Waking Nightmares

by Christopher Golden

  Ahead of her, she saw Octavian stride through the sliding glass doors of the emergency room with Charlotte in pursuit, her red hair bright even in the gray rain. The whole town had been infected by chaos, but Keomany knew now that it was the way the infection spread and created blossoms of discord and madness that was the true threat. She had faith in Octavian, and in herself. They could stop this. Gaea lingered just out of her reach, yearning to cleanse the contagion from this place. All could be healed again. Unless their efforts were undermined by small blossoms of chaos that grew so close they could bloom unnoticed. The wild, savage streak in the vampire girl had been augmented and intensified by the dark energies threaded through the town, churning in the chaos storm. This wasn’t the time for the kind of mischief she seemed to delight in stirring up, but like the blood thirst that gnawed at her, she could fight the urge only if she wished to, and even then, for only so long.

  The doors shushed closed behind Charlotte, and Keomany ran even faster after her.

  OCTAVIAN could feel the chaos around him now, its dark energy prickling his skin and making the small hairs stand up on the back of his neck. It touched him, coated his skin with a layer of filth just as unpleasant as the hot rain outside. The miasma of chaos was intangible and invisible, existing only on some etheric plane, but he felt it just the same, and it had been growing worse with every passing moment since the sun had come up. Keomany had predicted that they would have two or three days before the dark energies swirling in Hawthorne hit critical mass, reaching their full power and potentially destroying the entire town and all of its people. Instead, it had been not quite twenty-four hours since Keomany had first sensed the disturbance here, and Octavian could feel the power building. The air crackled with it. He still believed that the daylight—beyond the veil of the storm or not—would have a tempering influence on the evil festering here. But by nightfall, all hell would surely break loose.

  The emergency room hummed with the voices of a throng of people, most of whom had sustained bloody injuries overnight. There were broken limbs and gashed faces and two men who looked like they had beaten each other half to death and then come to the hospital together. A middle-aged Asian woman vomited noisily into a paper bag while her daughter tried to comfort her and held her hair away from her face. The woman had blood and snot dripping from her nose and tried to catch her breath between bouts of retching. She wasn’t the only one who looked sick, like some kind of poison had gotten inside her. Octavian realized that was precisely what had happened.

  Closing his eyes, he tuned out the cacophony of voices around him—all those people waiting for help, knowing there were dozens inside already being treated—and reached down within himself. At the core of himself burned a magic that he nurtured every day. Of all of the sorcery he had learned in the thousand years he had spent in Hell, this was the greatest—to find within himself the magic that had lain dormant in humanity for thousands of years, and ignite it, and make it grow and become his own second nature. So much of what he could do now—not the spellcraft but the instinctive magic, the combat sorcery, came from that core. And something else.

  Octavian smiled, because it felt good. Very, very good. Golden light shimmered at the tips of his fingers and sparked along his palms. An unseen wind danced around him and rustled his clothes and hair, and he could see the golden light misting in front of his eyes, spilling out of them.

  “Be well,” he whispered, and the words were the courier.

  The magic flashed up and spread across the ceiling, falling like gold dust. It slid through the cracks beneath the doors into the treatment area and the open window of the receptionist’s desk and he watched it go, exhaling.

  The Asian woman stopped vomiting. She took several deep breaths, eyes wide, as though she expected another round of convulsive retching any second, but none came. Even her pallor seemed less sickly. Some people tried to brush the gold dust from their clothes and skin, but it vanished like snowflakes melting as they landed on warm pavement. Several had noticed him and now turned to stare, some with fear and others with wonder. Octavian hated to make a spectacle, but if he could not purge all of Hawthorne so easily, the least he could do was help cleanse the dark chaos poison from this handful of people.

  The wounded were still wounded. They still bled. They were still in pain. But those who had been ill, he had made well.

  “What did you just do?” a voice asked from behind him.

