The Nightmare Affair (30 page)

The loud rattle of the door behind us shut everybody up for a moment. Culpepper and his hellhound would be breaking through any second.

Eli turned and started walking.

I didn’t know what to do. Paul did seem to know his way around the tunnels, but I couldn’t deny the strong pull I felt to go the opposite way. It wasn’t just déjà vu. It was more like gravity. And I realized I couldn’t walk away.

I glanced at Paul. “I’m sorry, but we’re going this way.”

He looked upset, but there was no time to worry about it. I turned and jogged down the tunnel beside Eli. The sense of being pulled grew stronger the farther we went, almost to the point that I felt as if I was riding one of those moving walkways they have at airports.

We traveled a long time before reaching a midget-sized door on the right side of the tunnel. It was so small and inconspicuously made, I didn’t think we would’ve seen it if it weren’t already open.

We came to a stop. There wasn’t a doorknob, just a tiny keyhole with a small key sticking out from it. A moonwort key.

“Are we going in there?” asked Selene.

“Yes,” said Eli. “We have to.”

He was right. It wasn’t just mere coincidence that had brought us here, but something more.
Dream-seer,
I thought. Was this what it truly meant to be one, that things happened by fate instead of chance?

Even though a part of me didn’t want to see what was beyond that door, there was no turning back. But nothing in the world could’ve prepared me for what happened on the other side.

23

The Keepers

Just like in Eli’s dream, the other side of the door revealed a cramped tunnel leading steeply downward. It twisted and coiled like a snake as we walked along it, moving slower now than before. Eli had removed the moonwort key and shut the door behind us, giving us another layer of safety from Culpepper and George the hellhound.

Within moments, we heard the sounds of a struggle somewhere ahead. Somebody was fighting, casting combative spells and curses the same you’d hear in gym class or the gladiator games. What wasn’t the same were the loud bangs and vibrations of unrestrained magic crashing into stone. My heart thudded against my rib cage as we picked up the pace. There was a loud
boom
followed by silence.

At last, the tunnel led us to a chamber, the same chamber from Eli’s dream with the tomb sitting at its center on a raised platform. Not everything was the same as the dream, but close. Everlasting Fire burned in the sconces, bathing the chamber in an eerie purple light, but centuries of dirt covered the tomb, obscuring the crystal and engravings. And also like the dream, Bethany Grey was there.

So was my mother.

I stopped, shocked by the scene before me. Bethany was lying beside the tomb with her belly against the ground and her arms and legs bent backward behind her, wrists and ankles tied together with silvery rope made of magic. It looked as if my mother had used the binding curse on her. Bethany was whimpering as blood flowed from what remained of the ring finger of her right hand.

Above Bethany, my mother had pushed the lid off the tomb and climbed inside. She now sat crouched in a position I knew all too well—a Nightmare feeding.
What the—?

Eli sprinted into the chamber toward Bethany, outdistancing the rest of us. He knelt beside her and grabbed at the silver rope.

“Don’t!” I shouted, but it was too late. There was a sizzling sound like water striking hot grease, and Eli jerked his hand away, swearing. Blisters popped up on his skin where he’d touched the rope.

Selene cast the counter-spell, and the ropes fell away. Bethany let out a groan as her limbs returned to normal position. Selene bent down and helped her sit up while Eli ripped off a piece of his shirt and wrapped it around the bleeding stump where her ring finger used to be.

“What happened?” Eli said.

Bethany took a shuddering breath. “Moira found out I’m the third Keeper and attacked me. She took the ring to open the tomb.”

I wondered how Bethany could be the third Keeper and still be alive, but I didn’t get a chance to ask.

“You’ve got to go after her, Dusty,” Bethany said.

“What?”

“Your mother. She’s going for the sword. You need to stop her.”

“Where is it?” I glanced up at the tomb, not understanding. There was no doubt my mother was dream-feeding, but I didn’t see how that was possible. It was a tomb for goodness sake, a place for dead people. And dead people didn’t dream.

