Dream Hunter (Bailey Spade 2)

The me in the conference room dream teleports over to where Valerian and the other me stand.

Looking at my fiery-haired self, I wink.

She/I wink back at me.

The feeling is weird because I’m conscious of both winking and looking at myself doing it.

Then the me who was already here notices a hungry expression on Valerian’s face when he looks at each version of me in turn. His purely male thoughts aren’t difficult to read: One Bailey is great, two are even better.

Well, if he’s a good boy, one day I might use my power to have a sort of threesome with him. It might be fun to enjoy him from different perspectives like this. So fun, in fact, that I feel distinctly warm at the thought.

Suppressing the distracting notion, I leave the fiery-haired me to supervise the wolf’s dream and teleport Valerian to the meeting-room dream.

Now that the two-dream juxtaposition isn’t confusing things, I get a good look around the room.

Hmm. The masks are all the cheapo crap you can get in any store. All the popular choices at costume parties are represented, from real monsters like drekavacs to fictional creatures like Pac-Man.

One specific mask catches my attention, that of a puck’s face.

Could it be?

It is a very common mask.

But it’s not just the mask by itself. This man is tall and thin, like the one in the dream of Vas, the orc from the Filthy Bastards gang.

Except that would mean Itzel’s grandfather’s disappearance is somehow linked to Icelus.

“The High Priest couldn’t make it,” the guy in the puck mask says in the same creaking-floorboards voice I heard before, confirming it is indeed the same person. “I’ll be the one to head today’s gathering.” He waits to see if anyone has any objections, then opens a hologram map of Gomorrah and waves his hands around until a huge chunk of the map is colored in red.

Everyone’s eyes gleam with fear and curiosity.

“As you’ve probably surmised, this represents the blast radius,” the puck-masked guy says. “For the foreseeable future, you’ll want to stay far away from those neighborhoods.”

My eyes widen. “Blast radius?” I exclaim so that only Valerian can hear. Millions live in the highlighted area, not to mention the Health District is there too—the location where Mom’s hospital resides.

Let’s talk after, Valerian tells me via LEGO letters.

“Has the date been set?” the werewolf growls.

The puck-masked guy gives him a cold look. “Only the Grandmaster will have that information. What we don’t know can’t be tortured out of us.”

Everyone at the table nods somberly.

“Speaking of capture and torture.” The puck mask takes out an unfamiliar device, presses it to his right finger, and winces as the device beeps. “I’ve just implanted a delivery system.” He extends his other hand and taps his index finger and thumb in a Morse-code-like pattern. “That gesture will activate the system. The medicine is painless. Use it if you’re captured.”

Valerian and I exchange worried glances.

The puck mask walks around the room, implanting the devices into everyone’s index fingers. Afterward, he spends a while making sure the group remembers the suicidal finger-tapping sequence.

Returning to his seat, he sweeps his gaze over the room. “I know how committed all of you are to our cause, so stating this is unnecessary.” His eyes glint darkly. “If you’re captured and don’t use the precaution you’ve just received, Phobetor will deal with you personally.”

Everyone looks a lot more frightened than they did at the talk of torture, or when a death-dealing device entered their fingers.

Valerian was right. These people really believe in this nightmare deity, to the point where they might actually kill themselves to avoid its wrath. In fact, the mere mention of Phobetor has a profound impact on Hans. In this dream, his shoulders droop, sweat beads on the back of his neck, and he adjusts his shirt collar.

The version of me who’s watching the werewolf notices him reacting as well. He stops eating and tucks his tail between his legs.

Puck. I can tell this thing is about to become a nightmare he’ll wake up from. Well, not with me around. I change the dream so that there’s a knock on the door leading to the meeting room.

Hans looks in that direction—and I instantly feel the dream is no longer a memory, something I expected.

The door opens, revealing a mooft standing there.

As Hans gapes at the benign cow-like creature, I start to make everyone in the room disappear. Before I get around to the puck mask guy, Hans turns from the mooft, likely to ask his co-conspirators what the hell is going on.

Seeing the puck mask alone, he frowns. “Where’s everyone?”

“What are you talking about?” the puck mask asks.

Valerian grabs my elbow. “Use your powers to make our surroundings more generic,” he whispers. “We want the dream to merge into the one where the two of them spoke alone.”