Chapter 22
There was movement above me on the stairwell. Footsteps. It was quicker to draw my pistol than reach for my shotgun. I put the STI in my left hand so I could keep using my right to hurl-drag myself up the rail. A flashlight bounced above. It was the Hunters Julie had sent. Someone bellowed a challenge. “Pitt, is that you?”
“Yeah. It’s me.” It was time to get the monster’s attention. I switched to Earl’s command channel, but somebody else was talking.
“Earl. This is Lindemann. I believe I just saw my father killing demons. This is troubling, since he died fighting vampires when I was young. Am I losing my mind? Over.”
“This is Pitt. Negative. The Hunters’ ghosts are on our side. They’ll stall the monsters as long as possible. It’s a long story. Over.”
Earl came on next. “Z, I thought you were dead. Milo said you got blown up by that meteor.”
“Nearly.” My ankle made an audible popping noise as I reached the fourteenth floor. “I’ve got a plan.” It was hard to talk and run stairs at the same time. “Mordechai showed me how to kill the Nachtmar.”
“We’re in a world of his creation. He can certainly hear you,” warned Lindemann.
“Good. He should listen. I know his secret. If he can read minds, then he knows what I’m going to do next. Come and get me, asshole.” Only four more floors. The flashlight from above shined in my eyes. It was Jason Lacoco. The squat shadow behind him could only be Edward. “Get ready,” I warned them. Once I got the Nachtmar’s attention, things would probably get really hairy. Lacoco only grunted. He might have hated my guts, but this was business. Edward took the lead. Lacoco grabbed onto my left arm and helped me along. The son of a bitch was so strong that he actually began dragging me. Not that I was complaining. My leg muscles had turned to jelly.
The information that Sam had given to me was all there, crammed painfully in between my own orderly memories. Of course I was the one picked for this. My brain was like a filing cabinet stuffed with folders from multiple people. Hell, I spoke sixteenth-century Portuguese because of this sort of thing. I was prepped for this sort of craziness. Thanks, stupid Old Ones and your stupid artifact. I flipped through the files, examined what my brother had overheard, until I found what I needed.
I kept broadcasting. “We’ve been calling him Nachtmar, Nightmare, things like that. We guessed right all along. That’s all he is. He’s nothing without us. He needs humans to give him form. He can’t do anything without us. He feeds on our fear. The Nachtmar is just an alp. He’s a parasite. He’s a worm. Humans made him strong and he’s only this powerful because of his human host. If he’s connected to somebody weak, he’s nothing. He’s a pathetic little alp. The Nachtmar ain’t shit.”
It was working. I could tell the monster was listening. The hotel rumbled. Edward turned to look at me as if to ask are you sure this is a good idea?
“This particular little nightmare spirit was lucky enough to find a powerful human to stick himself to a long time ago. One of the Chosen.” Like me, I didn’t add. There was only so much fate I wanted to tempt at one time, and I didn’t know what to make of that possession business that Dr. Blish had spoken about near the end of the memories. “The Nachtmar was too pathetic to take a man like this over on his own. It was the scientists that broke him and let the Nachtmar in. All of this? The dream monsters, the destruction, it’s all from the power of a special human mind. The Nachtmar likes being thought of as a wrathful god, but he’s just a manipulative little prick piggybacking off a great man.”
“This is Julie. Owen, you’ve got incoming.”
“What now?” There was a violent crunch. The cement wall on the landing above us was suddenly riddled with cracks. Lacoco and I stopped.
“Gargoyles. You’ve got three gargoyles on the exterior of the stairwell.”
Edward ran back past us, hit the nineteenth floor landing, yanked the door open and looked inside. He nodded quickly. Clear. The concrete on the twentieth floor was raining down in dust and chunks. An enclosed space was a stupid place to take on an animated stone monster. We went after Ed.
His response had been much faster than expected, but I wasn’t done provoking our monster. “Gargoyles? Probably the same ones from Appleton. See, what did I tell you? Now he’s cherry-picking Julie’s memories. He can’t do anything on his own. He’s a chump. He’s got no imagination.” The three of us entered the nineteenth floor. It was pitch-black, but Lacoco and I turned on our flashlights. Ed could see in the dark. This floor was still under construction, and was a mess of half-finished metal frames, dangling wires, scaffolding, and stacked sheetrock. There had to be another interior stairwell in the middle, and we could take that to the roof. “He’s limited to the weapons we provide him, and even the poor deluded human he’s keeping alive isn’t powerful enough to handle the things I’ve got in my head.” I could only hope that the great Old Ones were so sanity-bending and incomprehensible that they couldn’t be copied, otherwise we’d all just get squished.
There was a horrendous crash as the gargoyles broke into the fire stairwell. We kept moving as fast as we could, but I’d seen how quick these things were. It was a straight shot down the middle. Ed found the door for the next set of stairs and jerked it open. Ed looked inside, up, down, then back at us and nodded. Clear.
I got back on the radio. “Screw you, Nachtmar. Your world is nothing. You cobbled together all of this from your host’s subconscious. Your days are numbered. They know your secret back on Earth. They know how to kill him and banish you now. They’re going to find your poor human, waste him, and you’ll go back to being nothing. You might find someone else to bond with, but it’ll never be the same. Your glory days are almost over. You’ll be so weak that you won’t even show up on the PUFF table. You’re a nuisance. The best you’ll be able to do after this is make a five-year-old wet the bed.”
