The Associated Risks of Dreams
Nuit sallied her way into her darkened chamber but for a moment her step faltered to find the room alight with flickering screens. She passed stony faces, eyes all looking towards her empty chair. Of course, they could not yet see her, but as soon as she took her seat, they would. She pulled her hair tight behind her skull into a knot and then gracefully slipped into her seat. She imagined at once, their eyes collectively boring into her as her dark screen sprang to life in each of their chambers.
Silence reigned, taught with smoldering anger.
One of the portraits finally addressed her. ‘We have already assembled a contingent of Reapers to assist—‘
‘I don’t need your help,’ she spat, her voice cracking across his words like a whip. Her lips curled in a snarl, bearing ivory fangs. ‘What I need is a general proclamation, barring assistance of the boy, by punishment of death. If it hadn’t been for a rebellious few, he would have been expunged—’
The man who had spoken first bristled and his eyes crackled with white energy. ‘You chased him across half the city without success. And he was alone. Humans witnessed the chase. Your people were reckless. Two of them died. We all felt their tethers snap.’
A woman framed by golden light, honey hair draped like a mane down her tan shoulders, interjected here. ‘You’ve lost control of the situation, Nuit. It’s time to roll out the big guns. The Reapers will be there by tomorrow.’ The finality of her tone was definite.
Nuit’s hands gripped the edge of table until her knuckles whitened. ‘I don’t need—’
The woman’s screen blazed with blinding, angry light, and all the portraits grew brighter for several long seconds. Nuit bowed her head in submission and the light faded to normalcy. One after another, the screens switched off until she was returned to her darkness.
When Elliot woke, he slipped out from underneath the arm draped around him and left Justin slumbering. He dressed and headed down to the small factory kitchen, tucked away in what had once been a break room. Byron was reclined in a dilapidated armchair, a steaming cup of coffee perched atop a storage crate by his side.
‘Do you ever sleep?’ Elliot asked as he spotted the patriarch.
He slipped a bookmark between the pages of the volume he’d been reading. ‘Not frequently, and never for long enough.’
Elliot set about throwing together a meal from the few scraps left to be found in the cupboards.
‘Are you alright?’ Byron inquired.
‘Hmm?’ Elliot rummaged through pots, pretending he’d been making too much noise to hear properly, buying time.
‘You had quite a night last night. Are you alright this morning?’
He shrugged, held his silence, faced the stove. Byron didn’t press him further for the time being. He braced his arms against the stovetop. ‘Do you want me to leave?’
‘Justin wouldn’t like that.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
Silence. Byron shifted his weight in the chair and it groaned in protest. ‘It’s true that your presence causes a certain danger to my family. But the damage may already have been done. We brought you in. That may be enough in some eyes to warrant our… erasure.’
‘You don’t think that if I left, their attention might move away from you?’
Byron grunted. ‘I think that Vampires don’t let things go very easily. We’ve developed a highly punitive form of Justice and it’s served to protect both us and normal p—and humans, for a long time.’
‘Do you think I’m going to die?’
‘We’re all going to die, kid. Being a Vampire doesn’t change that.’
‘But do you—‘
‘We all have our time, Elliot. When he calls, we can’t help but answer.’
Justin turned in time to see Byron touch something at his chest. He’d never seen it before, but now he noticed a string of beads around his neck. A rosary? ‘He? You believe in God?’
The Man’s head bowed gently. ‘I do.’
‘But wh—‘
‘Don’t question a man’s faith, boy. It’ll get you shot. And as much trouble as you’ve caused, I’ve kind of grown attached to you. Don’t want to have to shoot you.’
‘You already did, remember?’
‘Yeah. Sorry. I don’t really have a good excuse for that.’
For a second, Elliot almost grinned, before he remembered what it had felt like to have a bullet drive through his chest. After a while he asked, ‘How did you get all… Vampirised?’
