House of Blood

He chuckled. “Typical administrative sloppiness. Accurate record-keeping isn’t one of our priorities. It bothered me in the beginning, when I first took this position, but now I appreciate the freedom it gives me.

“No record, no official notation of their presence, means they were never here.”

Another chuckle.

“You can think of it as a license to kill.” A pause. “Again.”

Cindy’s voice was a breathy whisper. “Thank you, dead man.”

Chad winced, bracing himself for the killing blows.

He wasn’t prepared, however, for the roar of gunfire that suddenly filled the room. He flinched and hunched his shoulders, but he didn’t seek cover-because Cindy’s stolid green eyes never wavered.

She smiled at him. “You’re okay, Chad.”

Her voice released him, and his gaze darted about the room, taking in the carnage. Three guards were dead on the floor. A fourth guard stood to his right, a 9mm pistol aimed at the still-standing warden, who was now a quivering mass of terror. His lanky, angular frame seemed to collapse in on itself as he fell back against the desk, his shaking hands held out before him.

“P-please … ,” he sputtered, his suddenly red eyes brimming with tears. “I can-“

Cindy was still facing Chad. “I don’t give a shit what he can do.”

Her hand, the one holding the knife, reared back.

Then, with a grace and precision worthy of a prima ballerina, she wheeled around, cocked her arm all the way back, and whipped it forward. This all occurred in the space of a heartbeat. The knife sliced through the air and flew straight and true. The tall man had time to gasp before the blade punched through one of his eyes and penetrated his brain. His hands clutched instinctively for the knife’s handle, but he was already dead. His body toppled backward, slid sideways along the desktop, and rolled to the floor.

Chad’s psyche, overloaded with violent sensory input, finally kicked his mouth back into gear. “Oh my God, I thought you were going to kill me. I thought you were going to torture me and then kill me. Oh, shit. Oh my God. Oh shit. Holy fucking shit.”

But Cindy’s smile was implacable. She exuded the calm that had left her following the tall man’s denial of her petition. “That was never going to happen, Chad. You’re too important.”

Chad cackled, a sound close to lunacy unleashed. “Yeah, you bet. Never going to happen. That’s what I thought all along.”

He looked at the guard with the pistol.

The unlikely savior.

He was a stocky guy in his thirties. He had a thin wisp of a mustache and a receding hairline. His gaze was sturdy, and he projected the air of a man you don’t mess with, not unless you want to lose a lot of teeth. Of course, maybe some of that had something to do with the big gun his hands were wrapped around. The black pistol looked huge and malevolent. But, hey, at least it wasn’t pointed at them.

“So you’re in on it, too.”

Chad’s gaze shifted back to Cindy. “You really ought to tell me more about this whole revolution, conspiracy thing. You’ve been implying I’m some kind of central figure in whatever’s going on, which makes no goddamn sense, since I don’t know you people and have never set foot in this godforsaken place even once in my whole life.” He laughed again. “Call me crazy, I think I’m owed a little more of an explanation.”

Cindy clasped hands with him. “Soon, Chad, I promise.”

And then she was pulling him out of the room.

“But now we have to go.”

He staggered after her.

The guard followed them.

“Hey-“

They were proceeding down a drab hallway at a pace Chad had difficulty maintaining, and he tried to plant his feet, an attempt to bring their exodus from this place to a temporary halt. He was pissed off about being kept in the dark. He wanted answers. But Cindy’s strength again eclipsed his own, and he was dragged along a bit before managing to regain his footing.

“Jesus Christ, Cindy” He panted. “It’s not like I’m being unreasonable. I really did think I was about to die in there. You could’ve fucking told me about our friend here. Do you not have an ounce of compassion in you? Not one single fucking ounce? And what was up with the wait? Why wait so long to bring in the cavalry?”

The guard cleared his throat. “Had to find out how much the boss knew.”

Cindy added, “Which turned out to be not much.”

The guard grunted. “Thank God.”

They exited the building through a rear door and stood in a tunnel that vaguely resembled an underground mine shaft. Earthen walls supported by joists and beams. Chad peered down the length of tunnel he could make out, which wasn’t much-it curved and formed a blind spot. He saw something flickering-a gas lamp flame.

Chad sighed. “I’ve died and gone to the land that time forgot.”

The guard pulled a folded piece of paper from a vest pocket and passed it to Cindy. “A duplicate of your emancipation endorsement. You’ll need it to get past the next checkpoint. The man you’ll need to see there is Stephens.”

Cindy nodded. “Stephens.”

Something flickered in the guard’s eyes, a hint of some private shame. “There’ll…” He cleared his throat again. “There’ll be a price to pay?

Cindy met his gaze. “It won’t be one I haven’t paid a hundred times before.”

The guard sighed. “I know.”

Cindy started walking.

Chad, ever reluctant, had no choice.

He followed her. “I would really like to go home now.”

Cindy ignored him.

“Good luck,” the guard called after them.

She ignored that, too.

The guard waited there until he saw them disappear around the bend in the tunnel. Then he went back into the holding facility and returned to the warden’s office. He examined the bodies of his former colleagues, checking to be sure they were dead. He detected a faint pulse from one of them, Nitkowski, a problem he took care of with another bullet to the back of the head.

Then he moved to the warden’s desk and took a seat.

He surveyed his bloody handiwork and judged it a job well done.

But not quite finished.

He racked the 9mm’s slide, ratcheting another bullet into the chamber. Then he put the gun in his mouth and thought about all the terrible things he’d done since coming Below. The slaves he’d killed. The innocent children he’d consigned to a life of slavery. Unspeakable, unforgivable acts of brutality. He wasn’t an evil man. Not really. These things had been an almost unbearable burden on his conscience, which was alive and well despite his repeated efforts to suppress it, even kill it. He’d allowed circumstance and his own fears to override his morality.

To turn him into a henchman of the devil.

But fate had turned and granted him an opportunity to atone for his deeds.

An opportunity he’d taken with gratitude. There was just one more thing left to do. Seal one more dead man’s lips forever. He pulled the trigger.

This is a dream. A dream but not a dream. A warped reflection or inversion of reality, like the dreamer’s odd visions of the beautiful woman called Dream. He experiences the same awareness that he’s dreaming. The lucid quality of the scene in his head distresses him. His sleeping body writhes on the bed, and he covers his face with his hands. Only then does he realize he is no longer tethered to bedposts. In fact, he senses he is alone in the bedroom. So this is it, the miraculous opportunity he’s been praying for, another chance to get out of this place. All he has to do is wake up.

WAKE UP!

an internal voice commands.

But he cannot.

How strange it is, how frustrating, to experience this dual awareness. Knowing that what he’s seeing in his head is something more than the usual juxtaposition of weird images conjured by a brain at rest. That random quality isn’t there. Nor is there any overt symbolism. He watches the drama unfold like scenes in a movie. A movie he can’t look away from. He is reminded of that guy in A Clockwork Orange, the singing sadist, who is immobilized and forced to watch a series of grotesque images, his eyelids held open with metal clamps. This is like that. Something restrains him. Monofilaments of psychic thread knotted in strategic areas, effectively preventing a return to the conscious world. The knowledge of his unbound body in the bed is like that proverbial carrot at the end of the string-always just out of reach. Maddeningly close.

Not for the first time, he experiences despair.

He is in a room lit only by candles. He sees this. He knows it’s an image in his head. But he’s there. Really there. He can feel the ground beneath his feet. Can feel the warmth generated by the flickering flames. There is an altar of sorts against the back wall. Upon it is the nude body of a middle-aged man. His chest is sunken and his ribs are visible through yellow, papery skin, the way plastic wrap might look stretched over a skeleton. His ankles and wrists are bound with lengths of rope, a measure that seems unnecessary-nothing about this obviously doomed man suggests “flight risk.”

The man is awake.

And resigned to his fate-no pleas of mercy issue from his mouth.

But the dreamer senses something more than mere resignation; the man on the altar seems almost… eager.

Yes, that’s it.

He’s eager to die.

He eagerly awaits deliverance from a long period of suffering.

The dreamer-who maybe isn’t really dreaming-is horrified by the revelation. Not for the sake of this man, who is obviously beyond help, but for himself. Because he knows how easily he might embrace a similar fate. It is all too easy to imagine that sense of serenity, of blissful acceptance, in that last moment before death.

There is a small crowd in the room. A dozen people. All there, the dreamer supposes, to bear witness to this man’s death. Witnesses are an essential part of the ritual. He isn’t sure how he knows this, but it is fact, as immutable as the tide. He can’t make out their faces, and none of them speak. They are waiting for something. This is a reverent silence, a silence of solemn anticipation.

They wait.

And wait.

The dreamer wills his sleeping body to open its eyes. His concentration is so focused the intensity of the scene in his head wavers just a bit, goes soft-focus. His eyelids flutter. Once. And then the scene snaps back into focus. There is a flashing moment of utter despair and frustration. Then the mute witnesses drop as one to their knees. The dreamer is on his knees in the same instant, not at all sure how he knew the precise moment to genuflect. But the same mysterious impulse causes him to bow his head in the next moment. His peers in worship do the same. That sense of anticipation remains, but it is more intense now, and there is a collective holding of the breath.

Footsteps.

Someone has entered the room. A presence of authority. The footsteps draw closer. The sound is the thump of boots on wood, and there is something ominous about it. The dreamer begins to shiver and experiences symptoms like the onset of a cold, a headache and chills, a dull throb at the back of the throat. The clip-clop of the boots is like a hammer in his head as the person wearing them passes by him on the way to the altar. The person ascends the few steps to the altar, stops, and turns to face the small crowd. The worshipers, if that’s what they are, look up now.

The dreamer shivers again.

It’s her. Giselle. His tormentor. The awful mute woman who tied him up and tortured him. The candlelight seems to grow brighter. No, the dreamer realizes, it’s not just a matter of perception. The light actually is brighter. Giselle has somehow willed it. She is capable of such things. Magical things. She is not as adept as the one who taught her, The Master, but he thinks her power should not be underestimated. This knowledge appears fully formed in his head, intact from nowhere, like a file added to a computer’s hard drive via a floppy disk.

Giselle looks more beautiful than ever. She is wearing an ankle-length black skirt over black boots and a burgundy top that exposes her arms and breasts to stunning effect. Her long black hair is pulled back and gold hoop earrings dangle from her delicate lobes. The light from the candles seems to lick at her porcelain flesh. Her eyes are alive with the raw power of dark magic. She is the most striking female he has ever seen.

She smiles.

And extends a hand.

A person near the front of the crowd stands, extracts something from the folds of a robe, something that glints in the light, and walks with her head knelt down to the altar. She proffers the shiny object. Giselle takes it from her and the robed woman returns to her kneeling position. Giselle’s gaze takes in each person in the room, one by one, seeming to linger longer on the pale face of the dreamer.

The dreamer swallows hard.

Giselle’s smile broadens. The object in her hand is a wedge of razor-sharp steel. A knife with an ornate handle. Ceremonial knife. She turns away from the crowd. The dreamer has a side view of her slender figure now. She walks over to the bound man and kneels beside him. She brings the blade to her lips and kisses it. All a part of the ritual. The dreamer knows this, but the purpose of the ritual eludes him-a missing floppy-disk file?

The next phase of the ritual becomes apparent when another member of the crowd-the dreamer himself, actually-stands up and approaches the altar. Dread fills him like a fast-acting poison. The last place he wants to be is anywhere closer to Giselle or that altar. But he continues his approach on damnably steady feet. There is an object in his hand. A thick, leather-bound book. He wasn’t aware of it before, but here it is.

An image flash. Giselle nude. Standing over him.

Standing on him.

He wants to be far, far away from this sadistic bitch, but here he is ascending the steps to the altar, turning to face the crowd, opening the book, opening his mouth to intone lines written in a language he doesn’t know.

Except that he knows it now. Words swollen with madness emerge from his mouth. Repetitive and rhythmic, blocks of strange verbiage form like passages in a song. This is a chant. An invocation. The dreamer speaks the words with the rote familiarity of one who has spoken them many times before. A possibility occurs to him, a notion imbued with enough unexpected hope to cause his physical body to grunt with surprise.

What he’s witnessing is real. Or very nearly real. He suspects any exaggerations supplied by his own mind are minimal. Slight embellishments. However, he’s now certain he isn’t actually in the candlelit room. Instead, he’s a visitor in someone else’s head, an unseen voyeur. His host, this sentient conduit between his own sleeping brain and this strange place, is unaware of his presence. He shares some of this person’s store of knowledge, which is how he knows this strange language. But there are gaps in the interweaving of the two minds, places where the synapses don’t quite mesh. The dreamer knows his host is a male. He knows the man once had a normal life in the world outside The Master’s domain, but that all ended more than seven years ago.

And that is all the dreamer knows of his host.

He stops reading. The book snaps shut. There is utter silence in the room again. Another phase of the ritual has concluded.

Only one phase remains.

Giselle grips the bound man under the chin with one hand, forcing his mouth open. The other hand, the one gripping the knife, moves with practiced deliberation toward the gaping orifice. Moisture leaks from the corners of the doomed man’s eyes. Helpless tears. The dreamer experiences a surge of anger that nearly-but not quite-overrides the terror he’s feeling. This just isn’t right. Hell, it’s a fucking travesty. Things like this should not happen in the modern world. But, hey, this isn’t really a part of that world, is it? That place, though still subject to the forces of random chaos and violence, is a world that has achieved some degree of civilization. Of enlightenment. This terrible thing would not happen in that place. …

Here, on the other hand …

Giselle slides the knife into the man’s mouth with the same unhurried precision. The man’s body jerks as something in his mouth gives way beneath the pressure of the blade. There is pain, sure, lots of it. Like all other sentient creatures, he remains a prisoner to the instinct of nerve endings. His mouth tries to close around the blade in a desperate effort to halt its progress, but Giselle merely tightens her grip around his jaw. She works the blade up and down while gouts of blood jump out of the man’s mouth. The look on her face is one of rapt concentration as the blade continues its inexorable excision.

Her eyes sparkle with nearly orgasmic joy as she springs to her feet and holds the blood-flecked knife high above her head. Impaled on its tip, almost unrecognizable beneath a coating of gore, is a small flap of flesh. The mutilated man on the altar has rolled onto his side and is coughing up blood. He is choking on it. Someone should help him.

Someone…

Be careful what you wish for, the dreamer thinks.

His host is moves toward the bound man. A moment later, he is kneeling beside him. The book is set aside as he reaches into his robe. His hand-the host’s hand, he reminds himself-closes around cold metal. A knife. The blade comes into view, and this is no ceremonial instrument. Six inches of dented but very sharp steel. This is a working man’s knife. A killer’s knife.

The host’s hand rears back. Then the blade swoops down in a merciless arc. The man on the altar dies, his throat cut ear to ear with stunning precision.

He steps away from the corpse, holds the dripping end of the knife away from his robe, and Giselle again takes center stage. She lowers the knife, pries the bloody piece of flesh loose, and opens her mouth.

I’m going to faint, the dreamer thinks.

The tongue is drawn into her mouth. She swallows it whole. There is a moment when the dreamer sees a lump in her slender throat, then it is gone, like the body of a mouse passing through a snake’s gullet. Something in the atmosphere of the room changes. It reminds the dreamer of the way it feels outside in the moments just before a storm hits.

Giselle’s nostrils flare and her body abruptly goes ramrod straight. The muscles in her arms and neck convulse like those of a condemned prisoner getting that first jolt of electricity. The throbbing veins look ready to burst. Her eyes glow a brilliant yellow, then morph to red a moment before resuming their normal dark brown hue. A great sigh issues from her mouth and her body returns to a normal posture. The strange power gripping her is gone-at least its visible signs-but her cheeks are imbued with a rosy glow. And that sense of almost erotic excitement remains palpable.

She looks at the dreamer again.

At his host.

She opens her mouth—

Then the scene starts to fall away from him, like the glint of a nickel tumbling down a well, diminishing to a pinpoint before disappearing altogether. There is a moment of total blackness, and in the next instant the dreamer is jolted back into his own body.

His eyes snap open as he jerks awake.

He sits upright in the bed and breathes hard.

My name is Eddie, he thinks.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

And I am not a murderer.

Eddie quickly scanned the room for signs of Giselle, but she was nowhere to be seen. This was the best news he’d had in, oh, ever. He’d rather get whacked repeatedly in the nuts with a Louisville Slugger than ever encounter that scary bitch again. Images from the dream assailed him, disjointed now, but still all too vivid.

The rational side of his mind began its inevitable assault of these things. The dream couldn’t have been real. He certainly couldn’t have been inside the head of another man. Eddie, the voice of reason told him, these are things a crazy person believes.

Eddie told the voice of reason to get fucked, because he wasn’t buying it.

It had all happened.

It was all real.

Whatever it was.

He had no idea what the purpose of the ceremony he’d witnessed had been and had no interest whatsoever in finding out. He knew it was some fucked-up kind of black magic, and he knew he wanted to put as much distance between himself and its purveyors as soon as possible.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, found his jeans on the floor, and pulled them on. This was the same pair of jeans he’d been wearing for the last year, and the filthy fabric felt nasty on his flesh. Nastier than usual, that is. He frowned, ran a hand through his hair, and frowned some more. His hair felt… clean.

He held out his arms and examined the rest of his torso. All the accumulated grime and muck of a year spent living in a cave was gone.

Psycho mama had washed him.

Eddie grunted.

Weird.

It was almost as if she’d been … well… preparing him for something.

His eyes widened as he thought again of the ceremony.

GO! the voice of self-preservation urged. MOVE YOUR ASS!

So Eddie moved his ass.

He went to the bedroom door, gripped the doorknob, and tried to turn it. It didn’t budge. He frowned, gripped it with both hands, focused his strength, and tried again to make it move. Nothing. He sighed and slumped against the door, breathing hard. Okay, this was depressing. The door wasn’t locked, yet it wouldn’t yield to his most concerted efforts. He supposed Giselle could have sealed it with a spell. Yes, she would be able to do that, wouldn’t she?

Damn her black magic-practicing ass.

He would just have to think of something else.

His gaze fastened on the window to the right of the bed. Yes! He ran to it, jammed his palms under the edge, and tried to throw it up its tracks. His muscles protested and a wheeze rattled out of his constricted throat.

“Aw, shit.”

A closer examination revealed the window to be as effectively sealed as the door, but, hey, he could deal with this. Glass would yield, spell or no spell. He went to Giselle’s writing table, picked up one of the chairs, took one step back toward the window…

… and froze.

He heard a muffled sound, but its source was a mystery. Then there was a louder sound. A grinding, shifting sound. Stone moving over stone.

Eddie put the chair down.

He sat in it and cupped his face in his palms. “Fuck me gently with a thresher.”

He rubbed his eyes and opened them again, and he saw what he expected to see. A panel of the wall was sliding slowly open. He glimpsed darkness and the hint of a flickering flame. Giselle emerged through the opening bearing a gas lantern. As soon as she was in the room the wall panel began to slide shut. Then the opening was gone and there was only the wall. The seal was seamless. He shook his head. Well, it made sense. A place like this would have sliding wall panels and secret passages.

Giselle blew out the lantern’s flame, walked over to the writing table, and set it down. Eddie looked up at her and was unsurprised to see her smiling at him. She looked just as she had in the dream. The long black skirt swirled about her ankles. The burgundy top looked flimsy, almost see-through, like something that should be ripped from her body posthaste.

