by Dima Zales
“Since when?”
I sigh. “Remember how you fell asleep during that video game design course we took together?”
“Nooo…”
“Well, you did.” I change the environment around us to match that classroom, so he can see what I saw that day: his head on the desk, some drool in the corner of his mouth. “See how your eyes are twitching? That’s REM sleep. Too good an opportunity to pass up.” I pantomime touching his forehead. Of course, when I’d really done it, there was hand sanitizer involved.
“So you snuck into my dream without my permission?” His voice rises, and I worry he might try to wrestle control of his dream world from me—something I can fight but prefer not to, especially with a friend.
“This was right after you hacked my laptop and made fun of my project,” I remind him.
“That’s different. This is a much bigger invasion of privacy.”
“You started it.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fine. What was it that you wanted to know about the Council?”
“Anything you can tell me. Pretend I know nothing.”
“Right,” he says in a professorial tone. “In that case, the Councils are a form of government. Their main objective is to make sure the Cognizant remain hidden from humans.”
“Okay, maybe not so basic.” I stand up to pace along our cloud.
“Then I don’t know what to tell you.”
“How about something that can help me?”
He considers it for a moment. “Councils are made up of the most powerful Cognizant in the region they cover. The New York Council is among the most powerful Councils on Earth.”
I roll my eyes. This is going nowhere fast. “So?”
“So don’t piss them off.”
“That’s a huge help, thanks. Any other pearls of wisdom you wish to impart?”
His unibrow furrows. “Well, yeah. Think about it: The very fact that the Enforcers took you to see the Council is good news.”
“Oh?”
“Without the Mandate, your standing in our community is shaky at best. They could’ve just killed you on the spot, and no one would’ve said boo.”
I halt my pacing. “Some government.”
“Before going to sleep, I tried using my powers to figure out what they want. Unfortunately, their computers aren’t connected to the human internet.”
He tried to hack them? Is he nuts? “Don’t do anything that’ll make them come for you next.”
“Nothing I can do, anyway.” He studies me. “Do you seriously have no idea what they might want?”
“No clue. I only know a couple of people from this Council, and the most powerful of them isn’t even on Earth at the moment.” I run my fingers through my fiery hair, sending embers flying. “There’s Kit—you know, the shapeshifter? We met at the rehab where I work. I think she likes me, and she’s on the Council. Maybe she can help? I doubt she’s behind whatever this is.”
Felix nods. “Kit’s good people.”
I strain my memory for anyone else on the Council. “Hey, maybe it’s—”
Before I can finish my sentence, Pom appears next to me, his fur light orange.
Felix’s eyes widen improbably yet again. “What is that?”
“I told you about Pom.” At Felix’s blank stare, I clarify, “My looft.”
“The fuzzy bracelet?” Felix eyes my currently naked wrist.
I grin. “In here, Pom looks like this.”
Pom bends his short, chubby legs in a curtsy. “Nice to meet you, Felix. This dream isn’t as bad as Bailey made it out to be.”
Felix studies him warily. “Thanks… I think.”
“I think it’s best you wake up now,” I tell him.
“But—”
“No reason to bore Pom with our problems,” I say pointedly.
An actual lightbulb appears over Felix’s head; I’m not sure he realizes he’s inadvertently summoned it. “Got it. But before I go, can you show me some cool dream stuff?”
I smile and snap my fingers to take us to my palace.
Felix looks around, agog. “Cool… Reminds me of Peach’s castle from Mario, but with Escher and Salvador Dalí influences.”
I snatch a Penrose-triangle clock from the air and let it melt into my hand. “You’re not far off. I changed this place a bit after we took that course. Video game design made me a much better dreamwalker.”
Felix looks up at the ceiling, a part of the palace so old I don’t even recall making it. Consisting of multicolored glass, it’s a mosaic depicting a mandala shaped like an archery target. He then stares at the walls and the floor. “What’s with the crazy color scheme?”
I grin. “They’re known as ‘forbidden colors’ because their light frequencies automatically cancel each other in our eyes. But we’re not really seeing through our eyes here, hence red-green and blue-yellow, as I imagine those shades to be. I’m thinking of adding ultraviolet and infrared accents as well.”
Eager to show off further, I take us to the memory gallery and explain how I use it.
Felix looks enviously at a painting of a surprise birthday party Mom threw for me when I turned twelve. “I’d pay a million dollars to revisit some of my childhood memories.”
“I could make it happen for you,” I say. “Just not today.”
“Of course.” He grins. “Thanks for showing me this.”
“You should take him to the tower of sleepers,” Pom suggests. “It’s my favorite spot.”
I grab Felix by the shoulder and fly him to the tower.
“Trippy,” he breathes when he sees the nook with another version of him sleeping and another version of me standing over him with my finger on his forehead.
“That’s you and me in Pom’s dream, my gateway to the dream world in this case,” I explain. “We’re now in the same location, of sorts, but in your dream. Hence the extra bodies. When I exit your dream, I’ll be in that body—and I’ll get back to my real body in that limo after I’m done in Pom’s dream.”
“Like I said, trippy.” He looks up and squints at a nook a floor up. “Wait, hold on… Is that Ariel?”
