Dream Stalkers Read online

  Dream Stalkers

  A Shadow Watch Novel

  Tim Waggoner

  Dream Stalkers

  A Shadow Watch Novel

  This one's for my brother Eric, my best friend and Jinx's biggest fan.

  Prologue

  The Maelstrom is all; the Maelstrom is nothing.

  The Maelstrom is eternal; the Maelstrom is fleeting.

  The Maelstrom is without form or function. Chaos is its natural state, and thus would it ever have remained, but one appeared who could shape the Maelstrom’s turbulent energies. The Dreaming began, and with it, all of Creation. And the Dreaming continues still, but who can say what might occur if on some far-off day the Dreamer finally awakens?

  Pray for sleep everlasting, children.

  Pray for dreams without end.

  Pray that the Waking never comes to pass.

  * * *

  from The Primogenium. Book One, Chapter One.

  One

  I’m not a big beachgoer. I look all right in a bikini, although I’m not going to get on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition anytime soon, and not without some serious help from Photoshop. But in Chicago, “the beach” too often means sweaty tourists, gritty sand, and the nipple-poppingly cold water of Lake Michigan. My idea of a real beach is an out-of-the-way island in the Bahamas, but since Shadow Watch agents rarely get vacations, I suppose I’ll have to keep dreaming. Get it? Dreaming?

  Jinx and I sat next to each other, huddled in the large woolen blanket that smelled as if it had been used to wipe King Kong’s ass. Our clothes didn’t smell much better. Instead of our usual gray suits – standard issue for Shadow Watch officers – we wore thick winter coats, jeans, boots, gloves, and pullover caps. In Jinx’s case, the boots were about ten sizes larger than normal to accommodate his gigantic clown feet. It was early December, and the wind coming in off the lake had a nasty bite to it that indicated the city was going to be in for an especially hard winter.

  Normally, Jinx’s body heat would’ve kept me warm. Incubi – at least in their Night Aspects – are suffused with Maelstrom energy, and as a result they gave off a significant amount of heat. But tonight, Jinx was wearing a negator collar, which prevented his body from absorbing more than a minimal amount of M-energy. At the moment, he was no stronger or more durable than a human. Unfortunately, he wasn’t any saner.

  He kept his voice to a whisper as he spoke. “If I cut my wrists right now, do you think I’ll bleed to death, or do you think I’ll still heal, only more slowly than usual?”

  “Don’t you dare,” I whispered back, knowing full well he might give it a try. “I had a hard enough time cleaning up the mess the last time you slit your wrists. The living room carpet still has stains on it.”

  “I know. Sometimes they talk to me. They like to tell jokes, but they’re not very funny. I laugh anyway, though. I don’t want to hurt their feelings.”

  Jinx might’ve been joking himself, or he might’ve been telling the truth. After all, it was his blood he was talking about.

  The night sky was cloudless and clear, and the stars were so bright, they almost didn’t look real. It was sad, but, even though I knew I was looking at the real thing, I couldn’t help thinking that the illusory starfield in Nod – called the Canopy – was more beautiful. Sometimes I don’t know which world I belong to more, which only makes me feel like I don’t really belong to either. I searched for constellations, but it had been a long time since my high school science classes, and I didn’t recognize any. At one point, I thought I’d found the Little Dipper, but there were only six stars instead of seven. No North Star on the end of the handle.

  I lowered my gaze and realized Jinx was looking at me. His normal skin tone is clown-white, with bright red lips and blue crescents around his eyes. But his white skin reflects light like nobody’s business, and at night he sometimes looks as if he’s glowing with a low-level phosphorescence – especially when there’s a moon out, as there was tonight. It’s a great effect for a lunatic nightmare clown, but not so useful when it comes to going unnoticed during a night-time stakeout. So before heading to Montrose Beach, I slathered flesh-colored makeup all over his face. His disguise wouldn’t withstand close scrutiny, especially not in full light, but at least his skin wasn’t gleaming blue-white.

  “Nervous?” he asked.

