by Sam Ferguson
I knew he was talking about the trans-dimensional unification engine, but I wasn’t going to feed him any information by filling in holes. He was going to have to explain everything to me. “What do you want?” I asked bluntly.
“The machine belongs not only to the Bar’Sule clan, but to mine as well,” Drendarin stated. “My father’s father worked with Hek’tar Bar’Sule’s grandfather on the invention. It took many years, and much sacrifice to create it. They knew it would be a challenging endeavor, but neither of the original inventors guessed that it would lead to a war between our clans. When it was near completion, my grandfather realized that using the machine would not simply unify the seven worlds into one, but that it would destroy nearly every living thing in all seven dimensions. Seeing that he could not complete his work, he spoke with Hek’tar Bar’Sule’s grandfather, a great and marvelous scientist known as Taragoth the Quick. Taragoth agreed with my grandfather, but Taragoth’s son would not see reason. In a fit of rage, Taragoth was slain by his own son during an argument about the fate of the machine. It was then that my grandfather knew he had to dispose of the machine.”
Drendarin swished his tail behind himself nervously. “My grandfather arranged to deposit the machine in this dimension.”
“Why in the bloody hell would he do that?” I shouted. “Hey, I just invented a giant doomsday machine, oh, I have an idea, let’s give it to the humans!” I went on in my best evil scientist impression, rubbing my hands together and everything.
“You misunderstand!” Drendarin said with a snort. “He never thought that anyone in this dimension would be able to actually complete his work. He destroyed all of the notes and diagrams, and only deposited the machine itself in this dimension.”
“So, let me get this straight, your grandfather thought humans were too dumb to figure it out?”
Drendarin nodded and flicked his forked tongue. “In his defense, we did invent the wheel some ten thousand years before humans. Technically, you never actually invented it. The elves gave it to…”
“I really don’t care,” I snapped. “So, you are telling me that my family is innocent, that I am not the son of a thief?”
“Well… no,” Drendarin said with a shrug. “My grandfather placed the machine within an organization that would have used its parts to fuel some sort of crude engine. Your father did, in fact, steal the machine from them.”
I shook my head and waved it all off. “Still, I’m blaming you that I am right here, right now.” A swell of anger boiled up inside my chest. Drendarin was still speaking, but I was no longer listening. I sheathed my sword, walked up to the six-foot-tall lizard-man, and belted him straight in the face with all the power my three hundred pound body could. Drendarin hit the dirt, hard. He hissed in a predictably snake-like fashion, but he didn’t draw his weapons or move to fight back.
“You are like Hek’tar Bar’Sule and his clan, slow to reason,” Drendarin hissed.
“And you are an idiot,” I shot back. Not my most creative insult, but I can’t always come up with the right thing to say when I’m flustered. “If not for you and your stupid grandpa, I could be home with my wife and son. I would never have gone to jail. Everything would be perfect!”
Drendarin held a clawed hand out to me and sighed. “If my grandfather had not hidden the machine when he did, the others would have already used it. Your world would not exist, nor would your family. At least you have had some piece of happiness, even if you lost it in the end. What is it you humans say? It is better to have loved and lost, than to have not loved at all?”
Great, I’m stuck in a dream with a giant lizard-philosopher. I grunted and reached down for his hand. Drendarin nodded his appreciation and then looked to the horizon.
“This is what my world looks like in the barren parts,” he said. “Come, I will show you more.” There was a flash of light as Drendarin played with a ring on his left index finger. Suddenly I was in a city of sorts. I stood upon a gray street. Houses lined the sides and drakkul were out in the sunlight. To my right, four children kicked a ball in the street. To my left, a pair of adult drakkul were discussing the sale of a rather large animal with six legs and two heads.
“We are not so different, you and I,” Drendarin said. “We each have families. We both have communities. Look there,” he said as he pointed to a conical building with windows of green and blue glass. “That is our primary school where our younglings attend until their tenth summer. When I was young, I attended there. My mother taught in that school until she died of old age.”
Drendarin played with his ring again and we were whisked up into a high mountain overlooking a coastal city with towering buildings and sprawling streets separated by rectangular green spaces.
“Even our larger cities are similar,” Drendarin noted. “Down there you will find universities, churches, buildings of government, homes, and businesses of all kinds. We have vehicles that are like your automobiles, but ours run upon water, and do not pollute our skies, though, they are slower than your noisy contraptions.”
“You seem to know a lot about my world,” I said suspiciously.
“I am a student of science and history,” Drendarin replied. “I study many subjects, but your home world is among my favorite topics, yes. Ever since the machine was placed in your home world, my family has endeavored to learn of your home, and its people.”
“Why?”
Drendarin sighed and pointed down to the city emphatically. “Because, the more you understand your enemy, the easier it is to recognize that you should be friends. Ours is a society built upon honor. If my clan could take a more prominent role in governing our people, then the drakkul will learn that humans are not our enemies. They will see as I do, that we are more the same. Our bodies may look different, but we have the same desires and aspirations.”
