The Key

65

Liv jerked forward in bed, the shrill shriek of the nightmare still echoing in her ears.

The hotel room was a mess — the chair tipped on its side, bedclothes twisted from the bed, and pages of torn paper drifting over everything. She wondered whether she was still dreaming and this was part of a layered nightmare she would have to escape bit by bit. She drew her knees up to her chin, waiting for what terror might unfold next, but no one knocked on the door, the temperature in the room stayed normal, and no dragons appeared in the middle of strange desert vistas. What she was looking at was real, and all the more disturbing because of it.

She tried to rationalize what might have happened: either someone had broken into her room and done this while she slept, or she had done it herself in some kind of dreaming fit. Neither explanation gave her much comfort. Her laptop was folded shut on the side where she had left it. Surely an intruder would have taken it? The only sensible conclusion was that she had done it herself, or whatever entity she now carried inside her had done it while her conscious self slept.

She scooped up a handful of paper from the bed. They were pages of scripture, ripped from the Gideon Bible. The cover lay on the floor by the bed. She picked it up and it flopped open in her hand like a dead thing. There was one page remaining, from the Book of Revelation, and it had clearly not been spared by accident. Most of the text on the page had been crossed out by a jagged, angry hand, but there was one section left:… and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a child, who was to rule all nations…

She stared at the words, the shrill sound of the dragon’s cry still splitting her head.

A loud rap on the door made her jump.

‘Make your way to the stairs, please, quickly now.’

The man moved away down the corridor, banging on every door and repeating his order as he went. The wailing sound was not the continued roar of the demon in her dream, but a fire alarm.

She quickly pulled on the clothes she’d laid out and grabbed her bag.

The siren was louder outside in the hallway and she clamped her hands over her ears as she headed towards the stairwell. She wondered at the coincidence of the verses from Revelation describing her nightmare so exactly. Maybe she’d read it before falling asleep and planted the seeds of those images in her mind.

She reached the fire door and pushed her way through, wondering if Gabriel had managed to sort out her passage to Ruin yet. She couldn’t believe she was actually looking forward to going back. Seeing him again had rekindled something inside her; something connected to him.

She was so distracted by these thoughts that she didn’t hear the swish of the door opening behind her, or catch the sharp whiff of chloroform until the towel was already clamped on her face and held there by a hand as big as her head.

She tried to scream but the siren and the towel drowned it out. She tried to pull the huge hand away, but her arms were already wilting as the drug took hold. The last thing she remembered before the darkness rose to swamp her entirely was a sudden rush of fear as she noticed the image of a cross tattooed on the forearm of the man who held her.