Genie and the Sandman

by Julie Parker

  “How?” he gurgled. With one last snarl, he reared up from where he lay prone on the forest floor, before he slipped back to the earth, closed his eyes, and was no more.

  Stupid vamp. Everyone from my world knew how to kill one.

  Loud clapping echoed throughout the forest.

  “You can come out now, coward.” Moments later Mr. Pizza emerged from behind a distant tree. He strode briskly toward me, glee etched in his expression. “I’ve killed he who cannot be killed,” I informed him.

  “If anyone could, I knew it would be you.” He fairly gushed with gratitude.

  I didn’t want to waste any more time here. As soon as he was within arm’s length, I reached out and grabbed him. “Awake.”

  Almost instantly I became aware that I was on the floor in the hall of the manor, my hands still on the chest of Mr. Pizza…well, Baldy now. Logan snatched my arm and pulled me up beside him. I guess I hadn’t been gone long…the goons were still unconscious.

  “Have you got something to use?” he asked.

  While Baldy glared daggers at us both, I nodded my head. “Yeah, come on.”

  “Don’t even think of following us,” Logan warned him.

  Together we strode down the passageway and into the throng of guests, who were still milling about. When they noticed Logan and me, they backed away, forming a crude circle around us. Half of them hissed while the other half growled. I wondered; maybe they weren’t all vampires. Half might be werewolves. The two did go hand-in-hand.

  A slight problem presented itself. I only had ammunition to scare off the vamps.

  I addressed the crowd. “You all know what I can do.” My bravado sounded weak, even to my own ears. Looking at the faces around me, I was sure they detected it as well.

  Logan was tense beside me. He was ready to fight, but I well knew the fear he must be feeling, for I too wondered if we would prevail. Baldy rushed into the room and pushed his way through the crowd to stand before us.

  “He is with her,” he hissed accusingly. “Our lord’s own son is aligned with the enemy.”

  A collective gasp sounded around the room.

  “Oh, piss off, the lot of you,” Logan snapped. “We’re walking out of here, and the first one who tries something gets it.” He took a menacing step forward; everyone else stepped back. “Clear a path.”

  I was amazed they did as he asked.

  We crept slowly through the group, our destination the front door. Closer we got, and then closer still, until we were only steps away.

  “Stop,” commanded a booming voice from above.

  Logan and I, and everyone else in the room, looked up toward the balcony. It was there we saw him—the head vampire—Logan’s dad.

  “It figures,” I muttered. We had been so close.

  “Dad?” Logan squawked. I forgot he hadn’t been partial to the dream sequence I was subjected to. He had no idea his dad was lead vamp.

  I put my hand on Logan’s arm. “Take it easy, okay?”

  He shrugged me off in annoyance. “Did you know about this?” When I smiled sheepishly he said, “You could have warned me.”

  “Wasn’t it kind of a tip off when they called you their lord’s own son?” Not to mention Baldy’s devotion, but I didn’t want to rub it in.

  “I guess.” He let loose a large frustrated sigh. “Now what should we do?”

  “Run?”

  Logan nodded his head in agreement, but as we made to dash across the last few feet to the door, a few vamps darted to block our exit. They could move very fast.

  Logan dropped his head in defeat. “Do it.”

  The feeling I got from him was why do you get to be the hero again? Hopefully, in the next world, Logan would get another chance to save the day. Guys and their egos…I swear, I would never get it. I would trade every power I had just to deliver us home safely. Didn’t he understand that? But for now, his willingness to surrender the moment to me was all the encouragement I needed.

  I swept my gaze around the guests, who were looking back and forth from Logan’s dad to Logan and me. “Don’t be fooled,” I warned them as convincingly as possible. “That is not your lord. Your lord is dead.” I waved my arm in a grandioso gesture. Most of the crowd cringed and began to scatter, looking around the room for what I’d brought forth.