I stood and walked to the side of the tomb, taking note of the three Keeper rings that had been placed inside those small round holes that Bethany had said were locks. The one on the left I recognized as Rosemary’s. The one on the right I guessed had been Ankil’s. The one in the middle was smeared with Bethany’s blood.

I peered over the side of the tomb, unsure what to expect as dread pounded inside my skull. It couldn’t be the Red Warlock’s tomb, not if that one was supposed to be in Britain. A woman lay inside it, and from the looks of her she was far from dead. She appeared not much older than my mother, although it was hard to say for sure. There was something ageless about her face. Her body seemed frail like an elderly person’s, but no wrinkles or age spots marred her skin. Yet, she had to be old. Even magickind didn’t wear dresses like that anymore. She looked like a medieval princess, Sleeping Beauty waiting for her prince.

Then it dawned on me how familiar her face was. It was
my
face, only different, like an intentional variation. I glanced at my mother, perched above the woman. It was Moira’s face, too. The same nose and mouth, same tilt to the eyes.

Then I understood. This woman was my ancestor. “This is—”

“Nimue,” Bethany said from behind me. “She’s the fourth Keeper. The sword is hidden somewhere inside her dream. You’ve got to find it.”

I turned to look at Bethany, shivering with fear. She wanted me to go in
there
? Face my mother inside a
dream
? “Why can’t you go after her?”

“I won’t stand a chance against her right now. But you might. You’re her daughter. She won’t hurt you.”

I shook my head.

“You’ve got to go now. If she gets the sword first, there’ll be no stopping her.”

I couldn’t believe it; I didn’t want to believe it—my mother, a villain. Then I remembered the horrible sound of Mr. Ankil’s screams as he burned to death. Only someone truly evil could’ve done something like that.

People are capable of anything,
I heard Paul say. I glanced at him now, standing a few feet from the tomb and watching me with anxious eyes, waiting for me to play the hero and save the day. But I couldn’t do it. Not me. Not against her.

In the end, it was the gruesome sight of Bethany’s severed finger that swayed me. Here was physical proof of the lengths my mother would go to. Gritting my teeth, I climbed into the tomb and positioned my body around Nimue’s legs. Then I glanced at my friends, watching me from below.

“Go get help,” I said. I wanted to say something brave, like
Don’t worry
or
I’ll be fine,
but lying didn’t seem like a good idea at the moment. I closed my eyes, pressed my hands against Nimue’s leg, and entered the dream.

It was unlike any I’d been in before. The scene was as solid and realistic as any of Eli’s, but everything was washed out, like a photograph faded over time. I was standing in the middle of a vast field of tall grass. The stalks around me were wilted as if from a rainless summer under a hot sun. They brushed against my legs and arms, stirred by a faint breeze. I winced as welts rose on my skin where they touched me despite my clothes. I tried to jump up and fly above the grass, but something held me in place.

Yes, this was definitely unlike any dream I’d been in before. No bending the laws of physics, it seemed. I wasn’t a god in here. I was just me. A teenage girl as scared and helpless as a rat in a maze.

Go back, Dusty,
a voice whispered in my mind.
Don’t do this. You’re too weak.
The worst part was I knew I
could
go back. Slipping out would be as easy as taking a breath. All my instincts were screaming at me to leave.

Ignoring the urge, I stayed put and looked around, wondering what to do next. There was no sign of Nimue. The sword could be anywhere. As far as I knew this dream world could go on forever, as endless as outer space.

A few feet in front of me, I saw a patch of crumpled grass and guessed it was the place where my mother had arrived. A clear trail extended out from it, heading toward the sun sinking behind a forest in the distance. Bracing myself for pain, I leaped toward the crumpled grass. Now instead of leaving welts, the stalks sliced into me like razors. I screamed, then immediately wished I hadn’t as something else screamed back in answer. Something not human.

A flock of birds alighted into the sky from the forest and soared toward me. The screams became screeches as they drew closer. Only they weren’t birds, but
bats
. Ones with fat-cheeked human faces like babies. I wanted to run away as I saw their needle-like teeth, but fear of the grass held me in place. I ducked, covering my head with my arms as the bats swooped down at me. Claws clutched at my clothes and yanked my hair. I swatted at them blindly, knocking one aside only to have another sink its teeth into my hand. Pain lit up my arm, making me woozy.

