Dreamfire (42 page)

From the floor below, a shot rang out. Instinctively, Josh dropped to the floor. Tanessa screamed, her voice muffled by the bed skirt.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs.

Josh realized she had made a serious mistake. She hadn't thought this dream had a villain—she'd thought the woman was dreaming of her parents fighting. But apparently the situation was much worse. Josh could only hope that whoever was coming upstairs didn't enter the bedroom.

Dozens of dolls and stuffed animals filled the shelves on the walls. As the footsteps approached the bedroom door, a baby doll in a sparkly dress called out in a whisper, “She's here!”

The other toys echoed—and within seconds, a chorus of “She's under the bed! Here she is!” sang through the room.

Oh, shit!
Josh's eyes searched the room for a hiding place. The closet—too far away. The desk—not big enough to hide beneath. The door—

Not a good option either, but her only one. She ducked behind the bedroom door and pulled it in front of herself just in time to hear a revolver being cocked. Through the crack between the door and wall, she saw a fleeting dark shadow as a man entered the room.

Josh shut her eyes, but she couldn't block out the fear flooding the Dream. It made her heartsick.

Save her!
Josh's instinct screamed, as loud as she'd ever heard it.
Save her! Save her!

The fear swelled up around her, filling the room to the ceiling like a red haze. Josh clenched her hands around her plumeria pendant to keep from flinging the door away.

This was actually quite close to how the dream-walker royals had proven their worthiness to rule: by sitting through nightmare after nightmare, doing nothing, for one day and one night. Supposedly, enduring the pain and fear of so many dreamers would make them compassionate.

Josh didn't buy that any monarch had ever passed that test. No one could stand this agony for very long. It was unbearable.

You were meant to save her,
Josh's instinct whispered.
You must save her.

The man lifted one corner of the footboard and threw the whole bed across the room.

“Daddy!” Tanessa wailed.

The revolver went off. The wailing stopped, replaced by a gurgling sound.

Something sick and sharp cut through Josh, and she accidentally let her forehead fall against the back of the bedroom door, sending the door swinging.

Tanessa's father spun around, aiming the gun at Josh's chest. Behind him, she saw Tanessa lying on the floor, blood pouring from her mouth.

Wake up,
Josh thought.
Wakeupwakeupwakeup!

But Tanessa didn't wake up, and her father shot Josh in the chest.

She felt her breastbone crushed against her heart and lungs, making it impossible to inhale. Her knees buckled and she sank toward the floor.

Then the nightmare ended, and Josh went tumbling, legs scooped out from under her.

She landed on her back on the ground, a sharp stick poking into her back. Above her, tree branches encroached on a dreamy blue-and-white sky. The Dream had shifted, and she'd landed in a forest. Her chest hurt worse than ever, but she managed to lift her hand and find the bullet, still hot … caught in the center of the Kevlar vest Davita had given her for her birthday.

Best birthday present ever,
Josh decided. The vest wasn't more than a quarter of an inch thick and felt like nothing more than several dozen sheets of thin plastic tarp stuck together; Josh couldn't imagine how it had stopped a bullet. But she was grateful that it had. Very, very grateful.

If she hadn't been lying on the ground just then, she might not have heard the hoofbeats soon enough. As it happened, she rolled out of the way just in time for a cavalry unit in Confederate uniforms to trample the grass where she'd been lying. The dreamer, a shirtless young man riding a slow-trotting donkey, followed behind them. He was trying to pull on his uniform while keeping hold of his rifle and forcing the donkey to run faster.

Josh, safely crouched in the bushes, touched the Dream's fear just enough to test it—a simple old “running late” dream.

Winsor would have stopped to resolve this one,
she thought, recalling her friend's odd compassion for humiliation nightmares. Dejected, she got to her feet and began trudging after the cavalry.

“Josh!” a familiar voice shouted behind her.

Impossible,
she thought. There was no way Will could have reached her once she'd broken
ligamus
.

