SAVICH HOUSE
GEORGETOWN
Friday night
It was late. Sherlock was asleep, her hand over his heart, her breath warm against his shoulder. Savich kissed her hair, breathed in her scent, and closed his mind down. He fell asleep and into a cold so brutal his bones were going to shatter. Fast as snapping fingers, the cold was gone, and he was standing in a small, circular clearing in the middle of a thick pine-tree forest, the thick-needled branches spearing upward, nearly meeting overhead. It was full-on night, yet oddly he could see around him as if it was twilight, the darker night hovering indistinctly in the billowing shadows at the edge of the trees.
He was alone beneath the motionless sentinel pines with no idea of where he was. He was naked but he didn’t feel cold, and surely that was strange, because he could make out small patches of snow. He realized he didn’t feel the rocky ground beneath his feet, and he felt a stab of panic. He had to be dreaming, but why would he dream this? And if he was conscious of it, knew he was dreaming, surely he could change the dream. That’s what a conscious dream was, wasn’t it? Could he bring himself out of it? He willed himself back into bed, wrapped around Sherlock, pictured himself kissing her neck.
Nothing happened.
Another shock of panic. He calmed. Relax, go with it. It wasn’t as if he had a choice anyway.
He sniffed the air, smelled smoke. He couldn’t remember actually smelling anything in a dream before, but now he could. It was burning wood, off to his right. He walked toward it, along a wide trail through the trees and the undergrowth, noticed again that he didn’t feel the brambles on the trail under his feet, though he walked right over them. He reached out to touch a pine tree, but his hand went through it. He drew back, slashed his hand through the tree again, harder. Nothing there. He knew then this wasn’t a dream. His subconscious had nothing to do with this. No, it was something else. Was he in some sort of hologram?
Something or someone else was in charge of his spirit-walk thought these woods and toward the unknown. He felt a presence, a presence he knew he should fear. What do you want from me? Why am I here?
Savich stepped out of the pines and into another clearing. An ancient stone tower stood before him, lichen growing thick on the stones. He saw two rough-cut skinny windows covered with what looked like animal hides. Why this bizarre tower?
He raised his hand to push the knob on the large black door, paused. Slowly, he laid his palm against it. He was surprised. It was solid, the wood rough against his palm. Savich shoved and the door swung open. He stepped into a magnificent Moorish-tiled entryway with a soaring ceiling so high he couldn’t see the top. The smell of smoke was strong inside, as if the air itself were burning, making his eyes tear. The stone beneath his bare feet felt icy cold and as solid as the door. Very well, for whatever reason, inside this tower, he wasn’t insubstantial, he was real.
He felt a sudden blast of arctic air. What was that—a touch of the spurs? Had he broken a rule? Whose rule?
He slapped his hands to his arms for warmth and looked around. He had to admit it was an awesome illusion, a vast space replete with Gothic trimmings. There were rush torches fastened to the stone walls, but they weren’t lit. Couldn’t you manage that?
Some twenty feet beyond him, wide stone steps led upward, fading into the roiling shadows in the distance. They looked well worn, as if centuries of heavy booted feet had marched over them. There was a solid stone wall on his right and an arched stone doorway on his left. He walked through it and into a room from the past, filled with dark, heavy, richly carved furniture, like he’d seen in an old castle near Lisbon. There was a blazing fireplace large enough to roast a cow, which blew out blue puffs of smoke. He walked over and reached out his cold hands to the flames, but they held no heat, no warmth at all, like a moving picture of a fire. There were dark beams crisscrossing overhead, but no windows, only large faded tapestries of medieval hunting scenes on the walls.
The air was oppressive, heavy, but the thick smell of smoke was now gone. He felt something stir behind him. It was the presence he’d felt in the forest. It was here. He turned slowly, but there was no one there.
He called out, his voice clipped and impatient, “You went to a lot of trouble to bring me into this elaborate dream with you. I smelled your smoke and found you, as you wanted me to. Time for you to show yourself and stop showing off.”
Savich heard a laugh, a man’s deep laugh, not the sort of laugh you’d join in. It was crude, mocking. He turned toward the arched doorway. It was no longer empty.
A man stood there, his hands crossed over his chest. He was swathed in a hooded black robe with long, billowing sleeves. The robe seemed to twist and swirl around his dark boots, as if stirred by an unseen wind. A thin gold cord was tied around his waist, the ends dangling nearly to his knees. His face was long and thin, his head covered by a hood. From what Savich could see of his face, he was pale, with long black hair that spilled forward from his hood onto his shoulders. He looked like an ancient scholar, or perhaps a monk from an old religious order who might have worked in a dark tower like this. He’d seen pictures of witches in robes like that, dancing in their ceremonies, their faces exalted while they chanted to the heavens, carving the air with sharp-bladed Athames.
“You are not frightened,” he said in a deep voice. “I admit that surprises me. I brought you here to instruct you about what you’re going to do for me.”
His voice was resonant yet strangely hollow, like an old recording played too many times. He sounded faintly European. Savich said, “You mean the kind of instruction you gave Walter Givens and Brakey Alcott, to stab their friends?”
