a difference to how he felt.

  “Well, we can’t do anything sitting here.” Nathaniel struggled to get to his feet, and, when Jinx and I tried to help him, he waved us off. “From the sound of things out there, I’d say all hell’s broken loose, and then some.”

  The alarms had continued to sound all this time, and we could hear people shouting and screaming in the corridor.

  “The prisoners’ collars vanished,” I said. “And, once their powers returned, they started rioting.”

  Nathaniel looked at me strangely. “What sort of collars?”

  I reached into my jacket pocket. I usually keep a couple extra negator collars in there, but the pocket was empty.

  I turned to Jinx. “Do you remember negator collars?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Kinda-sorta. I don’t know. But if you remember, that’s good enough for me.”

  I smiled at the big psycho. Sometimes he’s not so horrible.

  Nathaniel held out his hand. “If we’re going to go out there, I’m going to need a weapon.”

  I hesitated.

  “If Alkandros takes you over again while you’re armed…” I began.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t think he’s going to try to come out again anytime soon. And, if he does try, you’ll know because I’ll start sounding crazy again before it happens.”

  I thought about it, and, even though my training told me it was a bad idea, I trusted Nathaniel, and so I handed over my trancer. He took it, and then I turned to Jinx to ask him if he had something else in his pockets that I could use to defend myself. But, before I could say anything, Nathaniel took several steps backward – so he’d be out of our reach – and then pressed the trancer’s muzzle to his right temple.

  At first I feared that Nathaniel hadn’t been as rational as he’d seemed. My fear must’ve shown on my face, for he said, “I’m perfectly sane at the moment, Audra.” He smiled grimly. “In many ways, a truly sane man is the most dangerous of all. It’s only a matter of time before Alkandros makes another attempt to manifest. And the longer he has control of my body, the more Maelstrom energy he can draw to himself and the stronger he’ll become. It wouldn’t take long for him to reach full power, and, once that happened, none of us would be able to stop him. He is a Lord of Misrule, after all. There’s only one way to stop him. And only one way to make him pay for what he did to Mordacity.”

  I’d left the trancer’s selector switch on high. A full-force M-blast to a human head at point-black range would be instantly fatal.

  I felt cold all over and sick to my stomach. “Don’t do this, Nathaniel. Please. We can find another way.”

  He smiled. “No, we can’t. I’m sorry I’m not going to be around to help you clean up whatever mess you’re in. But Mordacity and I trained you two well. You might not be the most orthodox of officers in the Watch’s history, but you’re two of the best.”

  As he spoke, his gun hand began to tremble and beads of sweat broke out on his forehead. His face rippled several times, like an interrupted video signal. Alkandros was trying to emerge and stop Nathaniel from killing them both, but Nathaniel was resisting him.

  “Remember what I taught you.”

  This last word came out in the deep bass of Alkandros’ voice, and for an instant I saw a ghostly image of the Cyclops’ face superimposed over Nathaniel’s. And then Nathaniel pulled the trigger.

  M-energy blasted forth from the
trancer, and the body that fell to the floor was Nathaniel’s. There wasn’t as much as a hint of Alkandros in his face.

  I felt numb and hollow. I figured I was in shock, but I didn’t care. I wanted to say to hell with whatever shuteye really was, and to hell with whatever was causing bits and pieces of reality to be erased. At that moment, all I wanted to do was kneel at Nathaniel’s side and take hold of his hand. But I knew he wouldn’t want me to. If I truly wanted to honor him, the best way to do so was to get off my ass and get back to work. I knelt down, touched my fingers to my lips, then pressed them to his cheek. Then I took the trancer from his still-warm hand and stood.

  “You ready to go hurt a lot of people?” I said.

  Jinx let out a contented sigh.

  “Need you ask?”