  He didn’t have to ask, though. He was an Incubus, a nightmare given life, and I was his Ideator, the person who’d dreamed him up. We shared a bond that was deeper than that of siblings, or even parent and child. And, even if we hadn’t been linked, I’m sure he could read my emotions on my face with ease.

  “Yeah,” I said. I didn’t elaborate. I hoped Jinx would leave it at that, but I knew he wouldn’t. If Jinx saw a button labeled DO NOT PUSH, he would immediately push it, keep pushing it until his finger bled, and then destroy the button with a vicious swing of his sledgehammer.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked.

  “Melody and Trauma Doll will screw up somehow and get killed.”

  Jinx giggled softly. “I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

  I punched him on the shoulder as hard as I could, and I was gratified to hear him take in a hissing breath through gritted teeth. With the negator collar on, Jinx experienced pain like a human.

  I could get used to this, I thought.

  The collar was necessary because Incubi can sense each other’s presence, especially when in close proximity to one another. Jinx’s collar was easily removable – unlike the kind we use on Incubi we take into custody – so it wouldn’t prevent him from going into action when the time came. But until then, I intended to enjoy the side benefits.

  We had a bottle wrapped in a small brown sack, and we passed it back and forth occasionally, taking turns sipping from it. It was a Jim Beam bottle with water substituted for whisky. Not only were Jinx and I on duty, there was no way in hell I would let him drink alcohol. He was hard enough to control as it was. And the First Dreamer help me if he gets hold of caffeine. When that happens, he’s like a combination of Freddy Krueger and the Tasmanian Devil.

  Except for the two of us, the beach was deserted – or at least it appeared that way. We’d picked up word on the street that, if you wanted to score some shuteye, Montrose Beach was the place. Jinx and I had been here since ten o’clock, and although I didn’t check the time on my wisper – the light from the device would be a dead giveaway that I was a Shadow Watch officer – I estimated it was well past midnight now. A police officer, one of the regular kind, came by to roust us off the beach at one point, but I showed him my ID with its stylized dreamcatcher symbol. He looked at it for a moment without speaking, then told us to have a nice night and left. The Shadow Watch has operatives in every major city on Earth – and some not-so-major – but I knew most of the operatives in Chicago, and that cop wasn’t one. Thanks to the Somnocologists who designed it, the dreamcatcher symbol projects an almost hypnotic calming energy that tends to make people more… agreeable. But other than that one encounter, the night had been the very definition of uneventful.

  Thanks to the wind, the waves were high tonight, and they broke against the beach with loud, rhythmic shooshing sounds. The effect was as hypnotic in its own way as my ID, and if I’d been capable of sleeping, I’m sure I would’ve dozed off right then. But the sound didn’t help me concentrate. It invited me to relax, release my stress, and let my mind wander, none of which I could afford to do. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood, and the pain sharpened my senses once more, but I knew it wouldn’t last. I would’ve killed for a hit of rev, but I was doing my best to stay drug-free these days, and I didn’t have any on me.

  Where the hell are Melody and Trauma
Doll? They should’ve been here by–

  Jinx interrupted my thoughts with a none-too-gentle elbow to my ribs. He nodded to the north, and I turned to see a pair of figures walking along the shore in our direction. Melody was a tall, thin Asian woman with prominent cheekbones, killer eyes, and a smile that could get her gigs modeling for toothpaste ads. Tonight she wore civvies – a black coat and jeans, and her dark hair was tucked under a black-and-white striped beanie cap. Trauma Doll hadn’t done anything to disguise herself – which was the point. We wanted any Incubi in the area to recognize her for what she was.