  Octavian turned to see Keomany and Charlotte side by side, staring at him. He would have smiled and dismissed his actions with some offhanded remark, but off to their right, in a corner by the door, a uniformed police officer—darkly handsome, perhaps Italian or Greek—had drawn his gun and held it in both hands, aimed at Octavian’s chest.

  “Damn good question,” the cop said. “I’d like an answer. What the hell was that?”

  Keomany shuffled aside. Charlotte swore but managed not to reveal her fangs, and Octavian was grateful of that.

  Octavian lifted his hands to show he meant no harm. “My name is Peter Octavian. Last night, my friends and I were working with Chief Kramer and some of your fellow officers to fight the magic that’s attacking your town. The chief asked us to meet him here.”

  The cop looked doubtful, but his gun wavered. At least one member of the Hawthorne police force had been killed last night, and Octavian suspected that there might be more than one. Octavian saw the fear and grief in him and knew that he must have seen awful things overnight and might now be worried about the people he loved. Men in such circumstances could do foolish things.

  Keomany took a step toward Octavian, raising her hands as well in a placating gesture. “Officer, I know it’s been a long night and it doesn’t seem like it’s getting any better. But we’re here to help.”

  “You’re supposed to meet Chief Kramer here?” the cop asked slowly.

  Octavian nodded. “We are. Check in. You’ll find out that we’re telling the truth.”

  The cop glanced over at the people who had been sick, many of whom were standing, looking around in bewilderment as though they were only waiting for the standoff to end so that they could go home. But it was clear they were better.

  At length, the cop nodded and pulled out his phone, then seemed to remember it wasn’t working and grabbed a hand radio from his belt instead. Bursts of static erupted from it intermittently, but he managed to have a short, muttered conversation, and when it ended he holstered his weapon.

  “Come with me,” he told Octavian and Keomany, with a curious appraising glance at Charlotte. “The chief’s up in the psych unit.”

  “I imagine there was a lot of trouble there last night,” Octavian said, as they all fell in behind the cop, whose name badge he now saw read TAGLIATELLI.

  Officer Tagliatelli would have been a poor poker player. His expression turned grim, and Octavian knew that they had lost at least one officer to violence in the psych unit. But then Tagliatelli’s eyes lit up with confusion and curiosity, and he knew it was not the violence that had brought Chief Kramer to that particular wing of the hospital this morning.

  “Something interesting as well?” Octavian asked.

  “You’ll have to talk to the chief about that,” Tagliatelli replied. “Sorry about drawing on you, though. We’re just not used to . . . y’know, magic, around here. Good or bad. I think I’ve drawn my weapon once since I became a cop, but with all of the craziness right now, we’re all pretty on edge. A patient went nuts a little while ago, beat some people up and took off. I mean, why not just check yourself out. It’s like the whole town’s an insane asylum. Makes the psych unit look like a bunch of accountants talking numbers.”

  “Understandable,” Octavian said. “It’s an ugly day.”

  “I’ll take you up there,” Tagliatelli said, leading the way through the waiting room and past the reception desk.

  Octavian gestured to Charlotte and Keomany, and the three of them followed the cop into the heart of the ER. He could f
eel the fear and smell the sickness around him and he wished he could stop and do whatever he could for each person who was ill or wounded or crushed by fear, but the only way to help them all was to put an end to the chaos.

  Tagliatelli gestured to a hospital security guard. The man nodded and went out to monitor the waiting room. Out of the corner of his eye, when he knew her attention was elsewhere, Octavian watched Charlotte. The vampire had been twitchy and skittish all morning, and he knew it wasn’t just the agitation of the chaos in the air or a hunger for blood. Charlotte had been made into a vampire by Cortez, and he subscribed to an antiquated idea of vampirism. At their core, vampires were shapeshifters, able to change themselves on a molecular level. For more than a thousand years they had been infected with beliefs ingrained in them by the church, purposely laced through their community to limit their power. They’d been made to believe that there were only certain forms they could take when they shapeshifted, and that the sun would burn them, the latter a form of psychosomatic suicide—as shapeshifters, if they believed they would turn to fire and ash, they had.

