The Children of Hypnos

Chapter 6: Chickens Without Heads

Emery unholstered a Peacemaker with her free hand.

"Well," she said, "no paperwork for this one, so let's see what he's got."

"The stories say he only attacks when you address him, right?"

"Yep." She waggled her revolver at Wes. "Get on it, boyfriend."

Wes frowned. "I looked up the reports on the way here. Not all of them were hetero couples and in at least one of them, the girl was the one who—"

The Fox screamed.

Emery and Wes jumped at the same time, but Emery swung her Peacemaker up and fired, and the Fox, sprinting at them through the trees, jerked as his head whipped back on his shoulders. He fell into the underbrush, silenced.

Emery stood with gun still raised and eyes trained on the unmoving body. So did Wes.

"Why isn't it reverting back into the Dream?" Wes's voice came out strained.

"I don't know."

It should have been a cloud of violet. They should have been absorbing it. Emery's heart began to race in her chest. "You don't think...that couldn't have been..."

"We'd have known if it was a real person," Wes said. "It would have been obvious."

Emery holstered the Peacemaker to keep it from rattling in her hand. Wes shifted his grip to the very end of the hammer shaft, stepped forward, and used the hammer head to nudge the Fox's foot.

The Fox burst into a glittering cloud of blue and purple, glowing softly against the tree trunks.

"Oof."

Emery collapsed to her knees in relief. Her heart punched her ribs. "Let's not do that again. Wes, maybe you could step in the way of the bullet next time."

Wes didn't respond. The cloud had swirled around the hammer, hiding it, and moved no closer. It bubbled in a way Emery had never seen before, like the cloud was thickening again. Shadows bloomed along its surface and gave it shape.

"This is...not right," Wes said. "Right?"

Hands. Arms. Shoulders. A head. The Wilmark Fox reformed around Wes's war hammer, gripping the shaft. The boy looked up at Wes from behind the mask, silent and unmoving.

"Definitely not right," Emery siad.

The Fox twisted and heaved and threw Wes sideways. He crashed into a tree and fell, slumped, between the roots, his hammer across his legs. The Fox spun and launched itself at Emery. That hellish screaming split the night open, made more horrible because it sounded like a teenage boy. It sounded like a real person.

Emery sprang to her feet and ran.

She vaulted over roots and bushes as reflective eyes flashed in her waving light and disappeared. She lunged and grabbed a tree trunk to make a sharp right turn; the Fox's nails dug into the bark just as she let go. She'd heard of recurring nightmares that came back night after night, but not nightmares that reformed immediately after being dispatched. She fumbled for her Peacemaker again, making sure she had a firm grip on it before she pulled it from its holster. Root, root, low branch. She pointed her revolver over her shoulder and fired. Three shots. The footsteps behind her faltered, then picked up faster than before.

Emery cursed as she ran. Her lungs burned. Her knees jarred on every impact against the uneven forest floor. The ground dropped beneath her again and she tripped, rolled down a short hill, and curled into a tight ball to jump to her feet again at the bottom. She'd kept hold of her gun, but her flashlight was gone. Thin moonlight seeped through the canopy, giving her the barest outlines of the trees.