Waking Nightmares (40 page)
Authors: Christopher Golden
Another wave of chaos blasted through the house and again it staggered her, pleasured her. Then she heard a crash that shook the entire house. Splinter cracks raced up the walls. Feeling lighter than before, Amber turned to run into her bedroom, which was just beneath Gran’s. But instead of running she
darted
, pushing off the ground and flitting across the hall and through the open bedroom doorway.
darted
, pushing off the ground and flitting across the hall and through the open bedroom doorway.
She stopped in front of the shattered window, the rain and wind blasting in from outside. The storm had grown so much worse. A web of blue lightning arced across the black sky. As she watched, it struck the Kanes’ house, destroying the façade and setting it ablaze with a fire that the hot rain did nothing to extinguish.
Above, the goddess Navalica danced across the sky, blue as the lightning, clad only in gauzy veils that whipped around her body in the storm, her three sets of breasts bare. As she danced, she flew toward the center of town, as Amber had known she would. Her Reapers flew around her, capering excitedly in the air, and Amber thought of the wicked witch’s winged monkeys.
And then she wondered why she was not following. Why was she not capering as well, nothing more than a slave to the goddess?
Stepping back from the window, she saw herself in the full-length mirror beside her bureau. The sight paralyzed her for several seconds, and then she stepped nearer to the mirror, studying her reflection. She glanced down at her arms and blinked in surprise when she saw that the withering effect had somehow reversed. Instead of black, her skin had turned a wine-color, a deep burgundy, her hair a gleaming shade of plum.
In her tank top and jeans, she looked bizarre and exotic, almost alien. Her eyes blinked back from within a black shell, but as she moved closer to the mirror she reached up to touch it and found it brittle. The skin at her jawline was dry and cracked and as she dug into it with her nail, she found an edge there, as if she wore a kind of mask.
Fascinated and disgusted but unable to stop herself, she began to work her fingernails into the flaking edges of her face, and then she felt something crack and give way. The carapace came away in her hands, breaking into pieces, and she let them fall to the floor.
“Oh, God, what am I?” she whispered.
She had a mouth again. Lips. Her face had been altered, had become a finer, smoother version of who she had been, a mask of wine-colored porcelain. But not a mask, that was wrong. The carapace, that had been a mask. She could speak. She could smile. This new face was still her.
But
how
?
how
?
And then she knew.
Octavian.
Whatever he had done to her, whatever magic he had woven inside her to try to reverse or at least slow Navalica’s influence, had instead changed the very nature of her metamorphosis. Instead of becoming one of the Reapers, Amber had become this. But what was this?
Octavian.
Whatever he had done to her, whatever magic he had woven inside her to try to reverse or at least slow Navalica’s influence, had instead changed the very nature of her metamorphosis. Instead of becoming one of the Reapers, Amber had become this. But what was this?
She grabbed the bath towel she had used the day before from the hook on her closet door and wiped away the sticky residue of the carapace from her face.
“What the hell am I?” she said again, studying her face and her new body in the mirror.
“You ask me, you’re beautiful,” a voice rasped behind her.
She spun, the movement making her float a few feet backward. She alighted on the carpet, staring at the bloody figure in her bedroom doorway.
“Mr. Octavian?” she said, amazed. “I thought you were dead.”
Octavian stood up straighter. Through the slashes in his shirt she could see the wounds Navalica had made, but they were smaller than she’d have thought, as if they’d already been healing.
“I survived seventy-seven years of torment in Tartarus at the hands of Temeluchus and his iron hooks, and you think I’m going to let this bitch kill me?” Octavian said, taking a deep breath as he stood, golden light spilling out of his wounds and enveloping him.
He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them, and for the first time she saw in his gaze how truly ancient he was.
“Not fucking likely.”
OFFICER
Moschitto had stopped to help the teenage girls who had crashed their car, frustrated by the delay, wanting to hurry after Octavian and Amber, to find out what had happened to the Morrissey family. It wasn’t just his job; Mr. Morrissey had been his baseball coach when he was in elementary school, and he’d always liked the family. Instead, he’d had to see to these three girls. He thought they were seniors at the high school, but he wasn’t sure. One of them was Janey Ebbetson, and he knew for sure she hadn’t graduated yet.
Moschitto had stopped to help the teenage girls who had crashed their car, frustrated by the delay, wanting to hurry after Octavian and Amber, to find out what had happened to the Morrissey family. It wasn’t just his job; Mr. Morrissey had been his baseball coach when he was in elementary school, and he’d always liked the family. Instead, he’d had to see to these three girls. He thought they were seniors at the high school, but he wasn’t sure. One of them was Janey Ebbetson, and he knew for sure she hadn’t graduated yet.
If he’d had a working radio or cell phone he could have called an ambulance. But in the chaos, it was up to him to make sure they got to the hospital. The idea of bringing more patients to Hawthorne Union made him want to laugh—a weird hysteria had been bubbling inside him all morning—but he didn’t want Janey and her friends to know what kind of hellish wait they had in store when they got there.
Janey looked all right. Officer Moschitto smiled to himself. The girl looked more than all right. That skirt ought to be illegal. He tried not to let her see the way his gaze kept straying to her ass as she bent to reach into the car, trying to help her friends. When she glanced back at him he looked away, but his eyes were drawn back again and again to the sway of her breasts against the rain-damp cotton of her shirt.
The other two girls were injured. The blond, Monica, had smashed her face against the dashboard and her nose looked broken, blood streaming out. The absolutely luscious black girl, Belinda, had smashed her knee on the steering column and her chest against the wheel.
