Dreamfever

by Kit Alloway

  Josh was too weak to gag.

  Feodor walked past Josh so that he could check on Will. “Dead,” he pronounced, and Josh felt useless tears gush from her eyes.

  He can’t be dead, he can’t be, I’m so sorry, Will.

  Bayla put on the circlet and vambrace, not even wincing when the wires bit into her skin, and presented herself proudly to Peregrine. He patted her on the head.

  “Put Josh with the others,” he said, and Josh felt herself lifted from the floor as if by magic. Desperately, she tried to turn her head so that she could see Will and prove Feodor wrong, but Bayla prevented her.

  He can’t be dead. As long as I don’t see him, he’s still alive.

  As Josh floated out of the room, she heard Peregrine say to Mirren, “Now, about those secrets.”

  * * *

  Bayla used the devices to fly Josh into a large bedroom, where five people were chained to a massive block of concrete.

  “Josh!” Deloise cried. “Are you okay?”

  Another set of manacles appeared and closed themselves around Josh’s wrists and ankles, as if she could have tried to escape. Just breathing was difficult. Josh slumped to the floor between Deloise and Whim.

  Nearby, a man, a woman, and a girl around Deloise’s age sat on a couch. They all looked the worse for wear: the woman had clearly been beaten in the face.

  “Who?” Josh managed to ask.

  “This is Mirren’s family,” Deloise told her.

  “Is Mirren all right?” the teenage girl asked.

  Josh didn’t even have the strength to nod.

  “Where’s Will?” Whim asked.

  She closed her eyes. He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. I killed for him, he can’t be dead.

  Time might have passed; she wasn’t sure. Her body was screaming at her, but she didn’t know what it wanted or needed, only that she couldn’t hold it up any longer.

  Then suddenly someone was shaking her shoulders, and Feodor’s face swam before her eyes.

  “Open an archway,” he ordered.

  The mere thought caused a throb of pain between her temples. Josh’s weakness pinned her to the ground.

  “Give me the activator,” Feodor said, but she looked at him skeptically. Her anger at his betrayal restored a measure of her strength.

  “‘Whom you befriend, you become,’” she told him, citing a Polish proverb, as he had done.

  Feodor answered with another. “‘Sometimes even innocence needs a mask.’”

  Josh nearly responded in kind—she was favoring “‘Your face and my ass are twins’”—when Whim said, “Speak English!”

  “Who are you?” Mirren’s aunt demanded.

  In English, Feodor replied, “I am your only chance of escaping alive. Give me the activator, Josh.”

  “You betrayed us!” Whim said. He put his arm around Josh’s shoulders. “We aren’t giving you anything!”

  Feodor’s mouth tightened with irritation. “Stop being ridiculous. You claim to know me as well as I know myself—”

  “No, I don’t!” Josh hissed with the very last of her strength. “I don’t even know who I’m talking to right now! Are you the Feodor who brushed his little sister’s hair every night, or the Feodor who dumped his brothers in an orphanage? Are you the Feodor who invented modern methods of Veil repair, or the Feodor who created a drill powered by souls? Are you the Feodor who fought in the Battle of Warsaw, or the Feodor who helped the Nazis build—”

  She ran out of breath, but it didn’t matter anyway. What else could she say? She wanted Feodor to prove himself, even though she knew that was impossible, that there could be no redemption for the things he had done.

  Bash’s blood-filled eyes flashed in her mind. Perhaps there was no redemption for her, either.

  Strangely, Feodor reached for her hand. His smile was small and sad. “I am all of those things,” he said.

  She wanted to turn away but couldn’t, and even if she could have, there was no way to turn away from the truth. He had given her the answer to the paradox with which she had struggled for months: Was he a monster or a victim?

  He was both.

  Wasn’t she the same? Hadn’t she lied to her boyfriend and everyone else, and craved power, and built the devices when she knew how dangerous they were? And hadn’t she done it all with the best of intentions?

  “‘Wherever you go, you can’t get rid of yourself,’” Josh told Feodor, and she slipped the activator into his hand.