  Octavian and his long-dead lover, Meaghan Gallagher, had helped to change all of that, to free vampires—shadows—from the limits the church’s cunning had placed on them. But some had enjoyed being the creatures of nightmare the church had painted them as, who had loved being monsters. Predators. Cortez and his ilk shunned the sunlight, cleaving to the vampire myths of old.

  And so Octavian watched Charlotte. She had been turned and taught by Cortez, but he wondered if she had spent much time in the sun since she had fled his coven. He had a feeling she had experimented very little with walking beneath the sun, perhaps afraid to experiment. Even with the storm blotting out all but the dimmest light that filtered through the clouds, she seemed troubled by it. Now that they were indoors she seemed to have settled a bit. He hoped she could get over any skittishness quickly. He needed to be able to rely on her.

  They reached the elevator, where nurses and patients waited.

  “I’m sorry, folks,” Tagliatelli said. “We need to get up to the third floor immediately. Police business.”

  “They don’t look like police,” a craggy-faced old nurse said, staring at Octavian and his friends.

  “Never said they were,” Tagliatelli replied simply, ignoring the woman’s glare.

  The elevator doors opened and the four of them stepped on. None of the patients waiting looked to be in dire straits, so Octavian didn’t object when Tagliatelli held up a hand to prevent anyone else from boarding. The doors shushed closed and the officer hit the button for the third floor.

  As they ascended, Tagliatelli cast appreciative glances at Keomany and Charlotte.

  “What are you two, his personal assistants?” the cop asked, trying to hide his lecherous implications behind an innocent look that didn’t quite work.

  Keomany shot him a withering glance. She pointed a finger at herself.

  “Earthwitch,” she said, then pointed at Charlotte. “Vampire.”

  The cop flinched and turned a fearful gaze on Charlotte, who grinned widely enough to reveal her fangs and waggled her fingers in a childlike wave.

  “Jesus,” Tagliatelli said, facing forward and staring straight ahead as the elevator eased to a halt.

  When the doors opened he practically jumped off. Octavian waited for Keomany and Charlotte to step out before he followed. Tagliatelli rushed ahead of them, no longer bothering to try to make small talk. That was good. It was too grim a day for small talk.

  As they approached a turn in the corridor, Octavian spotted the police chief waiting for them by the nurses’ station outside a secure wing of the floor. Chief Kramer was in the middle of a conversation with a grave-looking doctor, a diminutive woman who seemed exhausted, but broke off the instant he saw them coming.

  “Chief, this is—” Tagliatelli began.

  Kramer ignored them, extending his hand. “Mr. Octavian, thanks for showing up.”

  Octavian nodded. “I told you last night, Chief, that’s why we’re here. I just wish we’d been more successful last night in figuring out the source of all of this.”

  “I appreciate that,” Chief Kramer said, then turned to the vampire girl. “Good morning, Charlotte.”

  “Peachy,” Charlotte replied.

  The chief had not been very comfortable with Charlotte in their brief meeting last night, and he seemed even less so this morning. Sometimes Octavian forgot that most of the world had still never seen a vampire outside videos on television or the Internet. She made Chief Kramer nervous, but Octavian thought that was probably for the best. The chaos around them had made everyone unpredictable, and with her hunger, Charlotte would be even more so. Octavian had caught her looking at him from time to time with a certain salacious glint in her eyes. He would have to have been blind not to see the sexual mischief there, but he wondered how much of that was really her and how much was the influence of chaos.

  She would bear watching.

  “Chief Kramer, this is my friend Keomany Shaw,” Octavian said. “Keomany, Don Kramer.”

  The chief shook Keomany’s hand, sizing her up. Octavian had told him she was an earthwitch and could see the man trying to match his own personal image of what an elemental witch might look like to this lovely, slender creature. Keomany was half-English and half-Cambodian, and the combination of her parents’ two heritages had given her a rare beauty.