  Sure enough, as the mob broke up, I could see the faint outline of a figure lying flat on the floor with a long wooden stick staked in his breast, just as I’d imagined in my mind. While I watched, he became more and more solid, until it was impossible to tell that he was any less real than anyone else in the room.

  The group screamed in fear, yelling, “Our lord is dead! He’s dead.”

  I could barely make out the angered words from the real lord on the balcony hissing this was all a trick, and that he was very much alive. I gave him a gloating look.

  My smugness was short-lived.

  A mass of unruly vamps and what-ever-else were running in a full out panic right at the front door, and at Logan and me. Logan grabbed my arm and we dashed out of the way just in the nick of time. As the guests fled the manor and scattered into the surrounding forest, ignoring their horse-drawn carriages, we flew out the door behind them, running as fast as we could. I looked back briefly at the manor and saw the head vamp now standing in the doorway, still yelling at everyone.

  “Boy, is he mad,” I said to Logan in a pant.

  “And no doubt fast as hell. Keep running.”

  As we reached the big iron gate, Logan grabbed one side and swung it closed while I did the same with the other side. It made a loud clanging noise as they came together. There was a heavy chain attached to one side. Logan undid it and lashed it around both sides of the fence. Then he clicked a heavy padlock into place.

  “This should keep in what hasn’t already escaped,” he told me.

  I peered around the surrounding land, but I couldn’t detect any movement. If anything had gotten out, it was probably long gone.

  We ran in the direction of the large looming hills and the entrance to the tunnels. I’d dropped my blanket in our haste to escape, and now the cold night air rushed against my exposed skin. Though the ground was soaked, along with my shoes, at least it’d stopped raining. I was tired, and slowed my pace to a jog. Logan saw me lagging and he slowed down to match my speed.

  “They were really freaked out,” he said.

  “I know.” I thought about Baldy’s dream and how he’d been normal and running from the Maker. He’d been certain that nothing could defeat the lead vamp and he would be doomed to his fate. Once we were safe, I would fill Logan in on everything that had happened in the dream. Especially the part of how Baldy with hair was actually the counterpart of someone we both knew back home. Logan hadn’t recognized him either, so I didn’t feel as badly about it anymore. I knew, though, if I ever made it back home, I’d probably never look at pizza the same way again.

  Chapter Eighteen

  We huddled in the short tunnel that led to the vampire world. Logan relinquished his jacket to me, having taking pity once he’d noticed my shivering. He then sat down and gathered me close, rubbing my chilled arms. His warmth soon spread over me, and I was strangely content; well, as content as I could be sitting on a dirt floor in a tunnel a million miles away from home. When he climbed to his feet and walked away I felt bereft. Was it so wrong of me to want a little attention?

  “What are you doing?” I grumbled at him. He was at the end of the tunnel and peeking around overcautiously.

  “Making sure we aren’t out there.”

  I eyed the swinging vines over the narrow opening we’d climbed through minutes before. “I’m more worried about something following us from out there.”

  “They’re all too scared of you to follow us.”

  I sighed. “I would just once like to leave a world where I wasn’t public enemy number one.”

  Logan came back over to me and sat down. “It looks clear. Hey….” He noticed my glum exp
ression. “Don’t knock the gifts you have. They’ve saved our bacon more than once.”

  “I guess.” They’d also been responsible for me taking a life, but I didn’t say this out loud. Being a killer was a stigma I wanted to wallow in alone. If anything, the vampire world had served as a temporary distraction to my overwrought conscience. Perhaps in the next world I could save some lives, be a hero, and try to make up for the life that’d been lost.

  “So, we’re back to square one,” Logan informed me.

  When I didn’t say anything he peered at me intently, trying to discover what was going on inside my head. I didn’t want to talk about the dead fed, so as he raised a quizzical eyebrow in lieu of asking me outright, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “It’s a good thing I already got my period in that last world. I’d sure hate to get it now.”

  “Thanks for sharing.” His tone was sarcastic, and I knew he was wondering if I’d actually meant to say that out loud.

  “You asked.”

  “Actually, no. I didn’t.”

