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Nic
The woman in the silver dress was where I’d left her, a small hotel room on the border of the city. The room exited into the parking lot and her car was right outside her door. She’d changed, probably showered by her wet hair, and now looked like any other traveler wearing jeans and a band t-shirt.
I sensed a hint of Nightmare coming from the black bag she had sitting on the edge of the hotel bed. It still boggled my mind that this woman had stolen the gem at the same time I’d been after it. What were the odds?
She grabbed the bag and headed for the door. I swirled out of the shadows in front of her.
To the woman’s credit, she yelped and reached for a gun instead of screaming. I kept the shadows close, shifting in and out of being in case she pulled the trigger.
“Who the hell are you?”
“You don’t know?” I needed to know if she was involved with Dream or not.
She sneered at me. “If I wasn’t stone cold sober, I’d think I was on some sort of bad trip.”
I sensed Robby step from his version of the shadows behind her. I didn’t look, not wanting to give him away. Letting the shadows swirl around me, I became more monster than man, hundreds of tentacles reaching out like some sort of eldritch horror, shadows obscuring my features, letting my eyes shine in the lamplight.
The woman’s hand shook, and she backed away, clutching the black bag with Dio’s essence. The gun remained pointed in my direction despite her fear.
“Give it to me.” Instead of holding out my hands, I snaked tentacles of shadow across the ground.
The thief whimpered.
“Clown,” Robby hissed.
She spun at his voice.
The walls melted around us.
I snagged the bag with Dio’s essence in it, using my shadows, and tossed it to Robby. “Go!”
Robby caught the bag, glanced between me and the thief, and vanished.
For her part, she’d spun back around and pointed the gun at me. I melted into the shadows completely, using my extra senses to keep my bearings as the clown warped reality.
He chuckled, walking through the closed door as if it didn’t exist. The creature still wore his charcoal gray suit, and didn’t look like a clown, but I knew his reflection would show his true nature.
The thief shrieked and pulled the trigger, aiming for the center of his chest. Bullets sped through the air, then slowed more and more until they hung suspended inches from impact. The creature laughed and plucked them from the air.
Were I a lesser man, I would have left her. I couldn’t leave a mortal to the mercies of this brutal nightmare creature, though. It was part of my job to control these beings, regardless of how I felt about it.
White and gray lines swirled through the air, spinning, spiraling, making it hard to focus. The woman staggered, dropped her gun, and clutched her head.
I sent tendrils of shadow toward the clown. Though we weren’t in Nightmare, I could still face him at least long enough for the woman to get away.
He turned his attention on me, further warping the surrounding air until it seemed as if we were upside down. That wasn’t a problem for me. I spent so much time in shadow that this felt natural.
I charged forward, pulling a blade from shadow essence, much like Robby did with his white one. He jumped back as I slashed for his midsection, but that wasn’t my true attack.
Ropes of shadow snaked around the clown, jerking him backward, diving into his chest, his arms, his legs, and draining Nightmare essence from his being, weakening him.
The clown’s eyes widened, and juggling knives appeared, floating in the air around us. They gleamed in the twisting light of this warped reality, deadly sharp.
I pulled hard on his energy as he flung them at me.
At the last second, I dissipated completely into black mist. The knives passed through me, relatively harmless, and the clown fled.
I fell to the ground, landing on one knee, as the natural order reasserted itself.
