"Bring her here. Keep her head elevated. What happened?"
"I don't know. She was fine, and then she started stumbling and fell over—"
"Em? Can you hear me?"
Emery blinked. She thought she blinked. Whether she did or not, her vision still blurred. The night was dark and rain misted her hair.
"What happened to her finger?"
"She was bitten. There was a thing in a cage—it looked like a bat."
Emery's head hurt. Her stomach hurt. Her arms felt like they'd been stabbed so many times they'd turned to ribbons. The ground flipped and spun like a gyroscope beneath her. Her vision cleared long enough for her to make out warm orbs of light passing her by. One, two, three. Lampposts. Rain fell into her eyes, so she closed them.
"Almost there, Em." The voice vibrated in her chest.
"Grandpa." Her own voice sounded too loud.
She was screaming.
"I'm here. Wesley, get the door. Get the door!"
The noises blurred like her vision. The world became a turbulent sea, and the voices around her became the howling of the wind. If she was still in the Dream, this was the worst nightmare they'd been through yet. Up was down, her nose and throat were packed with cotton, and it was becoming harder and harder to breathe, as if a bag of sand sat on her chest.
The cold sterility of the Fenhallow clinic brought her back to her senses long enough for Emery to register Grandpa Al setting her down on one of the beds, the curtain being drawn around her, and one of the doctors shining a bright light in her eyes. They took her hand. Shoved something in her ear, then down her throat. There was a prick at the inside of her elbow.
Wes's deep voice came from the other side of the curtain. His silhouette, the wave of his hair and the broad stretch of his shoulders, shifted against the white material.
"Wes," Emery croaked.
Grandpa Al's hand was on her shoulder, holding her down. "Wes is fine. Don't move, Em."
Wes had turned and the nurse had grabbed him. He was arguing with her now.
The doctor took Emery's hand.
"This looks like a bite."
"Poisonous." Grandpa Al's hand pressed flat on Emery's forehead. She knew it from the wrinkles, the warmth, the solid weight of the wedding ring he still wore. "Where is Marcia Montgomery? We need her here, she might be able to—"
His words faded.
Emery was horribly aware of slipping away. She had the time and awareness to dig her fingers into reality, but the Dream was dragging her down, down, back into it, away from the waking world. Then she was there, all at once, without any idea where there was.
Standing before her was a man without a face. He approached her. She raised her gun and shot him in the head, and a small perfect round hole appeared, and the man fell and blood pooled around him.
When she started screaming, the man appeared again. Again, she raised her gun and shot him. The hole wasn't there and then it was. The ground trembled when he fell. The blood made a soft rushing as it left his body.
The rushing grew louder and louder. The man appeared again. Emery shot him again. He fell again. She looked at her Peacemaker and it wasn't a dreamform at all, but a real gun, a gun made for killing other people.
She screamed.
The man appeared. She shot him. She screamed.
The man appeared. She shot him. The scream caught in her throat and she choked on it.
The man appeared. She raised her gun.
A pale hand grabbed it and shoved it down, and a black claw swiped through the man's head, sending him again to the ground. Sliding into his place was a new man, much younger than the last, with long unkempt dishwater hair, an unshaven jaw, and goggles. This new man took the gun from Emery first, then cupped her face in his hands. The claw disappeared and his palms were gentle but rough. Human hands. Long fingers.
"Sandman," she said.
"Emery," the Sandman said. "Focus on me. Focus as hard as you can, but don't move. You're having a fever dream. You are very ill right now, do you understand?"
She heard focus and dream and ill. She did feel ill, now that he mentioned it. She felt very ill. At least his appearance had stopped the unbearable spinning repetition.
The Sandman brushed the hair away from her face. "You were injured in my dream. What was it? Did something bite you?"
His dream. Injured. Bite.
"Little...bat." The words didn't want to come out. Her tongue weighed twenty pounds and was made of wet sticky rice. She saw her hand, then her hand against his face, then her hand brushing over his stubble. It felt nice. More than that, it felt real. She tried to push his goggles up. Her weak fingers got stuck on the rubber strap.
"The little bat. Of course." He grabbed her hand and took it down from his goggles. "Listen to me, Emery. The venom of the animals is not like any the Fenhallow clinic knows. None of the antidotes they try will work. It adheres to the laws of the Dream, and specifically to my dream. They need to—"
Emery's eyes opened. The clinic was hot and stuffy and she shook with chills.
"How am I supposed to know what to do for her?" The curtain was open enough for Emery to get a glimpse of brown skin and bright orange hair. "You think toxicology is learned through osmosis? I'm positive the things in his dreams are poisonous or venomous or whatever, but that doesn't mean I know—"
Sleep pulled her eyes closed again. The Sandman was back, yelling at her, his mouth moving with words she couldn't hear.
Then she could.
"EMERY. YOU—you're back! Damn fever dreams. Listen closely, this isn't going to make much sense. You need warm baby oil, and you need it poured into your ear. The venom only attacks your brain, and the oil draws it out through—"
Back to the clinic. The lights were too bright. Someone was holding her arms down to the bed.
"Why can't we see her? What happened?" The voices were far away.
Back to the dream.
"Did you hear me? Warm baby oil. In your ear. Tell them Klaus said to do it—"
The clinic banged cymbals in her ear and flashed a spotlight in her eyes.
"Baby oil," she gasped out. Black eyes looked at her from just outside the curtain. Then a flash of red hair. Then student uniforms. "In...in my ear. Warm."
"What's she saying?"
A hand touched her face. Grandpa Al was there again.
"Warm baby oil," Emery groaned. "Ear. Klaus said—Klaus—"
"She's hallucinating."