  He smiled then, before turning away.

  Twenty−eight

  Will woke up in pain. His pulse rushed, a flash flood in his ears, making his eardrums throb, and every time he inhaled, he felt like he was breathing in crushed glass.

  His eyes hurt, too, although he didn’t know why. When he opened them, he saw Feodor crouching beside him with an impatient expression.

  Then Will saw Bash.

  He tried to sit up and had to settle for crawling away across the marble floor until he could prop himself up against the fancy curtains. Bash’s back was arched, his burn-spotted arm stretched out as if he were reaching for help, for hope, for something that would have saved him from dying in agony.

  The last Will remembered, he had been praying for the same thing.

  “Don’t be afraid; he is dead,” Feodor said, as if that were some comfort. “Do you have a watch?”

  Will stared at him.

  “A timepiece?” Feodor asked urgently.

  Will usually wore a watch, but he’d worn it into Iph Lake and it had stopped working.

  “Do you have three brain cells left, or shall we use you as a coatrack?” Feodor asked, losing patience.

  “You’re evil,” Will managed to say.

  “No one who knows me would disagree,” Feodor said matter-of-factly. “Here.” He removed his pocket watch and unhooked the chain from his belt loop. “I have modified this watch to keep time within the Dream, so you may rely upon its accuracy. I told Peregrine that I could alter these devices to keep them from killing him; however, I intend to fit them instead with two of the transmitters. Exactly fifteen minutes from now, I will ask him to test them. You have until then to find the towers Peregrine placed in this universe and fit them with the transmitters. At the fifteen-minute mark, I will activate the transmitters. Do you understand?”

  Will heard about half of Feodor’s second sentence before his brain lost track completely.

  Seeing his blank stare, Feodor sighed angrily. “Perhaps Josh will take pity and keep you as a pet,” he said, rising.

  “Wait,” Will said, the words scraping his throat as he spoke them. “Why should I trust you?”

  Feodor rolled his gray eyes. “Your girlfriend wanted to know the same thing.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Will replied, climbing to his feet. “You did try to kill us four months ago, after all.”

  “Four months?” Feodor asked, lifting his eyebrows. “I thought less time had passed.”

  Will didn’t share Feodor’s interest in time. “I should kill you right now,” he said.

  Coolly, Feodor said, “Try.”

  They both knew that Will was in no shape for hand-to-hand combat.

  “You want me to believe that you’ve gone from wanting to kill us to wanting to save us?” Will asked.

  Feodor smiled with just the corner of his mouth. “I never wanted to kill any of you. Your lives meant nothing to me. I wanted to escape that prison universe, and to do that, I had to kill you. Today, I want to escape this universe, but to do that, I need your help.”

  “Why? Peregrine would let you walk out of here if you asked him.”

  “No.” Feodor shook his head. “We are playing a game, Peregrine and I, and we both know the other is playing. Eventually he will tire of testing how far I will go in order to keep playing.” He straightened his shoulders as he prepared to leave. “If you do not wish to help me, I will do what I can on my own.”

  Will said, “Wait. How did you get the ac
tivator?”

  “Josh gave it to me.” Feodor produced it from his pocket.

  Why did Josh give him the activator? Will thought. A bitter taste filled his mouth, ammonia and green onions.

  She betrayed me. She betrayed all of us.

  For him.

  “I believe this plan is our best chance at survival,” Feodor said.

  Then I’m not going to let you be in charge of it, Will thought.

  “I’ll help you,” he said, “but I want to be the one with the activator.”

  “If you aren’t in the room with us, how will you know when Peregrine has put on the devices?”

  “I’ll go outside and put the transmitters on the towers, then come back inside and find you.”

  He held out his hand, but Feodor said, “You are being unreasonable. I will be in a better position to decide when to activate the transmitters.”

  “I don’t care,” Will said, his voice rising. “This is the only way I’m going to help you.”

  Feodor stared at him for a few seconds, his eyes as dark as thunderheads, and then smiled. He dropped the activator into Will’s open hand.

  “You’ll find us in the file room,” he said.

