Maybe now it knew a kind of grief.
The self-pitying kind.
“Something’s happening Below. Something momentous. Something I can’t stop.” He sounded like a helpless child, whining over a toy taken away. “I can’t do what I planned to do. It’s too late. The banished people are coming to the surface.”
He shook his head at the absurd wonder of it.
Dream climbed off the bed. The soiled blue nightgown fluttered around her waist, and she smoothed it down in one deft motion. She steeled herself, willed her legs to be steady, and went to him. She pulled him into an embrace, stroked his back, and whispered the things he needed to hear.
“Substitute me for the people of Below.”
His head fell against her, and he sobbed.
“Sacrifice me. Then go to paradise alone.”
His body shook with the force of his sobs, and she was again reminded of an inconsolable child.
“But… but I love you.”
Bullshit.
You miserable, selfish, evil piece of fucking shit.
She said, “I love you, too. So … doesn’t that make me worthy… of sacrifice?”
He went still in her arms.
Dream smiled.
His thoughts were almost audible.
Chad and his ragtag army swarmed through the abandoned security office, then into the outer room that was only a basement in the true house. Only a short time ago, The Master’s psychic eruptions had rendered it a surreal obstacle course for a desperate man fleeing the hounds of hell. But the magic was gone from this place.
A short flight of stairs led to a wooden door that stood ajar.
Chad took them two at a time
And was inside The Master’s kitchen within moments.
Wanda and the old singer were right behind him.
Then the guards were in, spreading out and brandishing their weapons.
Alicia experienced a momentary surge of joy as Ms. Wickman freed her of her bonds.
Here was the chance she’d been waiting for.
The opportunity to fight back.
To make this wicked bitch pay for her sins.
But that was not to be.
All the revenge fantasies faded the moment she tried to move. The pain held her down as effectively as a slab of cement. Every open wound puckered, pulsing with pain and incipient infection. So she stayed where she was, unmoving, silent tears of helplessness sliding down her cheeks. She sensed the evil woman had returned to finish her off, and she could only hope the process wouldn’t be a protracted one.
Ms. Wickman lifted her off the bed, cradled her battered body with unnatural effortlessness, and carried her to a chair. She dropped her in the chair with a sadistic lack of concern for her tender condition, and Alicia screamed at the shock waves of pain that rocked her body.
Alicia watched Ms. Wickman open the razor.
The woman approached her.
Slowly.
Drawing it out.
Enjoying Alicia’s terror.
The sharp blade gleamed.
Alicia felt a strange intimacy with that blade. They were so well acquainted. Cutting edge to soft, yielding flesh. So she awaited the blade’s final, merciless caress, closing her eyes as it insinuated itself against her throat.
She felt the cold metal press.
But then the pressure was gone.
Alicia opened her eyes and saw something unfamiliar in Ms. Wickman’s eyes.
Something like … fear.
Alicia became aware of an external sound.
Something outside the room.
Something approaching.
Ms. Wickman’s gaze was riveted to the door as she backed away from her victim. Alicia saw the woman swallow a lump in her throat. She felt a mad urge to scream at the bitch, to ask her how it felt to be afraid.
HOW DOES IT FEEL, YOU HELL-BOUND CUNT!?
But she didn’t have the strength.
Ms. Wickman never looked at her as she retreated to the other end of the room. She stood with her back against the far wall, her eyes screwed tightly shut. Then something strange was happening to her. Her image grew hazy, wavering like something barely glimpsed over the horizon on a muggy summer’s day. The section of wall she was leaning against shimmered. Some weird kind of transmutation was happening, the substance of reality altering around the woman to allow-PASSAGE.
And then she was gone.
She’d gotten away.
The wall looked normal again.
Alicia sobbed. The memory of her rigid belief in a world of solid reality reared up to taunt her.
She’d thought she was so smart.
So levelheaded.
But she’d known nothing at all.
She didn’t want to live in a world where the sort of things she’d seen and endured were possible. She’d survived the ordeal with Ms. Wickman, a miracle others might embrace, but she knew she couldn’t live with the images in her head.
Which left her with only one choice.
To obliterate them.
To that end, fate had finally smiled upon her.
Ms. Wickman had left something behind.
Alicia gripped the armrests of the chair, gathered her strength, and lifted herself up.
She went to the bookshelf and retrieved the gun.
Then she hobbled back to the chair.
Sat down.
And put the gun in her mouth.
Dream’s heart fluttered at the sight of the long, ornate swords brandished by The Master. He’d retrieved them from his study. She saw right away that these were no ordinary swords. The metal no ordinary metal. The blades gave off heat, pulsed with energy. He proffered one to Dream, who took it with reluctance-but reluctance turned to eagerness as she felt the unnatural energy generated by the sword surge into her body, triggering an endorphin rush stronger and more sustained than anything she’d experienced through drugs or carnal sensation.
The Master smiled.
And beckoned her to the center of the room.
He knelt, positioning the tip of the blade against his chest.
Dream knelt opposite him, mimicking his positioning of the sword.
The blade’s tip thrummed against her with its strange magic, suffusing her with ecstatic joy and a marvelous sense of peace. She could almost feel the blade pulling itself into her, parting her flesh without assistance.
YES!
This was what she’d always needed.
Tears of joy ran down her face.
Blood trickled from the nick between her breasts.
The Master smiled. “I really do love you, Dream.”
Dream smiled, too. “I know.”
And maybe he really did.
In a really fucked-up, nontraditional kind of way.
The only way he could.
Not that it mattered.
Only his death mattered.
Our deaths, she reminded herself.
The Master slipped into the Trance of meditation.
The state others could access only by ingesting the plant of the same name.
Loth! he intoned.
The answer was immediate.
You have failed us.
The Master’s ethereal laughter resounded in the shimmering realm.
But I have another offering for you!
And now Loth laughed.
Do you?
The Master’s disembodied sigh rolled through the alternate plane like a gust of hot wind across a desert plain.
I do.
And the admission that followed was almost-almost- bittersweet.
The apprentices occupied the top, most exalted rung of the ladder in The Master’s hierarchy of servitude. For many of them, life as an apprentice was good. Very good. Quite a few of them considered their place here preferable to what they’d known in the “normal” world. Here was a place where they could indulge their sickest desires-and never fear for a moment the specter of legal intervention or retribution.
When these people sensed the unusual disturbance occurring in The Master’s home, they never suspected what was coming. The Master was all-powerful. The Master would always protect them. They had nothing to fear.