Byron chuckled, lowered the mug to his lap. ‘It was my fault really. I was trained as a medical assistant. When the war broke out, I worked as a battlefield medic for the Yankees. We were pushing forwards in Carolina, and we’d been ordered to go in after dark and find any survivors on the field. Not the doctors of course, just the black help. Anyway, I came across a man at the edge of the woods. He’d been hit badly by grape-shot, but somehow he was still alive. I started trying to triage him, and then his hand found mine and held fast. He looked at me with eyes, so burning with life though his was fast slipping. His lips were so red and he told me he had a gift for me. He pulled my head to his and kissed me, but his mouth was full of blood. I resisted at first, but he pushed it into my mouth and died. I never found out what he was doing there, or how he’d survived the day. But he’d been holding on for hours I think, waiting for someone to pass it on to. I went into convulsions, and by the time the other medics found me, I was on my own with a pile of ash. And I was a Vampire. I stayed in the canvas surgeon tent for days afterwards, drinking from dead bodies, from the bucket under the surgeon’s table, disgusted with myself. But I wasn’t about to drink from a living person. I think it was doing that, that saved me. One night a group of strangers found me. They’d tracked me every time I drank and connected to Duat and decided I hadn’t broken any of their laws. I’d transitioned well. Also, when they stabbed me, I healed faster than they could cut.’
Elliot was staring at him, wide-eyed. ‘He kissed you?’ he asked, finally.
Byron nodded. Something started to burn on the stove behind him and Elliot turned back to it quickly, turning off the burner. He took a plate and hopped up on the linoleum counter, pulling open a drawer between his legs in search of utensils.
He tried to sound casual as he spoke again, talking between mouthfuls. ‘Who’s Mahan?’
Byron set aside his coffee once more. ‘Master Mahan?’
Elliot shrugged.
‘Depends who you ask.’
‘I’m asking you.’
A grunt. A pause. ‘In the bible, at least according to the Church of Latter Day Saints, he’s a man who made a deal with the devil—no,’ he corrected himself, ‘with The Beast. But in the Duatal… he’s a myth. A legend. An ancient Vampire who pops up again and again throughout time, only to vanish once more without a trace.’
‘Do you think he’s real?’
The man shrugged. ‘I think the myth is real. He’s attributed with varying Beruf’s each time he appears.’
‘Maybe he’s a Mimic like me.’
‘Maybe. But the Houses would have hunted him down long ago. More likely, they are different Vampires. He’s given many names in many texts.’ Byron cocked his head at the boy. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘At the club, someone told me he was looking for me.’
Deadpan silence.
They both looked up as Tess wandered into the kitchen, pink, fluffy, rabbit slippers on her feet. She looked at them. ‘Go to bed you two.’
‘I just got up!’ they declared in defensive unison.
Her eyes fell on Byron. ‘Liar.’ He chuckled. She turned her back to Elliot as she moved to the fridge. ‘As for you,’ she ducked her head inside and her voice echoed out of the chill glow. ‘Give me warning, or knock me out first, next time you and Justin do that.’
‘What?!’ Elliot almost chocked on his food.
Her hand waved at him while she scoured the fridge for something. ‘Empath. Remember? I feel what people near me feel.’
He felt blood rushing to his face, but she wasn’t done yet. She emerged clutching a yoghurt pot and bumped the door closed with her hip. ‘And now I know more about you both than I ever wanted to, and I feel really, really dirty.’ She ripped off the foil lid and found a spoon in another drawer. She sighed, then added almost in exasperation, ‘Yes, you are very good in bed.’
Byron snorted into his coffee mug and Elliot protested. ‘I wasn’t—‘
‘Yes you were.’
Elliot’s blush redoubled.
Tess wandered out of the room again, yoghurt in hand, her voice ringing back to them. ‘Also, Byron, explain to him about bodies burning. He keeps thinking about it but not asking, and it’s pissing me off.’
Elliot’s Jaw fell and he stuttered, ‘I—‘
Byron snickered at him. ‘She’s an adorably creepy little girl, isn’t she?’ He knocked back the dregs of his mug. ‘I’m not going to ask what she meant by plural bodies, but when some Vampires die, their bodies burn. Think about the virus as stopping time’s effect on your body. When the virus dies, or stops to do its work, time catches up with you. Fast. Time takes its toll for all the years you’ve held at bay—aging, decay, the remains turning to dust. Only the older Vampires combust like they’re burning. So if you died, you’d still leave a corpse looking just as you do now.’
Elliot swallowed. ‘Uh, thanks. That was… morbidly reassuring. I guess.’
