Fable moaned with a double layer of hands over her mouth. Then she pointed speechlessly at the blood gushing out of Snow White’s heart around the stake.
Loki wanted to kneel before her, and beg her not to hate him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Her wounds will heal when she wakes up and feeds—if we let her. And don’t ask me to pull the stake out now,” Loki gathered the courage to talk in a slightly aggressive tone to her. She nodded obediently.
“Why would anyone want to pull the stake out?” Axel asked.
“Someone who wants her back as a vampire, probably another vampire like her,” Loki guessed.
“So what now?” Fable asked reluctantly.
“I’m glad you asked,” Loki said, pulling out his phone with the notes from the Dreamhunter notebook. “Now, I will have to enter her dream and kill her in it once again so she stays in this Sleeping Death forever.”
“It’s time you explain to us how this dream-hocus-pocus works,” Axel said.
“I’m going to explain this once, so please pay attention,” Loki said, “Vampires are immortal demons, which according to my notebook are called Demortals. Generally, Demortals don’t die. When a vampire hunter stakes them, the Demortals enter a state called the Sleeping Death, the same as mentioned in the Brothers Grimm version of Snow White’s tale. It makes the vampires look dead while they’re only sleeping until someone pulls the stake out.”
“So there’s really no way to kill them?” Axel said.
“The one and only way to really kill a Demortal is to enter their dream after you stake them and actually kill them again in that dream. The Demortals dreams take place in a realm called the Dreamworld. If they’re staked in the Dreamworld, their brains freeze and they will never wake up in our world, not even when you pull the stake out.”
Fable wanted to take a peek into the Dreamhunter’s notebook as she became more curious about it. “What is this Dreamworld like?”
“I haven’t read much about it yet, but think of it like a rabbit hole, one that is six levels deep. The waking world, which we live in now, is the earth. The Dreamworld, where a Dreamhunter kills a demon in their sleep, is the first level down the rabbit hole.”
“Six levels?” Fable snatched the notebook. “That’s awesome.”
“Yes,” Loki nodded. “Somewhere the notebook mentioned a forbidden place called ‘Six Dreams Under’, but that’s of no concern to us, because I just need to kill her in the ‘First Dream Under’, which is simply like the dreams we all know about.”
“May I ask an annoying question?” Axel said.
“No,” Fable said.
“Who wrote this notebook?” Axel said.
“I don’t know,” Loki shrugged his shoulders. “Many articles are signed by an A.V.H, though.”
“I think his name is ‘All Vampires go to Hell’,” Axel speculated.
“So that’s it? You just enter the dream, stake the vampire again and come back?” Fable said.
“That’s all I know so far.”
“Count me in,” Axel said.
“And you?” Loki asked Fable.
She tried to avoid his gaze.
“Fable?” Loki demanded.
“Look,” she said, unconsciously wiggling her nose under her glasses. “I will help you if this is a good thing for our town, so the teenage killings and disappearances stop. But you promise me, Loki, that if we find out she needs help like she told you, we help her.”
Loki was hesitant. He didn’t want to promise and lie to her again.
“Promise me, Loki,” Fable raised a warning finger in the air. “Doesn’t the fact that she asked for your help mean anything to you?”
She is only fooling me because I have a weakness for monster girls. You have no idea.
“I promise. Cross my heart,” Loki said, hating himself for lying to her again.
“And, Loki?” Fable asked, gazing sensationally at him. “Come back alive.”
This moment made Loki feel even worse about himself. It was a good feeling having found a small family. It felt good but also strange, because he’d always been a loner as long as he’d lived in the Ordinary World—his mom didn’t really count in her ghostly condition. Having others caring for him, and him caring for them, was beautiful but also a responsibility and an attachment. He was doing all of this to go home, and not to make friends that he’d end up wanting to stay with in Sorrow.
“Now, it’s time to tell you about the dream ritual that allows me to enter the Dreamworld,” Loki said.
Following the instructions from the notebook, Loki placed two of the mirrors opposite to each other with Snow White’s coffin in between. This way the two mirrors reflected one another as if they were staring into infinity. It was the only way to enter the Dreamworld.
“Mirror number one mirrors mirror number two, while mirror number two mirrors mirror number one mirroring mirror number two, and so on,” Loki read from his phone. “Can you imagine it?”