  “You raised your eyebrow, which means, ‘Hey, what’s on your mind?’”

  “So you speak eyebrow now? Is that your next gift?”

  I stuck my tongue out at him. It was true what I said about my period, and maybe I should have kept it to myself, but I was too tired to be creative. You’d think all that Sandman stuff—being in other people’s dreams—would be restful, but I actually felt more drained than when I’d entered the vamp world. “I want to sleep. For like a hundred years.”

  “In this place it could probably be arranged.” He got up and took my hand, pulling me to my feet. “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?” He led, I followed, dragging my feet, trying to keep pace.

  “We’ll peek at each world we come across until we find a nice, quiet one where we can lie down uninterrupted and sleep.”

  “For a week.”

  “Yeah, a week. Maybe two.”

  I have to pause here for a moment in my writing. Truth be told, I actually moved inside to our cave quite some time ago. It wasn’t the weird howling or the loud growl-shrieks that got to me, nor was it the cool chill in the air…or the gigantic mosquitoes. The light of the fire was sufficient for my writing, so I won’t blame that either. I’m not even all that tired, and though writing by hand is not something I do often, my hand is sore, but not killing me. It is my words themselves that have driven me to take comfort in the confines of our little cave…mine and Logan’s cave. It’s where we live, here together, in this place. This world. Telling our story makes me miss him so much. It’s been six days now. Six long, lonely days without him….

  We must have wandered five or six passageways and peered down a dozen or more exits before we found what we sought. The door was thick and heavy, short and wide, and sat hidden deep in the back of a long narrow tunnel. We were lucky to have found it, being so dark. We nearly gave up and turned back around, but by this point we were stubborn about retreating since we’d already walked for what felt like a mile. We didn’t pass any other doorways in this tunnel, and no passages jutted off from it. The door itself was a beast to move. Logan and I both had to pull on the large ring that served as a door handle. Once open, we could see the bright blue of the sky, and smell the sweet scent of a warm day; such a contrast to the dark, cool tunnel we stood in. It didn’t take much coaxing to get us to journey into this new world.

  Cautiously we slipped out onto a field covered with a carpet of green grass, which looked like it belonged on a golf course. There were few trees, large and looming, with canopies of leaves rustling gently in the soft breeze. The air was pure and thick, untainted by pollution. We took a few steps away from the door and, growing bolder, took a few more. The warm air and sunshine lulled us, comforted us. What could possibly go wrong in a place like this?

  “Hey, look.” Logan gestured to the back of the door we’d just come through. “It’s stone.” The tunnel side of the door had appeared wooden, whereas this other side seemed to be made differently. We both went over and ran our hands down the rough length. “It’s not a mirage, or faked, it actually does feel like stone.”

  “Strange.” When we looked up, we could see the ingenuity of the design. The door, when closed, would simply appear to be part of the hill that loomed behind us. So much so, I worried if we closed it, we may not be able to reopen it. I voiced my concerns to Logan.

  “There’s got to be a handle somewhere,” he said, running his fingers along the top then the bottom of the door. “Ah ha. Yeah, here it is.”

  I put my hand at the bottom of the door where Logan’s hand was resting. “I feel it.” I was somewhat relieved, but still uneasy that the entire side of the hill we faced was sheer rock. When the door was closed, it would completely blend in.

  “We can’t leave it open,” Logan said, reading my mind again.

  “I’m worried it may lock on us if we completely close it.” It had taken both of us to pull it open. Sure, Logan could go back inside and push it shut, and I could test to see if it locked. If it did, he could probably wrestle it open from his side. But if he were on the outside and the door locked, what if he were unable to push it open? We’d be trapped. “Maybe we could tuck something in it—like this jacket—just at the bottom, and cover it over with a few leaves so only we’d know it was there.” Before he could object, I shrugged out of the large, long-tailed coat and tossed it into the tunnel. I pulled out a sleeve and lay it across the bottom front of the doorway.

