Dream Chaser (Bailey Spade 3)

Then again, who knows what’s happening in the outside world. It’s feasible that they are dead, just in a different way from what the drug made me see.

“Shouldn’t you wake yourself up?” Pom asks, echoing my thoughts.

“Not yet,” I say and teleport to the tower of sleepers. “I need to wake up Rowan and Valerian. He can make us invisible to the vampires, and she can take them over completely.”

Whew. Rowan and Valerian are here. For a second, I was worried they got hit with something other than Koshmar—or worse, were killed while I dreamed.

“What’s that?” Pom asks, his ears pricking. “Are you making that music?”

Pucking puck!

It’s the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy again.

“The Nutcracker,” I say through gritted teeth.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Motherpucker. The enemy dreamwalker couldn’t have attacked at a worse time—and that’s probably the point.

Since going to a random locale on Earth seemed to help me battle him the last time, I do so again, teleporting to the entrance of the insectoid-looking Opera House in Sydney, Australia.

At the same time, I try to jolt myself awake.

It doesn’t work, and the reason why is clear. The Nutcracker appears in front of me, his clown-like painted mouth twisted in a sneer.

Puck. He’s still able to prevent me from waking up.

When we faced each other the first time, I was pre-boost, and we were evenly matched. Then, when we fought after I’d gotten the boost, things stayed the same. At that point, I thought that maybe I just hadn’t internalized the boost. Now there’s been enough time for that, and I have to consider a theory I dismissed the last time: that he’s somehow gotten a boost that matches mine.

A bazooka appears in his hands.

I fiddle with the gunpowder.

He must’ve planned for this somehow, because when he squeezes the trigger, a rocket whooshes out.

I dodge.

The rocket hits the Opera House, and a huge explosion levels the place.

Pom, who’s managed to stay with me until now, disappears without so much as saying the word scary.

I take flight toward the Sydney Harbour Bridge. An orca jumps out of the water below. There’s no way something that big can jump so high, so I normalize the gravity below the orca just enough so that its teeth miss me by a nanometer.

Reaching the bridge, I alter the gravity and turn the soles of my shoes into magnets, so I can run on the side of the bridge, parallel to the water.

None of my shenanigans slow the Nutcracker. He’s either practiced dream fighting for ages or has a background conducive to it, like me with video game design.

“The more time you waste, the higher the odds that Percival will kill you in the real world,” the Nutcracker says in his creepily melodic voice. “After he’s done with all your friends, that is.”

I turn and manifest a massive anvil right above his head, as if we were in a roadrunner cartoon. “I’m pretty sure Fabian and his wolfu have made mincemeat out of that pre-vamp already.”

He dodges the anvil and throws a cloud of spiders at me. “A pre-vamp? In your dreams. Percival is one of the most ancient vampires. Your werewolf is as good as dead.”

Oh, puck. That explains that superpowered jump. With a shudder, I recall what Edith, another ancient vampire, was able to do. If Percival is as powerful, Fabian is indeed in trouble.

All of us are.

If the Nutcracker’s goal was to throw me off my game with this revelation, it works spectacularly. I miss my chance to destroy the spider horde, and now they’re creepy-crawling all over me—and biting.

Acting purely on instinct, I dive into the water below, turning my body into metal on the way. The Nutcracker knows what I look like and can turn me back, but hopefully not before I get rid of his arachnid friends.

With a loud splash, I hit the water and sink like the chunk of metal that I am.

The spiders drown, as I hoped, but my reprieve is short. The Nutcracker shows up, incongruently standing on the ocean floor despite his wooden body.

With a flick of his hand, he returns my body to its flesh-and-blood form.

I begin to resurface, so I quickly adjust the density of the water around me, allowing me to stay put.

With a smirk, the Nutcracker creates a giant bubble of air around us, then manifests a saber in his hand and lunges at me.

My katana shows up in my hand just in time to parry.

This isn’t good. Our sword fighting didn’t go so well the last time. At least not until I played my secret weapon—the multiple body technique.

In a blink of an eye, I exit my body, create a duplicate of myself, and leap into both. The two of me raise our katanas—and are blocked with two sabers in the hands of two Nutcrackers.