As Elliot was finishing his meal, miles away, twelve sleek, black Prius’ sat running, silent engines barely stirring the air, deep within a hangar at the Los Angeles International airport. Lined up perfectly, tinted windows hiding their drivers. The hangar bay doors whirred to life. A crack of light split down the middle of the metal sheets, growing as the doors slid apart. One after another, twelve private, windowless jets rolled into the bay and parked, wingtips almost touching. A silent ballet of steel behemoths. The doors clanked again as they reversed the movement just preformed, sealing with a metallic thud and plunging the hangar once more into darkness. Fluorescent lights flickered on above and each of the jets lowered open their doors. Twelve figures, all dressed in imposing black, descended the folding steps. They took a moment to acknowledge one another’s presence, some casting glances of barely disguised surprise at the child-like stature of the final arrival, before each boarded one of the waiting cars. The doors slammed in a chorus and a door at the other end of the hangar wound upwards. The cars sped out onto the tarmac in a train, gleaming like a procession of black beetles in the sunlight.
Elliot left Byron to his book, cleaning his dishes and setting them by the sink—probably the first time any one had done so in many years. He slipped into the room he and Justin shared, careful not to wake him, and took the thick tome he’d carried away from Cassandra’s abode. He made the trek through the factory, up to the tower at the crown of the structure. He pushed open the trapdoor and squinted into the bright sunlight that streamed in through all four sides of empty windowpanes. He settled into a corner, confident he wouldn’t be disturbed for a long time. He spread the pages and his eyes fell on the hieroglyphs. He looked hard with eyes that once would only have seen gibberish. Now, comprehension seemed to flow off the page and into his mind. It was as if slowly, ever so slowly, the runes were melting away into English.
The text was far from an official catalogue as he and Justin and first suspected. More of a collection of personal research and interest. Most of the entries spoke of rumors and myths associated with the names written. Some even had additions in different ink confirming someone as deceased or directing him to another name within the parchment pages, and even correcting dates to match modern calendars. The creator had clearly spent a great deal of time and effort to amass the information, codify it, and then bind it by hand into the thin volume.
The sun was heating the concrete slowly, warming it underneath and around him. It was a perfect day, clear blue skies, even the smog seemed to have lifted temporarily. He let his head rest against the corner as he turned slowly through the pages, eyes drooping ever so slightly.
He scanned the page and a name popped out at him from the others.
Elliot skipped forward several names, looking for one in particular. And there it was, half way down the page.
He flipped through quickly, looking for the other members of their small family. But either they hadn’t been deemed important enough to make it into the catalogue, or the creator had stopped making additions. But then another name occurred to him. Mahan. He found the ‘M’s easily, but the name was missing. The ‘M’s carried simply from Maahes to Maketh. He looked closer, then ran a finger down the inner binding. A page had been carefully cut out, leaving only a sliver of parchment behind. He lifted the book by its spine and shook it gently, but nothing fell out. Wherever the missing page was, it no longer accompanied its siblings. He laid the book on his lap, folding his hands over it and leaned his head back. A light breeze teased his hair, coming in through the glass-less windows. His eyes began to droop again. He’d hardly slept after he and Justin had… had… what had they done? It wasn’t sex. But it was… something. Something personal and involved. He could do with a good nap, and it was so nice to be out in the sun again.
He slipped gently into slumber and the dream swelled up around him. But something was very wrong about it. Shrieking wind buffeted him about, bending the wheat stalks low to the ground. The sky was a roiling mass of black clouds and flashing lightning. The brothers continued their macabre routine unperturbed, but Elliot had to shield his watering eyes from the sharp wind. He turned his head, shielding his face, and something caught his eye. He and the brothers stood within the eye of a raging storm.
Outside of their small ring though, the world was a torrent of rain and wind, flashes of light slicing through the churning darkness. Figures moved in the storm, fighting a battle against the elements. He counted twelve of them in total. Their bodies wrestled with the storm, struggling to reach the centre. Every time one of them drew close to the relative calm of their circle, the storm rose to a new intensity and forced them back.
Then the world was shaking and he was dragged from the dream, down into the arms of Justin and Byron.