“We’ve got to get them to the hospital!” Janey said, withdrawing from the car—she’d been in the backseat during the accident. She turned her pleading eyes on Officer Moschitto. “Dude, seriously. I think Belinda has internal injuries or whatever. This is . . . fuck, this is bad!”
Janey and Monica kept trying to use their phones, as if they couldn’t get it through their heads that as long as the storm raged around them, they would not have a signal.
Officer Moschitto held the umbrella from his patrol car up to shield himself and Janey; the closeness to her, the damp slippery heat of the rain on his skin, beading up and rolling down her chest between her breasts, had his cock so hard that it hurt. It felt like it had been carved from stone. Really, more than anything, it felt like a weapon, and the urge to show it to her was so strong he could barely restrain himself.
Janey glanced down and licked her lips. It wasn’t his imagination. He saw her do it, and then she shook her head like she was trying to stay focused. Officer Moschitto smiled and she returned the smile, and they laughed softly together.
“This is insane,” she said, softly so her friends wouldn’t hear her over the rain. “What’s wrong with me? I think . . . I think someone may have slipped something in my drink at the party.”
“You’re not even old enough to drink,” Officer Moschitto said, automatically.
Janey moved against him, under the umbrella. “What are you going to do, cuff me?”
He arched an eyebrow. “I might.”
“Janey, what the fuck! Get us out of here!” Monica shouted from inside the car.
Officer Moschitto rolled his eyes. “Bitch.”
Janey nodded. “I know.”
“Belinda’s breathing all weird. It sounds . . . it sounds wet. I think she’s bleeding inside!” Monica cried. “Jesus, Janey! We need an ambulance!”
Officer Moschitto took a deep breath and then let it out. His hard-on didn’t diminish, but he knew he had to get control of himself. He bit his lip hard, clearing his mind, and stepped back from Janey, who looked both disappointed and relieved.
“Look,” he said, “we can’t move Belinda. It’s too much of a risk. I’ll stay here and take care of them as best I can. You take my car and drive to the hospital, get them to send EMTs out here immediately.”
Janey looked past him, her face suddenly bathed in blue light.
Standing beneath his umbrella, half a mile from the Morrissey house, Officer Moschitto turned and saw chaos magic burst across the town like a slow-motion nuclear blast. The first wave set off car alarms and tore trees from the ground, blew out windows and knocked over fences. Blue light swept over everything. The hair on his arms and on the back of his neck stood up and his skin prickled as the chaos wave enveloped him and then rolled onward. He shook with something akin to laughter, but there was no joy in it, only madness.
From the broken-down car he heard screaming. He looked inside and saw that despite her injuries, Belinda was alive. Blood bubbled from her mouth, but she had a fistful of Monica’s hair as she clawed the girl’s face and eyes, hatred lighting her face with passion and fire. Monica punched her in the throat, over and over, but Belinda did not let go, dragging the other girl toward her for what looked to be a kiss, until Belinda bit into her lips and began to tear.
Janey watched, breathing hard, the rain sheeting off her. She grinned, slapping her hand on the roof of the car.
“Do it!” she urged, though it was impossible to tell whose side she had taken. Perhaps both, and neither. “Do it!”
The second shock wave of blue light slammed Officer Moschitto and Janey against the car. His arm struck her and, bathed in blue, she turned to glare at him with murder in her eyes. Screams came from houses near and far, a chorus that rose and spread like a hymn of pain and lunacy. Animals howled. The ground trembled and pavement cracked.
Moschitto punched Janey so hard that he felt her cheekbone crack. Her head bounced off the car and she went to her knees.
He threw his head back and opened his mouth, thrusting out his tongue like a child catching snowflakes. The oily rain tasted like blood to him, coppery and sweet. It was the best thing he had ever tasted and he let out a howl of pleasure.
Janey grabbed his crotch, fist bunching around the rain-soaked fabric of his uniform trousers and the painful hardness of his cock. He looked down and saw her hungry smile and grinned so wide it split the skin at the corners of his mouth. She unbuckled his belt and dragged his pants down, clawing savagely at the fabric. With a swift bob of her head she took him in her mouth, then down her throat, gagging loudly as she devoured him. He wondered if she would bite and found he didn’t care. He fisted his hands in her hair and stared into her greedy eyes and knew they had both found paradise.
“More,” he growled, tugging her up by her hair.
She whined as her mouth pulled off him, but then groaned more deeply as his hands reached under her tiny skirt and yanked aside her sodden panties. He threw her roughly onto the hood of the broken-down car and as he fucked her from behind, they both watched through the splintered glass of the windshield as Belinda and Monica murdered each other.
In a moment of sparkling clarity, Moschitto understood that this was happening all over town. He wondered if he should do something.
His hands wrapped around Janey’s throat.
Then he remembered that he had a gun, and just the thought of it made him come.
KEOMANY
figured that since Bill Hodgson was dead, he wouldn’t mind them using his kitchen table. The iron chest that Norm Dunne had dragged up from the ocean bottom yesterday sat in the center of the painted wood. What had once been leather straps were now nothing more than a gritty residue, eaten away by what must have been centuries of saltwater erosion. But the chest itself had been perfectly preserved. She had studied the engravings on the locks that Tommy Dunne had described, anxious about opening the chest and suffering the same fate as his father. After several minutes she had realized magic was her only real option.
figured that since Bill Hodgson was dead, he wouldn’t mind them using his kitchen table. The iron chest that Norm Dunne had dragged up from the ocean bottom yesterday sat in the center of the painted wood. What had once been leather straps were now nothing more than a gritty residue, eaten away by what must have been centuries of saltwater erosion. But the chest itself had been perfectly preserved. She had studied the engravings on the locks that Tommy Dunne had described, anxious about opening the chest and suffering the same fate as his father. After several minutes she had realized magic was her only real option.
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