Crap. I forgot they’re roommates. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have taken him here. What if Ariel doesn’t want him to know she’s a patient of mine?
“You seriously need to wake up,” I forcefully tell him. “Now.”
He intuits my concern. “Oh, don’t worry. She told me you’re helping her.”
I give him my best poker face. “I can neither confirm nor deny.”
“Well, I want to thank you anyway. Ariel’s been through a lot, and ever since she went to rehab and started your treatments, I noticed real progress with all her issues.”
I wince internally. “Please, let’s not talk about my hypothetical therapy sessions.”
“Understood. Just keep doing what you do. I don’t need to know what it is.”
I sigh. “Anything else?”
“Sure.” He looks around again. “How do I wake up?”
“Just wish to do so.”
He closes his eyes, which I didn’t tell him to do, and gets a constipated expression on his face—but clearly doesn’t wake up. After a few seconds, I grow bored and push him from the dream world with a small jolt of my powers.
Both Felixes shimmer into nothingness. On my end, the version of me from Felix’s dream disappears, and I find myself in the body next to the empty bed where Felix was a moment ago.
Pom flies up and lands on the pillow. “So. Are you going to help Ariel now?”
“Might as well.” I head over to her nook.
“Good,” Pom states. “I like Ariel.”
Of course he likes Ariel. Pom’s male, after all. Sort of. Maybe.
On Gomorrah, we call Ariel’s kind of Cognizant ubers. That’s not because they chauffeur everyone around—our cars drive themselves—but because they’re uber strong and uber attractive. The term among Earth Cognizant is strongmen, which is dumb because fema
le ubers are just as strong as males, and because the label doesn’t begin to cover their extraordinary looks.
Reaching Ariel’s bed, I look her over. With her glossy dark hair and lightly bronzed skin, she’s striking even for an uber. Her face, with its strong nose and finely defined jaw, is so symmetrical you’d think a video game designer had toiled for years to craft such perfection, and her body is what humans on Earth label “an impossible standard of beauty.”
I’m actually glad Felix noticed her here. This might be my last chance to provide therapy for anyone, and Ariel isn’t just a patient anymore. She’s become a friend.
“Stay invisible,” I tell Pom.
He nods disappointedly.
I touch Ariel’s melted-candy-smooth forehead and sink into her dreams.
Chapter Nine
Dressed in an army uniform, Ariel is running effortlessly with a hundred-pound pack on her back. She looks stunning, as usual, despite being sweaty, barefaced, and covered in grime.
I’ve been in a version of this dream before. This is an echo of Ariel’s Army training.
“Ariel,” I call gently.
She stops short and pulls out her gun, panic in her dark brown eyes.
Just in case, I turn the bullets into cotton. “I’m Bailey. You know me.”
“I do,” she says, still obviously disoriented. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re dreaming,” I tell her.
She looks confused for another moment, then a grin slowly spreads across her face. “I’m at the rehab facility?”
“Not sure. I’m doing remote therapy right now, so I have no idea where your body is.”
I take us to my therapy space in the clouds above the ocean, and before she asks me to do so, I change her clothes into her favorite little black dress.
Instead of sitting down on the couch, she shifts from foot to foot. “So… what did you want to do today?”
I give her a soothing smile. “That’s a question for you. Did you want to experiment with memory or—”
“No!” She tenses like a cobra ready to strike. Then she deliberately relaxes and, in a calmer tone, asks, “Can we do some more of that exposure therapy? I feel like I’m almost ready to be around vampires without freaking out.”
As I thought—Ariel has deep trauma she’s not ready to deal with. A terrible thing happened to her during her service, an event I witnessed in a trauma loop when I first started working with her. She’s blocked her waking memories of it. I’ve been coaxing her to go there again, but she’s clearly not ready. At least she’s up for some forms of dream therapy. Not like some other patients of mine… and definitely not like Mom.
I’ve always suspected that Mom has been through something traumatic, but I have no idea what it is, as she’s never let me treat her in any capacity. Quite the opposite: The mere idea of my dreamwalking in her sends her into a fit. When I was a kid, she made me swear never to enter her dreams, and I’ve kept my oath to this day. I sometimes wonder if she came to Gomorrah—a place without humans and their power-boosting beliefs—to lose her dreamwalking abilities completely. Maybe our powers are somehow tied to whatever traumatized her.
Familiar guilt floods me at the thought. The morning of Mom’s accident, we argued about this very topic. I said things I regret and wish—
Ariel clears her throat.
“Sorry,” I say, “what kind of exposure should we start with?”
“Blood,” she says, her gaze downcast. “I feel brave today.”
She doesn’t need to say more. Vampire blood addiction is the reason she checked herself into rehab. She got hooked after she was healed by the substance and then started using it recreationally, probably as a form of self-medicating.
“Blood it is.” I take us to a room I’ve used a few times, one modeled on a club in Gomorrah frequented by vampire blood aficionados. There are so many toys and instruments of sexy torture you’d think a BDSM dungeon threw up in here. Chained to a cross in the middle of it all is a vampire, who I make look like Filth—a small token of spite.