“Tell that to the drakkul who beheaded my father,” I said.
Drendarin touched his ring and we were back in the barren valley where we had started. “Even if you cannot find mercy in your heart for my people, surely you must see the danger that the machine poses. If it is used to merge our worlds, none of us would survive. Imagine the chaos that would come to a barren place such as this when it merges with your home.”
“I assume that would also come with those giant pterodactyl things?” I asked.
“And many more beasts the likes of which your world has never known,” Drendarin answered.
I shook my head. “All right, so let’s say I put aside my feelings for your grandpa and ask what your plan is, what would you say?”
Drendarin grinned, revealing his wickedly sharp fangs. “Find the machine, put it out of reach of the Bar’Sule clan, and then broker peace between your family and theirs.”
“Oh, is that all?” I asked with a roll of my eyes.
“I have sacrificed much to stop the Bar’Sule clan from retrieving the machine. I must succeed where my grandfather failed. We must destroy it.”
“If I destroy it, then the other drakkul will never stop coming after me and my family,” I reminded him. “I’m not about to let them hunt my son.”
Drendarin shook his head. “No, you help me get the machine back. I will report that you returned it, thus making amends for your father’s sins. I will destroy it.”
“And I am just supposed to trust you?” I scoffed. “Fat chance of that.”
“I saved your life,” Drendarin put in. “The harbinger wolves had you cornered.”
He was right of course, but that wasn’t nearly enough to sway me into giving him the engine. “You may have saved my life,” I said. “But, the machine of which you speak could destroy far more lives. The others I work with wouldn’t allow it even if I did. They don’t trust you. I assume you know of the three Viking guys right?”
Drendarin nodded and grinned slyly. “Yes, I have seen them in action. Also, Hank has told me a bit about them.”
“Hank?” I spat out incredulously. “How do you know him?”
“Bull-crap,” I said. “I think we’re done here.”
“Hank was planning on stealing the machine back from a man named Brent Rathison, was he not?” Drendarin pressed. “Exactly how did you think you were going to go up against the most powerful family of vampires without help?”
This was too much. Drendarin knew far more than he should. “You can read my mind can’t you?” I accused. “In the dream you can get into my head. That’s how you know this.”
“No,” Drendarin said with a shake of his head and impatient tail thump. “I am the first drakkul to walk in dreams. I used a modified version of one of my grandfather’s inventions. We had made it as a way to guard against harbinger wolves, but I used it to find Hank. I watched the last several battles at the gates. I was there when you saw your first battle between Hek’tar Bar’Sule and one of your vikings. I saw something in Hank, an intelligence that wasn’t as obvious with the others. I began working then on contacting him. He distrusted me at first as well, but eventually he came to see that I was right.”
“You want me to believe that you and I are allies just because you can name Hank and some billionaire son of a vampire? You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“I cannot prove my words to you. Believe, or do not believe, the choice is yours. I will say that we need to help each other. If you assault Brent Rathison without my help, you will fail.”
“And you have something that can give me the edge?” I asked. Drendarin nodded, keeping his gaze locked steady with mine. “If you know how to beat them, then why not do it yourself?”
“Simple,” Drendarin said. “I am an honorable drakkul. I cannot sneak into your world in the physical sense. For me to do so would bring dishonor and shame upon my family. Additionally, thanks to the recent defeat at the hands of your viking guardian, I cannot open the gate from our world to yours and challenge your gatekeeper for several more months. So, as you can plainly see, I need your help.”
“So we’re supposed to become friends then?”
“A friendship between two people can grow into peace between two nations,” Drendarin said as he stretched out his hand.
CHAPTER 14
I woke with a sudden start, coughing and gasping for air while my eyes filled with tears. There was a terrible, acrid odor assaulting my nose and burning my lungs. I looked down and saw a bottle of Nose Tork. Reflexively I slapped at it, but Marcus moved the bottle out of the way before I could hit it.
“Sorry brother, just looked like you were having a bad dream so we thought we’d get you out of it,” Marcus said.
“You could have just used smelling salts,” I said. “The little ones aren’t as bad as the crap you put under my nose.” I coughed again and wiped away the water building up in my eyes.
“Didn’t have anything weaker on hand,” Marcus said with a shrug.
“Just be happy we made it out alive,” Katya said. “We got word that our Moscow team was hit same time we were. No one lived.”
“Who attacked the Moscow team?” I asked.
No one answered.
The vehicle stopped moving and doors popped open on all sides as people jumped out. I moved to follow, but a sharp pain in my ankle reminded me that I was not in perfect shape. Marcus helped me limp my way out. Now that I was essentially living two lives, one in the real world and one in dreams, it was difficult to keep up with all of the injuries I had and remember which ones applied in which life.
“It’ll take some time to heal,” Marcus said as he motioned to my ankle. “I stitched up the puncture wounds, but the bones are broken.”
I looked down and saw a mass of purple skin bulging out through the gauze that had been wrapped around my limb. “Thanks for patching me up,” I said.