Hmm, what a strange thought…

Giselle reached out and stroked his face with the palm of a hand. Eddie shuddered at her touch. Something passed through her fingertips into him, something sensuous, an electric elixir that made him drunk with desire.

He gulped. “Giselle, I’ve never been so scared of a person in my life, but…”

Giselle smiled.

And she opened her mouth.

And said, “But you want to make love to me.”

Eddie’s eyes widened.

He felt dizzy.

So very, very dizzy.

He slid out of the chair and tumbled to the floor.

The Master relaxed with another drink as he considered his nomadic nature.

Though he tended to remain in one place for decades, he’d traveled the world, beginning new colonies of slaves in the remotest corners of nearly all the major continents. These he wiped out whenever a renewed sense of wanderlust told him the time had come to move on. No trace was ever left. These demolitions were great, masterful symphonies of destruction, carnage on a grand scale, and it all occurred beyond the eyes of the outside world. The gap between the world the humans inhabited and the dark corners he carved out of the fabric of existence could not be breached.

Unless he willed it.

Which, as was the case tonight, he sometimes did.

He wasn’t certain yet, but he thought this place in the mountains of Tennessee might be the last of his kingdoms. That sense of restlessness was beginning to fade. The notion of starting fresh somewhere else possessed none of its former invigorating power.

Time.

That relentless tick-tock ogre.

He was getting old, and some of his passions were deserting him.

There was a life beyond this realm. He knew that. A place where he might finally live among others of his kind. This place wasn’t the afterworld of primitive human belief, but it was similar in some respects. His physical body would die and decay, but his life would not end. He would ascend to this other realm, this elevated place of light and wonder, and would inhabit a new shell. Solid flesh and blood. But this was the extent of his knowledge. He knew little of the form and substance of this other place. The few texts that talked about it were too vague in their descriptions.

The texts he had were handwritten tomes handed down from others of his kind through the millennia. The ancient pages survived only through a concentration of his will. When he ascended to that other place, there would be no one left to continue this act of magical maintenance; the pages would crumble, the binding would dissolve, and the remaining pile of dust would be swept away by the next gust of wind that happened along.

The Master sipped his drink.

A thoughtful frown creased his brow as he considered these things. It wasn’t a given he would automatically ascend to the other place. He certainly shouldn’t assume it would just happen. The gods required a constant level of appeasement and sacrifice. The ancient texts were quite clear on that matter.

Tick-tock.

The disquieting thing was the lack of a measuring stick. He had nothing to judge his efforts against. Had he done enough? Why were the gods silent? A melancholy loneliness settled over him. He ached for the company of others of his kind.

He became angry at himself.

How had he contracted so many human weaknesses? He fed off them in a vaguely vampiric way, derived life-sustaining energy from their terror, and he wondered now if he’d absorbed some of their essence.

Yet another in a long series of troubling possibilities.

He carried his drink to his chambers.

His “guests” would arrive soon. The sense that there was something unique about the one called Dream was undiminished.

She was special.

The thought he’d been trying to suppress-because it was so obviously not possible-floated fully formed into his consciousness.

She was the reason for this uncharacteristic bout with melancholy and self-doubt.

And this uncomfortable contemplation of the eventual end of his natural life.

He sighed deeply, stretched out in a chair, and closed his eyes. The flesh of his face began to ripple and contort. Some of the gray-but not all-faded from his hair. New hair filled in other places and removed the illusion of a receding hairline. The creature in the chair no longer looked like the benign older gentleman it usually pretended to be when greeting new arrivals.

The man in the chair looked forty instead of sixty.

Old enough to command respect.

Yet young enough-and handsome enough-to instill desire.

He was instituting a new approach tonight, a one-time deviation from the usual program of subjugation and torture. Dream was the reason for this change of plans. She would come to him of her own free will. He wasn’t sure why, but he sensed this was important.

The Master smiled.

The change was complete.

The Accord pulled to a stop alongside the long front porch. The imposing house loomed over the car’s passengers like a steely-eyed beast. Gabled windows extended from either side of the columned porch. The house would not have looked out of place in an upscale modern neighborhood, but there was a hint of something old world about it. There was an implied menace in the way it seemed to crouch against the side of the mountain, as if readying to strike.

Karen leaned through the gap between the front seats and said, “Creepy”

Alicia whistled. “No shit.”

Dream was entranced by the house. She was aware of the menace it exuded, but it evoked something else in her, some nameless longing that made her heart race. She opened the door on her side and extended a long leg through the opening.

Alicia seized her wrist. “Whoa, hold up!”

A thunderclap of unexpected fury rumbled inside Dream’s head. She twisted free of Alicia’s grip and barked at her, “Don’t fucking touch me!”

Alicia blinked. “Jesus, Dream.”

Dream winced.

What the hell brought that on? she wondered.

She clasped hands with Alicia. “I’m sorry”

Alicia frowned. “Whatever. We’re all on edge. I know that.” She glanced at the house again before shifting her gaze back to Dream.

She shuddered.

And opened the door on her side. “Oh, hell. Let’s go if we’re goin’.”

Dream smiled. “Thank you.”

“Place is creepy as all get-out, but we don’t have a lot of other options.”

Karen sighed in the backseat. “Other than just killing ourselves.”

Dream tried not to show her shock.

Karen’s comment was offhand, flippant.

She couldn’t know one of her friends meant to do that very thing.

“Nobody’s killing themselves.” Alicia sounded weary and out of patience. “Let’s get up in this fucker and see if we can get some help for that little asshole.”

Meaning Chad.

They all got out of the car and stretched their legs. Dream stared up at one of the gabled windows. A flickering light emanated from the darkness there. A candle. She walked up to the porch, climbed the steps, and soon stood before a large door. Karen and Alicia, still wary, trailed after her, and stood to either side of her.

The door was ornate and carved from old oak. There was a small window at about eye level, and there was a heavy brass knocker below the window.

Dream grasped the knocker. She rapped it hard against the door four times and stepped back.

There was no initial acknowledgment of their presence from the other side of the door. Dream was ready to reach for the knocker again when they heard a muffled click of footsteps from somewhere inside. A woman in heels, from the sound of it. Then yellow light was blazing through the small window. A moment later, the door creaked open.

A tall, slim woman of about forty stood in the opening. Her expression was severe, made more so by the way her black hair was pulled tightly away from her face. She wore a simple black dress, a dress an urban woman might wear to an elegant club. Something in her posture and the set of her features hinted at cruelty.

A smile devoid of warmth twisted the woman’s thin lips. “Are you ladies lost?”

Dream gulped. “Um …” She cleared her throat and somehow found her voice. “Yes. We’re lost and we need help. A friend of ours is… dead. And another one is missing.”

Dream’s voice quavered with unexpected emotion, the veil of detachment slipping momentarily away. “Please, we need to call the police. Please help us.”

“Oh, my,” the woman gasped, an exaggerated, nearly theatrical sound. “How dreadful.” She made a tsk-tsk sound and shook her head. “Why don’t you ladies step inside?

You can call me Ms. Wickman, by the way. We’ll have a talk and figure out what to do about your missing friend.”

Dream stepped over the threshold and into the house. Alicia and Karen followed her inside, and the heavy oak door swung shut behind them.

Ms. Wickman turned the lock.

“There,” she said, obvious satisfaction in her voice. Her hazel eyes sparkled with ill-concealed excitement. “Now no one gets in or out.” She chuckled, a sound that unnerved them all. “We’re all safe from the big, bad killer.”

Dream was appalled by the inappropriate nature of a humorous remark at a time like that, but then Ms. Wickman swept past them and beckoned them to follow her. So they did, moving down a short hallway off the foyer, then stepping through a doorway into a large and impressively appointed living room.

“Here, dearies, have a seat on the comfy sofas.”

The women seated themselves, settling into squeaky leather.

Alicia said, “We appreciate the hospitality, but what we could really use is a phone.”

An expression that was nearly a smirk tugged at a corner of the woman’s mouth. “Yes, I suppose that’s so. There isn’t one in this room, unfortunately. Relax and get comfortable.” She smiled again. “You should know that this isn’t my home. I am merely an employee of the man of the house. He will be in to see you shortly.”

She was gone before they could question her further.

Alicia released a shuddery breath. “Oh my God, she is so fucking strange.”

Karen looked startled. “Don’t let her hear you say that.”

Alicia laughed. “Yeah, what’s she gonna do? You think she’s coming back with a chain saw? Get real. She’s just an antisocial wacko living up here in the woods with her recluse boss.”

Karen said, “Think about what you just said. That last sentence.”

Alicia frowned.

Dream cleared her throat. “You both need to calm down. You’re jumping at shadows.”

Karen’s head jerked toward Dream. “Yeah, and for some pretty good reasons, or have you already forgotten? What’s wrong with you, anyway? You’re acting weird.”

Dream sighed. “I am not. I’m just tired.”

It was only a partial lie.

She was acting weird, and she knew it.

Hell, she felt weird.

Strange.

Well, this was her last night on earth.

How else should she feel?

But the suicidal thoughts vanished as she became aware of a new presence entering the room. She felt a strange tingle as she turned to get a glimpse of the best-looking man she’d laid eyes on in a long time. He was maybe six feet tall, solidly built, and blessed with square-jawed movie-star looks. He caught her eye immediately and smiled in a way that made her knees shake.

Alicia whispered, “Oh, my!”

His compelling gaze never left Dream.

She went to him, extending a hand. “My name is Dream.”

He clasped her hand.

His touch sent a shiver of sensual delight through her.

He smiled. “Welcome to my home, Dream.”

Dream blushed.

She felt weak.

Helpless.

Lost in his glittering eyes.

Chad followed Cindy through a narrow tunnel that steadily curved and sloped ever downward. The going was slow. You didn’t want to work up too much of a head of steam, or you’d go tumbling ass over teakettle down the tunnel. Staying upright was a job and a fucking half, but Chad found it helpful to let the fingertips of his right hand glide over the tunnel wall. The technique worked well enough, for the most part, but he was unsurprised to find himself stumbling as they rounded yet another bend. He righted himself with a wild pinwheeling of the arms, drew in a steadying breath, and slipped his right foot back into the primitive sandal it had just vacated. “Hey, uh, Cindy?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Yeah?” He resumed walking, even jogged for a moment to catch up to her, the sandals slapping against the hardpacked dirt. “Look, I can dig all this stuff about how you do what you have to do down here. Law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, and so forth. But since we’re sort of comrades-in-arms now, having been through a kind of trial by fire together, I thought I’d appeal to your better angels and ask you to give back what’s rightfully mine.”

“What are you saying?”

“I want my fucking Reeboks.”

“It’s good to want things, Chad.”

Chad groaned. “Jesus Christ, woman, you’re taking me down into the bowels of, well… hell… or something. I should get to make the journey in a modicum of comfort. Or is that too much to ask?”

“I think you already know the answer to that one.”

Chad sagged. “Congratulations, you are now officially the ball-busting champion of the world. I know you must be proud.”

Cindy’s expression softened, the smirk becoming an almost affectionate smile. She walked up to him, cupped his face in her palms, and kissed him full on the mouth. Chad’s eyes widened as she continued to kiss him for several seconds.

She broke off the kiss and said, “What were you saying?”

Chad frowned, and nervously cleared his throat. “Um … that was unexpected. Unexpected and startling …” He almost smiled. “… but nice.”

Chad watched a single tear spill from one of her eyes and trace a path over the contours of one of her lovely cheeks. A familiar ache sparked to life in his heart, the leading edge of a mass of pain he tried to keep tucked away in one of the darkest corners of his soul. That corner housed the love he felt for Dream that could never become the romantic love she so desired. Oh, he loved Dream so much. His one regret in the world, the one he would change if he could, was his inability to be what she wanted him to be.

A man worthy of her bottomless wellspring of love.

Cindy wasn’t Dream. They were different in countless ways. But here was that same source of angst again. He stared at her and felt a terrible empathy. The thin film of dirt that covered her body was heartbreaking. He looked at her unwashed hair and thought how coarse it must feel to the touch. He ached for the woman she’d been prior to coming here, a woman he’d just gotten a bittersweet glimpse of, a mom and a lover and a nurse. A good person. His own eyes glistened with moisture.

No one deserved this fate.

He took her into his arms and she stepped willingly into the embrace, wrapping her arms about his back as she cried softly against his ear. The embrace was brief, but he sensed it was a welcome gesture. When they parted, Chad sensed something fundamental had changed between them. He thought maybe he’d touched something long dormant within her.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “Sometimes it all hits home.” She managed a small smile. “Sometimes I get desperate to wake up from this nightmare and I just lose it.”

“You don’t ever need to be embarrassed to be human in front of me, Cindy”

Please let me have a chance to say that to Dream before I die, he thought. That and so many other things.

She kissed him again. A light peck on the cheek. “Thank you. Now …” She heaved a big sigh. “This has been … nice … but we should get going again.”

Chad nodded. “Right.”

Cindy clasped hands with him, and they began to make their way through the tunnel again, this time at a slower, more deliberate pace. Chad was so preoccupied by the abrupt change in the tenor of his relationship with Cindy that he failed to immediately notice the widening of the tunnel. He was so immersed in contemplation of the development that the hum of nearby machinery didn’t register until Cindy said, “Slow down.”

Chad looked at her. “What?”

So she said it again. “Slow down. Listen.”

Chad did. He frowned. “What’s that?”

Cindy looked troubled. “Checkpoint. We have to pass through it to return Below.” A shudder rippled through her. “We’ll be encountering some nasty people in a bit, and, well, no offense, please keep your big mouth shut. I’ve been through this before and I can get us through this now, but you need to leave the talking to me.”

Chad shrugged. “Fine.”

The tunnel continued to widen as they trudged forward. The steep downward slope began to level out, only a little at first, then dramatically, and soon they were walking on flat ground. The tunnel’s ceiling became higher, as well, and they began to perceive a glow of artificially produced light. The hum of machinery grew louder. Chad was pretty sure they were hearing a generator. This suspicion was confirmed as they came around what turned out to be the end of this branch of the tunnel. They stepped out of the tunnel and into a much larger area.

“This is the checkpoint,” Cindy breathed.

Chad glimpsed a dark opening beyond the checkpoint and realized his earlier perception hadn’t been quite true. The tunnel didn’t really end. Not exactly. Its dimensions changed here and there, particularly in places where more room had been carved out of the earth for places such as this. There was a shack to his left that looked a bit like a construction site office. A row of military-style transport trucks were lined against the opposite wall. A holding pen occupied the space between the shack and the trucks. Chad counted thirteen people in the pen. Slaves, he assumed. The area was lit by klieg lights, a brightness that approximated midsummer daylight.

Rifle-toting guards patrolled the perimeter of the pen. They wore body armor and black helmets with inscrutable black visors. They were lean and muscular and lithe, and they moved like hungry panthers stalking prey.

Satan’s shock troops.

Chad whispered, “Holy shit. Pardon me while I pass out.” He looked at Cindy. “Please tell me you’re sure they don’t know about…”

His eyes flicked back toward the tunnel. “You know …”

Crimson-tinted images of the holding facility massacre shook him.

Cindy arched an eyebrow. “Of course they know. Don’t be naive.”

A jolt of terror slashed through Chad’s heart and caused his eyes to open so wide he thought they might fall out of their sockets. “What!?” He was still whispering-a guard was approaching them-but he was agitated now. “What the living hell, Cindy? You said you could get us through this.”

“I can. I think.” There was an edge to her tone now, an implied warning. “You just have to shut up and trust me. Now hold tight.”

The guard reached them. He held his rifle in front of him, and Chad noticed his forefinger was curled around the trigger.

The guard’s voice was brusque. “Identification.”

Cindy reached into the pouch at her waist, pulled out a card, and handed it over to the guard, who gave it a long inspection. “I am formerly the property of Overlord Gonzo.”

Chad thought, Overlord Gonzo?

He heard a feigned pride in her voice when she said, “I am an emancipated slave.”

The guard studied the card a moment later, glanced at Chad, and handed it back to her. “And who is this?”

“This is my new slave.”

The guard studied Chad. The scrutiny made his skin crawl. It was like being sized up by The Terminator. The inscrutable visor increased his anxiety level by several degrees. An urge to turn and flee back through the tunnel gripped him, but he remained where he was, counseling himself against acts of impulsive-as well as suicidal-stupidity.

At last, the guards gaze went back to Cindy. “You’ll have to meet with the Stationmaster.” He nodded at Chad. “Your slave will have to stay in the holding pen.”

The holding pen!

Chad looked at the hungry eyes of the slaves in the pen. “Are you kidding? I won’t last ten minutes in there.”

Cindy backhanded him, a blow that rocked his head and sent him staggering backward. She stalked after him, glaring at him with real malevolence, and drove a fist into his solar plexus. He dropped to his knees and gasped for breath. Cindy grabbed a handful of hair, yanked his head back, leaned in close, and hissed, “Mouth off again and I’ll have this man shoot you.”

Panic filled Chad’s soul, wrapped a cold fist around his heart. He had fucked up. He knew that. Cindy’s anger was genuine, albeit for reasons other than what the guard would assume. He’d broken his vow of silence. He had to consciously remind himself she was role-playing-and that she alone best understood what it would take to get them through this place.

“I’m … sorry!” There was a quaver in his voice, and he realized he was close to blubbering. But that was okay. A little role-playing of his own couldn’t hurt. “It won’t happen again, I swear. Please don’t hurt me anymore.”

Cindy relinquished him.

The guard said, “I like the way you discipline.”

There was something new in the timbre of the guard’s voice, a deeper, raspier tone, and he was speaking at a level just above a whisper. Chad had a disturbing notion, an idea that he was beginning to know how Cindy meant to get them through this checkpoint.

He ached for her again.

“And what about my body?” Her tone was matter-of-fact, the voice of a person negotiating a business transaction. “Do you like that?”

The guard chuckled. “Very much.”

Cindy nodded. “You’re Stephens, right?”

The guard licked his dry lips and smiled. “Yes. I’ve been waiting for you. I’m the new Stationmaster.”

Cindy pursed her lips. “And the old Stationmaster?”

The guard’s smile widened. “Hawthorne.” He shrugged. “A real by-the-book, rules-and-regulations guy!” A tone of mock solemnity entered his voice. “Tragically, he just met an untimely end.”

Cindy nodded.

As if the information wasn’t news.

Stephens said, “I’ll just need to discuss some loose ends with you. In private.”

Chad’s stomach roiled.

She wouldn’t really let this happen, he was sure of it.

Stephens slung the rifle back over his shoulder, cupped his hands around his mouth, and called out, “Coleman!”

Another patrolling guard stepped away from the holding pen and strolled over to where they were standing. “Yeah?”

Stephens nodded at Chad. “Keep an eye on this guy while the lady and I conduct some business.”

Coleman grinned. “Sure.”

The guard and Cindy entered the tunnel, and Chad watched them disappear around the bend through eyes blurry with tears. Several long moments elapsed during which nothing seemed to be happening.

And then he heard them.

Dimly at first. Then louder. High-pitched cries of sexual enthusiasm. Cindy. And a lower-pitched series of testosterone-charged grunts.

Stephens.

This went on for a time.

Chad felt a welling of tears. He doubted he could quantify how infinitely sad what was transpiring made him. It was wrong. An unforgivable offense against the universe. Which was a melodramatic thing to think, he realized, but he believed it nonetheless. He was seized by a desire to bring this place down. He wouldn’t be satisfied with just his own escape. Not anymore. He would settle for nothing less than complete destruction. An inferno. The oppressed rising up to mete out a justice every bit as ruthless as the vile transgressions against humanity this underworld’s powers-that-be seemed to engage in as a matter of routine.

