“I wish you were here,” I whispered.
“So do I.” Even over the phone, his longing was palpable. I shivered.
“And Vicky,” he said. “Have faith in yourself. Tina does. Your aunt does. And I do.”
I brushed at my suddenly damp eyes. “I have faith in you, too.”
Given the impossible challenges we both faced, the words meant a lot. Everything, maybe.
MAB FELL ASLEEP AS SOON AS I TUCKED HER IN ON THE SOFA. I expected to spend several hours tossing and turning, but I must have been even more tired than I’d thought.
Sleep wrapped around me like a warm blanket. I let it hold me in the darkness. Tension drained from my limbs. Aches were soothed away. Worries that had sawed at my mind grew blunt and faded. Slowly, strength returned, filling me like a rising tide.
I didn’t think any of these thoughts. But somehow I knew them as my mind drifted in the warm darkness.
Eventually, the texture of that darkness changed, its uniform blankness ruffled by puffs and billows. It looked like a rising mist in shades of inky black and charcoal. Slowly, the mist spread and thickened, and I realized why. Someone was calling me on the dream phone. But who? Not Mab, her colors, silver and blue, always appeared quickly. Maria? She was still mastering this form of communication. I watched the mist for traces of Maria’s colors, candy-heart pink and sky blue, bleeding in, but the billows remained black and gray.
Black and gray? I didn’t know anyone with those colors.
I turned my mind away from the signal that someone wanted to talk to me. The black-and-gray mist persisted. It expanded to fill my dreamscape.
Finally, I grew impatient. I didn’t need to be solving puzzles in my sleep. “Who is it?” I demanded in a voice I hoped would scare the intruder away.
The mist whirled into a spiral. It looked like one of those satellite views of a hurricane. Coughing sputtered. The mist drew back. Then, the hurricane’s eye spat out a small, dark shape.
Butterfly lay gasping at my feet.
“Holy crap,” the demon wheezed. “You’ve got this dreamscape of yours locked up like Fort Freakin’ Knox.”
“There’s a reason for that.”
“Well, how else am I supposed to report to you? I can’t materialize in daylight, and it’s hours until dark. I figured getting into your dreamscape—you know, like a Drude—would be the easiest way.” Drudes are the demons that manifest in dreams, causing nightmares. “Hah!” Butterfly continued. “Look at how bruised I got trying!” The demon shook a wing at me. I didn’t see anything that looked like a bruise.
“I’m trying to get some rest,” I snapped. “Did you say you have something to report to me?”
Butterfly ignored my words, fluttering around my dreamscape as though checking the place out. “So then I got smart. Instead of beating my poor wings against the barriers, I’d get you to invite me in. Brilliant, huh? I knew all about that Cerddorion dream-phone thing from rummaging around in your brain—”
“Yes, fine, brilliant idea. Write it up as a book, and you’ll have the best-selling title in Uffern. But unless you actually do have something to report, get the hell out of my dreamscape. I mean it.”
“Best seller, huh? Too bad we don’t use money there. You try to barter an idea like that, some bigger demon steals it. Probably bites your head off in the process.” Butterfly quit flitting around and landed at my feet. “Hey, how come your eyes are bugging out like that? You should try to relax when you sleep. That’s what it’s for, you know.”
This was too much. I conjured a bronze sword. “Oh, right,” Butterfly said, flying out of reach. “My report. Well, it was like this. I got tired of hanging out in your gut and not being able to feed. It’s like, you know, going to an open-bar party when you’re on the wagon. So I split and went back to my own realm. And there I was, twiddling my thumbs. Figuratively speaking, of course, since I don’t have any.” Butterfly held up its two front legs to illustrate the point.
I gritted my teeth. Even in my dreamscape, my demon mark itched as I tightened my grip on the sword. This demon better have something to report that was worth the vast reserves of my patience it was squandering.
“To while away the time and distract myself from the fact you were starving me to death, I considered whether I should try to stop you from killing the Morfran in that cemetery. After all, it’s the essence of all demons, including yours truly. From one way of looking at things, it was like you and your aunt and your father were all destroying little pieces of my soul. Except it wasn’t. All that Morfran has nothing to do with me. I mean, I already am. Whatever Pryce wants that trapped Morfran for, it sure ain’t for my benefit.”
“You couldn’t have stopped me if you’d tried.”
“Heh.” Butterfly’s wings quivered with amusement. “You can believe that if you want to, I guess. Anyway, all of a sudden I heard this screaming. Now, screams are usually sweet ambrosia to any demon. But this . . .” The insect flew a quick loop-the-loop to show its agitation. “I wanted to cover my poor ears with my hands. And I would have, too, if I had, you know, ears. And hands.”