Marcus nodded and continued helping me until we passed through a steel door that was several inches thick and into a small room. Katya flicked on the light and a warm, faint yellow bulb began humming as it hung from the ceiling, doing its best to light up the racks of weapons on the walls to either side.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Safe house in Nevada,” Katya replied. “Come on, get the dream walker into the sleeping quarters.”
Marcus pulled me toward another metal door on the opposite side of the room as a pair of men pulled the thick steel door closed and sealed the safe house off from the outside world. Katya turned to Mack and asked him for a full report.
Mack was holding an ice pack to his head, and still had some dried blood matting his left eyebrow down. “Moscow was hit by a pair of drakkul leading a horde of beasts,” he said. “From what I could see it was similar to the ambush we got, except a lot bigger.”
Katya swore in Russian and put two fingers to her mouth as she spat. She opened her mouth to say something, but I cut in first.
“Are you sure there were drakkul?” I asked Mack.
The short man nodded. “Positive.”
“I need to tell you all something,” I said.
“It can wait,” Katya said dismissively.
“No, it can’t,” I argued. “While I slept on the way over here, I had a battle in the dream world.”
Katya eyed me carefully and then finally nodded. “Go on,” she said.
I relayed to them the entire dream, careful to go into as much detail as I could. When I finished, Katya spat again.
“You should have killed that egg-sucking lizard!” Dan said as he pulled his ripped shirt off over his head and went to a metal chest near the back wall to retrieve a new, forest-green shirt.
I nodded in agreement.
“So, you two shook hands and became best buds while Moscow was getting their cans kicked, is that it?” Flint asked angrily.
“No, I didn’t shake hands with him. He offered me his hand, but I ended the dream there. I didn’t trust him. And, now that I hear about Moscow, I think that was the right decision. I think he was only there to try and pump me for information about the engine.”
Katya nodded. “Sounds accurate enough, but how did they get to Moscow without our team catching the illegal portal?”
Mack jumped in. “The portal opened in the Moscow safe house. Our team never stood a chance.”
“In the safe house?” Flint spat. “How in the he—”
“Can they get to us here?” Dan asked, cutting Flint off.
Mack shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I only know that Moscow was hit because I was trying to contact them just before we all got hit. I was going to set up a coordination meeting to follow up on Hank’s plans. When no one answered, I was able to get into the security camera footage. That’s what I was going to explain before Mills interrupted. I saw the bodies in the live feed, and then we got hit before I could say another word. After we escaped in the van, I accessed the camera footage and rewound it. The attack was quick and brutal. They knew exactly where to go.”
“The safe house in Moscow is four hundred feet below ground,” Katya said. “I helped arrange for the purchase of the facility from an old… acquaintance.”
“You mean your FSB connections,” Dan quipped.
“Don’t be jealous,” Katya replied coyly.
“All right, then we supply ourselves and move on,” Flint said.
“Who put you in charge?” Dan asked.
“It doesn’t matter where we go,” I cut in. “The drakkul know our plans. They know we are going after Brent Rathison, they will do whatever they can to get there before us unless we act quickly.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Flint asked. “Shall we storm the billionaire’s mansion with a handful of operatives and some dream walker who can’t even walk without help in the real world? Oh, and did I mention there is a family of ancient vampires guarding both Brent and the engine?”
“We could call Section Four,” Mack said in a voice tha
t was almost too quiet. Everyone turned and stared at the bloodied hacker.
“Briggs will have us all flayed alive,” Flint said. “Jones was…” Flint’s words caught in his throat. As I watched the towering soldier, I could see tears welling in his eyes. He turned and walked out through the back door and disappeared down a dark hallway.
Dan sighed and shook his head. “We’ve lost some good men today,” he said. “Perhaps it’s best if we all catch some sleep and then decide what to do after we have regrouped a bit.”
Easy for him to say. He didn’t have to spend his sleep time fighting demons from other worlds.
“Katya, see if you can contact the other teams and warn them. Mack, try and find Indyrith. We could use his help.” The former FBI operative then looked at me with stern eyes and a sour expression on his face. “You come with me,” he said. “Let’s see if we can’t do something about these dreams you are having.”
Marcus helped me limp after Dan as the large man walked through the corridors as easily as if the safe house had been his childhood home. I took in the rusted hinges on the doors, the lightbulbs hanging by their cords and sloppily stapled to the ceilings, and felt more than a little apprehensive as I watched the shadows around us. Toward the end of a particularly long hallway, Dan opened a green door that screeched in protest as he pulled on it.
For a moment, I wondered if he had something like Professor X’s Cerebro… but I was soon disappointed to discover that it was a simple conference room. It was like something out of the Cold War era. A single table sat in the middle of the room. Some old contraption that appeared to be a recording device was sitting atop the table. Marcus helped me to a chair and then left the room, closing and locking the door from the outside.
“What’s going on?” I asked as Dan crossed his arms and began pacing on the other side of the table.
The large man shook his head. “Interrogation rooms help me think,” he replied. “I’ll ask questions, and you answer them.”