  Twenty−nine

  Mirren would have expected herself to be hysterical after watching Bash—and perhaps Will—die. Instead, she grew increasingly cold and matter-of-fact.

  Life is a kamikaze mission, she reminded herself. We’re all going to die in the end, so we might as well do something important before we go.

  She stood in the file room, only ten feet from where Peregrine stood fiddling with the key chain he’d taken off the wall.

  Three big steps, Mirren thought, and I could grab him.

  Three steps was too far a distance; he’d shoot her by then. He had the gun tucked between his elbow and his side so he could examine the keys with both hands, and Mirren didn’t doubt he was itching for a reason to shoot her.

  She heard Bayla singing in the stairwell, but the person who floated into the file room wasn’t Bayla.

  It was Katia.

  Mirren’s cousin collapsed onto the floor as Bayla released her, and Mirren rushed to her side. “Are you hurt? Did she hurt you?”

  Katia’s silvery hair was in snarls and her clothes were stained, but otherwise she looked only a little the worse for wear. Her hug was reassuringly strong. “We thought you were dead,” she admitted.

  Mirren hugged her back tightly. “I’m okay. What about Fel and Collena?”

  “They’re all right. Peregrine’s been holding us prisoner.”

  Reluctantly, Mirren released Katia and then rose. She could think of only one reason why Peregrine would have had Katia brought to the file room.

  “I won’t have her harmed,” Mirren told Peregrine.

  He smiled evilly. “Show me how to open the files, and I won’t hurt her. You have my word.”

  Your word? Mirren thought. And what is that worth?

  Before she could respond, Feodor entered the room carrying a chef’s knife. “I’m afraid this was all I could find,” he said.

  Mirren had refused to tell him where her family’s toolbox was. He’d told Peregrine that he could alter the devices so that they wouldn’t kill the wearer, and Mirren hadn’t wanted to assist him in any way. He had been gone a long time; she wondered how many rooms he had searched before giving up.

  “Miss Bayla,” Feodor said, “I will need to borrow the devices for a few minutes.”

  Petulantly, Bayla looked at Peregrine, who was holding the gun in his hand again. “But my turn just started!” she wailed.

  “Don’t be a brat,” Peregrine said. “Take ’em off.”

  Bayla reluctantly removed the circlet and vambrace.

  “Don’t try anything,” Peregrine told Mirren. To Feodor, he said, “How long will this take?”

  “Ten, perhaps fifteen minutes,” Feodor assured him. He set the devices down on top of one of the file cabinets.

  “Make it ten,” Peregrine said.

  “Then can I put them back on?” Bayla asked.

  “Stop whining.” He made as if to hit her with the gun, and Bayla shrank back. “Now then, Princess, you were about to open the files.”

  Mirren glanced at Katia, even though she knew that the sight of her cousin would only make her feel worse. “Don’t give him anything,” Katia said.

  She had always been the brave one: the one who talked back to her parents, climbed the castle walls, pulled out her own splinters. Mirren knew that Katia would endure whatever she could to protect the family secrets—and she didn’t even know what those secrets were.

  “I guess we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way,” Peregrine said, striding over to Katia. He grabbed her by the hair.

  “Don’t kill her!” Mirren cried. “Please!”

  “Oh, I’m not going to kill her. See, if I kill her, then I won’t be able to torture her anymore.” He grinned. “My father taught me that.”

  Katia’s eyes were wide, but Mirren could see her trying not to show any fear. She allowed Peregrine to jerk her to her feet, one hand fisted in her hair, the other holding the gun to her face.

  “You have to start small,” he said. “I was going to start with ripping out her hair, but since I only have two hands—”

  “I’ll do it!” Bayla screamed.

  Before Peregrine could even make a demand of Mirren, Bayla had sprung to Katia’s side and wrestled a chunk of hair away from Peregrine’s hold. She pulled, but all she managed was to yank Katia’s head to the side. Katia winced but didn’t make a sound.

  “No, no, you’re pulling too much,” Peregrine told her. “Use half that much.”

  “Like, this much?” Bayla asked.