Shelly woke in his bed, looking up at the tumultuous scene that billowed across his ceiling. The incense sticks at his bedside were burning low and had filled the room with their silky grey coils. At first he thought he must have dreamed and created the tempestuous scene as he slept. Then he saw Elliot’s face in the silvery haze, the two men, and then the twelve figures. He swept his hand through the smoke, trying to dispel the image. It broke only to reform as his hand passed through. The figure of Elliot staggered as if assaulted by some force, and then Shelly ran. He crashed into Justin’s room, startling him awake.
‘Where’s Elliot?’ He shouted. The smoky wind was still rushing in his ears.
Justin looked groggily at the empty space beside him in bed, and then frantically around the room. He pulled on sweatpants in a rush and ran barefoot from the chamber. The cat walks rattled under their steps as they ran about looking for the missing boy. Byron stuck his head out of his study, disturbed by the commotion.
‘What’s going on?’
Justin gasped breathlessly, ‘Elliot’s missing. We can’t find him.’
Byron’s eyes simmered. He’d been deep within his novel. ‘I just saw him a few hours ago. He’s around here somewh—‘
They all fell silent as a groan of metal carried down from the upper reaches of the factory. As one, they looked to each other, and then sprinted to the stairwell leading up. The noise of twisting metal grew louder the higher they ran, taking the steps several at a time until they reached the trap door. They looked up at the steel hatch and at one another. They could go no further. Open the trap door and daylight would flood down on them, scorching their skin. Justin threw himself up the ladder and pounded with his fist on the metal. It offered dull thuds, but they were almost drowned out by a screech of tearing steel. He shouted the boy’s name, and then threw open the hatch.
Instantly, daylight cascaded over him and his skin started to smolder. Wind howled up in the tower, and with a final gust, the metal roof tore clean off, ripping away the little shade it offered. He reached out with an arm and grasped Elliot’s leg, dragging him to the edge, and then down, into Byron’s arms. He fell from the ladder onto the dusty concrete, his skin cracking and blistered, seared by the sunlight. He rolled, gritting his teeth against the pain and clutching the arm that had rescued Elliot. The skin was nearly black and oozed blood. Several stories below, the metal structure crashed the ground, shaking the foundations of the building, rattling a number of windowpanes loose and waking the rest of their small family.
Justin writhed, cradling his blackened limb. Byron and Shelly rushed to him, pinning him down. The Patriarch bit into his wrist and held the withered limb, letting his blood flow over the cracked skin. Justin screamed, drawing the others to the tower in a rush. As they reached the upper landing, Elliot’s body gave a sudden lurch, and his back arched off the ground. His lungs took in great gulps of air, then he sank back down and his body underwent a series of convulsions. But when they ceased, he was finally breathing again.
‘What happened?’ Alyssa asked, hurrying to her brother’s side.
Byron answered her, though his focus was on directing the flow of blood from his wrist. ‘You brother stupidly pulled Elliot out of the tower in the sunlight.’
‘But why? And what was the crash?’ She asked.
Justin gritted his teeth and managed to sputter. ‘It was like the tunnel all over again, after Cassandra. But worse. I think it ripped the tower off the building.’
Shelly took that moment to tell them all about the scene he’d woken to. Justin paled as he explained the storm and the twelve figures on the periphery, but it could just as well have been from the pain in his arm than anything else. Then Shelly mentioned the twelve figures in the storm. He paused before adding, ‘One of them was Babi. Nuit’s right-hand man. I’m sure of it.’ Byron sucked his teeth at the mention of the two names.
Once Justin’s flesh had finished reweaving itself, Byron and Shelly worked together to carry Elliot’s dead-weight body down into his room. They lay him out on the bed and left, leaving the door ajar. They headed to Byron’s study where the rest of the family was already gathering. No one said anything as the two entered, or as Byron crossed the room to his bookshelf, fingered the spines, selected a volume and leafed through. He stopped on a page and set the book down on the desk before Shelly, sliding it across to him.
Shelly reached forwards and pulled the book closer, examining the woodprint picture set opposite a text. He looked at the two men who struggled in the image, animal jawbones clutched in their hands. Wheat stalks were crushed to the ground around them and a raven circled above. The inscription below read simply “Cain slays his brother Able.” Shelly nodded. ‘That’s pretty close to what I saw. But there was much more going on in it.’
