“Mother will be pleased,” the first one said.
“Very pleased,” confirmed the other.
The way they alternated phrases reminded me of how Grace—Jerome’s former lieutenant demoness—and Mei used to interact. That had had a charming, moderately creepy The Shining feel to it. This…this was something else. Something terrible and icy, burning my senses like nails on a chalkboard.
“Mother will reward us,” the first said. I decided to call them One and Two for the ease of mental processing. “She will reward us when she is free, when she escapes the angels.”
“Who’s your mother?” I asked. A troubling suspicion was beginning to form.
“We will avenge her until she can do it herself,” said Two. “You will suffer for betraying her.”
“Nyx,” I murmured. “Nyx is your mother. And you’re…you’re Oneroi.”
They said nothing, which I took as affirmation. My head reeled. Oneroi? How had this happened? Oneroi were a type of dream demon—but not demons like the ones I interacted with. Heaven and Hell were forces in the universe, but there were others, others that mingled with and often ran parallel to the system I existed in. Nyx was one such force, an entity of chaos from the beginning of time, when the world had been created from disorder.
And the Oneroi were her children.
I knew a few things about them but had never seen them—or ever expected to. They visited dreams, feeding on them. Nyx had done this too, but the manner had been a little different. She had manipulated people into seeing the future in their dreams—a twisted version that didn’t unfold the way the dreamer expected. It had led to crazy actions that spawned chaos in the world, allowing her to grow stronger. She’d also fed on my energy directly, taking it in its purest form and distracting me with dreams of my own.
But Oneroi fed on the dreams themselves, deriving their power from the emotions and realities fueled by the dreamer. My understanding was that they also had the power to manipulate dreams but rarely had reason to. Humans provided plenty of hopes, dreams, and fears on their own. They needed no outside help.
That was the extent of my Oneroi knowledge, but it was enough. Feeling even a little informed about the situation empowered me. “That’s what this is about? You took me because of Nyx? I wasn’t the one who caught her. The angels did.”
“You helped them,” said One. “Led them to her.”
“And then refused to save her,” added Two.
With a pang, I remembered that horrible night, when Carter and his cronies had recaptured Nyx after her devastating free-for-all in Seattle. An angel had died that night. Another had fallen. And Nyx had promised to show me a future and family with a man I could love, if only I would give her the rest of my energy and let her break free.
“She was lying,” I said. “She was trying to make a deal when she had nothing to offer.”
“Mother always shows the truth,” said One. “Dreams can be lies, but truth is truth.”
I decided pointing out the redundancy of that statement was useless. “Well, I’m sure she’ll appreciate the Mother’s Day gift, but you’re wasting your time. Jerome will come for me. My archdemon. He won’t let me stay here.”
“He won’t find you,” said Two. This time, I could definitely see smugness. “He can’t find you. You no longer exist for him.”
“You’re wrong,” I replied, with a bit of my own smugness. “There’s no place in this world you can take me where he can’t find me.” That was, of course, assuming they hadn’t managed to hide my immortal aura. To my knowledge, only greater immortals could do that. I wasn’t sure where Oneroi fell in.
One actually smiled. It was not attractive. “You aren’t in the world. Not the mortal world. This is the dream world.”
“You’re one of many dreams,” Two said. “One dream among all the dreams of humanity. Your essence is here. Your soul. Lost in a sea of countless others.”
My fear stopped me from offering commentary on his sudden shift into metaphor. The metaphysics of the universe and its layers and creation were beyond me. Even if someone had explained them to me, it was something past the comprehension of a mortal, lesser immortal, or any other being who was made-not-born. I had enough understanding, though, to recognize some truth in their words. There was a world of dreams, a world without form with nearly as much power as the physical one I lived in. Was it possible to trap my essence in it and hide me from Jerome? I was unsure enough that I couldn’t write it off.
“So, what?” I asked, attempting haughtiness but mostly sounding as uneasy as I felt. “You’ll just keep me in this mime box and feel better about yourselves?”
“No,” said One. “You’re in the world of dreams. You will dream.”
The world dissolved again.
It was my wedding day.
I was fifteen years old, jailbait in the twenty-first century but more than old enough to be a wife in fourth-century Cyprus. And more than tall enough too. The Oneroi had sent me into a memory or a dream of a memory or something like that. It was a lot like the dreams Nyx had put me in. I was watching myself like a movie…yet at the same time, I was in myself, experiencing everything quite naturally.
It was a disorienting feeling, made worse by the fact that I had never wanted to see my human self again. Selling my soul had come with obvious downsides, but there had been perks too: the ability to shape-shift and never again have to wear the body that had committed such grievous sins in my mortal life.
Yet, there I was, and I was unable to look away. It was like being in A Clockwork Orange. My younger self had been about five feet ten inches tall by today’s standards and a giant of a woman in an era where people had been shorter. When dancing, I’d been able to put that long body and all those limbs to good use, moving gracefully and effortlessly. In everyday life, though, I’d always been painfully conscious of my height, feeling awkward and unnatural.
Watching my old self walk now, from the outside, I was astonished to see I didn’t appear as clumsy as I’d always believed. That didn’t negate the revulsion I felt at seeing the thick, waist-long black hair or passably pretty face. Still, it was kind of a surprise to watch reality (if this was reality) and memory meshed.
It was just after dawn, and I was carrying a large amphora of oil out to a storage house beyond my family’s home. My steps were light, careful not to spill any of it, and I again marveled at the way I moved. I set the vessel down beside others inside the shed and started to head back toward the house. I’d barely taken two steps outside when Kyriakos, my husband-to-be, appeared. There was a covert expression on his face, one that instantly told me he had sneaked over here to find me and knew perfectly well that he shouldn’t have. It was an uncharacteristically bold move for him, and I chastised him for the indiscretion.
“What are you doing? You’re going to see me this afternoon…and then every day after that!”
“I had to give you these before the wedding.” He held up a string of wooden beads, small and perfectly formed with tiny ankhs engraved on them. “They were my mother’s. I want you to have them, to wear them today.”
He leaned forward, placing the beads around my neck. As his fingers brushed my skin, I felt something warm and tingly run through my body. At the tender age of fifteen, I hadn’t exactly understood such sensations, though I was eager to explore them. My wiser self today recognized them as the early stirrings of lust, and…well, there had been something else there too. Something else that I still didn’t quite comprehend. An electric connection, a feeling that we were bound into something bigger than ourselves. That our being together was inevitable.
“There,” he said, once the beads were secure and my hair brushed back into place. “Perfect.”