  * * * * *

  Jinx and I fought our way through Deadlock one corridor at a time. Jinx used Cuthbert Junior to fracture skulls and pulverize bones, and his lapel flower squirted constant streams of acid at anyone unlucky enough to get in his way. I made do with the trancer Jinx had given me, and, when it ran out of juice, I discarded it, grabbed another from the corpse of a fallen guard, and started firing. Sometimes we fought alongside guards, sometimes we fought with only each other for backup. If the inmates had been organized in even an approximate definition of the word, we would’ve been overwhelmed in no time. But they fought with each other just as much if not more than with the guards and staff. The Incubi’s inherently chaotic nature was as much our ally as it was our enemy.

  I don’t know how long we fought for, but, after a while, Jinx and I were both covered in gore. We switched bodies often enough that we got used to it and kept fighting with barely a pause in our rhythm. The alarms provided a constant shrill accompaniment to the violence, and after a time we became accustomed to their shrieking. But at one point the lights went out and a few seconds later low-level emergency lighting kicked in. When that happened, the alarms, already loud as hell, doubled in volume.

  “Whatever the hell that means,” I shouted in Jinx’s ear, “it can’t be good!”

  “Too right!” someone shouted before Jinx could reply.

  Bruzer shoved his way through the guards and inmates, none of whom seemed to notice or care about the Warden’s presence. He only had one head now, and at first I thought he’d lost the second in battle, but his suit jacket was missing, and his shirt was torn to ribbons, and I could see no sign of a bloody stump where the second head had been attached. Like the first head, it had vanished. Or more precisely, been excised, as if it had never existed. The Warden carried a heavy-duty M-rifle, but the shreds of meat stuck in his teeth showed he’d been fighting with every weapon he possessed.

  When Bruzer reached Jinx and me, he leaned his remaining head close to ours so he could be heard above the din.

  “The second alarm indicates the prison’s power supply – and its backups – are offline. In short, the lights are out.”

  Those last few words turned my blood to iced water. If there were no lights inside or outside, that meant…

  Screams erupted at the far end of the corridor, and people began running toward us, desperate to escape whatever was attacking them.

  “Darkuns,” I said, so softly that I’m sure neither Jinx nor Bruzer heard me. Not that they hadn’t reached the same conclusion on their own. The emergency lighting was enough to see by, but it was nowhere near intense enough to drive back the Darkuns, let alone harm them.

  “Follow me!” Bruzer shouted.

  He fired several energy blasts from his M-rifle to get people out of our way, then he led Jinx and me to a door. He keyed in a code on the pad, the door unlocked, and he opened it and gestured for us to enter ahead of him. He fired a couple more energy blasts to prevent anyone from joining us, then he entered and yanked the door shut behind him. There was another keypad on this side of the wall, and he destroyed it with a quick burst from his rifle. Metal shattered, sparks flew, and smoke curled forth.

  “The doors operate on battery power in case of emergencies,” he said.

  There were no alarms in this dark, narrow corridor, and it was easier to hear him, although my ears kept ringing from the assault they’d endured since the riot started.

  “No batteries for the lights?” Jinx said.

  Bruzer cocked his head to the side. “That’s a good idea. I wonder why no one ever thought of it.”

  I sighed. “I’m sure someone did and that those batteries were installed. They just don’t exist anymore, that’s all.”

  Bruzer frowned at me, but he decided to let my comment go.

  “What about Mordacity and Officer Sawyer? And your two friends?” he asked.

  I almost couldn’t bring myself to say the words, but somehow I managed. “Russell and Bloodshedder managed to escape, although Russell was seriously wounded. Nathaniel and Mordacity didn’t make it.”

  “I’m genuinely sorry to hear that,” he said. “They were both fine officers.” He took a deep breath. “Well, let’s see if I can at least get the two of you out of here more or less intact.”

  Without waiting for us to reply, he turned and headed down the narrow corridor at a fast jog. Jinx and I didn’t need any further coaxing to follow. The emergency lighting – which I was very grateful still existed – provided only dim illumination. Shadows clung to the walls and ceiling, and it didn’t take much effort to imagine that they were Darkuns lying in wait to attack. But we made it through the corridor without having our flesh ripped by obsidian claws and teeth, and at the other end was a door. But this one was different than the others we’d seen in Deadlock. It was circular instead of rectangular, and the keypad next to it on the wall had only a single red button.