But that was ridiculous.

He was a systems analyst, not a revolutionary.

How could he hope to change anything down here?

When Cindy and the guard emerged from the tunnel, she seemed reluctant to look at Chad. He met her gaze once, tried to transmit a message of concern and empathy, but her eyes flicked instantly away.

The guard who took Cindy into the tunnel sent Coleman away. “You’ll be boarding the next transport run when it leaves, which should be within an hour. You and your slave will be taken Below. You will be carrying documentation verifying your status as an emancipated slave.”

Then he was gone, leaving Cindy and Chad standing there unguarded.

She said, “See? I know what I’m doing.”

Chad nodded. “Sure.”

But there was a distance in his tone, a faraway look in his eyes.

He was thinking about liberation. About throwing off the shackles of oppression. He was also thinking quite a bit about retribution.

Eddie was dreaming again. Yet again. But the images weren’t as vivid this time. They were fleeting and halfformed. That sense of lucidity and pseudoreality was gone. In its place was an odd mixture of physical lust and a swirling sense of impending disaster. He saw bodies burning in a pile, heard screams so loud and so anguished they pierced his eardrums like serrated knives. The stink of death was everywhere. And, in the middle of it all, appearing and disappearing-then reappearing again-was the woman from his earlier dream.

Dream.

A hauntingly beautiful image glimpsed here and there through a fog. Or it might have been smoke, the billowing black smoke of a conflagration. Although he couldn’t tell exactly what was happening, he sensed the woman was in extreme danger. Something terrible was about to happen to her, something unspeakable, and, this was the creepiest part of it, she seemed to welcome it, to even embrace it.

He saw the woman again, more clearly than before. She was again wearing the flimsy, sheer blue dress she’d shed in his previous dream. She seemed less threatening in this dream, not quite as apt to turn into a yellow-eyed beastie. He wasn’t sure why that was, but he would later decide he was getting glimpses of a fluid possible reality. The woman’s fate wasn’t decided yet. He sensed she was vulnerable, susceptible to ideas she wouldn’t normally entertain. She stood now on the precipice of a great corruption. Soon she would either surrender her soul to darkness or give up her life trying to fight whatever was threatening her.

This dream, what little he would recall of it upon awakening, was suggestive of things that might happen should she pursue the latter course. A dark shadow, enormous and distended like a shadow puppet, emerged from the smoke to loom behind her.

Eddie opened his mouth to scream out a warning … … and awoke with a start.

Giselle looked up from her writing table when he sat bolt upright in the bed, gasping hard like a runner at the end of a marathon. The images from the dream became fuzzy and dispersed like bubbles blown into a breeze, but he retained a sense of what he had seen and of what the images meant. He looked at Giselle, who, with a tip of a quill dimpling a corner of her mouth, resembled a biology student studying a particularly interesting specimen through a microscope.

He heaved one more heavy sigh and said, “I am having some seriously fucked-up dreams.”

He reconsidered the admission instantly. Broaching the subject with her was the kind of mistake that registered in the upper reaches of the stupidity Richter scale. Wasn’t it possible she was the one who’d turned his head into some kind of psychic antenna? “That is, ah, I mean, it’s probably nothing, and, uh …”

Giselle set the quill down, folded her hands primly in front of her, and said, “In what way are these dreams … ‘fucked up’?”

Eddie said, “Well-“

And then it came back to him, the memory of the astonishing event that had sent him reeling back into unconsciousness. She had spoken. Upon emerging from the secret passage, the mute girl had opened her mouth and sounds had emerged.

Words and sentences.

He stared at the sleek contours of her lovely face-and again experienced inappropriate erotic urges-and recalled images of a bloody flap of flesh sliding down her mouth, a tongue excised from the mouth of an emaciated old man.

The images, as well as the persistent desire to kiss her red lips, quashed his train of thought. “Um …”

There was a glint of amusement in her eyes, a glimmer of secret knowledge. “Your desire for me disturbs you.”

Eddie swallowed hard. “Ah … well…”

She laughed. “You can’t understand why you are so drawn to a woman whose deeds you find abhorrent.”

She’d nailed that part of it, Eddie had to admit. “That about sums it up.”

He shrugged. “I suspect you of literally fucking with my head, altering my brain chemistry somehow. I don’t understand it, but… there you go.”

“Nor do you need to know the specifics of it.” She got up and walked slowly toward the bed. The long skirt swirled about the ankles of her boots. “My powers are rooted in obscure rites and ancient magical practices, things you are too simple to comprehend.”

She climbed onto the bed, hoisted the skirt to thigh level, and sat astride him. “You saw me do something horrific, saw it in a dream, but what you don’t know about is the higher purpose behind the ceremony”

She wriggled her ass against his crotch and grinned at the automatic physical reaction the stimulation caused. Eddie’s heart fluttered. He was having difficulty focusing on anything other than pure sensation, but he managed to say, “Come on, a higher purpose behind murder. You’re kidding … right?”

She tilted her head back, pinched her nipples hard through the fabric of her dress, and said, “No … you have a destiny to achieve, Eddie.” Her face was flushed with lust, her porcelain flesh tinged a deep red. Her breathing quickened as she moved more rhythmically against him. “The ceremony… is symbolic. Restores my speech for a short time. I did it to facilitate quicker… communication between us, to…”

Eddie managed a hoarse mutter: “What destiny?”

Her only reply was a low moan.

Eddie shifted uncomfortably beneath her, but the movement only served to further stiffen his cock. He sighed and became still. It felt like there was a stick of dynamite wedged between their bodies.

Though it disturbed him to look into her eyes-especially when they were so close-he did so now. “You know, magic didn’t make that happen. I’m a guy who likes women. A lot. And you are one lovely piece of ass.”

Giselle licked already moist lips. “Oh?”

Eddie nodded. “Yeah.”

Giselle laid her wrists on Eddie’s shoulders and clasped her hands behind his neck. “Tell me more about these dreams.”

He slid a hand along one of her thighs. “Um … now?”

“Tell me everything.” One of Giselle’s hands came away from his neck and cupped his jaw. The hand squeezed, forced his mouth open, and for one long, delicious moment their mouths joined. During that moment, every concern he had-even the need to escape-was obliterated by the totality of the erotic fever gripping him. Then she withdrew her tongue, pulled her head back, and said, “Everything. Leave nothing out. Starting with your escape from Below.”

Eddie was breathing hard. “Jesus … I can’t even think with this … thing … between us.”

Giselle’s eyes flicked downward, then she met his gaze again and smiled. “I seem to have created a monster.” Teasing laughter trilled out of her mouth. “I suppose I should set it free. Then we can talk.”

She propped herself up on a knee, unfastened his jeans, and pulled his cock free. Eddie scrambled to push the jeans down around his knees while Giselle stroked the engorged shaft. He moaned and flopped onto his back. She settled onto him, easing him inside her one heavenly inch at a time. When he was all the way in, she started riding him like an urban cowgirl atop a mechanical bull. Eddie thought he would come right away, given his unusually intense state of arousal, but it turned out she controlled his ability to achieve orgasm, as well.

He cupped her breasts through the fabric of the dress, and she arched her back. Her mouth stretched open wide. Her eyes closed. Her head whipped side to side, making her raven hair fly. A series of high-pitched gasps escaped her mouth, building to one long crescendo of uninhibited pleasure. She abruptly seized him about the wrists and stopped bucking. She got to her feet, pulled the dress off over head, and tossed it away. Eddie stared up at her, rapt, and ran a hand along one of her perfect legs. He was dimly aware of any will, any resistance to her desires, dying quietly. Whatever else she might be-monster, killer, sadist, what have you-she was unquestionably a goddess.

There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.

She smiled, as if sensing his thoughts.

And she sat on his face, wedging the pink slit of her sex against his open mouth. He worked her with his tongue, determined to pleasure her as no one else had, convince her of his worthiness. A piece of knowledge arrived wholly formed from seemingly nowhere. His arrival in her room was no accident. She had directed him here. She had plans for him. Grand, dangerous plans. He didn’t know what she had in mind-couldn’t know-but he sensed whatever it was might be his only true hope for salvation.

She screamed.

Slapped the wall behind her with open palms.

She rolled off him and beckoned him to her. He came to her without hesitation, planting his hands beneath her arms. She arched toward him and he thrust into her, gasping at the hot wetness that enveloped him. She locked her legs around him, the balls of her feet gouging the small of his back. Eddie thrust and thrust, arching his back, crying out, and it went on and on, until finally, mercifully, release was achieved. His eyes clenched shut, he groaned, twisted handfuls of rumpled bedsheets, gasped in air, and slumped against her.

No words were exchanged for a while. Silence was better. Eddie’s head rested between her breasts while she slowly stroked his tangled hair. Her legs still clung loosely to his hips. It was beautiful, a natural physical joining. Eddie had engaged in sexual activity during his time Below, but never had there been an opportunity to enjoy the luxury of afterglow. For that matter, sex Below had never remotely approached anything like what had just transpired. The memory of those quick, animalistic couplings saddened him, served as a reminder of just how grim his situation remained. And he didn’t want reminders. He just wanted to enjoy this moment. To savor the feel of Giselle’s soft, deceptively fragile body beneath him.

He’d just made love to a woman.

Really made love to a woman.

A beautiful, transcendent thing, one of nature’s greatest gifts. The most natural, normal thing in the world. How good it was to feel normal again, even if for only a few fleeting moments. How he would love to perpetuate this moment forever, render this carnal interlude eternal.

But that could not be.

Somehow he knew it.

And so he was not surprised when Giselle said, “Our time here is short.”

Eddie sighed. “I thought you might say something like that.”

She stroked his cheek. “A time of reckoning is nearly at hand. Now… tell me about your dreams.”

So he told her. He described the woman called Dream, whose recurring presence in his dreams was so like a portent, a sign of some momentous event, something he was somehow tied to. He told her of his growing surety that Dream was a real person, not merely some symbol of the subconscious.

“But the dreams themselves, I think, are symbolic. Something catastrophic will happen. I keep picturing fiery conflagrations. There’s a sense of temptation, a psychic war for this woman’s soul.” Eddie shook his head. “I can’t make sense of a lot of it, but I get the feeling she’s the key to… everything.”

Giselle’s gaze flicked to the bed canopy. She looked thoughtful. “Tell me about your escape. Leave nothing out. Spare no detail, no matter how minor.”

So he told her about the escape. The supply run to the checkpoint. How he’d slipped into one of the upbound tunnels while the guards at the undermanned station were busy taking advantage of the female members of the supply team. He was more than a hundred yards into the tunnel before he heard the dim echo of raised voices behind him. He told her of his frantic dash through the tunnels. At some point the shapeshifters picked up his scent. The memory of that awful snorting, a hungry intake of unnatural breath, made him shudder in Giselle’s arms. Next he related his passage through the security booth and the surreal trip up the endless staircase.

Giselle made a sound.

Eddie frowned. “What?”

She ran fingers through his hair. “I was thinking how much easier this would have been for you had we been able to approach you.”

“We?”

Giselle just smiled.

Eddie’s mind reeled. There was so much he didn’t understand. “Shit. Look, I don’t care who all’s involved in … whatever’s happening. But if you needed me up here, if I’ve really got some kind of destiny to meet… why not tell me up front?”

Giselle’s smile never wavered. “Destiny can’t be coerced.”

“I don’t get it.”

She kissed him lightly on the mouth. “You had to come to me of your own free will, Eddie, with no foreknowledge of the role you’re to play here.”

“But why?”

She sighed. “A higher power decreed it.” Her smile finally faltered. “I doubt you would have come here had you known what was in store for you.”

Eddie didn’t like the sound of that. This rendezvous with so-called destiny gave every indication of placing him in great danger.

Life-threatening danger.

Which wasn’t his cuppa Joe, thank you very fucking much.

He cleared his throat. “Look…”

“Shush.” She placed a finger to his mouth. “You have a rare opportunity, Eddie, a chance to achieve greatness. To do a good thing.” Something flickered in her eyes, a barely glimpsed shadow of regret. “And to help me atone …”

He frowned again. “Wait… are you saying what I think-“

She cut him off again. “Yes. Then we’ll be gone from here.”

Gone?

Eddie knew better than to hope.

Hope was heartache waiting to happen.

But Giselle said, “Yes, Eddie, we will.”

She drew him into her again.

And gasped.

“I promise.”

Dream couldn’t get over how gorgeous King was. His square jaw and cool blue eyes were the stuff of steamy erotic fantasies. A wavy wedge of brown hair swept back from his brow. He was dressed in black slacks with razor creases, a starched white shirt open at the collar, and polished nut-brown loafers. A class ring of some sort glittered on one of his fingers. But the attraction was about more than appearance. There was something in the knowing way he looked at her that made her weak in the knees.

A shudder went through her every time he turned that dazzling smile on her, as he did now. “Tell me, Dream, if you don’t mind my asking, were your parents…” He pursed his lips, as if considering the proper way to address a potentially delicate subject.”… the sort who lived on communes and traveled around the country in the wake of nomadic musicians?”

Alicia snorted.

Dream shot her a look, then showed King her most open, inviting smile. “No, I don’t mind the question. I know what you’re getting at. My name.”

King arched an eyebrow. “And a lovely name it is.”

Dream was peripherally aware of Alicia rolling her eyes. She knew what Alicia would say privately about King. That he was phony. That he dripped false sincerity the way construction workers dripped sweat-profusely. And perhaps there would be some truth in those accusations, but Dream didn’t care. She knew King’s demeanor toward her was typical predatory male stuff. His interest in her was obvious in both the set of his features and the rapt attention he paid to her.

And Dream loved it.

The memories of recent wounds were still so fresh in her mind. Disillusionment caused by Dan Bishop, the ultimate phony. Rejection and scorn from Chad, the man who didn’t know-and now would never know-he was the love of her life.

It felt good to be the object of such blatant desire.

“Thank you,” she said, flushing. “To answer your question, my parents weren’t classic hippies. They went through a phase of that when they were very young, which happened to coincide with when I was born. My folks were eighteen and nineteen at the time. My mother named me. She later said she would have named me anything else if she’d known there’d be a hit song in the seventies of the same name. At any rate, I don’t mind the name. It’s not the burden everyone assumes.”

King laughed. “Oh, I would hope not. A name like that’s a gift. You should wear it proudly, the way a queen wears her crown.”

Alicia echoed his laughter. “Flaunt it, baby”

King appeared to miss her sarcastic tone. “Precisely. Let it set you apart, distinguish you from the masses. You should move through the world with arrogance, smirking at the ordinary people who can never know how it is to feel special… the way you are, Dream.”

Dream’s smile faltered. “Yeah. …”

What King said ran contrary to everything she believed. She disdained arrogance in people. Ditto crass displays of unchecked ego. King exuded those qualities in abundance. Everything about him, his clothes, his home, his attitude, bespoke a measure of wealth and success that was disquieting. Exceptionally attractive women, women like herself, were magnets for men like King. A lot of women allowed themselves to be seduced by money and material things. Dream couldn’t fault them. It was only human to seek security. But her experiences with successful men always left her cold. Wise in the ways of finance and business, none of them were versed enough in the nuances of the human heart to suit her. She needed a man who would prize her more for her worth as a person than her value as a trophy arm-piece. Somewhere along the way she’d decided the right man for her, whoever he turned out to be, probably wouldn’t be a slice of society’s upper crust.

Why, then, should she find herself so drawn to King?

But the answer was obvious, wasn’t it?

This was a time of great upheaval in her life. Life, in fact, had beaten her. Like a hooker left broken and bloody in a ravine. She had struggled so hard for so long, and now she was ready to give up. She was ready to die. The enormity of it hit her for the first time since entering King’s house. Maybe her bleak mind-set was to blame. A person facing imminent death at her own hands had no reason to be bound by a lifetime’s worth of insecurities and inhibitions. The same went for principles once held dear. A man like King, cocky and so polar opposite of her ostensible ideal, was maybe exactly the right man for this set of circumstances.

King got up to freshen his drink, then returned to the sofa opposite her. “You seem troubled, Dream. Is something bothering you?”

Dream frowned.

He’d known her less than ten minutes and already he was probing her for personal information. It seemed inappropriate, but… yes, she felt like she could talk to him. Something in his eyes spoke to her, indicated that all her darkest secrets could be shared in confidence. But that was ridiculous. She was assuming things she couldn’t know. Perhaps all she was seeing was lust, naked desire transformed by the filter of her desperation into something else. It was silly, even absurd, the notion that he was appealing to her on some deeper level.

But the feeling was there, imbued with an unlikely emotional heft.

She sighed. “Well…”

“Oh, Christ.”

Dream flinched at the exasperation in Alicia’s voice. She glanced hesitantly at her friend, whose unwavering gaze was locked on King.

“I hate to interrupt your little mating dance, but tough shit, we’ve all got some things bothering us.” Her eyes, hard brown pebbles set in porcelain, flicked briefly at Dream before returning to King. “We didn’t show up at your door because we had nothing better to do, Edward. We’re lost, you see, and we’re out of gas. We’re here because your place is literally the end of the road. We need help.”

King stroked his jutting chin with a thumb and forefinger. His brow furrowed with concern. “I see.”

Alicia smirked. “Do you? I’m not sure, man. One of our friends is dead.” She jerked a thumb at Karen Hidecki, whose face was a numb, unreadable mask. “Her boyfriend. And we’re not talking about natural causes. He was murdered.”

Dream saw a shudder shake Karen’s thin shoulders. Shame assailed her all over again. The woman’s obvious state of shock was the only barrier holding back a complete mental meltdown. Jesus, Alicia was right to sound pissed off.

What’s wrong with me? she wondered.

How many times had she asked herself that very question?

Too many.

A picture of the Glock filled her mind.

She breathed very slowly.

In. Out.

In. Out.

She looked at King and had a thought. A thought so startling it made her swallow with difficulty. This house, this place high up in the mountains, would be the stage upon which the last great drama of her life would play out. She would either kill herself with the Glock during the night, or King would turn out to be the lover she’d always needed. The heterosexual alpha male she could cling to like a life raft. She listened to the flow of words between Alicia and King, sensed on some level what was being said, but she wasn’t really listening to it.

She was thinking of King that way again-imagining herself undoing the buttons of that clean white shirt and pulling it off him …

… thrusting a hand inside his slacks …

She felt wanton.

Slutty.

She felt disconnected from the scene in the living room. Cut off from her friends. All of existence was composed of herself and King, a vivid image of their naked bodies entwined, desperately fucking away all the pain in the world.

She became aware of someone saying her name.

It was Alicia.

“Dream? You hear me, girl?”

Dream gave her head a good shake. The world regained definition; random, senseless sounds coalesced again into recognizable words and language.

She nodded. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “Of course.”

But that inappropriate erotic tingle was still very present. She recrossed her legs and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. She made herself look at Alicia instead of King. “I’m sorry.” She searched for a good excuse for her distraction. The most valid one occurred immediately. “I’m just so tired. This day has gone on forever.”

She didn’t have to fake the yawn that came then.

Alicia’s expression softened. “I know, girl.” She smiled, a sad upturning of her lips that spoke of weariness and loss.

“Just bear with me a bit longer. I’m having a bit of an argument with Miss Scully here.”

She nodded at Karen.

Dream was startled by the Asian girl’s tear-soaked countenance. A fresh stab of shame made her wince inwardly. Christ, how could a person get so lost in fantasy that she’d miss a friend’s emotional meltdown? The grotesque inappropriateness of her thoughts made her want to cry.

