The thing in the snow chuckled and squealed.Dawn was so, so close; if they could just hold out, the longest night of the year would soon be over.
Should’ve moved her before now.But Control?—
For a moment Erik wasn’t sure why he’d stopped.Then he looked down.
Thunk.The sound reached him late, cotton-fog shock filling his ears, and he stared at the dirty ivory spear-claw embedded in his chest.Its edge smoked with poison, and its golden chasing, not to mention the gems along its handle, would buy you anything in the waking world you desired.
It would also pay for passage to the dreaming lands, but unless you were careful you’d end up sold for a handful of clotted-blood rubies and taken to the nightmare country, carried in the stinking hold of a black ship with banks of oars like serried teeth along each side, its prow a frozen scream under a pair of staring crimson lamps.
Oh, shit, Erik thought, and the thing in the snow laughed.It loomed before him, its fingers stained by the filthy spear-claw wrenched from an almost unimaginable beast in the lands bordering the fair far shimmering of deepest dreams.Those rolling green hills and bright shining city were a place the Mad God hated almost as much as this tiny inconsequential planet whose inhabitants, through whatever freak of genetics, magic, or just plain chance, could bleed away his force, betray him, and bar his passage, not to mention impede his plans.
It didn’t matter.Even the claw in his chest, digging relentlessly for his heart, didn’t matter.Erik closed one bloody, dripping, grimy hand around the spear, spat a mouthful of liquid glittering red in the faint orange glare of citylight off snow, and yanked it free, not caring if he sliced his fingers down to bone or even lost one or two.
They’ll grow back eventually.Kill that thing, Erik.Kill it now.
The creature who could wield that claw came from deep in nightmare, though it might look human enough—save for the extra joints on its long, strong fingers and the wasted, terrible almost-beauty of its pale, lipless face.
Sarnaki.One of the Great Liars creeping through the fringes of normal human dreaming, voracious but banished from the waking world—unless, that was, they were summoned and sent to be the god’s fleshly hands.Fast, unpredictable, deadly toxic tolirai, utterly committed to its task, they were also very, very difficult to destroy.
For one thing, they regenerated almost as quickly as a Son.
Erik’s knees turned to melting snow, and he staggered.The thing laughed again, using the falling flakes as a shield, and if thesarnakiwasn’t splitting its attention between an Elder and those he was protecting, it could only mean more than one of the Mad God’s centurions was lurking in the blizzard.
“Lirai,” Erik whispered, and the thing halted, snarling.For a single cold, heartstopping moment it was clearly visible; Erik shoved himself forward, the wrenched-free spear in his hand keening and the hole in his chest giving a splattering gout of bright crimson.
Stop the Whispers
One momentshe was looking forward to peeing in a filthy gas station restroom, maybe being able to write a note on some toilet paper—though she might not, the police probably couldn’t help her if nightmare creatures and superhuman monster hunters were in the mix—and the next, Liv was blinking, her hair hanging in her face and theoneirostapping at her chin.
It was hanging that way because she was upside down.Smoke filled her throat and scorched her nose; she tried to make some sense of what was happening.
Dream.It was all a dream, maybe?Her hands hung, fingers twitching as her brain tried to coordinate them.Her eyes ran with shimmering hot water, the back of the driver’s seat only indistinctly visible.
A crash and tinkle of falling glass, a hungry roaring.Hands on her, warm and iron-hard.Liv struggled, a drugged kitten batting at a threat too big for comprehension.
Someone was dragging her out of an upside-down car.
What the hell?This wasn’t the long-ago accident in Mika’s sporty little orange coupe—for one thing, this hulk of crumpled metal and crumbling safety glass was a lot bigger.Not to mention she and her bestie hadn’t ended upside down, just bruised and shaken with the front end folded around a concrete pole.
Also, it was snowing instead of dry and crystal-clear icy, and Liv hadn’t dreamed this accident ahead of time.
For once.
“Give it to usss,” something hissed.
The voice waswrong, scraping and burrowing through her head without going through her ears.She convulsed, a weak little whisper-scream sliding past her chapped lips.
Something popped, and whatever had spoken gave a thin glassy howl.It sounded like it hurt, and she was dozily glad even if its pain tore at her as well.
“Go fuck yourself,” another voice snarled, but the words were blessedly human, male, and totally pissed off.For a moment, she thought it was Erik and her heart gave a weird leap, almost lodging in her smoke-jammed throat.
She was dragged the rest of the way through the window, shattered safety glass grinding against her jeans.Her sneakers dangled as he lifted her, and the necklace settled in its accepted place, a warm, comforting weight.
“It’s all right,” he said, softly.“Almost dawn, Livvie.Just hang in there.”
Don’t call me that, asshole.Darkness swallowed her, and just before she passed out, she heard a massive, grinding noise.
The SUV had exploded.
