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Besides, no more monsters had come for me.
I’d seen enough memories to know the lull was not permanent. There was a hole in reality somewhere, where the creatures came from, called the Rift. What the Cucitrice had been doing—killing them—was a temporary patch. Could the Rift be fixed? If what The Soldier had said about the nightmares amassing then... It hurt to think about doing anything without Val. Every superhero had a sidekick.
Mine was dying.
On the third day, while I was getting coffee at the vending machine, someone new arrived at the nurse’s station, flashed ID and came toward Val’s room. Val’s DNA might’ve triggered some bell somewhere, flagged him on a hidden program. This man looked official, maybe CIA. They would know who he was from DNA even though no police had come calling. His fake name might also be known to them—Mr. Tom Bardiche.
From memory, a bardiche was a big nasty sharp thing from the Middle Ages—a polearm. He was probably boasting about his dick. Trust Val to have the last laugh.
I lingered outside the room where I could listen while pretending to read a message on my cellphone. The tall stranger said nothing. Or not at first, and I started worrying about drawing suspicion. Then...he spoke on his cellphone.
“I’m at the hospital. He’s gone, or close to it. They expect him to last a few days at most. Too much damage to even do surgery. Systems are shutting down. In a coma, yes. No, we should still transfer him to the military hospital. He was at the site of both bombs. That makes him a person of interest. If he’s going to die, then moving him won’t matter now will it? Make the arrangements.”
The man left.
“Fuck you,” I whispered, digging fingernails into my cup as I walked past the door and down the hallway as if I was visiting someone else.
If they moved Val, I’d never get close to him again.
Stomach tight and with an ache in my chest, I threw the coffee into the bin. Wiping my palms down the front of my pants, I tried to get hold of my racing thoughts.
Think.
Think.
In my handbag, I had the eyeglasses and the knife. One would kill Val and set the Nightmare King free to body hop again. Useless. The other...gave wishes, but mostly just let you find something in unexpected ways. Thing was, Val wasn’t lost.
He wasn’t anywhere.
I’d tried to walk his dreams. I’d tried to find him in the place between life and death—nothing.
Ihad nothing.
Still, I returned to Val’s room and donned the eyeglasses. It was a stupid, ridiculous hope that I would find a clue. Something. Anything.
Taking a deep breath, I looked down.
There he was, the Nightmare King, in all his lava-red glory.
All of Val’s brain glowed red, not just a little. His skeleton was a deeper, darker shade that was almost pitch black in places—his spine, ribs, limbs, and skull.
My stitching showed on his arm, some in red and black, some purest white where faery had been used by me or the Cucitrice. And inside his abdomen a bright ball glowed, sending out thin shafts of purest white, rotating in some impossible way. Each rotation revealed an interlocking mess of alchemical symbols on its surface. That was what kept the NK in check, and also why Val hadn’t been obliterated.
The man had thought the NK secreted in some remote area of his mind, but it wasn’t so. The two of them appeared inseparable. How long had the Nightmare King been inside his body? Had the Cucitrice triggered his awakening or had Val always been living on borrowed time? I didn’t think we’d ever really know.
A tear splashed onto the glass, and instinctively I raised my arm to wipe it away.
Fragments were everywhere on my arm.
Splinters of red, black, and white were under my skin—wriggling pieces of both nightmare and dream. Shrapnel somehow from the explosion.
As if I’d been stitched.
Stitched?
I’d forgotten about the symbol outline I’d carved into my arm on the roof.
Was this why I could still see Neme and the faery?