But… Jesus … the thoughts weren’t going away.

She made herself say, “What are you arguing about?”

Alicia scowled. “You are really out of it.” She sighed, glanced again at Karen before continuing. “We’re arguing about… the way Shane died.”

Karen whimpered, a sound that tugged at Dream’s battered heart.

“What about it?”

Alicia’s expression grew more solemn. “She’s still insisting he was killed by a monster. She’s been telling Edward here about what she believes she saw in the woods, a vivid description, granted, but obviously a product of hysteria and stress. I say she didn’t clearly see Shane’s killer, so her mind supplied her with images gleaned from movies and books. Delusions-“

Karen turned on her. “I saw what I fucking saw, Alicia!” She scooted to the far end of the sofa, away from Alicia. “I’m not fucking crazy, I’m not on drugs, and I don’t hallucinate monsters. My mind’s not so goddamn brittle. You don’t have to believe me, fine, shit, I don’t care, but please stop insulting me.”

Alicia closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Her lips moved, and Dream knew she was counting to ten. She was trying to find a calm center within herself, the place she always tapped to drain away excess hostility. Dream had seen her do it a million times.

Her eyes fluttered open. She turned an unblinking gaze on Karen. “I’m sorry if you feel insulted, Karen. It wasn’t my intention to insult you. We’re all under a lot of stress, and I think we’ll all feel a lot better as soon as we can get a ride to the nearest hotel.” Her gaze shifted to Dream. “Right, Dream?”

Dream’s breath caught in her throat. She was uncomfortably aware of how closely the sound resembled a gasp. A disappointed sound. She couldn’t help the quick glance she shot King’s way. “Um … yeah, sure.”

But she didn’t like that, acquiescing to Alicia’s unflinching drive to steer them in the right direction. She didn’t like being cajoled. And she didn’t want to kill herself in a fucking hotel. She wanted to spend her possibly last night on earth under King’s roof.

In his bed.

She sighed.

A frustrated-little-girl sound. She didn’t like making that sound. It embarrassed her, made her feel childish, but she couldn’t help it.

She didn’t want to go.

She wouldn’t go.

Fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck everything.

A look of exasperation creased Alicia’s face. “Oh, what, Dream?” She shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated way. “Please don’t get weird on me. I’ve seen you making googly eyes at studly here. Cool, fine, I understand lust. What I don’t understand is this lack of grace under pressure.

This is the wrong goddamn time for hanky-panky. I’m counting on you, girl. Help me get us out of this.”

Dream seethed.

Alicia’s famous bluntness was intact, but it had been a long time-since shortly after the escapade with the razor-since Dream had felt the brunt of it.

So she lashed out.

“You’re not my fucking nanny”

But Dream was instantly appalled by the utterance.

“I’m sorry, Alicia.” She sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”

Alicia came to her without words, took her into an embrace, and wiped her tears away. She held Dream close, cradling her face against her neck. Dream snuggled into the crook of her friend’s neck. Sobs continued to shake her body. Her friend’s strong arms around her were a reassuring statement of strength. It was what she liked best about Alicia. She was stolid. Dependable. Implacable. She would absolutely never, ever crack under pressure.

As always when Alicia comforted her, she quickly began to feel better. She breathed a shuddery sigh and broke the embrace. “I’m okay now.”

Alicia looked at her with concern. “You sure, hon?”

Dream wiped her eyes. “Yes.” She managed a fragile smile. “Sorry about that.”

Alicia rolled her eyes. “Oh, hell, don’t apologize for being human.”

King loudly cleared his throat.

They all turned their heads toward him. He sat in his chair with one leg propped over another, his big hands clasped over a knee. A look of bemusement played across his handsome features. Dream found herself unsettled by the expression. There was a disturbing quality to it, something she couldn’t quite pinpoint, something … And then she had it. The realization struck her like a sack of rocks.

He’d found the tearful exchange … amusing.

Entertaining.

What a sick motherfucker!

Dream felt a surge of anger.

But—

She frowned and chewed her lower lip.

Maybe she was misreading him.

She wanted that to be the case.

King’s expression changed, became solemn. “I’m afraid there’s no question of where you’ll be staying tonight. Our phones are out.” He shrugged in apology. “I don’t know what the problem is, but I assume the phone company is working to correct it. You are, of course, welcome to spend the night here.”

He smiled. “It’s really for the best. All will seem better …” He paused, glanced at Karen, and appeared to reconsider his words.”… or at least more manageable in the morning. A good night’s rest can do wonders for the disposition.”

Alicia grunted. “Look, what we’d really like is a ride into town.”

Dream frowned, chewed her lips.

Was that what she really wanted?

She jiggled her foot and tried not to look at King.

Alicia, oblivious, went on. “No offense, but I’d really feel a lot better about everything if we could let the police know what’s going on.”

“Chad’s still out there,” Karen chimed in. “They ought to be looking for him. He could be in danger.” She grunted, glanced with deliberation at each of her friends. “Don’t forget what it was like out there.” Her voice dropped in pitch. “Strange. Like the motherfucking Twilight Zone.”

“He’s in danger,” Alicia said. “No doubt about it.”

Karen’s red-rimmed eyes flicked toward Dream. “We should never have left the goddamn interstate.”

Dream flinched.

Alicia sighed. “Yeah.”

Dream didn’t want to think about that.

Not anymore.

King sighed. “I’m sorry, ladies. I hesitate to send my employees down the mountain at night even under the best of circumstances. This place is not this ‘twilight zone’ you speak of, although I understand tremendous stress of the sort you’ve endured can cause some misperceptions. I live in a remote area. The going is treacherous at best, as I’m sure you’ve discovered. And the threat of inclement weather erases any possibility of such a trek, I’m afraid.” He smiled thinly. “Your missing friend should be fine as long as he sticks to the road. I suspect he’ll show up here at some point.”

There was another uncomfortable silence.

Dream thought, What threat of inclement weather?

But she didn’t say it.

She looked at King, felt her heart stutter, and she just couldn’t say it.

Alicia sighed, defeated. “Okay. I guess we’re staying here.” Then there was some steel in her voice again. “But you’re getting us out of here first thing in the morning, understand?”

King smiled. “Of course.”

Then he raised his voice. “Ms. Wickman!”

The severe housekeeper appeared through an archway. “Yes, Master?”

Alicia’s double take was impossible to miss.

She looked at Dream and mouthed the word: Master?

Her face radiated incredulity.

King paid her no mind. “These ladies have endured a long, arduous night. It is time for them to rest. Please be so kind as to show them to their rooms.”

Ms. Wickman nodded stiffly. “Certainly? She arched an eyebrow at the women. “Ladies?”

Alicia and Karen got slowly to their feet, stretching and groaning from exhaustion. Dream shifted in her chair, uncrossed her legs, and listened to the beating of her frantic heart. She was as tired as her friends-perhaps more so, having done the bulk of the driving from Key West-but she didn’t want to leave yet.

She wanted to stay right here.

With King.

Alicia cast an inquisitive gaze at her. “Hey, Dream, aren’t you coming up?”

Dream mustered a big smile, infusing it with as much sincerity as she could summon. “I’m a little restless yet. I think I’ll stay down here and have a drink with Mr. King.”

King smiled.

Alicia smiled. “Okay. Whatever. You’re a grown-up, sweetie.” She bent down to kiss Dream goodnight. “You take care of yourself, you hear?”

Dream met her friend’s gaze. “I will. Don’t worry about me.”

She tossed her car keys to Alicia, who caught them in midair. “Get our bags out of the car. You can give me the keys tomorrow.”

Alicia sighed. “Okay, Dream.”

Then she and Karen were gone, following Ms. Wickman through the archway.

Dream, at last, was able to turn the whole of her attention to King.

His smile broadened and he uncrossed his legs. “Alone at last.”

Dream drew in a deep breath, counted slowly to ten, and expelled it with a shudder. “Yes,” she breathed. She had to count to ten again. She swallowed hard and somehow managed to say, “I want you.”

King nodded. “I know, Dream.”

He stood up.

Approached her.

Extended his hand.

She stood.

Took his hand.

And followed him out of the room.

Hell.

Chad wondered about that.

Am I in hell?

Perhaps. If Satan’s domain was a maze of crudely carved tunnels beneath the mountains of East Tennessee, then, yes, he was certainly in hell. What he’d seen of Below so far was comparable in important ways to Western civilization’s most common vision of hell-an oppressively dark, hot, nasty place somewhere well south of heaven, a grim place where evil reigned supreme and soul-scorching terror was a way of life.

Okay, maybe this “Master” person wasn’t the literal Satan of the Bible, but he was clearly some variety of bad-ass supernatural being. He could manipulate minds as easily as other people fold clothes, and he apparently enjoyed mucking about with the fabric of reality a bit. Not nice.

Chad had never previously had occasion to give the issue much thought, but he considered it a given that anyone who went around mucking with the fabric of reality was an asshole.

Which was somehow perfect.

Of course the devil was an asshole-what else would he be?

So, Chad decided, let’s say this guy’s the devil. Master. Devil. Same difference. For hypothetical purposes, let’s just go with it. This motherfucker is Beelzebub. The horned one himself. 01’ Scratch. Commander of the forces of darkness. Wielder of malevolent power beyond calculating.

Why, then, did such a being have such an inefficient infrastructure in place for his underworld kingdom?

The guards at the checkpoint, for instance.

An undisciplined joke.

These things were all symptomatic of a system ripe for exploitation. As he rode with Cindy in the transport truck, the part of his mind that made him a success in business went into overdrive, scheming, turning things over in his mind, looking for patterns, weak links, things he might be missing.

The transport truck coughed and sputtered as it rumbled over the rough tunnel terrain. Its shock absorbers were shot, and every time the vehicle bumped over a rock or mound of hardpacked dirt its occupants were jostled. It was a feeling akin to being on a small ship during a major storm on the open sea.

Cindy, who was free of restraints, was handling it okay. She could easily grab one of the curved metal struts that supported the green canvas above them. But the slaves-and Chad was a slave-had it bad. They were tossed about like dice in a gambler’s hand. Chad kept pitching to the floor and smacking his head on the bench opposite him. To get back up, he had to roll onto his side, shift around until he could get his butt under him, then propel himself backward onto the bench next to Cindy.

Cindy, of course, didn’t lift a finger to help him.

She didn’t even look at him.

As a slave, his safety was of only minor importance. He was her property. Extreme emphasis on the word “property.” Dehumanization was obviously a vital component of the master-slave relationship. To the extent that you could even describe such an arrangement as a “relationship,” that is.

He wasn’t really her slave. They’d discussed it in hushed voices prior to the transport truck’s arrival at the checkpoint. She had to maintain at least a facade of the typical bad attitude evinced by newly emancipated slaves. Freed slaves had something to prove, she educated him. They had to show they could be every bit as cruel as their former masters. More so, if possible. Survival of the fittest wasn’t the guiding principle down here. That was surfaceworld rhetoric. Bullshit spewed by clueless assholes who didn’t know the true meaning of adversity.

Survival Below wasn’t about corporate-style maneuvering.

Or the petty backstabbing of reality-show contestants.

Cindy made it clear she meant to put forth a convincing portrayal of the meanest bitch any of these assholes had ever seen. Chad, of course, knew what that meant-assthrashings so severe they’d make even the jocks who’d tormented him in high school cringe. She didn’t try to sugarcoat it for him. He was going to have a hard time. He was going to hate her sometimes.

But she told him to keep one thing clear in his mind at all times.

Pain aside, it wasn’t real.

He wasn’t her slave.

He looked at the manacles binding his wrists and thought about the leg irons immobilizing his feet, and he tried to believe that.

But it was hard.

The rumbling and tossing stopped as the truck rolled onto a stretch of tunnel floor that was significantly smoother than the rougher terrain it had just traversed. The excavation was more extensive here-the tunnel walls were farther apart, and the ceiling was higher. Chad could see this through the opening in the green canvas at the rear of the truck. The lighting was better here, too, more revealing-he could see evidence of the tunnel’s long-ago construction, shovel marks in the earthen wall.

Then the walls seemed to fall away altogether, the tunnel opening up behind them like a pair of unfolding hands. Chad slid to his right, leaning into another slave as the truck went down a steep incline. Cindy held on to a strut. Chad leaned harder on the slave. The emaciated man groaned. The descent was so dramatic he could only compare it to a monster roller coaster going down a long, plummeting straightaway. His stomach roiled, and he felt a tickle of nausea in his throat.

Then the descent ended and they were on flat terrain again. Chad became aware of noise all around them. Strange sounds. Something like a carnival whistle. Angry shouts. Threats. The primal sound of conflict. Fists on flesh. A crack of a whip. Voices. A multitude of voices, like at a rock concert before the houselights go down. If he needed any further reminding that he was in a savage place, here it was, the sound of the devil’s playground in full bloom.

The truck slowed as it threaded its way through a milling crowd. Jeers were hurled at the truck. Chad’s heart thumped faster when he realized the epithets were directed not at the driver, a servant of The Master, but at the slaves in back. He turned to stare through the rear opening at the faces of the hecklers.

An old man with a long, tangled beard and a corona of stringy, dirty hair around a bald scalp walked behind the truck, leered in at them, and held his middle finger aloft. He wore a loincloth, and Chad saw a glint of silver at his throat.

Chad squinted, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

The man’s leering countenance receded as the truck pulled onto a rutted track along the cavern wall and picked up speed. A few minutes later they were pulling into an open space that served as a parking lot. The truck pulled to a stop alongside another transport vehicle, and its engine shuddered as it shut down. A door creaked open and there was a sound of booted feet slapping the hardpacked floor. Then a guard’s visor-obscured image appeared through the rear opening.

“Any nonslave personnel aboard?”

Cindy answered immediately.

“Yes.”

The guard scrutinized her. “You bear the mark of a slave. Are you emancipated?”

Cindy nodded. She held her chin high, proudly. “I am.”

“Step forward, please.”

Cindy got up, strode purposefully toward the rear of the truck, and jumped to the ground. She opened her pouch and produced her paperwork. The guard took the folded papers from her hand, opened them, and studied the words printed on them. The guard stared at the papers long enough to make Chad uncomfortable.

At last, though, the guard folded the papers and returned them to her. “I see you’re newly emancipated. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you have a slave on board?”

She nodded, pointed at Chad. “That one.”

“The fresh meat?”

“Yes.”

The guard motioned to Chad. “Step forward.”

Chad got to his feet and shuffled to the rear of the truck. He looked down at the ground, hesitating, wondering whether he was expected to jump with the leg irons still in place. He was still considering this when Cindy grabbed the chain linking the manacles around his hands and feet and yanked him out of the truck. He screamed, struck the ground at an awkward angle, and pitched forward. His open mouth tasted dirt, and he gagged. He groaned, rolled onto his side, and stared through blurry eyes at Cindy, who looked to be reaching out to help him.

Wrong.

Her foot, encased in one of his new Reeboks, drove hard into his stomach, punching the air out of him and sending an explosion of pain through his midsection. She kicked him again, harder, and he curled up, a pathetic attempt to deflect any further blows. She kicked him one more time anyway, the tip of the athletic shoe punishing the hands clasped protectively about his stomach.

Chad cursed her in his head, but he cried out for mercy. Something awful occurred to him. Wasn’t it possible Cindy was fucking with his head? She’d been down here a long time-long enough, perhaps, to have every remaining drop of humanity wrung out of her. Maybe she was a sadist and this was how she caught her kicks-by concocting a carefully wrought illusion of friendship and conspiracy, an illusion she was even now in the process of cruelly destroying.

He couldn’t see her, but he imagined a smirk creasing her lovely face.

The thrashing ceased with a jarring abruptness. Through his tears, he saw Cindy whirl away from him and face the guard.

The guard smirked. “Nice. You have to break them in right.” He cast a sidelong glance at Chad. “Some people just have a knack for this life. I think you’re one of ‘em.”

Cindy only said, “We’ll be going now.”

The guard nodded. “You’ll need to register with Slave Control. There’ll be some more paperwork.” He grinned. “And your letter.”

Cindy’s eyes gleamed. “The mark of emancipation.”

“Yep.” The guard lifted his visor. Chad saw that the man had a prominent brow and a bulbous nose. There was a hulking quality about him. “Will you be at The Gathering tomorrow?”

Shit, Chad thought, the thug’s hitting on her.

Cindy shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll see.”

The guard’s smile faded. “Yeah, sure.” He sneered. “Don’t go getting the big head, bitch. You may be emancipated, but I’m still a swingin’ dick with a big gun.”

Cindy sighed. “Jesus …”

Pitiless laughter trilled out of the guard’s mouth. “Just keep it in mind, whore.”

Cindy parted ways with the guard without another word, came to Chad, and pulled him to his feet by the chain. Chad staggered, his head swimming. A hand snapped across his face, stinging his flesh and clearing his vision.

“Be still,” Cindy hissed.

She knelt before him, extracted a key from her pouch, and unlocked his leg irons. She pulled them free and handed them to him. Then she stalked away from him, and he shuffled after her.

“Hey, hold up.” His breathing was labored. “Christ, this is heavy”

She didn’t say anything.

“Can’t I just drop it?”

She whirled around, and Chad drew up short. Her green eyes flashed with real anger. Seeing it made his knees shake. She twisted a handful of his shirt and pulled him to his tiptoes. Christ, she was strong. He’d forgotten how easily she’d handled him at the holding facility. His chest swelled with pain as panic jolted his heart with the force of a defibrillator. Her face, vibrant with newfound power, was inches from his own.

“You’re letting me down, Chad.”

A helpless sob escaped him. “I…”

“Shush.” Her lips brushed his ear. “Remember everything I told you. This isn’t real. I know it sounds crazy, but you have to let me hurt you to help you. No matter what I do, remember that I… shit…”

Chad wiped his eyes and studied her expression. “What, Cindy?”

Cindy averted his gaze, frowned at some middle-distance point. “Nothing.”

Chad was puzzled. She seemed almost… embarrassed.

But why?

She turned away from him, yanked on his chain. “Come along.” She talked to him over her shoulder. “And remember what’s real. Remember.”

Chad shuffled along after her. He still felt weary, battered, exhausted almost beyond the breaking point, but Cindy’s reassurances made things bearable. They soon passed through the parking lot’s security gate. The lot adjoined a squat, one-level building with the letters SCD crudely painted next to the entrance. Chad assumed, correctly, that this was the “Slave Control” building the guard had mentioned. Cindy shackled him to a rail outside the building and went inside. The rail was made of wood and stretched from one end of the building to the other. It made Chad think of the hitching posts cowboys tied their horses to in Western movies.

Chad glanced around, saw no one watching, and tossed the leg irons away.

Three other slaves were shackled to the rail. One was a black woman of Cindy’s approximate age. The slave closest to him was a frail young man. Chad’s stomach clenched at the sight of him. He was dying. There was a wound of some sort along his side, a raw lip of swollen flesh. It pulsed with infection. He was feverish and glassy-eyed. He laughed, mumbled, and swatted at bugs that weren’t there.

Hallucinating, Chad realized.

The last slave was tethered at the far left end of the rail.

A small girl child.

Six, maybe seven years old.

Chad ground his teeth. A single word hissed through his clenched mouth: “Evil.”

The word captured the attention of the dying slave. For a moment, a moment Chad sensed would be all too fleeting, the man’s eyes were clear and focused. He looked right at Chad and said, “You’re new.”