Desperate, I tried to think of some way out of this. The easiest thing would be to leave the dream completely. But what would I tell my friends if I came back without even trying? No, I had to think, had to fight.

I couldn’t bend reality here like in a normal dream, no imagining a giant paddle to swat them with, but I didn’t know about using magic. Magic
was
my reality. Quickly deciding that fire was the best weapon, I grabbed a handful of the tall grass and yanked it out, ignoring the sting as it sliced my hand. Then I muttered the fire incantation, feeling no hope that it would work.

The tips of the grass burst into flames. I didn’t question it, but stood up and started waving my makeshift torch in the air. The bats shrieked away from the fire, only to swerve and try again. Over and over they came down at me, but I drove them off, feeling a perverse pleasure whenever one of them let out a shriek as the fire singed them.

When the last of the bats gave up, I watched them disappear into the sky. I threw what remained of the grass to the ground, shaky with exhaustion. The fire spell had drained my energy. There was something wrong with the fictus in this dream. As if there weren’t any here at all.

At least I wasn’t as afraid as before. Surviving a bat attack had a way of bolstering bravery. I took off at a slow jog, following my mother’s path through the grass. I couldn’t imagine how much it must’ve hurt her to come through here first, but I appreciated how much easier she’d made it for me.

After a while, I entered the forest filled with trees the width of houses. My fear began to grow again with every step as I heard the sound of things moving through the brush and rustling the branches overhead, but after walking for what felt like an hour nothing attacked me.

When I came around a bend in the trail, I realized why. A dead animal that looked like a combination of a wolf and a scorpion was lying across the path. I carefully stepped around it, making sure not to disturb the brush for fear of alerting other beasts to my presence the way I had the bats. I passed another half dozen of those dead wolf things with their curved tails like a scorpion’s stinger and pincers on their front feet instead of paws and was again thoroughly glad my mother had come in before me.

Eventually, the path began to slope downward, and I caught glimpses of water through the massive trees. Distracted, I didn’t notice when the trail abruptly ended in a drop-off to a rocky beach below. I slid over the side, yelping in surprise and renewed pain as dirt coated the cuts on my legs and arms.

I stood up, brushed myself off, and approached the water’s edge. The lake was small enough that I could see the shore on the other side, but the water in between was murky and eerily still. I knew I had to go
in
that water. It was the only way to go other than out of the dream or back up the bank into the forest. The idea of jumping in filled me with terror.
Anything
could be in there. Slimy, slithering things that might grab hold of me and pull me down.

If that happens, just leave
. But after my run-in with the black phoenix, I knew better than to trust in an exit.

A scuttling sound echoed in the woods above me, and I dove in. I had no idea how to kill one of those wolf-scorpion things, and I wasn’t keen on figuring it out. The water was so cold I almost fainted from the shock, but the sight of dark shapes moving toward me was all it took to drive off the dizziness. I dove downward toward a faint light in the distance. The dark shapes swooped closer, and I swam harder and faster, wishing I could transform into a fish.

When I reached the source of the light, I saw it was some kind of dome on the bottom of the lake. My mother stood just inside it, dripping wet but no longer submerged. In the center of the dome, a sword stuck up hilt first out of the lake bed. The sword was the light source. Even from outside the dome, I could see the magic pulsating from it.

I swam to the dome’s edge, passing through it as if it were made of air instead of something solid enough to hold back water. I plopped to the ground with a wet thud, startling my mother who turned around, poised to strike. Shock, then anger crossed her face at the sight of me.

“What are you doing? Where’s Bethany?”

I wiped water off my face. “We set her free.”

“You did
what
?” Her eyes flashed.

I pushed myself up to my feet. “I can’t let you do this, Mom.”

I realized how unprepared I was for this moment. Sadness and pity squeezed my chest, and I held back a sob. Until now I’d always been secretly proud of my mother, of her fierce independence, her reputation as being someone unafraid to do her own thing no matter what people thought. But not anymore. Now I saw a desperate, power-hungry woman. A murderer.