  Trauma Doll was Melody’s Incubus, and her name suited her perfectly. Her porcelain skin was as white and smooth as polished bone, and, as she moved, small fissures appeared wherever her limbs bent, making soft cracking sounds. The damage healed almost instantly, only to reoccur the next moment she moved. Her only clothing consisted of loops of black barbed wire that encircled her arms, legs, chest, and torso. The wire didn’t cover her completely, but, since she possessed no genitals or nipples, the parts that showed weren’t especially sexy – unless you had a fetish for life-sized China dolls, that is. She wore her bright orange hair in pigtails tied with blood-stained ribbons. Her sky-blue eyes were anime-large, and they appeared to have been painted on, until she blinked. It was an extremely disconcerting sight, and one I hadn’t gotten used to yet. The small nub above her mouth was only a suggestion of a nose, and her too-red lips formed a Betty Boop moue. All in all, Trauma Doll made an imposing, frightening figure, and I wondered what had inspired Melody to ever dream up such a sinister thing.

  Then again, I imagine a lot of people wonder the same thing about me and Jinx.

  Speaking of Jinx, he sighed as he watched Melody and Trauma Doll approach. “Don’t you just love the sound her skin makes as it cracks? It’s almost musical.”

  Of all the problems I’ve had having a nightmare clown for a partner, I never thought I’d have to deal with Jinx falling for a woman who was made out of porcelain.

  “Next thing you’ll tell me is how beautiful her skin looks in the moonlight,” I said. “All shiny, cold, and hard…”

  He scowled at me, but then quickly refocused his gaze on Trauma Doll.

  “You know you can’t go out with her,” I said. “She’s a trainee. Our trainee.”

  After the Lords of Misrule had nearly caused the dimensions of Earth and Nod to fuse into a single chaotic mess, the Nightclad Council had decided the Shadow Watch needed more officers – in both dimensions – to make sure something like that could never happen again. Director Sanderson had started a major recruitment drive, and almost all current officers had been assigned a pair of rookies to mentor. Melody Gail and Trauma Doll were ours.

  Jinx grinned at me. “You know how I feel about rules.”

  “The faster they’re broken, the better,” I said. “But I don’t want you doing anything that might interfere with her training.”

  “Why? Afraid something bad will happen?”

  “Yes. And you damn well know why.”

  “Nathaniel,” Jinx said, and then surprised me by letting the matter drop. We both fell silent and turned our attention back to Melody and Trauma Doll.

  So far, there had been no sign that anyone besides the four of us was on the beach tonight, but when it comes to Incubi, appearances don’t mean squat. This fact was driven home to me once again as a patch of sand near our trainees rippled. An instant later a humanoid form rose forth from the sand not more than half a dozen yards from Melody and Trauma Doll. They stopped and turned to face the newcomer. I couldn’t make out his features – or if he really was a he – so I turned to Jinx.

  He reached up and tapped the negator collar around his neck. “Don’t look at me. Right now, my eyesight isn’t any better than yours.”

  Shit! I’d forgotten about that damned collar.

  The spot where Jinx and I sat was several hundred feet farther back from the water than Melody and Trauma Doll, and even with the half-moon in the sky, I couldn’t make out any details about the sand being’s form. He/she/it was an Incubus, of course. A human couldn’t have risen from the sand like that. But otherwise, I knew nothing. I hate not knowing stuff, especially when I’m working and double especially when my not knowing something might get someone else killed.

  I started to rise to my feet, but Jinx put a hand on my shoulder and gently but firmly forced me to sit back down.

  “I thought you’d be all for rushing mindlessly to attack,” I said.

  “Usually I am, but I’m working on being less predictable.”

  “But not less annoying.”

  He grinned at me, but he kept his hand on my shoulder. With the negator collar on, he was no stronger than an average human male, and I thought I could take him. But probably not before he could spring the catch on the collar and remove it. After that, it would be an entirely different story.

  I knew Jinx was right to stop me. While I wasn’t comfortable letting Melody and Trauma Doll make contact with the shuteye dealer, there was no way Jinx and I could’ve done it. After our part in stopping the Fata Morgana and the Lords of Misrule, we were too well known throughout the Incubus and Ideator communities in both dimensions. If the two of us had been walking along the beach, the sand-figure would most likely have remained hidden as we passed. We needed to bust the shuteye operation, and, right now, Melody and Trauma Doll – two unknowns – were our best bet.