But she turned to look, and he had. Not only that, but he had brought Haley and Whim along. They were trekking through the woods toward her.

“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded, more frustrated than angry. But a small part of her was glad to see them, especially Will. She'd gotten used to having him around in-Dream.

But she was still planning to knock him unconscious at the first opportunity.

“I found you!” Will said, looking pleased with himself.

“How?” Josh asked.

He held up his left hand.

It took Josh a moment to understand. “You used the looking stone?” she asked. “That's not even possible.”

“That's what I said,” Whim replied.

They met in a small clearing. Josh crossed her arms.

“You're not going to stop me,” she told them all. Whim and Will exchanged glances.

“Here's the thing,” Whim said. “Haley and I have spent the last seven months drinking piña coladas on the beach, gorging on French pastries, and avoiding physical exercise; and Will's still in training—”

“We aren't sure we can take you,” Will summarized. “And we don't want to tire you out before you face Feodor. So we agreed that the best chance of keeping you alive is to back you up.”

Josh softened. She had already begun to feel ashamed of how she had spoken to her friends in the car, and now she felt like a royal jerk. She couldn't deny that some of Will's concerns had merit, but she still felt honor bound to save Ian.

“Do you understand why I have to do this?” she asked.

“Because every second Ian's body is walking around doing Feodor's work is an insult to the person he once was?” Will suggested lightly.

She blinked, astonished to realize that Will did, in fact, understand.

“I get it, Josh,” he told her. “But I still think it's a bad idea.”

“That's why you're the apprentice,” she said, and started walking deeper into the woods.

 

Thirty-four

They worked their
way across the Dream, waiting for a nightmare to resolve and drop them into another, creating a porthole there to see if it opened to the cabin in Charle, finding that it did not, and waiting out another nightmare. After an hour, Josh finally poked her head through the Veil and saw the fire-gutted basement of the cabin.

“Go,” she ordered, and they all went.

Josh climbed through and landed on a concrete floor. Around her stood the half-demolished remains of her mother's burned cabin—everything black and smelling faintly of woodsmoke even now, the stairs to the second floor impassable, the ceiling burned away to reveal a half-moon.

“Do you have a plan?” Whim asked. “Because truthfully, I was sort of hoping the Gendarmerie would get here before we did.”

“Find Feodor. If he'll give himself up to the Gendarmerie, we take him to the house and call Peregrine.” She wasn't thrilled by the idea of involving her grandfather, but she doubted Feodor would give himself up anyway. “If he won't give up, we kill him.”

“Do you think you're capable of killing a real person?” Will asked.

“If I have to,” she said, although she wasn't certain. She'd killed nightmares before; she hoped that would serve as enough experience to give her the nerve to kill a real person.

“What about Ian?” Whim asked.

“You mean Ian's
body,
” Will corrected.

Josh thought hard, avoiding Will's gaze. “Haley?” she asked. “Can we save him?”

In a small voice, Haley said, “I don't know.”

“We'll deal with Ian when we find him,” Josh said with forced nonchalance. “The first thing we have to do is make sure that Feodor can't keep creating … whatever he's creating.”

“Zombies,” Will said pointedly.

Josh's palms flushed and she gritted her teeth to keep from telling Will that she would be fine; that whatever Feodor threw at her, she could handle; that she knew the difference between Ian's body and his soul. But she couldn't say that for certain. Whim had been right in the car when he said that she didn't really know what she would do when she saw Ian.

But she wanted to find out.

She pulled out her lighter and compact and sent a beam of light toward the air she had stepped through moments before. The archways here had no stone frames, no edge markings, but she knew approximately where they should be.

The Dream opened back onto the nightmare they'd come out of. “Haley, try your keys while I keep this archway open,” Josh said. Haley shone another light in the same direction, and a second archway appeared.

Twin images floated side by side—one for each eye, a soundtrack for each ear. Josh saw the Dream through one Veil, and through the other, she saw Feodor's universe and the same dark room she had walked into eight months before, where one high dormer window let in a few rays of light.