Chad nodded. “I am.”

A sad smile touched the man’s face. “I’ve been here four months.” He frowned, and his eyes went momentarily dull before clearing again and locking on Chad. “Or maybe four years. I forget. Don’t have a lot in the way of advice to give you, friend. You’re pretty much fucked.”

Chad laughed. “I figured.”

“Just keep your head down.” The man nodded, affirming the truth of his own statement. “Whatever they do to you, don’t fight back.” He lifted an arm and gave Chad an unobstructed view of the wound that was killing him. “Ain’t worth it.”

Chad looked away. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

“And you have to see Lazarus.”

Chad frowned. “Who?”

But that was the extent of the conversation. The doomed slave went back to swatting invisible bugs and mumbling half-coherent condemnations of God and, obscurely, Johnny Carson. Chad stopped listening to him and took in his surroundings.

So this was Below.

The place where The Master’s banished people were forced to live out what remained of their bleak existences.

Below was a huge cavern. The ceiling, high above him, was like an earthen sky. The place was lit by dozens of klieg lights. The rutted track that served as a road for the transport trucks was bordered on this side by the parking lot, the SCD building, and a scattering of other, vaguely official-looking buildings. Across the road was a row of more primitive-looking edifices. He heard a buzz of voices beyond those buildings.

The carnival whistle sound came again.

As did sounds of strange commerce and conflict.

There was a lot wrong with this place-a colossal understatement-but he realized it was a functioning community with a social order and, probably, some sort of rudimentary economy. It would fascinate a sociologist.

Chad, however, was repulsed.

Cindy emerged from the building thirty minutes later, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

The incongruous smile had a contagious quality that reminded him of…

Dream.

Chad blanched.

He’d been trying not to think about Dream. He hoped she was safe in a hotel somewhere, snuggling in for the night, blissfully unaware of his dire predicament. Logic told him this was probably the case. They had a car. They would be safe in the car.

He had to believe this.

Anything else was too dreadful to contemplate.

As Cindy drew nearer, he noticed a glint of silver at her throat. When she reached the hitching rail, Cindy turned her neck up, displaying a necklace to him. “You like?”

A piece of metal fashioned to resemble the fifth letter of the alphabet dangled from the necklace, glinting in the artificial daylight.

The dying slave was staring at Cindy, his gaze riveted to the necklace. Lucidity again touched his feverish visage. “Cunt. Emancipated cunt.”

Cindy hit him in the throat and he went down, folding faster than a glass-jawed stumblebum absorbing a blow from the heavyweight champion of the world. He lay unconscious on the ground, his arm dangling from the hitching rail.

Chad gaped at her. “My God …”

Cindy unlocked the chain shackling him to the rail. “Had to do it.” Her voice was low, barely audible. “I start accepting disrespect from slaves, we’re both in trouble.”

She led him across the rutted track. He stepped in a puddle of engine oil, winced, and shook oil from his sandal, then he joined Cindy on the sidewalk-like path of polished stones on the opposite side of the road.

He caught up to her and asked, “That guy back there, the sick slave, he said something about a guy named Lazarus.”

Cindy stopped abruptly. She put a hand on his chest, stilled his next question with a forefinger to the lips. “I’m taking you to Lazarus now.”

Chad frowned. “But who is he?”

Cindy’s answer only deepened the mystery. “I don’t know who he really is, Chad. I only know his real name is something else.”

She smiled. “Some people, Below’s more gullible denizens, think he’s God.”

God, Chad thought.

What a perfect irony.

He was in hell.

And God was here with him.

What might that mean?

And what was this strange, niggling feeling at the back of his mind?

He thought of a jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces, the pieces slowly, slowly fitting together, revealing long hidden secrets, pointing the way…

Out of here, Chad thought.

And followed Cindy around a corner.

Eddie couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“You must be kidding. We can’t kill that thing.”

Giselle’s smile hinted of secrets unrevealed. “But we can.”

She was at her writing table again, still nude, gloriously nude, and he wanted her again. Oh, how he ached to be inside her again. Eddie forced his gaze away from her body. She too easily distracted him, and he did not want to be distracted now. What she was proposing was madness. He couldn’t do what she wanted. He just couldn’t. Couldn’t she see it was tantamount to suicide?

And Eddie wanted to live.

He hadn’t come this far, struggled this much, to voluntarily lay down his life. So tell her that, he thought. Be blunt. Lay your cards on the table. He paced the room, puffing intently on one of Giselle’s handrolled cigarettes.

“I don’t want to die!” he told her. He knew what it sounded like, but he didn’t care. “Call me a coward, go ahead. You won’t hurt my feelings. Goddamn, Giselle, you don’t survive Below without developing one bad motherfucker of a self-preservation instinct.”

He stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on the table. He made himself look at her face, not the slopes of her breasts or the breath-quickening swell of her hips. No, better to seek sanctuary in the relative safety of her face. Her lovely, exquisite face. “I’m just a man, Giselle.” His voice was quiet, solemn, devoid of the previous agitation. “You send me up against that thing, you’ll be writing my death warrant.”

Giselle finished rolling a fresh cigarette. She licked the end of the paper, pressed it shut, and struck a match. She puffed the cigarette to life, exhaled, and said, “It’s true, Eddie, you may die. There is risk involved. Great risk.” Another slow exhalation of sweetly aromatic smoke. “That I can’t deny. But I can assure you of this-if you attempt to flee this place, you will certainly die.”

Eddie groaned. “Jesus, Giselle.”

Her gaze sharpened. “It’s true, Eddie. Remember what I told you about The Master’s mind? This place we inhabit, this shadow realm, is more than a corruption of reality. It’s a prison, Eddie. Once you enter The Master’s domain, you cannot leave. There is no exit. No early parole.” She smiled a little. “No escape.”

She opened her mouth. More smoke plumed away, perfect O’s floating up toward the ceiling. The smell was strange. Sweeter, more pleasant than tobacco. But it wasn’t marijuana. Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know what they were smoking. It would be something freaky, wouldn’t it? Something like powdered bone or magical herbs. Essence of speech-impaired old man, perhaps.

Why not?

Look, he told himself. She’s a great lay. Strike that. A mundane term like “great lay” didn’t do this lady justice. She was light-years above and beyond anything he’d ever experienced, and he was a fairly experienced guy. He wasn’t King Stud, but he’d had his share of very nice sexual experiences, a great many of them certainly falling in the “great lay” category. And none of those women, not one, was fit to carry Giselle’s garters. She was ecstasy incarnate. Transcendence. Bliss. She could give you those things. Her body could take you to places beyond sensation, beyond orgasm, a place within the body, to the root of the pleasure centers deep in the muck of brain matter. And she could manipulate them with a precision a neurosurgeon would kill for.

Yes, she could do this.

He knew.

She had done it to him.

He was effectively enslaved to her now. There was no more need for ropes and discipline. He could never leave her, would never think of it, not now that he knew what she could do to him. He accepted this as fact and chose not to expend any energy struggling against it.

She owned him.

End of story.

But knowing that did not erase some very grim facts.

Giselle was a killer. A vicious killer.

And she was a sadist.

Bad things. He didn’t approve of any of the fucked-up shit she had done, let there be no mistake about that. Still, he’d surrendered his immortal soul to her. His immortal fucking soul, ladies and gentlemen, and you know what?

He’d do it all over again.

Without blinking a goddamn eye.

Which was why this act of resistance was so momentous a mental struggle. There was only one thing so awe-inspiring in its power that it rivaled the hold Giselle had over him, and that was The Master, a creature he’d bet the house on in a no-holds-barred death match against Satan and all his hellspawn.

“No escape?” Eddie threw up his hands. “So we’re just fucked, right?”

“No.”

“No?” he repeated.

Well, at least she said it with conviction.

“Let me tell you some things, lover.” She patted the seat next to her. “Have a seat.”

Eddie opened his mouth, but no words came out. Getting next to her was dangerous. Proximity would weaken his ability to argue. But he had no choice. It was a command, not a request. He sat down, gulped as he watched her legs uncross, and shivered when she propped an ankle on his knee. His strong hands went immediately to her foot, and his thumbs began to gently massage the soft pad of her sole.

Eddie sighed.

That’s it, he thought, it’s over, I’m screwed.

She made a sound of pleasure. “Mmm, that’s nice. When I’m done telling you what I need to tell you, we’ll make love again. Won’t that be nice?”

Eddie gulped.

It was another statement of fact. No need to comment.

She exhaled a final stream of smoke, stubbed out her cigarette, and stared at him with an expression of serene confidence. “Some things I can show you, Eddie. You can see with your own eyes some of the things I know, some of the things I can do. The power of ritual. The power of magic.”

Eddie recalled his vision of the bloody sliver of excised flesh disappearing down her throat, and he shuddered.

Giselle smiled. Her gaze drifted to the ceiling. She appeared to be looking beyond the speckled white surface, at something, or some place, far away. She looked stoned. There was a good reason for that-she was stoned. Eddie realized he was a little buzzed himself. Shit, it had to be that stuff they’d been smoking. He felt light-headed, not quite himself, but it wasn’t like a ganja high. He didn’t feel… fucked up. This was the opposite of that. It was a real high, in the purest sense, an elevation, an expansion of the senses. This was what proponents of lysergic acid were always claiming as the drug’s great miracle, but Eddie had done acid a time or two when he was younger, and he knew that was a bunch of shit.

Acid wigged him out, made him doubt his sanity.

This stuff…

Jesus, this shit made him … see.

He reached for the unlit cigarette in the ashtray, but Giselle deflected his hand. “No more. Any more will be too much. It’s still working its way into your system.”

“What is it?”

“It’s not important.” Her foot slipped out of Eddie’s grasp, insinuated itself along an inner thigh. “Just close your eyes and listen to me.”

Eddie did as she bade, leaning back in the chair and shuddering at the enhanced physical sensation of her foot on his bare flesh. Something surprising occurred to him. He wasn’t aroused. He should be. His cock should be straining toward her even now, but it was not. Then he realized she was regulating his physical response. She wanted him attentive. Focused on her words instead of her body.

So he listened to her.

And she said, “There are many things you will have to take my word for, things I can’t show you in the physical world. There are other planes, Eddie, and I’m not talking about the kind that fly. I’m talking about other levels of existence. Places inhabited by beings beyond man’s comprehension. Gods, Eddie. Immortals. Yes, they do exist. Notice my emphasis on the plural form. When you understand, Eddie, when you see, the idea of one great, omniscient God will make you laugh. These gods do wield some influence on events in our world, the one beyond this tainted place, but mostly they stay out of human affairs. These beings are powerful, more powerful by far than The Master, who is not a god, and who is not immortal.

“You need to know this about The Master-he is flesh and blood. As such, he is vulnerable. He has always been vulnerable, Eddie, but because he is powerful, and because he is careful, no one has ever been able to exploit that vulnerability. We will be the first. And the last. We will kill him.”

The conviction in her voice riveted Eddie.

The drug, this odd elixir that invigorated the mind and senses, made him believe it.

She said, “I have communed with the gods, Eddie. Even some of his gods. Not in the metaphorical way humans ‘talk’ to God. I have had exchanges with them. They have told me things, shown me things, all the sweetest wonders of existence, as well as its darkest terrors. They have shown me the truth about The Master. They’ve shown me how to kill him.”

Eddie’s heart rejoiced.

Yes!

He can be killed!

“He is the last of his race, Eddie, and I know some things about his kind even he does not. They did not originate on this world. His ancient ancestors came here in a ship. A disabled vessel. It crashed on our planet. Only a few of them survived. The Master was born here, birthed by an alien mother. She died when he was young, and the others dispersed about the planet, using their unique abilities to blend in with the primitive peoples that inhabited our world then.

“They lived as Gods, became kings and idols, and some of them became dictators, the worst despots the world has ever known. Our Master could have followed in their footsteps, but he chose a different path. He was exceptionally gifted even for his kind, and he chose to use his rare abilities to create a different kind of kingdom, to exist beyond the prying eyes of the modern world. I’ll tell you something astonishing, Eddie. This place, this corrupted terrain, is but the latest in a series of kingdoms. He builds them, fills them with wayward souls, then, eventually, he crushes them and moves on. That will not happen here, Eddie.”

Eddie shivered. His eyes remained closed. “The gods told you that?”

“They showed me how to stop him. He is weak, Eddie.” She laughed, a wicked, conspiratorial sound that thrilled him. “He, too, communes with the gods, but do you want to know a secret? The gods don’t like him.” Laughter pealed out of her now, melodic, intoxicating. “His gods are the death spirits. Parasites that feed off suffering. Powerful spirits. They know he is weakening. They laugh at his offerings, his pitiful attempts to appease them, these laughable sacrifices.”

Eddie laughed.

To think that he’d never seen it that way-that sacrifice was laughable!

It was amazing!

He laughed at the idea of killing people to make gods happy.

What an absurd concept!

Giselle said, “He doesn’t understand the true power of ritual, of symbol. The tongue I ate was a symbol, Eddie. The gods appreciate that. I honor them in ways that appeal to their sense of humor. Have you ever heard a god laugh, Eddie? It’s the most wondrous sound. …”

Eddie tried to imagine it.

He was almost there, could almost hear it-with the aid of this amazing drug-but the sound remained just beyond the range of perception. …

“The Master knows he is a mortal being. He has lived a long time, and he knows his time on this plane grows short. I’ll tell you something else, something to make your heart palpitate, Eddie. His power, while still great, has greatly diminished.”

Eddie swallowed hard. “It has?”

Her foot slid away from him and she stood up. “It has.” She took his hand. “Open your eyes, Eddie.”

His eyes fluttered open. He stared up at her, slackjawed, his heart thrumming in his chest like a high-tension wire. God, this drug, it was amazing, it did the impossible-it made Giselle seem even more beautiful, even more desirable. She guided him toward the bed, and he numbly followed, sliding beneath the rumpled covers with her.

She curled her body around him. “We’re going to kill him, Eddie.”

Eddie felt a tingle of the old fear, but it was an echo, a remembrance of something that no longer existed. He would do Giselle’s bidding. That had been clear all along, but now he was truly at peace with it. “I know,” he rasped.

She kissed his neck. “It’s why you’re here, Eddie.”

He breathed heavily. “I know,” he repeated.

“Remember, Eddie,” she said, and briefly took the lobe of an ear between her teeth. “Symbol. Ritual. I can’t tell you everything now.” Her tongue traced the edge of his jaw, dipped briefly into his mouth, and retreated. “But know this, Eddie, it will all become clear to you soon. When the moment comes, it will all be perfect, and you will see. You will understand.”

I hope so, he thought.

“You will,” she said.

Eddie looked at her and shivered.

It was a reminder, he realized.

She owned him, mind, body, and soul, and she could see his thoughts as clearly as if they were printed on his forehead.

She smiled.

“Relax, Eddie, let it all go for a while.”

Eddie stared at her beautiful face and tried to do what she said.

Her smile turned salacious. “Would you like me to tie you to the bed again, Eddie?”

Eddie gulped.

Shivered.

And said, “Yes.”

Karen turned out the lamp on the nightstand next to the bed, snuggled up under the plush comforter, and tried not to think about Shane. It was impossible. There in the darkness, with the shadowy outlines of unfamiliar furniture lurking like dream phantoms, she found herself unable to think of anything else. The darkness was suffocating, a dark cloak drawn taut over her head. Helpless to stop it, her mind went back several hours, brought back the claustrophobic feeling of stumbling blindly through invisible trees. Dark and forbidding, these woods were full of hidden rocks and branches that snapped at your face an instant before you saw them. She staggered and fell, got up, and kept going, moving with relentless, heedless drive in the general direction of the scream they’d heard from the road. The terror, the most undiluted, all-encompassing burst of emotion she’d ever experienced, was more than she should have been able to bear. But she was undaunted, motivated by guilt, by the need to rescue the lover she’d betrayed.

The echo of Chad’s voice taunted her: “I fucked your girlfriend, Shane.”

Asshole.

What a rotten son of a bitch.

Chad’s revelation, so cruelly delivered, was an unforgivable offense. Boorish in the extreme. But he’d only been the messenger. She had only herself to blame for her transgressions. The worst of it was that the regular trysts with Chad hadn’t constituted an isolated phenomenon. There had been many other lovers. It shamed her. She wanted to know the serene joy of pure love, an ideal relationship, the one so fulfilling in every way it would erase at last her inability to be monogamous. She’d had such hopes for Shane, had even fleetingly believed he was The One. The one who would match her carnal intensity, finally freeing her to mature into a responsible, faithful lover.

But now she would never know.

Her eyes filled with fresh tears. Guilt welled within her like a balloon ready to pop, and her heart ached with loss. She thought of Dream, then, and remembered that awful night Alicia’s shaky voice on the phone had summoned her to the emergency room. The sight of her friend’s wan, drugged countenance in that ER room haunted her for months. Life was so fucking unfair. Dream was a sweet, funny, beautiful girl, and the depression that crippled her was so cruel. A lot of people cared about Dream, even loved her, but she didn’t give much of a damn about herself.

It had mystified Karen.

Even angered and scared her.

Now, however, she thought she knew what it was like to be Dream, to dwell in a place where fear and unmitigated anguish held sway. A dark, echoing, empty chamber of the heart, a lonely place where no one else could ever venture. Her friend inhabited this lonely realm full time. It felt at once alien and welcoming.

She couldn’t sleep. Not at first. She tossed in the bed, curling into a ball first on her left side, then her right side. She turned onto her stomach, clutching the pillows like a lover. That was no good. Too many heartrending connotations. So she turned onto her back again and stared at the velvet expanse of the four-poster bed’s canopy. She thought her mind would never rest enough to grant her the temporary peace of unconsciousness. But sleep came the way it always did, stealing in slowly, stealthily, displacing consciousness before she knew it was gone.

And then the dreams came.

Shane was alive in the dreams. And then he wasn’t. He was an ambulatory corpse, a wounded, shambling thing, a movie zombie. His mouth hung open and a steady, raspy hiss emanated from his throat. His flaccid cock dangled from the open fly of his jeans, and one of his dead hands stroked it to no effect. He came after her with it, and she ran. She ran and ran, tripping and stumbling her way through a phantasmagoric wilderness filled with screaming vampire bats and wolves with luminescent yellow eyes.

Then the scene shifted.

She was in a bed. The bed was her own, but in the dream it was in Shane’s apartment. His bedroom. She was naked. A faceless man loomed over, fucking her, grunting and cursing her. And she loved it. It was so great. She clawed the phantom lover’s back and cried out. Shane was in the room, too, standing clothed next to the bed, watching the primal rut with an empty expression.

He was holding a gun.

His Glock.

The gun hung limp in his hand, aimed at the floor. But now his arm moved, raising the gun, pressing the muzzle against his temple.

She laughed at him. “Do it. I’ll come so hard if you do it, Shane.”

Shane’s empty expression never changed. His finger squeezed the trigger, there was a momentous explosion, and her boyfriend’s brains splashed the window blinds behind him. Karen awoke with a gasp, her eyes blinking against the wall of darkness, the final grisly image from the dream imprinted indelibly on her brainpan.

She felt sick, disgusted at the imagery conjured by her traitorous mind. The dream’s meaning couldn’t have been more clear. She’d killed Shane with her betrayal. But it was just a dream, random brain blips, the unconscious mind’s bent way of processing the shame filling her conscience. The crude mental shorthand couldn’t be taken seriously.

She knew that.

So why was she suddenly crying again?

