Standing on him.

He wants to be far, far away from this s.a.d.i.s.tic b.i.t.c.h, 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.

147.

Except that he knows it now. Words swollen with madness emerge from his mouth. Repet.i.tive and rhythmic, blocks of strange verbiage form like pa.s.sages 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 148.

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. h.e.l.l, it's a f.u.c.king 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 o.r.g.a.s.mic 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 149.

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sing 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.

150.

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 b.i.t.c.h again. Images from the dream a.s.sailed him, disjointed now, but still all too vivid.

The rational side of his mind began its inevitable a.s.sault 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 f.u.c.ked, 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 151.

witnessed had been and had no interest whatsoever in finding out. He knew it was some f.u.c.ked-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 acc.u.mulated 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 a.s.s!

So Eddie moved his a.s.s.

He went to the bedroom door, gripped the doork.n.o.b, 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?

d.a.m.n her black magic-practicing a.s.s.

152.

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, s.h.i.t."

A closer examination revealed the window to be as effectively sealed as the door, but, hey, he could deal with this. Gla.s.s 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 m.u.f.fled 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. "f.u.c.k 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 pa.s.sages.

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 153.

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 pa.s.sed 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.

154.

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 wanderl.u.s.t 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 155.

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 pa.s.sions 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 sh.e.l.l. 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 a.s.sume it 156.

would just happen. The G.o.ds required a constant level of appeas.e.m.e.nt 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 G.o.ds 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 157.

receding hairline. The creature in the chair no longer looked like the benign older gentleman it usually pretended to be when greeting new arrivals.