“You heard Tina.”
“Yeah, your zombie friend. I never heard such a racket. Enough to deafen all the demons of Hell.”
Why hadn’t I heard Tina screaming? I thought back. At first, I’d checked the demon plane frequently, watching for signs of trouble. But later the work was going so smoothly that I slacked off. After the Night Hag’s departure, I’d been in a hurry, wanting to kill as much Morfran as possible before dawn. I’d kept my ears tuned to the human plane, listening for the Night Hag’s return—and that was when Pryce snatched Tina and dragged her through Uffern.
I waited for Butterfly to gloat over my carelessness, but for once the demon didn’t take the bait. “I’m not a Drude,” it said in response to my thoughts. “I can’t feed inside your dreamscape. I’ll save that one for later, though. Thanks.”
“Go on with your story.”
“Pryce had a tough time with the zombie—the way she howled and struggled and hit at him, he could barely keep a grip on her. He had to call Difethwr to help. They were both so distracted, I figured this might be my one and only chance to follow them without being noticed. So I went for it.”
The absurd rush of gratitude I felt was swamped by the urgency to hear more. “You know where Pryce took Tina? Tell me, now!”
“Cool your heels, lady. You want to hear it, you let me tell it in my own time. We’re in your dreamscape. This whole conversation is taking maybe fifteen, twenty seconds of outside-world time.”
I wanted to remind the Eidolon that “fifteen, twenty seconds” would be plenty of time for it to die a long, slow, painful death inside my dreams. Instead, I reminded myself that, for reasons I didn’t understand, this demon appeared to be helping me.
“So, Pryce and Difethwr dragged the zombie through Uffern, and the whole way she’s raising holy hell—so to speak. Heh heh. They stopped in front of this door and looked around. I hid in the shadows so they wouldn’t see me.” Not hard—Uffern was all flames and flickering shadows. “Pryce kicked open the door and dragged the zombie through.”
“By himself?”
“Difethwr stayed on our side. The demons’ side. I waited for it to cross the threshold, so I could scoot through before the door closed. But that didn’t happen. Difethwr stayed put, but the door was closing. I had to creep along the floor, like this.” Butterfly demonstrated, wings flat, its multiple legs taking stealthy steps. “When I was sure the Destroyer wasn’t looking, I ran across the threshold. Immediately, I knew I was in your world. I was on a concrete floor in some hallway. No windows. I think it was underground. The place was filthy, with lots of junk lying around.
“Anyway, by the time I caught up with Pryce, he and some guy in a robe were shoving the zombie through a door. Once they locked her in, the screaming stopped and I could hear again. Soundproofing, I guess. I crawled as close as I dared. The guy in the robe was pulling up his hood; it had fallen back in the struggle. Whoa, man. Talk about ugly. He had the Crypt Keeper’s complexion and fangs like freakin’ walrus tusks. He was complaining, and it took a minute for me to follow what he was saying, what with those ridiculous fangs and all. Something about how he wasn’t sure that even the cauldron was worth all this trouble. Pryce said, ‘Once you’ve been transformed, you’ll thank me.’”
Of course. That was what Pryce was offering the Old Ones for their cooperation. The one thing Colwyn and his crew had always wanted: eternal life. Not as the decrepit, hideous creatures they’d become, but transformed into strong, powerful beings—into gods. After Pryce conquered the Darklands, he’d give its prize, the cauldron of transformation, to the Old Ones.
“Then,” Butterfly continued, “Pryce asked Mr. Fangs how long before the virus would be ready. I didn’t catch the exact answer, but I got the impression it would be soon. I did hear fangboy say that some was being readied for shipment.”
“Shipment? Did he say where it was going?”
“‘The first locations.’ That was all I got.”
The Old Ones, creators of the original plague virus, were making more and shipping it somewhere—multiple somewheres. And Pryce was threatening Tina to prevent us from destroying more Morfran. He planned to create more zombies and turn them into an unstoppable Morfran-driven army.
“Butterfly, this is bad. This is really, really bad. You need to tell me where Pryce took Tina.”
The demon’s voice turned crafty. “What’s it worth to you?”
Don’t kill the thing yet, Vicky. It’s got more information. “What do you mean?” I said, trying to sound all innocent. “You said you’d help me in hopes of saving your own sweet ass. Remember?”
“That was my starting position, sure. But I risked my ‘sweet ass’ to get some information, and I hit pay dirt. Emphasis on pay. You heard enough to know my info is good. You can save your little zombie friend and prevent Mr. Fangs from distributing plague virus to locations unknown. So I ask again: What’s it worth to you, oh great demon slayer? How much do you want to save the world?”