  “This is an emergency exit,” Bruzer said. “Outside is a motorcycle with a high-powered headlight and defensive lights mounted on the vehicle’s sides and rear. At least, one’s supposed to be out there. It’s possible one of the guards or staff got here before us, in which case…” He trailed off. “No matter. It’s still the best chance for survival I can offer you. Remaining in Deadlock at this point would be suicide. I’ve contacted the Rookery and informed them of the situation, but it will be a while before help can arrive, and by that point there won’t be anything left here except Darkuns with full bellies. Good luck to you both.”

  “Aren’t you coming with us?” I asked.

  He shook his lone head. “You can ride two on the motorcycle, but not three. And, once the door opens, the Darkuns will swarm it. It’ll shut and lock automatically behind you, but it won’t keep them out for long. I’ll stay here to take out as many as I can.”

  Nathaniel and Mordacity had already died that day, as had who knew how many others. Maybe Russell too, if the Thresholders hadn’t managed to retrieve him in time. I desperately wanted to keep Bruzer from being added to the list of casualties, but I didn’t know how to make that happen. And Bruzer was, in a very real sense, the captain of this ship. It was his right to go down with it if he wanted.

  On impulse, I gave him a quick hug and a kiss on his fuzzy cheek. He seemed surprised, but pleased. He then pushed me gently but firmly away, and his manner became gruff once more.

  “Go.”

  He made a fist and slammed the red button. The circular door sprang open with a pneumatic hiss, and Jinx and I hurried out before it was all the way open. It was utterly, absolutely dark outside. No emergency lights out here, not anymore anyway. I felt panic rising in me as I realized there could be dozens, hundreds, thousands of Darkuns surrounding us, and we would have no way of knowing it. My first impulse was to start firing my trancer randomly in all directions, but its charge was already low, and I couldn’t allow my fear to get the better of me. If we hoped to get the hell out of the Murk alive, we’d need every ounce of remaining power the weapon possessed.

  The door closed, shutting off the meager light from inside and leaving us in total darkness. I heard the soft rustle of cloth as Jinx rummaged around in his clothes, and a second
later I heard the hiss of a match flaring to life. I now saw that, in his other hand, Jinx held a bottle filled with clear liquid. An oily rag was stuffed into the bottle’s neck, and Jinx touched the match flame to it. The cloth caught fire and started to burn, and Jinx hurled the bottle toward the ground in front of him. Glass shattered and the Molotov cocktail exploded in a bright burst of flame. Darkuns hissed in anger and drew back from the firelight, and I tried not to think about how many of them there were. The dome’s polished metal surface reflected and intensified the light, and we were safe – for the moment.

  Unfortunately, there was no sign of a motorcycle.

  “Looks like we’re walking,” Jinx said.

  “Are you kidding? Once we step outside the range of the firelight, we’re dead.”

  Before Jinx could respond, we heard the sound of an engine in the distance, and a small pinpoint of light appeared. The sound quickly grew louder and the light brighter as the vehicle approached. It was the emergency motorcycle Bruzer had told us about, and the driver fired bursts from an M-rifle at any Darkun that got too close for comfort. As the driver drew closer, I could see that whoever it was wasn’t wearing the reflective white uniform of a prison guard. I knew for certain the driver wasn’t a guard when he started firing at us.

  The first couple blasts missed. It’s a lot harder to shoot accurately from a moving vehicle than people think. I, however, was not moving, and I raised my trancer, aimed, and fired.

  The motorcycle’s front wheel exploded and the bike flipped forward, launching the driver into the air. The bike tumbled to a stop fifteen feet from where we stood, and the driver hit the ground close by. Most of the bike’s running lights had been shattered, but a couple still worked, and they further illuminated the scene, providing additional protection from any Darkuns that might be lurking nearby.

  Jinx and I walked over to the downed rider. I expected it to be either Gingerdread Man or Demonique – or the Incubi whose bodies they shared. But it was the organ conglomerate, the third Incubus who’d gotten off the Loco-Motive with us.