The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 2] Chapter 24: Castle in the Desert

Negotiations with Trevor did not go over the way Emery wanted.

When they'd gathered to discuss his request, Trevor had been holding his phone aloft, his finger poised for an emergency call. Just the press would bring responders to the house. He stood on the opposite side of the kitchen and let the dreamhunters circle up.

Emery had tried to get Wes to dreamform the phone away, but Wes had given her a flat look.

"I'm happy you have that kind of faith in my dreamforming abilities," he said, "but I'm worn out, and he can hit that button a lot faster than I can get a dreamform around his hand."

"Who cares what happens to a rich idiot?" Marcia snapped. "Let's bring him in with us. We're on a suicide mission anyway, even if he dies, it's not like the State can do anything worse to us than what's happening right now."

"You're supposed to be the adult!" Emery shot back. "He's going to get hurt—"

"None of us have time to waste on your boyfriend's mental state, Ashworth." Marcia drew herself up to her full height. Emery bristled at the word boyfriend. "All four of us have doppelgängers out there right now and who the hell knows what Morrigan is doing with Klaus?"

Around and around they went for the better part of five minutes, until Emery finally relented. Trevor wouldn't let them leave the house to make their gateway elsewhere, and they didn't have any more time to waste. The longer it took, the heavier the tide of nightmares would grow around the castle, the stronger their doppelgängers became, the farther Klaus slipped away.

"Look," Trevor said, and held up a piece of paper he'd been scribbling on with his left hand, "I wrote down in words that I take full responsibility for anything that happens to me inside the Dream. Does that make you feel better?" He did sound like he felt bad for the blackmail, but by that point Emery was too far toward the end of her rope to give him brownie points for it.

"Whatever. Let's go before I change my mind."

So they'd ended up in the library, Wes pressing the head of his hammer into the empty space before him to punch a hole into the Dream, then swinging the hammer up and tearing the world apart. A dark, gaping portal appeared in the brightly-lit room, and framing it in were two black eyes stood on their ends, swiveling independently to look at each person in turn. The Dream echoed from inside. The beginnings of nausea and a headache tingled at the base of Emery's skull, like knowing she was going to get sick when the ride had only just begun.

Trevor stared at the gateway in wide-eyed incredulity. His arms fell to his sides as Wes opened it, and he stepped forward to touch one of the huge eyes with his whole hand. The eye swiveled wildly; when Trevor pulled his hand back, a string of pale mucus stretched with it.

"What is this?" he asked with wonder, clearly not caring for an answer. He began examining other parts of the gateway. With a quick glare at him, Marcia stepped through and disappeared into the darkness.

"Rid, you next," Wes said. "Marcia should be there waiting for you. Think of her when you go in and you'll get there."

Ridley stepped up to the gateway but hesitated. Marcia had bandaged her face from the run-in with the Wilmark Fox, cuts and bruises crawled all down her arms and legs—now covered by her dreamhunting armor—and she looked as if she had been crying for the past several hours. Before the doppelgängers, Emery had not known Ridley to be a big crier. Nice to a fault, yes, and caring, maybe a little strange, but not one of those people who broke down and cried when things got difficult. But she'd never seen Ridley deal with difficult things until now, either, and a person acted differently when confronted with their doppelgänger. It was themselves. It was the part of themselves they shoved down and away, the part they tried to hide. Add to that being called a coward by your uncle, being chased off the campus that has been your only home, and getting half your face clawed off by a beefed-up urban legend, and then crying seemed like a completely normal response.