The Children of Hypnos

[Vol. 3] Chapter 30: Morpheus

Capturing Klaus the second time had none of the fanfare of the first. Wes caught up to Marcia and Ares, the green moon beaming down on them, and they returned to the middle of the quad and the fight around the fountain. Now that the storm had let up, he could see all the bodies scattered around campus, dark, unmoving forms on the ground. Bile rose in his throat. He couldn't think about them now.

Klaus and Pestilence were no longer a blur. They had dropped to the speed of normal humans, facing down on opposite sides of Iltani's fountain. Pestilence gripped the edge, coughing acid into the water. Klaus kneeled on the other side, a slice through the armor on his thigh and blood running down the left side of his face. Ares, Marcia, and Wes slowed their approach.

"Emery said to take him into the Dream," Wes said to them, low and quiet. "There's a cottage. At the Waking Lake. I don't know what it is, but—"

"Who told her about that?" Ares shot a dark look at Wes. He'd taken the lead on their group, his axes held out ahead of him as a shield. "The cottage is—hell."

Klaus and Pestilence had both seen them. Pestilence began to rise first.

"He's mine!" Acid spittle spewed from Pestilence's mouth. He shambled away from the fountain and fell to his knees. His hands no longer seemed to be working. He had the same black claws as Klaus, and just as many rips and tears all over his body. "Get—get back. I'm going to make him hurt. I'm going to make him pay for this." He gave no explanation, just began pulling himself around the fountain, toward Klaus.

Klaus's eyes were dark, hollow. He tracked Pestilence's movements like an animal. There was little of the human Wes knew in his face, and none of the concern or intelligence or life. For the first time, Wes considered that Pestilence was all that was left of Klaus's humanity. This sad, poisonous creature, trying to save itself by killing the thing that tethered it to this horrible life.

Ares stood between Klaus and Pestilence. Keeping Pestilence away was as easy as planting a boot on his shoulder and shoving him onto his back. Marcia and Wes approached Klaus. He looked up at them and sank toward the fountain, as if trying to become smaller. He focused on Marcia.

"He's scared of me," she said quietly. She turned away before Wes could see her face, kneeled before Klaus, and very delicately clasped the collar around his neck.

He collapsed, boneless, against the fountain. Pestilence let out a keening cry and ceased to move.

Wes dreamformed two plain slabs and Marcia and Ares dragged Klaus and Pestilence onto them. Restraints crawled over their arms, legs, and chests. Wes tried hard not to look at Klaus's face. The ruin of a former teacher and friend.

"What is the cottage?" he asked Ares.

"Even I'm not entirely sure," Ares said. "The official line is that it's a figment of the collective human mind, a peaceful and safe place. Dreamhunters who attempt to reach it will find themselves walking forever. Dreamkillers will be thrown from the Dream entirely. As far as I can tell, those effects are real. But I know there's more behind it than figments." He swung his axe through the air and created his gateway, a gaping black portal flanked by two wind-blasted sandstone columns. "I'll get us as close as I can."

Marcia stepped up to the edge of the portal, then turned to face her father, staring him straight in the eye. "Why now? Why did you decide to turn on the State now, instead of the first time we needed you, or the second, or the third?"

"I'm not sure this is the time, Marsh—"

"Answer me," she snapped, "Or I'm making my own gateway."

Ares sighed and rocked back on his heels. "I did what I thought would keep our family safe. All our family." He glanced at Marcia's stomach, then at Wes, too. Then, finally, at Klaus. His expression was pained. "And if this is what you want...then he's family, too."