Because it was all too much. The grief washed over her again, drowning her in sorrow. She was so preoccupied with her guilt, she didn’t initially realize something was very wrong. Then she felt it.

The restraint.

Something cold and metallic encircled her wrists.

Handcuffs?

And all at once there were no more feelings of guilt, no more bottomless depths of grief to plumb. Panic, hot and galvanizing, spread through her like a wildfire. Her hands yanked against the restraint, and she heard a faint metallic clank.

Shit!

Her hands were cuffed to the headboard rails. Before she could scream, she heard a faint creak-then she saw a sliver of yellow light. The bedroom door slowly opened, and a lithe figure stood framed in the light from the hallway.

The figure chuckled.

Fear seized her heart like a cold hand.

The figure closed the door. There was a click, the sound of the door being locked. Then she heard heels clicking on the hardwood floor. The figures face wasn’t clear yet, but a sudden certainty gripped her-she knew who it was.

The figure clicked on the lamp next to the bed.

And Karen trembled.

Her suspicion was validated.

Ms. Wickman smiled at the cuffed girl, licked her thin lips, and said, “What a naughty little bitch you are. Killing your boyfriend that way.”

She made a tsk-tsk sound and shook her head.

Karen whimpered. “Don’t hurt me … please.”

Ms. Wickman threw her head back and laughed heartily. She looked again at Karen and said, “Oh my, I haven’t laughed that hard in …” She pursed her lips, cocked an eyebrow, and appeared to think it over.”… oh, since the last time I punished a lying little whore like you.”

She pulled the comforter down, cast an appraising glance at Karen’s exposed body-nude except for white cotton panties-and opened the nightstand’s drawer, from which she extracted a cat-o’-nine-tails. It was black with a braided handle, nine knotted cords with metal tips, and a wrist loop for better handling. Karen shuddered. She’d played with such things before-in controlled situations with partners she trusted.

Ms. Wickman’s demeanor was not that of one who wanted to play.

And there was the matter of the woman’s devastating accusation…

… killing your boyfriend that way…

Could she see into her mind?

It wasn’t possible.

Was it?

Ms. Wickman smiled and flicked the whip at her.

Another room, dark and quiet.

The figure on the bed sleeps fitfully. Tortured dreams abound in this place tonight. They always do. The house is a vast repository for nightmares. The very air is heavy with the trace remains of agonies past. …

Alicia’s eyes snapped open in the darkness. She sensed something in the room with her, an unnatural presence leering at her, and the perception caused her heart to do a pretty good imitation of a jackhammer. She sat up in bed, gasped, and cast her gaze quickly about the dark room.

The terrain of the room was alien, disconcerting, its dark corners impenetrable in the gloom. A ripple of fear made her teeth chatter. She flipped the covers off her body, snapped on the bedside lamp, and saw …

Nothing.

She was alone in the room.

She put a hand to her breast, breathed deeply, and tried to relax. The perception of a menacing presence faded. More deep breaths. She worked at regulating the out-of-control rhythm of her heart. Her nerves were on edge, a condition she attributed to the creepy surroundings.

Goddamn you, Dream, she thought.

But Alicia was angrier at herself. She should never have acquiesced to Dream’s strange desires to stay in this place. Her friends were distraught. Their judgment wasn’t to be trusted. That being the case, she should have been firmer in her resolve.

Alicia breathed a sigh of frustration.

The truth was, there was little she could have done. The Accord was so low on gas it might not have gotten them back to the paved road, much less all the way back to the interstate. And the prospect of sleeping in the Accord after all those cramped hours on the road was only marginally more enticing than an invitation to sleep on a bed of nails. Therefore, they were at King’s mercy.

Alicia didn’t like that.

Not at all.

This house was a few very small steps removed from being a prison. She was here against her will, and she couldn’t leave. The stark reality of it shook her. She wished she’d probed King for personal information when she’d had the chance. They’d all been too wrapped up in their own problems to give him much thought, but it suddenly seemed very important to know who he was and what he did. Why, for instance, did he live in such isolation? He was a man of obvious wealth, given the size of his home and the fine furnishings in evidence throughout its interior, but how did he generate the money?

But the isolation bothered her more than the mystery of his wealth.

A person with certain inclinations, a fondness for the taboo things civilized society shunned, would find it easy to indulge those appetites here, far from the prying eyes of law enforcement and media.

A disturbing thought sent a chill through Alicia. He could kill people and get away with it. Take the case of Alicia and her friends, for instance. Days had passed since they’d communicated with anyone back home. Nobody knew where they were, a situation exacerbated by the unplanned detour from the interstate and the subsequent bewildering path they’d taken through the winding back roads. If anything happened to them, how would anyone ever find them?

The answer was obvious.

No one ever would find them.

Fear galvanized Alicia. She got out of bed, pulled on a white robe, and went to the window that overlooked the front yard. Ground lights faintly illumined the driveway and front porch. The burgundy Accord was a rich red in the semidarkness. A black Bentley was parked behind it. The elegant luxury car hadn’t been there before, and the sight of it made Alicia frown.

The frown deepened when she realized the night sky was clear and the ground below was drier than Death Valley.

What the hell happened to the inclement weather? she wondered.

She was contemplating this when she heard the sound.

Shrill but abrupt, it might have been a scream. A woman’s scream. Alicia spun away from the window and went to the bedroom door. She placed an ear to the door, held her breath, and waited to hear the sound again, but the only thing she heard was her heart kicking into overdrive.

Warring factions of her mind debated.

That was a scream.

No, you’re imagining things.

She hoped she’d imagined it.

Then the sound was repeated.

Alicia was propelled by instinct, with no regard for her own safety. She cinched the robe shut around her with the sash, pulled the bedroom door open, and stepped into the dimly lit hallway.

Which way?

The next scream, longer in duration and more anguished, provided the answer. She went left, her bare feet scampering across the cold floor. The sound grew louder and was punctuated with sobs. Though there were no words, something in the tonal quality was recognizable. One of her friends was making that sound. She came to a stop outside a room several doors down from her own, grasped the doorknob, started to turn it-

-and hesitated.

Karen was on the other side of this door. Something horrendous was happening to her. Alicia wanted to come to her friend’s rescue, but the mystery of the situation gave her a moment’s pause.

She was weaponless.

Karen wailed again.

Fuck it.

Her bare hands would have to suffice.

She turned the knob and stepped into the room. She was several feet inside before her mind registered the reality of the insane thing she was seeing.

A previously ordinary wall composed of drywall and paint had been flipped around to reveal manacles set in stone. Karen was suspended above the ground in these, her legs and arms spread apart in a Christ-like pose. A neck bracket kept her head flat against the wall. She saw Alicia and sobbed.

Ms. Wickman’s whip hand paused in mid-lash, and she turned around to greet Alicia with a wide-eyed grin of pleasure. “Why, it’s your little Negro friend. Come on in, dear. We don’t discriminate here.”

Alicia wanted desperately to take the old bat’s whip and insert it firmly up her tight fucking ass. She would have done it, too, if not for the specter of the thing crouched at the end of the bed.

Dark, matted fur covered its foul-smelling flesh. The thing looked at her, and the enormous nostrils at the end of its long snout flared. A rumbling snort emanated from somewhere deep within it. Its mouth opened, leathery lips peeling away from gleaming rows of razor-sharp fangs.

It growled at her.

And loped off the bed.

Alicia wilted, the sense of righteous fury spiraling out of her like dirty water down a storm drain. She backed away, but her shaking legs betrayed her, and she tumbled numbly to the floor. The thing loomed over her, dripping saliva on her face.

Too late, she believed.

Monsters exist, she thought.

They really do.

And I’m just another goddamn dead pragmatist.

A spine-scraping sound sputtered out of its hideous mouth.

Lupine laughter.

Alicia fainted.

Dream had somehow known there would be no drawn out process of seduction. The chemistry between them was so powerful, their desire so obvious, that an unspoken conclusion was reached-they would dispense with the niceties, forgoing even the merest pretense of accelerated courtship, and get right to the fun part, the enthusiastic exploration of each other’s body.

Even so, she was shocked by just how swiftly this developed. There were a handful of one-night stands in her past, though not nearly as many as other people believed, but she hadn’t fallen into bed with any of them quite as hastily.

She supposed she should feel bad about it.

Perhaps feel cheapened, an easy lay.

But she didn’t care.

Not now.

And maybe never.

Dream screamed into the mattress.

She moaned. “Oh … God …”

Her face was pressed sideways against the tangled bedsheets. A sheen of sweat covered her sun-brown body. She panted. Strands of blond hair fell into her open mouth, and she spit them out automatically, not thinking about it. Her fists knotted handfuls of bedsheet. She cried out again as another precise thrust pushed her forward. She turned her mouth into the mattress and loosed another muffled scream. Her knees wobbled on the edge of the bed, but King’s hands were firm at her waist, holding her in place.

He stood poised behind her, rigid behind her upturned ass.

Making her wait again.

“Please … ”she breathed.

So he gave it to her again, one more swift, brutal shove. She felt faint. White light crowded the edges of her vision. She was sure the next thrust of his cock would rupture her vaginal walls, maybe pierce her uterus. He was that endowed. That powerful. It was incredible. No man she’d ever had could compare. It was like being fucked by a god. Each stroke was like an exorcism, banishing forever the ghosts of Dan Bishop and Chad Robbins, rendering them meaningless. He earned her adoration for that feat alone. He looped some of her blond hair in a hand and pulled her head back.

He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “What would you do for me, sweet Dream?”

She struggled to form coherent words. “Any… anything … you want. …”

He pulled her straight back and his other hand, so muscled and strong, roamed over her hanging breasts, pinching her nipples, squeezing. “Would you kill for me?”

He arched up into her and tears rolled down her face. “Yes.”

She meant it as she said it. It was insanity. It was sinful. It was wrong. A part of her even felt an echo of shame. Later, when she was no longer under the spell of Eros, the memory of the exchange would horrify her. That didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. All she cared about was this extraordinary thing he was doing to her.

Because it was extraordinary, of that there was no doubt.

Dream could think of no legitimate comparison with anyone from her past. The whole experience was a series of erotic revelations, exploding epiphanies of carnality. She’d been fucked a variety of ways by her former lovers. Gently. Roughly. Passionately. She’d had beautiful experiences, indifferent experiences, even some fairly exotic experiences. King was a different species of lover altogether, a man for whom the word “exotic” seemed barely adequate. No word was adequate. He used his organ to manipulate her, punish her, and she loved it. It wasn’t like making love, with that term’s connotations of intimacy and rhythmic, gentle coupling.

It was just fucking, proffering herself as an object for his pleasure. And being extravagantly, acutely pleasured in return. It was as if she existed only to perform this act. There was something dehumanizing about that, a depersonalization.

She loved that, too.

Losing herself.

It was raw, animalistic, primal.

She didn’t want it ever to end.

He pulled out of her, relinquished her hair, and flipped her over. She spread her legs wide, and he climbed on top of her. She ground her teeth and ripped the flesh on his back with her nails as he reentered her.

His voice was hoarse. “Will you kill that black bitch for me, Dream?”

Her mouth opened wide.

She couldn’t say anything. She was entranced by the sight of his magnificently muscled torso looming above her. The way it looked, the pecs and biceps flexing as he moved against her, was beautiful. So fucking beautiful.

He stopped moving. “Answer me, Dream.”

She cleared mucus from her throat. “Yes.”

What?

How could she say such a thing, even during the altered state of consciousness induced by lust? It was awful. She was troubled, in a detached way, that he was even asking her such creepy questions. He couldn’t mean them literally. He had to know she would never hurt her friends. She knew, though, that some people got off in strange ways. Asphyxiation, for instance. Slapping. Biting. Bondage. This was just his version of that.

His kink.

She decided there was no harm in playing along.

He slid slowly in and out of her. His brow furrowed and his mouth twitched. She loved the way he groaned and twisted his neck. He was so turned on. Being able to do that to him thrilled her, heightened her own already elevated state of arousal.

“And what about the Asian slut?”

“Yes.”

He closed his eyes. His voice seemed far away. “Would you slit her throat, Dream?” His head arched back. “Would you drink her blood for me?”

She felt it coming.

Saw the muscles in his shoulders tensing.

Her eyes went wide with anticipation.

His voice was barely audible. “Say it, Dream.”

“Yes!” she cried. “I’d drink her blood.”

He opened his eyes.

And smiled.

Then his body spasmed against hers, rocking the bed, threatening to push her through the mattress. She locked her legs around him and held on for dear life. It went on far longer than any normal male orgasm should. When his body finally stopped pistoning and settled on top of her, she felt the way she imagined champion bull riders must feel at the end of a grueling tournament.

Her voice sounded frail when she said, “Oh my God.”

He rolled off her and beckoned her to the head of the bed. She felt weak, enervated, but she managed somehow, curling her small, toned body around his muscular frame. Their bodies meshed perfectly together, like two halves of a whole. Dream realized she was smiling. She knew why.

Who wouldn’t smile after having the best sex of their life?

It was true.

She had never felt this drained, this completely satisfied, or more inextricably linked to a partner. She didn’t think anything in her life had ever made her feel this good. No food, no emotional experience, no professional accomplishment-nothing. It was nice beyond words to finally feel fully alive, to not hurt, to not want to die. The suicidal impulses were quiet again, and she felt their absence like the lifting of a heavy physical burden. She suspected they were only lurking somewhere in a dark corner of her psyche, biding their time until she was vulnerable again, but that was okay. They wouldn’t trouble her while she was in the arms of this amazing man.

She traced a finger along the edge of his rib cage. “Mmm, I want to do that again. …”

He chuckled. “As you wish. …”

She arched an eyebrow at him. “Oh, shit, no, not now.”

He was smiling. “Why not?”

She sighed, her face flush with perfect contentment. “I don’t think I could survive another round of… that… so soon.” She kissed his chest. “You’re … my God, there’s no word for you … you’re like nothing else on earth.”

He laughed. “You’re right about that, Dream.”

Dream rolled her eyes. He had a healthy ego. Well, what else would she expect? Any man who could do the things he did had to be brimming with confidence. A lot of guys out there came on like God’s gift, but Ed here was the real deal. He knew it, too, which was sickening on one level, but also pretty thrilling.

She sprinkled his chest with soft, slow kisses. She was content for the moment to enjoy a period of serene afterglow. And what a wonderful place to wallow in postcoital bliss. The bed was massive, big enough for an orgy. The soft feather mattress was deliciously pliant under her, creating an illusion of being adrift on the open sea. A fire crackled in the fireplace, warming them and providing the room’s only illumination. The flickering flames looked far away, like a campfire on a distant shore. A marble bust of Alexander the Great sat on an ornate pedestal next to the fireplace. The spacious room was enormous, bigger than many luxury apartments in their entirety. As in the living room downstairs, bookshelves lined the walls, filled with leather-bound volumes she supposed were ancient and valuable. The hardwood floor was dotted with throw rugs; they looked hand-loomed, the work of artisans of various ethnicities. French doors opened onto a long balcony, which overlooked a panorama of mountain and trees that would be beautiful by daylight.

It was just heavenly, a wondrous sanctuary from a coarse world.

She thought it might be very nice to stay here forever. The notion should have been alarming. How smart could it be to consider that level of commitment to a person she’d known only hours? She knew what Alicia’s answer to that would be.

Shit.

Thinking of Alicia was a jarring dose of reality. She’d managed to keep the memory of King’s kinky interrogation at bay for several minutes, but now the perverse words resonated in her head, making her skin crawl. She turned her head to gaze into King’s dark, soulful eyes. “Ed … can I make a request?”

He ran a hand through her hair. “Of course.”

Be like Alicia, she thought.

Get right to the point.

She sighed. “I loved everything you did to me. I loved surrendering my will to you, letting you have your way with me, and you can have me again any time you want, any way you want, as much as you want, but, please, don’t make me say that sick shit about my friends again. That was awful.”

A flicker of some indiscernible emotion passed over his face. “Was it?”

Dream nodded. “Yes. Hey, I don’t care what you’re into, Ed. Any kind of freaky shit you like, cool, go for it. I’m yours to do with as you wish.”

Hearing the words replay in her mind, she shuddered-yet she knew they were true.

She took a deep breath and continued. “I only ask that you leave my friends out of it, and that you not make me say things that offend my heart.”

His arms encircled her, drawing her closer. “Then I will honor your wishes. Your willingness to surrender yourself to me is humbling, but it is profoundly unnecessary. I don’t seek your submission.”

An odd flicker of disappointment made Dream frown. “You don’t?”

He smiled. “No. Quite the opposite. I’ll tell you something I believe, Dream. I believe your arrival here was no accident of fate. I believe destiny brought you here. Your destiny. My destiny.” He laid a hand upon her face and stroked her cheek. His gaze never wavered as he said, “It’s like a fairy tale, Dream, though not of the sanitized, storybook variety. I’m a King. King of this place.” His arm swept away from her in an all-inclusive gesture she supposed was meant to indicate his home and the surrounding mountain region. “But I was a lonely King, A tired, sad old King.

A King who had grown weary of life, weary of existence itself. Then, on a dark night full of magic, a miracle happened, a Queen arrived at the King’s door.”

Dream swallowed hard. It was hard not to be entranced by King’s words. What woman wouldn’t enjoy being likened to a fairy-tale queen?

She smiled. “But how can a King be a King without subjects to rule?”

The vaguest wisp of a smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Oh, but there are subjects. A great many of them, in fact. I want you to take a trip with me, Dream. A great journey. Are you up to that?”

She nodded, murmured against his chest.

“Good.” He kissed her mouth. “Now I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything.”

“I need you to close your eyes, Dream. Close them and imagine yourself far away from here. Envision yourself floating on a cloud, weightless, insubstantial, a free spirit soaring high above the earth. Glory in that freedom, Dream, revel in it.”

She closed her eyes.

She listened to his voice, let herself be captivated by the imagery it described.

At first what she was experiencing was very similar to the kind of visualizations therapists had tried on her as a way to reduce stress. Her mind filled with an image like the one King described. She was high above the ground, soaring through the clouds over East Tennessee. She was a nude figure, a winged goddess, an image worthy of fantasy tales. It was nice. Soothing. Relaxing. A great way to escape the mess she’d made of her life. And King’s droning, sensuous voice only magnified the sense of exhilaration. Still, she was always aware of it as an exercise-while she swooped over mountains in her mind she nonetheless remained conscious of the mattress beneath her, of King’s arm around her, of the shifting of logs in the fireplace.

But then an astonishing thing happened.

The tactile reality of the mattress began to fade. The crackle of fire dimmed, then was gone. She had a sense of falling…

… of plummeting from a great height. …

Then she felt the wind on her face, buffeting her hair and caressing her body like the ephemeral hand of God. She opened her eyes, looked down, and her mouth opened in a silent scream. A green carpet of treetops was rushing to meet her. What happened next was reflex. She flexed her arms, turned her gaze heavenward, and soared back toward the clouds. She entered the swirling white mist, continued moving upward, and emerged above the clouds. She continued up, up, up. She knew if she kept going she would pass through the earth’s atmosphere and enter the icy blackness of space. The prospect initially frightened her, but intuition told her she would be fine. Nothing could hurt her. Especially not the lack of oxygen she didn’t need in this form.

So she kept going.

Slipping the bonds of the tarnished planet that was her home. Earth receded behind her, shrinking to a globe the size of a basketball. She circled the moon, her mouth open in awe as she surveyed the gray, rocky landscape familiar from old NASA films. She swooped back toward earth and hovered above it, raised her arms over her head, and danced like a ballerina, a solo dancer in the celestial spotlight.