“You’re quite intuitive, I see. Perhaps that is why you are not as afraid of me as you should be. You realized quite quickly my beautiful forest wasn’t a dream, that I had eased into your mind, created this splendid setting to bring you into.”
“I should be afraid?”
“You will do as I say, as they did, whether you are afraid or not. Before we are done here, you will revere me, worship me. And you will remember nothing.”
Savich waved his hand around him. “I don’t see much to be afraid of, actually. Look around you. You couldn’t manage to get the lighting right, so many shadows, so many blurred corners in your tower. And you couldn’t provide heat, either, could you?
“Worship you? If you don’t mind, now I’m too cold.”
The hooded figure didn’t move, stood with his black cloak swirling about his ankles. If Savich wasn’t mistaken, he looked surprised at the mockery. What would he do? Savich hated to admit it to himself, but he was afraid. He had no idea what would happen if he were killed in his mind. Would his body die as well?
The witch, or whatever he was, cocked his head to one side, sending more of his black hair to fall out from under his hood and slide along his face.
“Enough of this melodrama. Who are you and what do you want?”
“My name is Stefan Dalco. I have told you what I will do.”
“Is that name part of this Romanian fantasy? Who are you, really? How does all this concern you?”
“I will kill you before I allow you to find that out. You are not here to question me. I brought you here to stop all these questions, whatever it takes. And I will.”
“You say you have that power, yet you’re afraid to tell me who you are?”
Savich felt a burst of anger from Dalco, so real he almost smiled. “You are nothing like the others,” Dalco said. “They could not think beyond their fear, they could not reason. For a time they believed they were mad. Yet you remain yourself, even here. You are not a witch, you are something else entirely. There are not many like us, you know.”
“If that’s the case, you can stop looking like a Hollywood villain from a melodrama. Why don’t you pull your hood back, show me your face?”
A pause, then a stiff voice: “I provide the trappings one expects to see. These hands, for example”—he raised narrow hands with bulging purple veins and long, thin fingers, their nails filed to a point. “A fine touch, don’t you think?”
Savich didn’t answer. He was looking toward the medieval tapestries. Only now they were large dirty-brown woven rugs hanging on the walls, as if Dalco had lost concentration and the hunting scenes had disappeared. Interesting. Was Dalco really strong enough to hold him here? Until when? Until he died?
He looked back at Dalco. “Why did you kill Sparky Carroll and Kane Lewis?”
Savich knew he wasn’t wrong; a spasm of pain had crossed the shadowed face. For what? Dalco said, “All you need to know is that they deserved death. At my hands, as do you for your interference.”
Dalco took two steps toward him, raised a hand that held a long black-handled Athame, and hurled it at Savich, but Savich had already fallen to his side and jerked one of the big chairs in front of him. The Athame struck the wooden back and sank deep, not three inches above his head.
He had no weapons, nothing to protect himself. He heard Dalco’s harsh breathing. “You are too arrogant, too proud to spare. You will not give up. I will not let you destroy me.”
He saw the flash of another Athame in Dalco’s hand. He was coming closer and he would kill him this time. Savich focused, pictured Winkel’s Cave in Maestro, Virginia, a place he’d dreamed about several times, a place where he and many of his friends could easily have died. He pictured both of them standing in the large chamber beneath a ceiling of incredible stalactites.
Suddenly they were both standing in the cave.
Dalco stood very still, staring at the walls. “How did you do that?”
Savich had no answer, for either of them. He’d simply willed both of them out of Dalco’s illusion and into one of his own. It had worked.
Dalco said, his voice thoughtful, “You’ve done this before, haven’t you? And you didn’t tell me.”
“Why should I tell you anything? Would you like to be buried here in my cave, Dalco?” Savich pointed to the wall. “Look at your own personal coffin I fashioned especially for you.”
Dalco looked at a coffin carved into the stone, his name carved in large letters on it. He stumbled, then seemed to get hold of himself and jerked back to face Savich, shaking his head back and forth. “No, this can’t be possible.” He looked panicked, turned and started to run, and suddenly everything disappeared.
“Dillon! Dillon! Come on, wake up!”
It was Sherlock’s voice and she was shaking him, slapping him. He was gasping for breath, drenched in sweat.
“Come on, wake up. You’ve had a nightmare, a doozy.”
He grabbed her wrist, pulled her down close to his face. “I’m okay now. Thanks for waking me.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him up, kissed his nose, his mouth, held him hard against her. “Was it because of what happened in New York?”
“Actually,” he said slowly as he pulled away, “it wasn’t.” He stroked her wildly curling hair from her face. “I know who killed Sparky Carroll and Kane Lewis. His name is Dalco. Stefan Dalco.” He kissed her again, pulled her tight against him. “It wasn’t a dream. He brought me into this elaborate dream setting. He talked to me. He tried to kill me.”
Sherlock studied his face in the dull gray dawn light. She tasted fear and relief, a heady brew. “You stopped him.”
“Yes. This time.” He knew there would be a next time. And what would happen? In the silence of the early morning, he could still hear the faint echo of Dalco’s voice.
The alarm went off, and they both heard Sean running down the hall toward their bedroom, ready to take on the day.