  Mirren began to feel like she was floating. This can’t be happening, she thought. I can’t—I don’t know—how can I—

  Bayla, now clutching a smaller lock of hair, braced one foot against Katia’s hip and yanked. Katia yelped as she swung her hips to the side, and Bayla came away with only a few strands.

  Haley, Mirren thought desperately, I wish you were here.

  “Let’s brace her up against the file cabinets,” Peregrine said.

  Tears filled Katia’s eyes as Peregrine forced her to stand next to one of the file cabinets. It came up to her chin. Bayla ran around the other side, so that she could brace herself against the cabinets when she pulled.

  I’m such a coward, Mirren thought, but she closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch.

  She couldn’t watch, and she couldn’t stop them.

  “Open your eyes!” Peregrine yelled at her. “This is the last time you’ll see your cousin with a full head of hair! By the end of the night, she’ll look like me!”

  Katia gave Mirren a tiny, weak smile. Mirren tried to collect herself, to think, but she couldn’t stop trembling. After all these weeks of threats and fears, and now seeing her cousin tormented, she was finally losing her composure.

  Bayla yanked, and at the last second, Mirren shut her eyes. She heard Katia cry out through gritted teeth and something slam against the file cabinet, and when she looked, she saw Bayla holding a fistful of silver strands of hair.

  “I thought her scalp would come off,” Bayla said, examining the hairs.

  “She’s bleeding,” Peregrine said. “That’s enough.”

  Katia sneezed, then sneezed again. Blood oozed down the side of her face, the way it had Bash’s.

  He’s going to kill her slowly, like he did Bash, Mirren thought, and then she heard Haley’s voice.

  Don’t lose yourself, he whispered.

  And for an instant, she felt him there with her, his hand squeezing hers.

  She marched up to Peregrine, grabbed the hand with which he held the gun, and pointed the barrel at her cousin’s temple. Peregrine realized what she was going to do just in time to jerk the gun to the side, and the shot Mirren fired went into the file cabinet next to Katia’s head instead of into her skull.

  Peregrine s
miled, and Bayla began to giggle.

  “Thought you were going to screw me out of my fun, didn’t you?” Peregrine asked.

  “I would rather see her dead than tortured,” Mirren told him.

  “We’d just start again with your aunt,” he replied.

  Then he shot Katia in the leg.

  Katia screamed, not just out of pain, but from surprise, Mirren could tell.

  “Missed the bone,” Peregrine complained. “I’ll get it with the next one. There’s nothing quite like bone pain.”

  He glanced at Feodor as he spoke, and Feodor glanced back and shrugged coyly. Mirren didn’t know what that meant, but she went to her knees beside Katia, who was trying to put pressure on her shin. The bullet had torn through her calf muscles, and she was bleeding from both entrance and exit wounds.

  Mirren pulled her shirt over her head. With the long sleeves, she tied a tourniquet below Katia’s knee and then used the rest of the material to put pressure on the wounds. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Let me bleed out,” Katia was whispering back, trying to remove the knot from the sleeves. “It’ll be faster.”

  Peregrine laughed again, and Mirren didn’t realize she was moving until her bloody fist connected with his face. She hit him hard enough that he fell backward onto his ass, and then Bayla tackled her, and they fell to the floor in a painful pile of elbows and knees.

  Everything Mirren knew about fighting, she’d learned from Josh in a two-week period, and the knowledge wasn’t enough to help her much. Bayla fought like a wild animal, with her nails and her teeth, growling and slobbering. Within no more than a minute, Mirren was bleeding from multiple bite wounds and her own patch of torn scalp, and one of her bra straps had been snapped.

  “Stop it!” Peregrine shouted. “Stop it!”

  He kicked Bayla, who reluctantly rolled off Mirren. Peregrine’s eye was already beginning to swell, but he had no trouble aiming the gun at Mirren’s face.

  He trembled with rage. “I’ll kill you!”

  Mirren smiled a weak, bitter smile.

  “Go ahead and shoot,” she said. “I’m not afraid. I’ve got someone waiting for me on the other side.”