  “I guess if we hide it, it’ll be all right,” Logan relented. He took a long look around our surroundings and then pulled the door almost completely closed, careful to keep some of the arm of the jacket still visible. He tucked it up close to the doorway, and he and I both covered it over with leaves and twigs.

  “Can’t even tell,” I said, standing back to admire our handy work.

  “Okay, now let’s look for some grub.” Logan began to walk. When he was hungry, there was no reasoning with him. I hurried after him, but looked back at the doorway, which was now completely camouflaged, and took a mental picture of the location of the exit.

  We headed in a straight line away from the hill and the doorway. That way, if we had to vamoose, we could retrace our steps. This world was brand new to us, and treading with caution was vital. Who knew what wonders or threats lurked nearby? Someone or something could easily hide behind one of the widely spaced big trees; however, the land was flat and highly visible for miles and miles. If danger approached, we’d see it coming. We were also wary enough to keep a watchful eye on what might follow. Looking back, the farther we walked, the more we could see of the big hill behind us.

  The best thing about this place was the feeling of peace surrounding me. Would our world be like this if left uncorrupt by man and machines? When I saw the easy smile on Logan’s cute lips, I believe he felt it too. Part of me expected an oasis to appear in the distance, welcoming us with sweet delicacies and fruity punch. Wouldn’t that be divine?

  As we came upon a narrow babbling brook, the spell broke. It would undoubtedly be fish for dinner.

  “Isn’t this lucky?” Logan said, grinning from ear to ear.

  Didn’t the guy get more than enough fish to eat in the medieval world? I know I did, but I nodded my head and mutely accepted my lot. He fashioned a net from his crisp white collared shirt, and it didn’t take him long to catch a few fish. Watching his wet muscles dance in the sunlight as he splashed around made up for his choice of grub. I sat on the bank while he did the manly thing and provided for us. I must have relaxed enough to drift off, because when I awoke with a start awhile later, it was to a fish fry going on practically beside me.

  “Ready to eat, sleepyhead?” Logan grinned at me, waving a proud hand toward the pile of cooked fish. He’d hung his wet shirt over a stick placed near the fire to dry. He seemed genuinely pleased with himself, so I smiled in return.

  “Looks great,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could mu
ster. I splashed some water on my face and then dug in to eat with surprising gusto. “How’d you make the fire?” The backpack with the flint had been left behind in the tunnel, and Logan had changed clothes in the vamp world.

  He held a lighter up in his hand. “I had this on me from the three-moon world, and I slipped it into my pants when I changed. Good thing it didn’t get too wet; I have a feeling we’ll need it.”

  After we ate I felt much better. My little nap and a belly full of food—even if it was fish—had done me a world of good. As much as I wanted to go back to sleep, this world enchanted me with its delicious smells and breathtaking beauty.

  “Do you want to stay here for a while?” I asked Logan. He was leaning back on his hands, his long legs stretched out before him.

  “Sure. It looks to be safe enough. Good place for a rest.”

  I nodded my head in agreement. After the dark, wet, and gloomy vamp world, this place felt like paradise. “As much as I agree, you know how things have a way of going terribly wrong as soon as we get comfortable. I don’t think we should hang out in the open too long.”

  Logan got up on his knees, reached into the creek with both hands, and began to cup water to toss on the fire. “There’s got to be some shelter around here. Maybe a cave or something. We can look while there’s still light. I don’t know how long the days here are.” Though his shirt was still damp, he pulled it on and buttoned it up.

  We both looked up at the sky, so blue and picturesque. Finally, someplace to unwind. It wasn’t home, but at least it was peaceful.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The next moment we were running for our lives, back toward the hills as a monstrous bird swooped down from the sky at us, screeching at the top of its lungs.

  Though I needed no urging, Logan hollered, “Run! Run.”

  “I am running.” And ducking too. We both ran in a zigzag, making it harder to be caught. I tripped over a branch and fell to the ground as we took cover beneath a giant tree. Logan bent and grabbed the branch and flung it hard, hitting the bird right in its beak.