"What if she's not?"
"Warm baby oil in the ear is meant to help with ear aches, not venom."
"It can't possibly hurt to try."
"Miss Fenhallow—"
"Look, I don't know all the intricacies of your dreamhunter voodoo, but I know some weird nonsense goes down in the Dream, and warm baby oil in the ear sounds like weird nonsense to me."
When Emery fell asleep again, the Sandman was gone, and she had a gun, and she had a gun, and she had a gun.
~
Nothing was well. Not her and not her dreams. She no longer knew when she was sleeping and when she was awake. Sometimes she felt someone holding her hand. Sometimes her other hand throbbed: all her fingers were gone and poppies grew from their stumps. Sometimes she was looking in a mirror, and her reflection's hair floated around her head, and where her eyes should have been were two glowing disks like car headlights.
She was prodded and turned. She fell into a deep and inescapable cold, and shivered violently. She pleaded for someone to make it stop, however they could, to please make it stop. Make the world stop spinning, make her stop shivering, settle her stomach and calm her mind.
Her mouth was clamped shut, her teeth ground together, her tongue too heavy to move.
~
Something hot slithered into Emery's ear.
Her eyes snapped open. The clinic spun around her, but the heat cut through the haze in her mind. She tried to jerk away from the feeling but found herself pinned to her bed. Someone grunted.
"Sorry, Em. Don't move."
Joel. He laid on top of her, using his weight to hold her down; he held her wrists in both his hands, pinning them to her stomach. His face came into her vision a second later, expression apologetic. Kris and Jacqueline moved into view a second later. Kris looked pained; Jacqueline had her arms folded and her eyes narrowed.
That only left the person pouring the hot, nasty thing down Emery's ear—
"Hypnos's ballsack, Ashworth, hold still."
Marcia. Of course.
The hot slithering stopped. The heat dissipated quickly. All the muscles in her head and neck loosened, relaxing, and as they did the fog in her mind lifted and the room stopped spinning.
"I don't know if that was enough." Marcia leaned over. "Did he say how much to put in?"
"No," Emery grunted. "You can let me up, Jojo. I won't move."
"Hold on." Marcia leaned away. A finger jammed something soft in Emery's ear. A cotton ball. "Okay, let her up."
Joel let go and helped Emery sit up. Blood rushed to her head, but once the fuzz cleared from her vision, she could see again. Her index finger was bandaged and she wore a paper hospital gown.
Marcia looked at the oil-slicked spoon in her hand and said, "Wow. That was fast."
Emery pressed her hands to her face. Her stomach lurched, she was covered in sweat and shaking slightly, but the tempest of horrible feelings had passed. Joel moved up the bed to sit beside her against the headboard, planting his arm behind her. She had to ignore her own sweatiness to burrow against his shoulder, and her reward was breathing deep the smell of Old Spice. They were alone in the clinic, just the five of them. The nurse's station at the far end was empty.
"Where are Grandpa Al and the clinic staff?" Emery asked. "Where's Wes?"
"The dean is currently speaking to the director of the North American Ward," Marcia said. "You looked pretty terrible, but you weren't getting worse, so he took the opportunity to call for help."
"And the clinic staff was a quick distraction," said Jacqueline. "Wes told Dr. Wong that the Wilmark Fox had gotten ahold of one of the non-dreamhunter students and he'd lost an arm. Marcia offered to stay here while Wes went with Dr. Wong and the nurse to help."
Emery looked around again. "And...where's Lewis?"
Kris blushed. "He offered to lose an arm."
Jacqueline rolled her eyes. "We didn't actually cut off his arm. He agreed to act hurt on the soccer field because Kris asked him to. We just needed them gone long enough to get the baby oil into you. Once they were out of the room, we snuck back in."
Emery put a hand to her ear. The cotton ball was already falling out. The details of her dream, the Sandman's words, and even waking the few times to conversations in the clinic were fading fast, but she remembered Grandpa Al there, and she remembered him arguing.
"They didn't want to do it, did they?" she said. "They didn't believe me."
"You did sound delirious," Jacqueline said.
"You were delirious," said Joel. He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her tighter against his side.
"So why did you all believe me?" Emery asked.
They all looked at Marcia, who looked immediately disgruntled. "You said Klaus told you to do it," she said. "He came to you in the Dream, didn't he?"
Emery nodded.
"Idiot," Marcia spat. "Fever dreams are the most dangerous to walk into. He could have killed himself just to tell you that. What else did he say? Anything?"
"No. I don't think so. I was kind of out of it at the time, Marcia."
Marcia's lips curled back from her teeth. "Because you went into his dream. What prompted you to do something that stupid?"
"I don't know, it seemed like fun." Emery pressed the heel of her hand to her now-pounding head. Memories from the Dream trickled back in. The dark forest, the castle, the witch of the wood and her glowing eyes. "You were there. But you probably already knew that, right?"
Marcia's dark eyes glittered. She said nothing.
"Who is this guy?" Joel asked.
"Wes and I were assigned to find him, but not to engage him," Emery said. "We found out he was following us. Following me. He knew who I was, and in his dream we found...we found a drawing of me. Of my doppelgänger."
Marcia's gaze sharpened. Joel, Jacqueline, and Kris all came to attention with confusion and worry. Marcia seemed to think hard for a moment, then said quietly, "Keep that to yourself. I mean it." She looked around at all of them. "That doesn't leave this room. Tell no one, not even Dean Ashworth. Understand?"
"But why would he—" Emery began.
And before she could finish, the clinic doors burst open.
(Next time on The Children of Hypnos —> TWO WILL ENTER. ONE WILL LEAVE.)