  “This is Dr. O’Neil,” Chief Kramer said, indicating the pale, petite woman in her lab coat. “She’s had a hell of a night.”

  They all exchanged greetings, and then Kramer turned to Octavian.

  “I wanted you all here so we could compare notes, see if anyone’s learned anything that will help us get to the bottom of this. The weird shit has tapered off a little since dawn, but it hasn’t stopped, and there are new twists by the hour. In some parts of town, the plants and trees and grass have all died, but in a couple of neighborhoods it’s all grown out of control, like jungles sprouting up from nowhere. More and more people are just flipping out, turning feral. My department hasn’t been able to keep up with all the fights, and the ones they can stop, they’re not arresting anyone. Just sending them home. Sinkholes are starting to open up . . .”

  Chief Kramer paused, glancing from Octavian to Keomany and back.

  “I guess what I’m saying, folks, is that I hope you’ve got some good news. Tell me you can figure out the cause of all this.”

  “I wish we could,” Octavian said. “We know what it is, Chief. But Keomany’s tried pinpointing the source with no luck. If we can’t find the source, maybe we’ll have better luck finding a trigger.”

  Kramer nodded. “I’m not used to all of this stuff, but I had the same thought. I talked to my officers, tried figuring out a timeline. Looks like the first thing anyone noticed was all the dairy products spoiling in some parts of town.”

  Octavian narrowed his eyes. The chief seemed irritated, a little on the defensive. Back in the days when Octavian had played detective, he’d seen it before, cops who bristled at the suggestion that anyone else might be able to do their jobs better than they could. Under the circumstances, Chief Kramer had mostly seemed happy for the help during the night. Octavian hoped the man was smart enough not to start getting territorial now.

  “In some parts of town?” Octavian repeated.

  “I take it back,” the chief said. “As far as I can tell, it happened everywhere, just not all at once. It was like a wave.”

  “A wave,” Keomany said.

  Octavian exchanged a glance with her.

  “Where did the wave start?” Charlotte asked.

  Chief Kramer gave her a surprised look, but Octavian was glad she’d asked. It showed that the vampire was focused, despite the chaos within her and the daylight without, both distracting her. It was the very question he’d been about to ask.

  “It seems like it started from the coast and rolled through town east to west,” the chief said. He looked tir
ed, dark smears under his eyes, but he perked up now. “The way the tide went out so far, like a tidal wave was coming in or something . . . do you think this started in the ocean?”

  Octavian glanced at Keomany.

  “It’s where we went when we first came to town,” Keomany told the chief. “I don’t think it’s the source of the magic causing this, but I definitely sensed something unnatural there.”

  “It’s a start,” Chief Kramer said. “But what do we do? Send divers down? We wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Let’s take this from another angle,” Octavian said. “Other than Charlotte over here, has anything been reported that seems occult to you? I don’t mean the effects of magic, all this chaos, but something more than that, anything your officers have run across, or anyone who seems to know more than they should—”

  From the chief’s reaction, Octavian saw that he’d hit on something.

  “What is it?”

  “The reason we were up here to begin with,” Chief Kramer said, gesturing at Dr. O’Neil, who still stood beside him. “One of my people was murdered in the psych unit last night. Dr. O’Neil’s staff and patients took some hits as well. But one of her patients . . .”

  The police chief glanced around, turned to Dr. O’Neil, and then smiled wanly.

  “Maybe you’d all better hear this yourself. Could be it’ll make sense to you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  THE ghost was waiting in the elevator when Miles and Amber got on. Or, at least, that was how it seemed. Over the course of his life, prompted by his first brush with the supernatural as a child, Miles had studied various occult phenomena, but all of his research and his various encounters with roaming spirits had no handle on the behavior of ghosts. All of the supposedly true stories he had ever read had provided no consensus. For all he knew, the ghost might have been following him all morning, just out of sight, and only manifested as something he could see at the moment that the elevator doors swept open and he and Amber stepped on board.