Hellforged by Nancy Holzner Page B

back. Or I could bring it to you if you’d rather.”
    “Would you? That’d be terrific. I need it for a Drude extermination tomorrow night.” I told him where I lived.
    “Oh, sure, I go right by there on my way home. But I won’t be out of here for a while. Those Goons made a mess of the storeroom; it’ll take me an hour, probably, to straighten it up. That okay?”
    “I’m about to fall into bed. Can you leave it with my doorman? He’ll hold on to it for me.”
    After we hung up, I fell into bed, as predicted. Now I could sleep soundly.
    Except sound sleep eluded me. I did sleep, and it started off fine—darkness, silence, no dreams. But a sound emerged, an echo of laughter. It rumbled through my sleep, not a dream but not part of the waking world, either. The sound grew and multiplied; other voices joined in, all of them laughing. The darkness rippled, broke into pieces, and tumbled into billows of thick black smoke that stung my nose and eyes. I smelled burning and squinted against the smoke, trying to make out a half-glimpsed figure passing through it.
    This shouldn’t be happening. I struggled to gain control. All Cerddorion are lucid dreamers; we know when we’re dreaming and can consciously direct what’s happening. It’s one of the reasons we’re such skilled demon fighters: Demons often enter victims’ dreamscapes to torment them, so we have to be able to control dreams. But tonight, it was difficult. I focused my attention on dispersing the smoke—I tried a strong wind, then rain. I made the wind stronger, until a hurricane blasted my dreamscape. The smoke didn’t thin. Didn’t budge. It was smoke, but it was a solid, heavy presence, like a hundred-foot-high cliff. The laughter escalated, roaring over the screaming winds.
    Then, abruptly, it stopped. The smoke cleared as if it had never been there. The laughter fell away, one voice at a time, until a single whisper remained. The whisper faded, then it was gone. All around me stretched the blackness of undisturbed sleep—and an uneasiness that lingered with the merest whiff of burning.
    Gradually, I sank deeper into sleep. My body needed it.
    As I reached the deepest part of the sleep cycle, the place of profound relaxation, a hideous figure pushed itself into my dreamscape. Its warty blue skin dripped slime, and it smiled, showing hundreds of teeth, each as big and sharp as a dagger. Flames smoldered behind its eyes, and it belched foul-smelling smoke.
    Difethwr, the Destroyer. The Hellion that had killed my father—and nearly killed me.
    I screamed and tried to back away, but I couldn’t move. My demon mark, the scar on my arm where the Destroyer’s flames once touched me, burned with searing pain. The face came closer. Its eyes flashed. Flames shot out, streaming toward me.
    I struggled but still couldn’t move. I couldn’t even look away as the death-dealing flames, the fire that burned both body and soul, shot toward me.
    An inch from my face, they halted. The brightness blinded me, the heat singed my eyelashes, but the flames didn’t touch me.
    Difethwr laughed. It was the sound I’d heard before, a chorus of individual voices—loud and whispering, high-pitched and low, screeching and cackling and making me want to block my ears.
    As the laughter peaked, Difethwr reeled the flames back into its eye sockets. A huge black bird—a crow, or maybe a raven—flew in and alighted on the Hellion’s shoulder. Something dangled from the crow’s beak. The Destroyer lifted a taloned hand, palm up. The crow dropped the object into it and cawed three times, loudly, the harsh sound joining the demonic laughter. Difethwr clenched its fingers into a fist and then opened its hand again, flipping its wrist so that something dangled from a finger. I blinked the spots from my eyes to see what it was.
    My watch hung from the Hellion’s claw.
    Difethwr flicked its hand, tossing the watch into the air and incinerating it with a blast of its