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Reaching out with the hand Kain contaminated earlier, I touch his forehead and fall into his dream world.
I find myself in Kain’s kitchen.
He’s talking animatedly on the phone—I think it’s about taxes—so I make myself invisible before he can spot me. Decades without sleep and his subconscious concocts a dream this boring? How disappointing. In any case, I can breathe a sigh of relief. He was indeed already in REM sleep, so I’ve skipped over the dangerous subdreams. And unlike Bernard, Kain seems to have no deep-seated nightmares to worry about—nightmares I would be in right now if they existed. Unless he really dislikes talking on the phone to his accountant? It wouldn’t be that crazy. When it comes to death and taxes, vampires don’t have to worry too much about the former.
I grope for my empty wrist. Because I’m in Kain’s dream and not Pom’s, Pom doesn’t instantly show up here. That’s probably for the best, as I think he’d prefer to miss the bit with the werewolf.
Dream manipulation time.
I manifest the date and time I want and morph the environment to an international airport at midday. I always do this as smoothly as I can manage. In this case, the kitchen already has barstools, so it becomes an airport bar. Kain doesn’t question this new reality, so I slowly add noises of talking people and clanking glasses.
Still good. Kain keeps chatting on the phone.
I end the call.
He shrugs and leaves the bar as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I get bolder, adding details from his story: screams of bloody murder from the werewolf’s victims, panicked humans, fellow Enforcers rushing into action. It’s more art than science, giving the dreamer enough details that they can run with the dream from there, their subconscious adding in whatever is needed. As Kain begins to do this, I relax and watch the events unfold.
Foaming at the mouth, the wolf rips an old lady into pieces. Kain shoots it with a tranquilizer dart, and it lets go of the human and dashes for Terminal 8. Filth and a few other Enforcers are already waiting there, holding stun guns.
Uninterested in the bloody outcome, I ask myself a single question: Is this dream a memory? My power confirms it, just as it did in Bernard’s dream. Good. If Kain were the killer, I’d be in a vulnerable real-world position, being in his dungeon bedroom and all.
Job done, I yank myself from the dream and into the waking world.
Before Kain wakes up, I use what’s left of the sanitizer to finally clean my hand.
After I’m done, I softly call, “Kain. Wake up.”
Fangs out, he leaps off the bed as if to battle for his life. Spotting me, he halts, recognition appearing in his eyes.
“You’re officially not guilty of killing Gemma,” I tell him. “This clears Firth and a bunch of other Enforcers, too.”
He massages the bridge of his nose. “I was in my kitchen and the airport. That makes no sense, but at the time it was so logical and real. I somehow knew the date and time without looking at any clocks. Felt it, almost.”
I nod. “Dreamers almost never ask themselves, ‘How did I get here?’ Those who do sometimes realize they’re in a dream. It’s called lucid dreaming, and it can cause problems for me, so I’m glad it’s rare.”
“I think I could go for centuries without dreaming again.” He strides out of the bedroom, and I gladly follow.
Without stopping, he heads out of the apartment and down a spindly corridor teeming with monks. When we reach a dilapidated wooden door, he opens it. “This is your new quarters.”
The place looks spartan, with just a small bed and a wooden table inside a small windowless room, but it’s luxurious compared to the dungeon cell. It even has a washroom with a shower and a proper toilet.
“The stuff you wanted is there.” He gestures at a pile of plastic bags behind the bed. “You have a little time while I make the arrangements for the Councilors to go to sleep.”
When he leaves, I rummage through the shopping bags. Yep, everything I asked for is here, adult diapers and laxatives included. I fish out the bananas, water, and sanitizer and set it all on the table.
Vampire blood has many side effects, one of them being the suppression of hunger along with sleep. While on it, I eat based on common sense—a few hundred calories every few hours. I’m actually way behind on my quota, so I sanitize seven bananas and force myself to eat them one after another—which takes twenty minutes that feel like five hours.
Feeling like a stuffed ape, I chase the fruit with plenty of water and use the toilet while I have it handy. A side effect of eating so rarely and being constantly dehydrated is that I don’t have to do this often.