The sensation was beyond liberation.

It was empowering.

More intoxicating by far than the most potent drink ever distilled.

And it was real.

She didn’t question it. There was no point. She was reminded of Karen’s angry words to Alicia about the thing that killed Shane. She was seeing what she was seeing. She trusted her own mind and senses. This was her essence up here in space. Her corporeal body was still on the bed in King’s room, but she could feel and experience everything in an exalted way no physical, flesh-and-blood construct ever could.

King’s disembodied voice spoke to her. “Do you like this, Dream?”

Her face had a hard time containing her exultant smile. “Yes!”

“Good.” She felt his smile. “Come back to earth. I have things to show you.”

She released a squeal of delight, flexed her knees, changed direction, and dove back toward earth. She was free of all fear now, and she moved toward the spinning planet at a speed that should have been terrifying. The earth’s atmosphere was like a lover’s hand this time, warm, welcoming, stimulating. She plunged through the clouds and overlooked a desert vista far from King’s mountain home. She saw a pyramid in the distance, a ruddy, four-sided triangle rising up out of the sand. A burst of excitement emboldened her, and she sluiced through the sky-she’d only seen pyramids in pictures, and she coveted this new experience. The wonder of it all filled her like a dazzling inner light, made her marvel at the limitless possibilities.

She could go anywhere.

Do anything.

See anything.

People in primitive attire milled about the base of the pyramid. She flew low and studied their faces. They were workers. Their bodies glistened with sweat as they struggled with their burdens. Dream realized they were slaves.

“This is a glimpse, Dream.” King’s voice was right in her ear, although she was alone in the air. “You asked about subjects. This is the kingdom of one of my forebears. These are his… subjects.”

Realization dawned in Dream. “You were telling the truth about being a King. It wasn’t just a story.”

“No, Dream, it wasn’t. And what you’re seeing is real, but it’s just a glimpse. It’s the past. We can only have glimpses of it, unfortunately. All those people are long dead.”

The vision faded, broke apart like an old television with bad reception, and there was a sense of displacement, a temporal shift. All of existence was blinding whiteness for a millisecond, then a new scene revealed itself, a remote section of English countryside in the early twentieth century. She flew low between hills, passed grazing sheep, and approached a stately old house. A man who looked nothing like King stood on the porch, yet she realized it was King. A fully formed awareness appeared in her brain.

He could look like anything. He wasn’t human. He was something … more.

Something better, she hoped.

The knowledge should have been frightening, but it wasn’t.

“Here’s another glimpse, Dream. This is from my own past, so we can linger longer here. For days, if we had the inclination. We won’t be that long, however, a few minutes should suffice.”

The man on the porch-King, she reminded herself-turned and went back into the house. Dream passed effortlessly through the front door. It was insubstantial to her, offering no more resistance than a breath of air. The man, who was wearing a tweed jacket and sported an Oxford class ring on one finger, turned down a hallway.

“Leave him, Dream.”

She hovered next to a staircase. “Where should I go?”

“To your left, through that archway, into the kitchen.”

Dream did as he bade. Part of her wanted to fly away and see other wonders, but he was her guide through this process of enlightenment, so she went without hesitation.

The kitchen was large and outfitted in the usual way.

“Where now?”

“See that door next to the pantry?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the cellar door. I want to take you down there.”

Dream experienced her first real twinge of apprehension since the beginning of this astounding journey. It was a precognitive, unsettling feeling. Something disturbing lurked beyond that door. But she decided to trust him. It wasn’t like she really had a choice, right? She was on this ride for the duration. So she passed through the cellar door, glided over a dark staircase, and arrived in a dank room. It was empty, but there was an opening in the far wall, a passage carved from the earth. She understood King meant her to go there, so she did, ignoring the renewed sense of trepidation.

She was in a tunnel. The tunnel wound down into the earth, far below the house on the hill. She followed it, floating down, down, down, until she emerged into a cavern. She floated just below the roof of the cavern and surveyed the scene below her.

It was horrific.

She was looking at an underworld society, a realm similar in distressing ways to the pyramid scene. She saw immediately that there was a ruling class and an underclass. More slaves. They were treated horribly, worse by far than the slaves who’d toiled in the desert. Worst of all, she realized this awful place was a creation of King’s. These people were here because … he’d trapped them.

They were travelers, unfortunates who’d turned down the wrong road.

They were-

“Here are my subjects, Dream,” King’s voice revealed.

She noticed the hideous, lupine creatures poised around the tunnel exits.

Shane, she thought.

One of these things killed Shane.

The pitch of King’s voice never altered. “You can come back now, Dream, come back to me.”

That was fine with her.

She suddenly wanted nothing more than to be back in her own body. She didn’t want to see any more of this.

The cavern scene faded.

And she was falling again …

… falling …

Her eyes snapped open and she lurched in King’s arms.

He held her close. “Relax, Dream.” He traced one of her lips with a forefinger. “You’re safe with me.”

“But you’re a monster,” she breathed.

He laughed. “These things are subjective. Am I monster? Or am I a King? What the storybooks neglect to say is that the two concepts are often inextricably entwined. I am only a monster to those I exclude from my inner circle. I have servants. Apprentices. My chosen ones wield a degree of power they could never hope to achieve in the outside world. And there’s nothing as seductive as power, Dream. These people are grateful to me. They love and worship me.”

Dream trembled. “They fear you.”

King chuckled. “Of course.” His smile was disquieting. “As well they should. But they also love and worship me, exist to serve me.”

He kissed Dream on the mouth. “As they will exist to serve you.”

“Love you.”

“And worship you.”

King kissed her again, and Dream felt her body go slack. His mouth on hers still felt good. Bullshit. It felt wonderful. He was a monstrous, evil, inhuman creature. His very existence was an affront to everything she’d ever believed in.

And yet…

His hand traveled down her side, over her hip, along her leg, fingertips gliding over her raised kneecap, then sliding slowly, inexorably down her inner thigh.

It was too much.

Too exciting.

Too exquisite.

So she compartmentalized, stowing away the horror generated by his revelations, and she gave herself over to sensation.

“You are so beautiful, Dream. I’ve waited for you so long.” His deep voice, rich and resonant, soothed her, made her tremble. “My Queen.”

Queen.

What an incredible concept.

She shut her eyes.

Focused on the physical sensation of King’s tongue on her flesh.

And let go.

Surrendered to Eros again.

Lost herself again in sweet oblivion.

And there was nothing better than that.

Chad followed Cindy through a throng of madmen and madwomen. His head was in constant motion, his mouth open in a perpetual gape, as he took in the spectacle of what looked like a medieval marketplace. His mind numbly catalogued countless instances of casual brutality. An old man pitched over after a member of The Master’s police force cracked the butt of a shotgun against his head. Blood gushed from a gash above the man’s ear, and he screamed for help. A shadowy figure emerged from an alley, picked the old man up in its distended arms, licked its chops, and loped away toward one of the distant tunnel mouths.

Chad turned a wide-eyed expression toward Cindy. “What’s the shapeshifter doing with that old man?”

Her expression remained blank, stoic. “Having dinner.”

Chad groaned.

This place was a nightmare come to life. A vendor to their left was hawking canned goods. A woman was on her knees fellating him. The tone of his pitch never altered as the woman’s head moved. “Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, step right up!” He sounded like a carnival barker. “Oh, who am I kidding?” He cackled. “Gather round, you depraved sacks of shit, come check out the goodies I have for you today. I’ve got beans, I’ve got soup, I’ve got corn, I’ve got it all. I’m the only authorized seller of spinach in all of Below!”

“Bullshit!” bellowed another vendor nearby.

The canned-goods salesman wheeled in that direction, his wet member slipping free of the woman’s mouth. She scurried after him, drew the dripping cock back into her mouth, and moved her head desperately up and down.

Chad was disgusted. “Jesus Christ.”

The vendor waved an arm in the direction of his challenger. “Do not listen to this man!” His voice rose dramatically in pitch. “He is a liar, a cheat, and a scam. Go to him if you wish to spend your hard-earned currency on inferior product. But don’t blame me when you’re doubled over with food poisoning after ingesting his rancid wares. My goods are fresh. Everyone Below knows the name Elvis Kennedy means quality!”

Chad looked at Cindy. “Elvis Kennedy?”

“A lot of people Below use made-up names.”

“Oh.”

“Like Lazarus.”

The vendor continued, “Ask anyone, my prices are the lowest around! I will not be undersold! Everything’s negotiable. No money? We can work something out!” He grabbed a handful of the woman’s hair. “Hell, just ask my lady friend! She’s a repeat customer!”

Cindy approached the man’s booth. Chad stood back and watched. The vendor regarded her with a lascivious grin. “Hey, good-looking! What can I do for you today? I bet you could go for some baked beans, whaddya say?”

Cindy never hesitated. She strode purposefully toward the obnoxious vendor. Chad could see the coming violence in the set of her shoulders. She was like a snake poised to strike. Too bad for the vendor she didn’t have a warning rattle.

Chad felt a reflexive jolt of fear.

Cindy was too impulsive.

He couldn’t help believing she was endangering their already fragile position here by violently attacking the first person who pissed her off.

And this attack was certainly violent.

But it was also executed with lethal speed and efficiency.

She got the vendor in a headlock before he even sensed danger. She rode him to the ground, planted a knee in his gut, and twisted his neck. He flailed, gurgled, and spit, but Cindy never budged. She kept the pressure on until the man’s face turned purple and his tongue protruded from his mouth. Chad winced at the sound of popping tendons and bone. At last, he went still and Cindy released the lifeless body.

She stood up and turned away from the dead vendor, leaving the grisly scene behind without so much as a backward glance. As soon as she was clear of the area near the booth, the crowd of onlookers converged on the dead man’s goods. They crashed into each other, diving and scooping up stray cans, filling the burlap sacks they carried as shopping bags. Chad saw the woman who’d been servicing the vendor snag a can of soup and wobble away. He watched the nearest guards for signs of retribution, but none was forthcoming. Amazing. A murder in plain sight, and they did nothing. It was a wonder this crude society managed to function at all.

Cindy took his hand and dragged him past more vendors. Vendors selling cooking utensils, vendors selling animal skins, vendors selling bread. One vendor was pitching what he called “contraband” goods from Above. Trinkets of the sort that were sold in convenience stores and truck stops. Key chains, disposable lighters with slogans, and miniature race cars. There were homemade curios, too, including placards with crudely rendered etchings of a longhaired man that bore the inscription “Lazarus Saves.” Children clamored around this booth. Chad looked at their dirty faces and the sea of bruised innocence made him want to puke. Another “contraband” dealer peddled piles of porn magazines. Still another booth was actually in the business of selling people.

Chad said, “It’s like the Farmer’s Market of the Damned, or something.”

Cindy looked at him. “That it is. But there are worse things Below.”

Chad grunted. “Shit.” He looked around at the bustling panorama of filth and corruption. “What could possibly be worse than this?”

“Well, there’s the live sex shows the Overlords force the slaves to participate in.” She didn’t look at Chad. “That’s worse. There’s not a woman Below who hasn’t been made to do some pretty vile things. You’re not in Kansas anymore, Chad.”

The information saddened Chad. Again, however, it wasn’t surprising. “Where do the vendors get their merchandise?”

“The guards bring it in from Outside.” She glanced at him. “A branch of the tunnel opens onto a road outside the mountain. They load up the transport trucks with cheap shit from grocery stores and truck stops, bring it back here, and distribute it among the vendors. The vendors are emancipated slaves. The Overlords stay in their private quarters with their concubines and liquor, while hired thugs tend to their herds.”

Chad frowned. “Herds?”

“Slaves.”

“Oh.” He glanced at her. “How do you know all this?”

“You’ve seen how things are run here, Chad. These aren’t exactly state secrets.”

Chad thought that over. “I should know this shit. What other secrets do you know?”

Her brow furrowed. “Hmm, here’s an interesting fact. Not counting guards and shapeshifters, there are over five thousand people living Below. Not all of them got here the way you and I did, by having the bad luck to wander into The Master’s territory. The guards occasionally go out on scavenging parties, bringing back as many as a half-dozen people at a time. There’s a high rate of attrition here, and they like to maintain certain herd levels.” Chad saw a flash of anger cross her face. “You’ve got an idea of what the guards are like by now. They mostly abduct women.”

“Why so many slaves?”

“What do you mean?”

Chad frowned. Something didn’t add up. There was something missing, some crucial piece of information he didn’t possess. “Historically slaves have served as laborers. I just don’t see what work there is to do around here. There’s no cotton to pick. No crops to tend. So what function do they serve?”

“Slaves Below are walking dead people.” Her voice exuded a chill that was almost palpable. “They are sacrifices in waiting.”

“Oh my God.”

Another layer of horror.

Was there any bottom level to the depravity?

“The sacrifices are offerings to The Master’s gods. Each month each Overlord selects a member of his herd as his contribution.”

Chad cringed. “Barbaric. Absolutely barbaric.”

Cindy snorted. “No shit. It’s why slaves so zealously pursue emancipation. It’s the only way to remove yourself from the ranks of the condemned. The problem with emancipation is the inevitability of becoming what you loathe.”

The obvious implications were unsettling. “And now you’re emancipated.”

A statement. Cindy didn’t reply.

“Are you …” Chad groped for the proper way to express what he wanted to say. “… would you say that… inevitability … applies to you?”

Again, no reply.

Which was not exactly reassuring.

They emerged through another crowd of people and ducked down an alley. An old man with a bottle sat slumped against a wall. “Where are we going now?”

“The Outpost.”

“Oh.” Chad waited for clarification, but none seemed forthcoming. “What’s the Outpost?”

“It’s what passes for a social club Below. Entrance is restricted to emancipated slaves and Overlords, but the latter rarely venture inside.”

Chad groaned. “Am I about to be hitched to a rail again?”

“No. I’ll get you in. It won’t be a problem.”

He couldn’t account for her confidence, but there was so much here he didn’t understand-like almost everything-so he let it go.

He stepped over another unconscious wino. Like the slave hitched to the rail outside the SCD, he stank of infection. “Ugh. Jesus. Hey, Cindy, why are we going to the Outpost, anyway?”

“You’re a smart boy, Chad.” He could almost hear her smirk. “You should be able to figure it out.”

Chad started to refute her statement, but he realized she was right. “That’s where Lazarus is.”

“Uh-huh. I’m proud of you, Chad.”

Chad ignored the sarcasm. “So what’s the deal with this guy, Cindy? Is he some sort of guru? Why are you taking me to see him?”

Cindy’s sigh was rife with exasperation. “Stop interrogating me, Chad. Save your questions for the man with the answers.”

That being Lazarus, Chad assumed.

They emerged from the alley and crossed another street, this one less congested than the marketplace. There were pedestrians about, but they were outnumbered by guards and hulking shapeshifters. The strange creatures watched him with hungry fascination; he could feel their eyes tracking him down the street, a sensation that made the back of his neck tingle.

The buildings here, though fewer in number, were marginally more impressive than what he’d seen of the buildings lining the marketplace. Those had been little more than shacks and lean-tos. The level of craftsmanship here, however, was several notches higher, as were the building materials-he saw actual brick and mortar, concrete foundations, and glass windows. One building they passed had an open door through which instrumental techno music emanated. Two attractive women, each notably more attractive than any of the other women he’d seen Below (with the exception of Cindy, who was otherworldly), framed the doorway. They wore thigh-high black leather boots with stiletto heels, black thong panties, and black bras with pointed cones. Each of them wielded bullwhips, which they would snap at the occasional passerby. A closer look revealed the telltale emblems of emancipation about their throats. Cindy’s gaze locked on the building as they passed it.

Chad had to ask. “What sort of place is that?”

Cindy glanced sideways at him. “A bad one. It’s where the Overlords go to indulge their basest desires. Slaves are the entertainment.” She looked at him directly now. “Females slaves, mostly.”

His eyes narrowed. “Have you-“

“Yes. Now shut up. We’re here.”

“Huh? Where?”

Despite the horror he felt at the injustices heaped upon Cindy and the other women of Below, the women in their bondage gear were shamefully compelling. He had to force his gaze away from them to see what Cindy meant.

“The Outpost, Chad.” She smirked. “Which you would’ve known if you weren’t like every other man on the planet.”

A sign less than twenty feet from where he was standing read:

THE OUTPOST

OVERLORDS AND EMANCIPATEDS WELCOME. SLAVES AND OTHER SCUM STAY OUT!

The message troubled Chad.”! thought you said-“

“I remember what I fucking said, maggot.” She twisted a handful of his hair, eliciting a high-pitched yelp. “And you better remember to keep your slave mouth shut.”

She leaned in close and spoke in a whisper. “Now we’re back to keeping up appearances. This is important, Chad. Life-and-death-level important. Don’t talk again until invited to do so.” She spun around, relinquishing her grip on his hair. “Follow me.”

Chad followed her through a pair of bat-wing doors.

Smoky jazz music emanated from a hidden sound system. The mellow tones meshed perfectly with an atmosphere of languor. The dozen or so patrons present sat slumped over beer steins and whiskey glasses at booths and tables. The dining area was small, but the bar was surprisingly wellstocked for an establishment that redefined the phrase “out of the way.” Tendrils of sweet-smelling smoke plumed in the air. The aroma was vaguely reminiscent of marijuana, but Chad was sure that wasn’t it, though the handrolled cigarettes pinched between the fingers of at least half the customers did resemble joints.

Heads turned with slow indifference as Cindy led the way to the bar. A balding bartender with rolled-up sleeves over beefy arms planted meaty hands on the bar and glowered. “His kind’s not welcome here. There’s a big damn sign outside that makes that pretty clear. You blind?”

Cindy leaned over the bar. “I’m here to see Lazarus.”

The bartender’s expression changed subtly, a flicker of suspicion in his eyes. “He ain’t here.”

Cindy ignored the denial. “Tell him ‘the girl has returned.’”

The bartender’s demeanor did an about-face. “I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared through a door next to the rows of liquor bottles.

Chad’s brow furrowed.

He again experienced the frustration of not being privy to crucial information. He ached to ask Cindy what was going on, went so far as to open his mouth, but she silenced him with an angry glare. Chad fidgeted, barely able to contain his curiosity-luckily, the bartender returned less than a minute later to usher them through the rear door.

They entered a room smaller even than the dining area outside. A pair of booths lined the rear wall. A single table occupied the center of the room. A lone man sat at the table with his back to them. A black kitten with yellow eyes leapt off the table and ran out of the room-Chad felt the animal pass between his legs. The bartender left them without another word, closing the door behind them. Cindy circled the table, pulled out a chair opposite the man Chad assumed was “Lazarus,” and beckoned Chad to sit at the only other chair.

Chad sat.

Cindy started talking. “It’s almost time. Everything’s in place.”

The man inhaled from a handrolled cigarette, smiled thinly, and released a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. “Excellent. May I say that your bravery is inspiring.”

Cindy blushed.

Chad couldn’t believe it. Cindy blushing?

“I only did what had to be done.”

“Nonsense.” The man toked again. “Your valor is truly humbling.”

The man’s unwashed hair hung to his shoulders. It was brown but heavily flecked with gray. His eyes were bloodshot, but they nonetheless sparkled with a keen intelligence. His body evinced the telltale signs of decades of hard living-a pale complexion, a red nose mapped with traceries of broken veins, and a gut. A whiskey glass and a nearly empty bottle of gin sat next to his ashtray. There was an aura of sadness about him, something awful in his past-something that predated his time Below.