Ariel picks up a big knife and approaches Filth. I get out of her way and observe.
“You know you want it,” Filth says in a tone much friendlier than I think the real version of him is capable of. “Drink from me.”
With small, careful steps, Ariel draws near enough to cut a deep gash on his forearm. I try to make sure the blood pours slowly and, for lack of a better word, temptingly.
Ariel stares at it, hypnotized. I do as well. I sometimes worry I’ll become addicted myself, thanks to my use of vampire blood to banish sleep, but so far, I seem to be okay. Then again, even if I were a blood addict, I doubt I’d be tempted by Filth’s blood.
Ariel’s face shows her mental turmoil. I hold my breath. She’s either going to lean in and greedily gulp from the wound, as she’s done during most of our sessions, or she’s going to turn away, as she’s managed to do only a couple of times.
Sweat beading on her forehead, she turns away from the blood and walks toward me.
“Great job.” I pat her shoulder and usher us back to the clouds.
Ariel still looks doubtful. “This is all well and good, but I don’t know if I’d be able to resist such temptation in the real world.”
She doesn’t give herself enough credit. “I think you’d be able to. You’re—”
The whole world quakes.
“Open your eyes, bitch,” booms a voice that sounds like Filth’s.
Ugh, not now.
A slap wrenches me from the dream world, and I find myself back in the limo, Filth looming over me.
“What?” I snap.
“You’re not supposed to dream,” he hisses.
“I wasn’t. That was a meditative trance.”
“Don’t do that, either.”
I slather hand sanitizer on my stinging cheek and glare at Kain accusingly.
The head of the Enforcers shrugs. “We know you can communicate with people in your sleep.”
“So what? Even the police allow an arrested person a phone call.”
“We don’t.” Filth settles back into his seat with a sneer. “Close your eyes again, and I’ll cut your lids off.”
“Don’t talk back,” Felix urges in my ear. He sounds on the verge of fainting. “He looks like he means that.”
It’s true. Filth looks eager to mutilate me.
What a puckwad.
“Firth,” Kain says, “she’s not to be harmed.” He turns his glare on me. “Do stay awake until we arrive at our destination.”
“Fine.” I stare at Filth for a few miles straight, doing my best not to blink. The bastard doesn’t seem to care, though. He just sits there with a smirk on his weaselly face.
Deciding that the stare-off hurts me more than him, I look out the window instead. A full moon illuminates picturesque forests and distant mountain peaks as we drive into a fenced area past a sign that forbids trespassing. As we approach one large mountain, the dirt road turns into a nicely paved one, and a few minutes later, we reach a blockade manned by vampires who salute us—or rather, who salute Kain.
My hopes of escape evaporate.
Enforcer vampires are everywhere.
The limo crosses a moat and heads toward skyscraper-sized doors on the side of the mountain, thrown wide to reveal a medieval castle that puts even my dream palace to shame. The craziest part is that the entire castle is inside the mountain—a Cognizant with stone control must’ve helped with this project, because it’s truly impressive.
The limo pulls into the mountain, where very unmedieval lighting illuminates gorgeous bastions and crenellated towers. I mentally file away the images in case I want to plagiarize them for my own dream architecture.
The limo comes to a stop.
“We’re inside the bailey,” Filth says libidinously.
I force out the most maniacal false laugh I can muster. “You’re so clever.”
He grabs my upper arm and drags me out of the car.
“Let go of her,” Kain orders with a frown.
Filth releases me, and I massage my smarting arm as I apply more sanitizer to it. Pretty sure I’m going to have finger-shaped bruises there.
Inside the castle, we pass through cold stone corridors filled with hooded figures of monks. One of them hands a folded bundle to Kain without saying a word.
“Is that the Brotherhood?” I ask no one in particular.
“Speak only when spoken to,” Filth barks.
“Yes, they are,” Kain replies almost at the same time. “Don’t you have them on Gomorrah?”
“I think so,” I say, “but I’ve never met them myself.”
The Brotherhood is a group of Cognizant without any powers, or at least any powers I’m aware of. They follow some strange religion, the details of which I don’t know.
Eventually, we reach a large set of doors opening into a miniature indoor coliseum lit by candles floating in the air—a nice touch.
Filth points at the circular platform in the middle. “Stand there. Don’t go to sleep.”
“That will be all,” Kain says to his minions.
As all the Enforcers leave, Filth included, Kain unfolds the bundle of fabric given to him by the monk. It turns out to be a black robe with a hood.
He puts it on. “Now we wait for the Council meeting. It’s going to happen first thing in the morning.”
“That’s a long time away,” I say. “Any chance you can tell me what this is about?”
“No. But what I can do is make the time pass faster while you wait.”
“Sure, but how—”
As his eyes turn into mirrors, I realize my mistake.
He’s about to glamour me.
I’m resistant to vampire glamour, at least from the run-of-the-mill vamps, but Kain is clearly powerful, and drinking vampire blood does make one more susceptible to their—
“You won’t remember the next five hours,” Kain says in a voice made of melted caramel.
The next thing I’m aware of is how stiff I feel standing in the same spot.
Only now I’m surrounded by the Council.
Chapter Ten