“Last time, Feodor attacked as soon as we entered,” she said. “So stay close to—”

She broke off as the scene through the archway changed. The view slid, like a camera zooming and panning, then stopped high above a narrow, rubble-filled street with crumbling concrete buildings on either side and chimneys shooting into the smoky sky. Burning wreckage reflected orange light off the dark clouds and the glittering, diamondlike raindrops falling on the city.

Close to them, only a few feet below the archway, Feodor stood on a rooftop. He wore a white shirt with brown pinstripe slacks and a matching vest, all drenched with water, and he held a golden watch attached by a chain to his pocket.

“Every nine seconds,” he declared, his eyes on the city below. A squadron of planes flew overhead. Josh couldn't see them against the utterly black sky, but she heard them. Feodor raised his voice. “That is how often a bomb hits Warsaw during these air raids. Every nine seconds.”

Though he must have already been aware of them, he slid his watch back into his pocket and looked up at the archway as if surprised.

“Hello again, children. Ah, you've brought friends—oh!” Feodor smiled, suddenly near laughter. “How much one of your friends looks like a friend of mine!”

His amusement stole some of Josh's confidence. She'd expected to fight with him, but she'd hoped to do it with her fists. Feodor's joke reminded her that he was mad in addition to being dangerous. In fact, his insanity almost certainly made him more dangerous. Josh met Will's eyes, and he gave a little shake of his head.
We don't have to go in,
he seemed to say.

“Are you going to come and visit this time?” Feodor asked. “Or just stare through my window like vagrants again?”

He backed up a few feet to give them room to climb onto the roof, bowing his head graciously as he moved. Josh placed herself in front of the ragged archway and then gave a little jump the way she usually did at home, and her cross-trainers landed solidly on the rooftop.

Once inside, she heard far-off sounds that had previously been masked by the rain: bombs exploding, buildings crumbling, an air-raid siren. The rain stank of stomach bile and each drop bit her skin where it landed, like a mosquito. Josh drew her arms close to her body and ducked her head down.

Feodor smiled, his gray eyes large and round, his eyelashes sparkling with rainwater. He made her a little bow. “Welcome to Warsaw,” he said. “Of course, your friend is welcome also, since we are already acquaintances. And your other friend, he must come as well, to meet his doppelgänger. But who is this stranger you have brought with you?”

“His name is Whim,” Josh said flatly as Will and then Haley joined her on the rooftop. “You sucked his sister's soul out.”

Feodor took the accusation in stride, merely giving an admissive nod. “Even so, I think that perhaps our party is large enough.” He called toward the archway, “It was a pleasure to meet you! Please give my regards to your sister!”

“Wha—?” Whim cried, but the archway closed and cut him off.

That's not good,
Josh thought. Feodor could control who entered his universe, which meant he could probably also control who left it. Before she could figure out what to do about that, Feodor turned and called, “
Kapu
ś
cisko!
”

Josh didn't know what that meant—he might have been calling out “Abracadabra!” in Polish for all she knew.

But then she saw the man she had called Gloves. He walked across the roof to Feodor, who threw an arm jocularly around Gloves's shoulder. Rainwater shone on his green-black trench coat, and mud he hadn't bothered to scrape off clung to his boots.

Now that Josh knew who he was, she could see Ian in him—the right height, the right build, even a black curl sneaking out from under the brim of his black-banded fedora.

“I call him Kapu
ś
cisko,” Feodor said, “since he never told me his name. It means ‘little cabbage.' The French use it as a term of endearment.”

Josh didn't care what the French did. She knew from Feodor's smile exactly why he'd chosen the name.

Because cabbage was all Feodor had left of Ian.

Ian was a vegetable.

Josh walked straight over to Gloves. He didn't move; she wasn't even certain he was looking at her. She stood helplessly before him, trying to reconcile Ian's hazel eyes with the black ones she saw now—endless void eyes, literally soulless. His eyes held nothing when he looked at Josh.