  Relax, I told myself. Let them do their job. It’s what they’ve been trained for.

  Then again, they weren’t fully-fledged officers yet, were they?

  Shuteye is one of the most dangerous drugs ever produced in Nod. Once an Ideator brings an Incubus to life, they no longer have any need to sleep. We’re linked to our Incubi, and, since they don’t sleep, we don’t either. We do need to rest several hours each day to continue functioning at peak capacity, however, so we read, watch TV, meditate, whatever, just as long as we’re not working. I hate resting without sleeping. It’s boring as hell, and it’s a waste of time. But I’d learned the hard way that if I don’t rest, my job performance suffers – which in turn means others suffer, the ones I’ve sworn to protect. So I do my best to refrain from working three or four hours a day. It’s not as much as Somnocologists recommend, but it’s about all I can stomach.

  I don’t miss sleeping all that much. To tell you the truth, I don’t even remember what it was like. My life before I became an Ideator and a Shadow Watch officer sometimes seems like little more than – pardon the expression – a dream. But some Ideators would do just about anything to experience sleep again, and some Incubi – who’ve never slept – are curious about what it’s like. Normal sleep drugs, the kind you can get in any pharmacy on Earth, won’t work on Ideator or Incubus physiology. And that’s why shuteye was created. The drug allows the user to experience a chemical simulation of sleep. Some users begin to exhibit psychotic behavior and become a danger to themselves and others, and some poor bastards go crazy after taking only a single capsule. I know. I’ve seen it.

  Melody and Trauma Doll walked back to the figure who stood motionless as he/she/it awaited them. Melody began talking to the figure, but she kept her volume low. I wished I’d made her wear a wire so I could listen in on her conversation with the dealer, but you can never tell what kind of special senses a particular Incubus might possess. And, if the dealer so much as suspected Melody was an officer, it wouldn’t go well for her.

  At first, everything seemed to go okay. Melody talked, the sand creature responded. Melody talked some more. The sand creature then reached inside its chest and pulled out a plastic bag containing several small capsules. I couldn’t tell how many were in the bag from where I sat, but I guess there were a half dozen, max. The sand creature held the bag out to Melody, while at the same time holding his other hand out palm up, ready to receive payment. And that was the moment Trauma Doll decided to go into action. She shrugged her right shoulder, and the coils of barbed wire wrapped arou
nd that arm rippled, loosened, and shot toward the sandy being like a gigantic S&M Slinky, and with a not dissimilar spronging sound. The coils lengthened as they encircled the dealer, covering him/her/it from head to toe in an improvised cage.

  “That’s my girl!” Jinx shouted.

  He took his hand from my shoulder, popped the catch on his negator collar, threw it to the side, leaped to his overlarge feet, and began running toward Melody and Trauma Doll, determined not to miss out on whatever action might be left.

  As it turned out, Jinx didn’t have to worry. Instead of being constrained by Trauma Doll’s coils, the sand creature simply stepped out of them, the barbed wire passing through its substance without doing any apparent damage.

  “Rookies,” I muttered.

  I threw the blanket off, got to my feet, and started running after Jinx. I’d kept my trancer tucked against the small of my back, and I drew it as I ran and flicked the activation switch. Melody drew her own trancer the moment the sand creature escaped Trauma Doll’s coils, and she fired before the Incubus could attack either of them. A beam of multicolored Maelstrom energy shot from the weapon’s muzzle and struck the sand creature in the chest. But either the beam passed through the Incubus’ sandy body or else the creature had created a hole in itself for the beam to go through. Either way, the M-energy did the Incubus no damage and continued lancing through the air – straight toward Jinx.

  I wanted to shout a warning to him, but there wasn’t time. Yet just as Jinx was about to get a face full of M-energy, he veered to the side, and the beam missed him, continuing on for a few dozen more feet, weakening as it went, before finally hitting the beach’s upward slope. Sand exploded with a loud chuffing sound. Jinx turned his head to give me a quick grin and a thumbs-up, and then faced forward once more and increased his speed.