The hotel was experiencing a continuous low-level earthquake. “You’re really pissing him off,” Lacoco said as we went up the last flight of stairs. I had one arm draped over his broad shoulder. It was faster than trying to walk on my own swelling foot. Lacoco was half ox, and though huffing and grunting, was dragging me along fairly quickly. “You better know what you’re doing.”
“I’m winging it.”
“The only reason I haven’t dumped your ass is because I trust Earl Harbinger. You’re making that really difficult.” The crashing told me that the gargoyles had entered the hotel. The stairs ended earlier than expected. There wasn’t an opening to the roof. We had to go back out onto the twentieth floor and go back to the first set of stairs. “Hell.” Lacoco murmured when he came to the same realization. Ed led the way through the door.
The gargoyles were below us. Their movements were so destructive and heavy we could feel them vibrating the floor. We’d have to pass back over them. We’re almost there.
The twentieth floor was an even more chaotic construction mess than the nineteenth. Some walls were in, others were just metal skeletons waiting to be dressed. There was a low animal growl from the opposite end of the hall. A primal fear instinct caused all the hair on my arms to stand up. Something was waiting in the dark between us and the stairs to the roof. With no hesitation, Edward drew his swords. “Ed! Wait!” But the orc was already charging the unknown threat. Ed leapt over a wheelbarrow and disappeared into the dark.
“After him.” There was a sudden movement to the side. Something incredibly cold collided with me and Lacoco. Our flashlight beams whipped about, adding to the confusion. I was knocked head first into the opposite wall.
What now? Dazed, I managed to get to my hands and knees. I reached for my pistol, but caught a kick in the ribs so hard that it lifted me off the floor. “Ooof!” The air in my lungs came shooting out. I caught the framing, struggling to rise, but a big fist caught me right behind the ear. The framing collapsed on top of me.
In the conflicting light, I’d seen that it was a man. A big dude, at least my size, shirtless, and thickset with muscle.
Lacoco came up with his shotgun, but our attacker blocked the muzzle with one hand and slugged Lacoco in the face with the other. The Remington landed a few feet away. The Hunter roared and drove himself forward. They collided. Lacoco caught an elbow drop to his back, but rammed his opponent through one frame and into another solid one. They came right off, whirled around, and Lacoco was the one that hit the opposite wall, tearing a huge gash through the new sheetrock.
His enemy was me.
Lacoco froze, shocked, and the nightmare version of me hit him again, and again, and again. Harder and faster than I’d ever been capable of in real life. Blood splattered the sawdust as Lacoco’s nose shattered. The fists kept pumping, falling over and over like pistons. The look on my evil mirror twin’s face was completely dispassionate, emotionless. It was my face, but it was younger, free of scars, and the eyes were dead, blank, all humanity shoved aside and focused on only one thing, utterly destroying his opponent.
It was exactly how I’d looked when I’d ruined Jason Lacoco’s life.
Lacoco tried to shove him off, but it was an overwhelming assault. Lacoco hit the floor, and the copy followed him down, knowing exactly how to manipulate an opponent on the ground. He got a knee over one of Lacoco’s arms, and hit him, and hit him, and hit him. Lacoco’s face was being pulverized. An elbow fell and his glass eye had popped out and rolled across the carpet.
It was exactly like last time. I’d lost it. I’d broken his skull open. I’d put out his eye. If I hadn’t been pulled off I would’ve beaten him to death. I’d put him in a coma.
Of course this creature was here. It was made of nightmares. This younger, blank-faced version of me had been Lacoco’s nightmare. I was his monster.
But like the rest of us, Lacoco had gotten a lot better at fighting monsters.
WHUP. The fake me lurched. The bloody hands left Lacoco’s face and grabbed for his leg. The knee that had been used to block one of Laccco’s arms. Lacoco’s hand came off the floor, holding something boxy and orange, and he drove it against his opponent. WHUP. A black circle appeared in the copy’s chest. WHUP. WHUP. Two more.
Lacoco had landed on a powder-actuated nail gun.
As the copy rolled off, Lacoco got one big boot up and kicked him in the face.
The copy crashed into the far wall, reached up emotionlessly, and ripped one of the nails out of his sternum. He immediately started to rise. There was a sharp crack. The nightmare copy looked down in surprise at the new, much larger hole that had appeared in the center of one pectoral. Screw the nail gun, Lacoco had gone for his pistol. His XD .45 extended in one shaking hand, Lacoco lumbered back up, blood streaming from his battered face.
Hands pressed against the holes in his chest as blood trickled between his fingers, the copy turned his head and studied me, speaking with my voice. “You mocked me, Chosen, but I’m not the only one here that causes bad dreams.” He began to laugh.
Lacoco shot him again.
The Nachtmar grimaced and slid down the wall, leaving a smear of blood, until he came to a rest, seated, chest full of weeping holes. “It is all for nothing. The human I am bonded with is beyond your reach. You cannot kill him.”
“I know,” I said as I slowly got to my feet. “That’s why I’m going to talk him into doing it himself.”
And then the ancient nightmare creature realized what I intended to do. “No! You—”