The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 2: Reluctant Deals

The first nightmares arrived with Babylon.

It was the first city in history to reach a population size large enough to thin the veil between the waking world and the Dream. There were only a few sparse records left of the nightmares that appeared during that time, and mentions of only one person who knew how to vanquish them. Every official Hypnos State text called her Iltani, and named her the first dreamhunter.

There was a statue of Iltani at the center of Fenhallow Academy's campus—accompanied by Fabian Fenhallow, the school's founder, whom most students forgot about until reminded—her arms raised, wreathed in flame. Emery was eight years old when she stood before the statue the first time, and as she looked into Iltani's fierce bronzecast face, she began to understand the responsibility she'd been given.

Dreamhunters, forged by exposure to the Dream in the cities they protected, had worked alone and unorganized until the formation of small dreamhunting societies in China, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Middle East. Over time, more societies appeared across the globe, grew, and evolved to their current form: the Hypnos State. A neutral world government that worked outside politics to bring peace to nightmare-riddled cities across the globe, named for the Greek god of sleep.

That was what the textbooks said, anyway. Emery thought it was mostly garbage. The history all sounded good, but nothing as far-reaching as the Hypnos State would be "outside politics."

Fenhallow had been created to give the Hypnos State a base of operations in the U.S. As the largest training center for future State employees in North America, it was the reason the Sleeping City had been built at all—and the Sleeping City was the only one of its kind. There was a billboard outside the city limits that had never changed and never would; a black background that disappeared against the night sky so the stark white letters, lit from below, hovered over the city:

FIND HOME HERE,

CHILDREN OF HYPNOS

Emery could see the back of the sign far in the distance where she sat on the sidewalk outside the Miller's home. Her mission had taken her to the suburbs—and on a Saturday night, no less—so it took the cleanup crew forty-five minutes to reach her. By then, Cora was dead asleep in her father's arms, exhausted by the night's events, and Emery was ignoring the messages popping up on her wrist cuff and instead typing one out to her boyfriend, Joel, who was not a dreamhunter, and who would most certainly be asleep in his dorm room on Fenhallow's campus.

Don't listen to what anyone says tomorrow. 100% owned this mission by myself.

She sent it out and stared for a moment at the dark span of yard between the houses on the other side of the street, trying not to think of how much trouble she was going to be in when she got back to campus. As she stared, something shifted in the shadows, and she realized there was a man standing there, watching her. Only his face was visible, and only barely, and his eyes were covered by goggles.

Then a few members of the cleanup crew passed in front of Emery, and when she looked again, he'd slipped around the back of the house and disappeared. She'd heard from full-time hunters about people in the city who liked to creep on dreamhunters before or after jobs, like fanboys with celebrities, but she'd never seen it for herself.

The Millers had some weird neighbors.

The Hypnos cleanup crew consisted of two teams: one outfitted in gray jumpsuits, the other in jackets and ties. The jumpsuits took in the damage to the house, the broken window and bedroom door, and began calculating the repair costs. The jackets and ties spoke to Cora's father about what had happened, then to the neighbors who had come from their houses to inspect the commotion.