Byron settled into his chair and rubbed his jowls. ‘I’m sorry Justin, but I think we need to talk about Elliot. After last night especially.’
There were a few murmurs of assent, but when Justin scanned his eyes around the room, he couldn’t tell from whom. ‘Look it’s not his fault! He’s not making these things happen—’
‘No-one’s saying he is, Justin.’ Byron tried to pacify him. ‘But things are happening, and you can’t deny that he’s created a lot of risk for us—’
‘We knew that though!’ Justin shouted this time. Clearly Byron’s attempts weren’t working. ‘We knew there was risk when we voted. We chose to keep him with us and to help him—you can’t turn on him now, just because things have gotten a little scarier and harder than you thought!’
Byron looked at his lap, avoiding Justin’s bristling glare. ‘Things have changed now Justin. It’s bad enough that there are Reapers involved—but twelve of them? Don’t you realize what this means? It means every faction has sent someone. As long as it was just Nuit, there was hope that we could escape to someone else’s territory and find shelter. But now that’s out. For whatever reason, all of them, very much want to see Elliot dead.’
When Elliot came-to, he was alone in the room. He’d always found that phrase confusing, he realized as he looked around at his new surroundings. Where had he come from? And where was the ‘to’ he had arrived at? It was altogether a decidedly ambiguous saying and he decided then that he didn’t like it. He lay there for a long time, trying to figure out how he’d gotten from the tower to his present location. The bed still held the distinct smell of both him and Justin. He turned his head. The notebook was on the bedside table, closed, waiting. The sun outside was setting, bringing greater murkiness to the factory as even less light filtered through the caked windows.
He listened for noise from the rooms around him. Nothing at first but wind blowing through rusted metal and cracked glass. An echo of a voice carried suddenly through the still air. It was Justin. He was almost shouting at someone, somewhere in the factory. Elliot closed his eyes and strained to hear. He filtered out the small noises of creaking metal, and before long, he could make out other voices. They sounded like they were coming from down the hall—maybe Byron’s study? He couldn’t think of many other places they would all gather.
‘He doesn’t know what’s going on,’ Justin was still yelling. ‘He hardly knows how we work! He won’t last a day without us.’
Someone else cut in—maybe Arkell—‘it’s not like he had to feed. Danielle taught him how to block out Duat. He could probably—’
‘No he couldn’t!’ Justin snapped. For some reason Elliot imagined him rubbing his forearm gingerly. ‘That’s what I’m trying to say. He didn’t know about Dampers last night. I had to explain them to him. And do you remember how this all started? He left his blood at Cassandra’s. He didn’t know to clean it up.’
A gruff grunt. Most likely from Byron.
Justin continued. ‘He knows only what the Duatal says about our kind, our government, our culture, and’ he gave a hollow bark of laughter, ‘let’s face it, that’s hardly a reliable, unbiased source for information. Our sub-culture is alien to him and now—‘ He took a breath. ‘Now, not only are there Reapers after him, but we took him to that damn club. We exposed him to everyone else now. We put him on the fucking market and now you want to just cut him loose?’
Someone else spoke softly and he had to really strain to hear their delicate voice. It was Tess. ‘He’s right. If the Reapers don’t get him, someone else will. And they will want to keep him alive, even if death would be kinder. We’re responsible for him now.’
Elliot’s mind raced. Reapers? What were reapers? He tried to remember if he’d read anything about them in the Duatal or even in the small notebook. He didn’t think he had.
There was a drawn-out silence, which Alyssa finally interrupted. ‘Oh don’t you dare try to pit me against my brother. Not on this.’
“What?’ Byron’s throaty voice.
Evidently the question was not to Alyssa though, because Shelly, who until then had been quiet, answered. He must have mumbled something too soft for Elliot to hear.
‘I’ve just been thinking about the vision. There was something else going on in it. The Reapers were trying to reach Elliot—but if they caused it, why make the storm? And he was being battered by it almost as badly. If it were Elliot’s storm, he would have been the eye. But he wasn’t.’