“And it is an honor to meet you.”

Chad was studying the man’s face so intently he didn’t initially realize this latest statement was directed at him-but the man was looking right at him.

He blinked. “Say again?”

The man laughed. There was something familiar about the sound. Hauntingly familiar. “We’ve waited a long time for you.”

Something in the set of the man’s features triggered a nagging association, a mental puzzle he couldn’t set aside. The man reminded him of someone. A deepening frown creased his face as he minutely examined every facet of the other man’s visage. The mouth. The nose. The eyes. The cheekbones. He’d never looked so closely at another man’s face before. It was so familiar, like the face of an old friend you haven’t seen in too many years. And there was that voice, so distinctive, a rich whiskey-soaked baritone. Chad’s mouth opened in a gape as suspicion quickly morphed into absolute certainty.

“Oh my God.”

Now the man whose name wasn’t really “Lazarus” was frowning.

A helpless, humorless laugh sputtered out of Chad’s mouth. “This can’t be. You’re supposed to be dead.”

He knew the man’s name. His real name.

The man knew that he knew. Chad could see it in his eyes. Those riveting eyes he’d seen in so many film clips from VH1 specials and documentaries. Penetrating, playful, and mournful.

Eyes set in a frown.

The man sighed. “The person I was is dead, Chad. In a figurative sense.” Another pensive drag from the cigarette followed this grudging admission. “The body lives on, yes, but that person, the personality, the myth …” He flashed that same sad, thin smile again. “That… persona … has rightfully been consigned to the ash heap of history”

Chad was astounded. “So you say. But you have no idea, man. No idea. You haven’t been forgotten.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know how I feel about that. What I do know is what I am now is much more important than what I was…” He indicated some nebulous place above them with a forefinger. “… up there. …”

“Why do you say that?”

The old singer smiled. “Here I can really help people be free. It is my calling. My true role in life. What I was born for, Chad.”

“Wait.”

Chad’s eyes widened in shock. “How do you know my name?” He darted a glance at Cindy, who wasn’t looking at him, but he was sure she knew far more about this man than she’d let on. “Jesus Christ. It just hit me. We were never introduced. You can’t know my fucking name.”

The man’s posture changed. Chad saw his eyes charge with excitement. “But I do, Chad.” He leaned over the table. “There are things you need to know, friend. You have no idea how important you are.”

Chad shivered at the singer’s words. He reached for the whiskey bottle. He said, “I need this more than you right now.” He drank straight from the bottle. And a long morning of revelations and whiskey-fueled lamentations began in earnest.

Giselle’s progress through the passageways behind the walls of The Master’s estate was slow and deliberate. The time for the uprising Below was nearly at hand, and she wanted to get a sense of the structure’s temporal stability. The house was more than an assemblage of stone and mortar. It existed simultaneously on the physical plane and beyond it, like the tainted swath of land encircling it. This was what allowed for the vast, impossible expanse of rooms on the upper level, enough rooms to fill the most extravagant mansion. Several dozen, at least. From the outside, however, the structure’s top floor looked big enough for only a fraction as many.

This flagrant defiance of the laws of physics also allowed for alternate means of movement through the fluid structure. The dark passages between the walls were accessible by more than the conventional means of ingress and egress. Here and there were places where the fabric of existence was altered in an enhanced way, portals through which those sensitive to their presence could move from room to room within the beat of a demon’s heart.

Giselle passed through portal after portal, pausing at each stretch of passageway just long enough to gauge its stability. She would lay a hand on the cold walls, close her eyes, and allow her uniquely sensitive mind to search for signs of volatility. Anything out of the ordinary would be cause for alarm. A disturbance in the energy field could indicate The Master’s awareness of the impending revolt, a development that would doom the effort before it could even begin. She was looking for anything, any subtle hint of something amiss, but there was nothing.

Only the usual cold emptiness.

She allowed herself a smile.

Just a small one.

Because she knew the danger was still immense. The uprising’s chances of success depended on keeping The Master off guard until it was too late. Until the moment of his death was at hand. For that to occur, every aspect of her long-ago-conceived plan would have to come together with utter precision. Which entailed a perfect confluence of events and players. At least she could be sure Eddie would be where he needed to be when he needed to be. The sex magic had, of course, eliminated any ability he had to resist her. The rest of it was maddeningly out of her control.

She did, however, trust her fellow revolutionaries Below.

Especially Lazarus.

The only man she’d ever loved.

And the only one she could never have.

The man was a mythical figure to the banished people, believed dead for years but not forgotten. The amazing man was haunted by demons from his distant past, and he had a pronounced penchant for whiskey. However, he possessed a remarkable ability to remain lucid no matter how much he imbibed. He was a man of clear vision and unwavering conviction, and he’d inspired the people of Below. People flocked to him, clamored to hear him speak, and they derived hope from his words.

Of course, the power structure Below soon moved in to silence him.

A slave was bribed to assassinate him.

It happened at a Gathering.

Gatherings were the weekly festivals of music and dancing the slaves were allowed to participate in. They were spectacles of debauchery. The slaves fought and fucked in a frenzied burst of revelry the likes of which even New Orleans had never seen. People died. Buildings collapsed. Babies were conceived. It all served a larger purpose, of course-to further pacify the herds. The distractions of inebriation and internal conflict effectively stifled any possibility of revolt.

But Lazarus changed the tenor of the Gatherings.

They became opportunities to hear the charismatic man discourse at length on varied topics. He talked about the world they’d known. The world beyond this place. Its wars and history of petty conflict. He talked about men and women of rare courage. People who had been willing to take a stand during difficult times.

He was a learned, erudite man.

And a dangerous one.

Enter a slave who called himself Kansas.

The assassin.

His target didn’t suspect anything until he was crumpled on the ground with a knife in his chest. The guards moved in and whisked him away. A guard then shot Kansas in the face, and the dead Judas was carried off to the tunnels by a shapeshifter.

The slaves were too stunned by the events to riot, their grief was too enormous. A long period of mourning ensued, and Gatherings were never quite the same.

Sometimes, however, there’s more to the picture than what’s seen on the surface.

One of Giselle’s confederates was a high-ranking guard. He assumed responsibility for the disposal of the old singer’s body, a detail no one else wanted. A cursory check of the body revealed a faint pulse. The guard summoned a slave who’d been a nurse Above. She tended to Lazarus as best she could, using the meager supplies available to perform miracles. The wound, though deep and ragged, had managed to miss anything vital.

Lazarus survived.

The nurse’s name was Cindy.

Rumors of the old man’s survival circulated Below. There were occasional “sightings.” Most of these were bogus, but on occasion a slave would glimpse a man who looked very much like a disguised Lazarus being escorted place to place by a grim-faced cadre of protectors. So began the myth of Lazarus. It was at this point that his more devout followers began to ascribe Christ-like attributes to the man.

He was a savior, these people said.

And one day he would arise again.

The Overlords scoffed.

Giselle was unable to suppress another smile.

It would happen.

She blinked through another portal, laid a hand on the coarse stone—

But this was not stone.

It was drywall. Plaster covered with dry paint. Which meant the room on the other side of this wall was in use for discipline purposes. Giselle closed her eyes, leaned her head against the wall, and let her mind see what was happening on the other side.

She flinched.

Ms. Wickman.

The ruthless, despicable woman was The Master’s most exalted-and most trusted-servant. She was cruel in ways the other apprentices could never equal. Giselle was capable of cruelty herself. It was a job requirement for the apprentices. She had killed people. Tortured them. Made them do awful things to themselves and people they cared about. But it all served a higher purpose. She did what she did to keep working behind the scenes, to see to it that she and her allies accomplished the momentous thing they’d worked toward for years.

Ms. Wickman, however, enjoyed hurting people.

Just as she was hurting the women in this room. Giselle saw a nude, teary-faced black woman tied to the bed. A drooling shapeshifter hovered over her. Another girl, also nude, was on her hands and knees on the floor. She was Asian. Her body was laced with lash marks. A smiling Ms. Wickman watched her from a bedside perch. She sat next to the black woman, a straight razor at her throat. Another apprentice, a black-clad man with wavy dark hair, stood over the Asian girl, a broadax propped over his shoulder.

Giselle felt a surge of compassion for the black woman.

Ms. Wickman was asking her questions no one should ever have to answer.

Life-and-death questions.

Giselle knew the women were beyond her help, but the knowledge did nothing to lessen the anguish she felt. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Over the years, she’d built a wall against emotions. Survival required a distance, an inner coldness, and she’d cultivated that detachment so well she’d stopped feeling anything. However, now that her plan was finally coming to fruition, that wall was crumbling.

In her mind, she saw Ms. Wickman frown.

And look toward the wall.

Giselle quickly blinked back through the portal, but she could still see Ms. Wickman’s penetrating eyes. She blinked rapidly through a succession of portals until she was in the small antechamber behind her own room. She stood on the pedestal where she’d performed the tongue ritual. She rubbed her eyes hard, and the menacing countenance of The Master’s top servant was gone.

Which was good.

But Giselle was troubled.

The woman had sensed something. A presence. Giselle believed the woman wasn’t as adept as she in the magical arts-only The Master could make that claim-but she clearly had some ability. More than the average apprentice, anyway. Might she have seen who was on the other side of that wall? Did she, like Giselle, possess the ability to detect the psychic traces people left wherever they went?

Giselle hoped not.

It would mean the woman could follow her to this place.

And everything would be ruined.

She dropped to her knees, closed her eyes, and clasped her hands before her. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she strove to make contact with the gods. She focused her will, tried visualizations to transport her back to that wondrous realm they inhabited, but there was nothing. Just silence. A heartbreaking void. Giselle felt a ripple of panic. Had they abandoned her?

She tried to calm down.

The problem, of course, was this stew of emotions percolating in her head. It was ruining her concentration, making communication with that other realm impossible. So she drew in a deep breath and imagined the construction of a wall. Brick by brick. Layers of mortar hardening between rows of bricks. She didn’t rush the process. The wall slowly took shape, and as it did, the nervous tremors in her body stilled. Her breathing became regular. And she felt the physical world become insubstantial. When she opened her eyes, that world was gone.

She was in the land of the gods now.

She spoke with her mind: Azaroth, I beseech you.

A swirl of black smoke parted, and a creature resembling an old man in a flowing robe appeared. She understood this wasn’t his true appearance. These creatures were composed of a different kind of matter-deity dust, you could call it-and the human eye wasn’t equipped to interpret the reality of the gods. So an illusion was created. They appeared to humans in a form they could understand. To Giselle, the god Azaroth looked exactly like a man who’d played Moses in a movie she’d seen long ago.

Azaroth smiled.

You called me?

She returned the smile.

She loved Azaroth.

Yes.

Why?

Giselle’s physical body shuddered at the memory of Ms. Wickman’s eyes.

I’m afraid I jeopardized everything. I was traveling. Through portals. I saw something in a room. That woman, Ms. Wickman. I’m afraid she saw me. I’m worried she knows what’s coming.

The god’s mouth opened.

And a sound as resonant as any oratorio filled her with delight. It was her favorite sound from any world, from any layer of existence.

It was the sound of a god laughing.

She knows nothing.

“But-” More laughter.

Dear Giselle, you overestimate this harridan. You should be careful of her, yes, but you need not be afraid of her. She possesses some psychic sensitivity, but it is feeble, not worthy of comparison to your extraordinary abilities. And she is loyal to The Master, but not at the expense of her own safety. She will not expend energy saving a sinking ship.

Giselle felt some of that bright edge of fear fade.

Azaroth sounded so sure of himself.

Well, he always did.

And he was usually right.

Almost always.

Still. But Azaroth sensed her lingering doubts: Giselle, all will be well. The other man from your vision is in place now. You will see him tonight. Be ready.

Yes!

Giselle felt a thrill of exultation.

Eddie in her room.

Chad Below.

Just as she’d seen it so long ago.

She addressed Azaroth: It’s really happening, isn’t it? We will win.

The god’s answer was encouraging but evasive.

You have an opportunity. The creature you call The Master is weaker than he has ever been. His gods have turned their backs on him.

So you’ve told me.

Azaroth continued: He is vulnerable, and the silence of the gods disturbs him. But you must not underestimate him. He is weakened, but he remains the most powerful living creature on earth. Be careful, Giselle. Be strong. Resolute.

I will!

Azaroth’s human guise began to break apart.

Yes, I think you will. And now you must go.

And then the image was gone.

Giselle experienced the usual jolt that accompanied the transition from one plane to the next. She opened her eyes and was back in the antechamber behind her room. She got to her feet and stepped off the altar. She crossed the room, touched the knob that swiveled the wall, and returned to her bedroom.

Eddie, of course, was waiting for her.

He took her into his arms.

Kissed her.

And led her to the bed.

Giselle went eagerly.

She heard the echo of Azaroth’s words in her head.

All will be well.

She willed it to be true.

Dream was dreaming.

In her dream she felt light as a butterfly, soaring in the air, flitting from place to place with ease and grace. She flew through clouds, over mountains, buzzed a herd of cattle, and passed through an airplane. As she passed through the plane, alien thoughts buzzed in her brain. She seemed to exist as many people at once. She was a gay man named Jim. She was a boy named Alexander. She was a teenage girl named Sophia.

Jim’s parents had disowned him, and he was depressed.

Alexander wasn’t doing well in school.

Sophia was fantasizing about a movie star.

There were others.

The madness of being all these people at the same time brought her out of the dream. The sensation of lightness was gone. She felt a jolt. That transitional jolt. She opened her eyes, gasped, and realized it hadn’t been a dream.

Oh my God, she thought.

It was real.

All of it.

The out-of-body experience. King. This house way the hell out here in the middle of nowhere. Shane’s death. Chad’s disappearance.

And the sex.

Let’s not forget about that.

As if she could.

Dream rolled onto her back, closed her eyes against the brilliant light of the sun, and stretched. She groaned, lifted her arms high above her, and stretched her legs to their limit, extending her toes horizontally. Then, when she could stretch no more, she let her muscles go slack and she settled back into the plush feather mattress. She blinked, squinted against the sunlight, and took in her surroundings.

King’s room was, if anything, more impressive by daylight.

The room was just huge, bigger even than she had perceived last night. A small family could live in this room and not worry about invading each other’s personal space. The rows and rows of floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves made her think of libraries at great universities. She thought maybe the books were just for show. How could anyone ever read this many books in a lifetime?

Unless, she reminded herself, one’s lifetime encompassed several centuries.

So, she thought, back to that again.

Well, there was no avoiding the subject. Her new lover was a supernatural being with powers that both awed and frightened her. Absurd. But undeniable. The exhilaration of her flight through space and time was still fresh in her mind. But so was the memory of what she’d seen in that underground place in England. The slaves. The degradation. Death. And there was another place just like it somewhere beneath this house. While she luxuriated in this incredible bed-easily the most sensually decadent bed she’d ever slept or fucked on-somewhere below her people were suffering.

She shifted ever so slightly on the bed.

She still didn’t want to get up.

Even the reflexive guilt she felt wasn’t sufficient enough to change that. The French doors stood open, allowing her a view of the balcony and green mountainside. The warm sunshine felt good on her nude body. It was like a lover’s lightest touch, fingertips gliding over trembling flesh. She ran a hand along an inner thigh, shuddered at a sense-memory of King’s caress, and touched herself.

She remembered being perched at the edge of the bed.

Her favorite position.

Another shudder rippled through her. She could almost feel him inside her. She was often too shy with new lovers to broach the subject. When she was with someone new, she invariably put up with the standard alternations of boy on top and girl on top for weeks before working up the nerve to tell them what she wanted. They were always enthusiastic, which just made her feel silly for being so bashful. Of course, some of them were confused by her request, thinking she wanted it in the ass.

Dan thought that.

Of course—

Well, she hadn’t made the connection until now.

It made her giggle.

This is just insane, she thought.

Here she was, surrounded by madness, and she was giggling … and sort of lightly masturbating.

What’s wrong with this picture?

She knew she ought to be getting up, putting her clothes on, making preparations to get out of this place. No sane person, knowing what she knew, would hesitate. Somewhere on the floor was a tangle of clothes. She envisioned getting off the bed, sorting through them, and going out to look for Alicia and Karen. Her friends were somewhere in this house. She had to warn them.

She didn’t move.

The thought came again: What’s wrong with me?

Had she been drugged? She didn’t have any of the familiar symptoms, and she knew them pretty damn well from her time in the hospital and the institution. That spaced-out, numb feeling wasn’t in evidence. Dissociation, they called it. No, this was nothing like that. She had never been more in touch with her senses and her feelings. In fact, she seemed hypersensitive. The hand at her sex felt like a warm, vibrating glove.

Hmm … some weird libido drug?

She jerked her hand away when she heard the sound of a doorknob turning. Dream’s head lolled to the left, and she saw Ms. Wickman enter bearing a tray. She set the tray on a folding stand next to the bed, folded her arms beneath her breasts, and said, “The Master wanted me to tell you he’ll be along shortly. He has some business to attend to.” Her gaze traveled the length of Dream’s exposed body before she added, “There’s a robe for you in the closet, should you find yourself feeling … modest.”

She turned and exited the room before Dream could formulate an appropriate reply or inquire after her friends. The door clicked shut, and she was alone again. She perched herself on an elbow and examined the contents of the tray. A porcelain cup brimmed with steaming coffee, and there was a little plate with a cute arrangement of chocolate truffles. Dream’s stomach growled, and she realized how much time had passed since she’d eaten-not so much as a bite had passed through her lips since discovering Dan in flagrante delicto.

She scooted to the edge of the bed, picked up a truffle, and nibbled. Crumbs tumbled from her mouth to the mattress. She brushed the crumbs off, got out of bed-finally!-and went to the closet. The large space was filled with expensive, tailored suits, things a modern bigwig would wear with pride, but there was a curious assortment of clothes from other eras. She saw vests, shirts with ruffles, Edwardian jackets, and tweed coats with arm patches. There was a shelf for hats. There were fedoras, bowlers, top hats, and a leather cowboy hat with a braided band around it. Some of it looked like stuff that belonged in the Smithsonian or some other museum. She wondered how long it had been since he’d worn some of these things. Why would he keep such old clothes?

Could a thing like King feel sentiment?

Dream pulled a terry-cloth robe from a hanger and slipped it on, shuddering at the way it felt on her skin. Her conviction that something was enhancing her senses grew a little stronger. She drew the sash tight across her waist, cinched it, and returned to the room. She picked up the tray and carefully carried it out onto the balcony. She set the tray on a table and moved to the edge of the balcony, where she gripped the railing with both hands.

Her voice was a breathy whisper. “Oh … my. …”

The view was spectacular. She had a greater appreciation now for the distance she and her friends had traveled the night before. And she must have been too tired to have a real sense of the size of King’s house, which appeared to be perched atop some high point, perhaps at the very peak of a tall mountain. It hadn’t seemed that way on their approach last night, but she was beyond questioning these inversions of reality. The rear of the house stretched for what seemed like a mile in either direction. Dozens of gabled windows overlooked the same breathtaking panorama of mountains and greenery. She saw a lowlying cloud roll lethargically through the slash of land below.

It was gorgeous.

Heartbreakingly so.

She felt weak in the knees, so she made herself go to the table and sit down. She settled into the wicker chair, picked up the still-warm cup of coffee, and sipped from it. Delicious, as she’d somehow known it would be. She set the cup down, reclined in the chair, and stared in rapt awe at the scenery.