Elliot’s mind reeled and he felt his stomach plunge like the floor had dropped out beneath him. His dream came back to him in a rush. But how did Shelly know so much about it? Who were the people in the storm—these… reapers?
‘Someone else was creating his dream,’ Shelly finished. Then, as if adding an afterthought, he said, ‘It felt like that first night… when we took him from his home. I thought someone else was in the room, but maybe—maybe they were just in the dream. Making it.’
The family was clearly uncertain as to the implications of this as none of them spoke for a long time. Then Byron murmured something. Elliot could almost feel the others look to him as he repeated it louder.
‘Mahan.’ He paused, probably stroking his chin or rubbing his cheek in the way he so often did. ‘When I spoke to him this morning, Elliot said someone at the bar last night told him that Mahan was looking for him. What if… What if whoever Mahan is, doesn’t know where he is, but can connect to him somehow through Duat. If Elliot was asleep, his defenses would have been down… a connection would be easier to make…’
Far away from the factory, a stream of images flashed across a wall of massive tinted-glass windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. The flashing projected images mixed with the little light that came through the black glass to provide the only illumination in the otherwise pitch chamber. A lone man stood before the panes, observing the lightning storm of moving pictures. He turned suddenly away from the glass, his face falling into the darkness and framing him with a glowing corona as he addressed the rest of the room.
‘Suit up. We’re out of time. They’re moving for him now.’
The darkness around and before him erupted in a flurry of movement as people, previously still as statues in the dark, sprang to life and into action.
Something touched on Elliot’s focus. Something outside the factory. A crunch of tires, but not sounds of engines. The chain on the front gate rattled, then clinked softly on pavement. He willed a flash of connection to Duat and the walls fell away and the lines tried to rise up out of the mist. He saw twelve figures approach the gates. They looked up at the factory—almost to the window of his room. He severed the connection again quickly and sat up. His legs swung over the side of the bed and he stuffed the notebook inside his shirt, tucking into his pants, and left the room in a hurry.
Byron started in his seat as a tiny red light on his desk ignited, the red LED flashing on and off. His eyes shot to Arkell.
‘That’s the perimeter alert. Someone’s inside the walls.’ The boy noted.
They leapt to their feet and turned to the door to find Elliot looking at them from the catwalk.
‘Elliot!’ Byron exclaimed. ‘There’s someone—’
He nodded once. ‘I know.’ But he didn’t move out of their way. In fact, he looked to Justin and said steadily, ‘I’m sorry.’
Justin sprang towards him and Elliot grabbed the door handle, swinging it closed against them. His foot kicked out and snapped fee a section of the rusted metal rail. He caught it deftly and jammed it against the door knob, preventing it from being opened.
He ignored their clamor and banging on the door and made his way down to the first level. He paused to take a breath only at the door, and then pushed it open. They were only half-way across the factory grounds, moving in a steady line. They froze when they saw him. He stepped out and heard the door close and click locked behind him.
Byron ran from the door to the corner of his room. He shoved aside boxes and books to reveal a tiny security monitor. He rushed with it to the desk and roughly shoved the plug into the socket, making it spark. ‘Arkell,’ he called out to the boy. ‘Are those security cameras still up on the building?’
He nodded and then jumped forwards in understanding. He ripped the back off the monitor and stuck his fingers inside, working them in between the wiring. The static on the screen cleared and resolved into a view of the front yard from somewhere above. They watched as Elliot stepped into view, facing the twelve figures. By now they were all focused on the small glass screen. Justin held his arm and his breath simultaneously.
‘Run, Elliot,’ Tess whispered. ‘Do something.’
Elliot stood stock still, hands at his sides, the wreckage of the tower several yards away, just visible on the edge of the screen.
One of the twelve raised his hand to shoulder height. He grasped something invisible with his hand and squeezed.
Elliot crumpled.
Justin screamed a denial and ran at the door. His tattoos swirled to his front as he crashed into the door and it split open. He kicked aside the half with the hinges and rushed down the catwalk, almost falling twice on the steps as the others sprinted after him. He burst out the door into the grounds and slowed, finally coming to a halt. He heard the door swing open several times behind him as the others emerged into the deepening twilight and slowed their paces.
Of Elliot’s body and the twelve, there was no sign at all.