Dreamfire (43 page)

“Take off your mask,” Josh said.

“And your gloves,” Feodor added.

Gloves obeyed. He loosened the mask and let it swing from a strap around his neck, then pulled off his gloves and put them in his pocket.

Ian's face—so like Haley's, and yet so different—no longer resembled either one of them. The features were slack, disinterested, and so pale that Josh wondered if the sun ever rose in Warsaw. A rough pink outline of the gas mask ran from under his chin to the bridge of his nose and back again.

Feodor reached out and lifted Gloves's left hand—Josh still could not think of him as Ian—to show her his palm. An oval-shaped scar, like a burn, marked his skin.

“Are you the one who pulled him back?” Feodor asked Josh in a low, intimate tone. “An astonishing act, to hold so tightly to another that you tear him from his skin. Your passion quite inspired me.”

Josh wanted to touch Ian's hand, but her own hands refused to move. She recognized his fingers; the shape of his thumb; his nails, though they had grown strangely long; the tiny scar on his inner wrist where his watch buckle had cut him.

Earlier, she'd thought that there was no way to predict how she would react when she saw Ian. If asked, she might have listed any number of possibilities.

Disappointment would not have been among them.

She'd come here to save Ian, but Ian wasn't here. The trench-coat-clad boy wore Ian's face beneath strands of Ian's curling black hair and held out Ian's hand to her, but he wasn't Ian. He might have recognized her intellectually, but he didn't look at her with love.

Feodor had done this to Ian. Anger flooded Josh like a torrent of black fire running through her body.

“What did you do to him?” she asked Feodor.

Feodor shrugged. “Very little. You were the one who tore out his soul. Such things are possible, in the moment one moves between universes. But you left me his body, which has been most obedient and helpful. I hope that seeing him this way doesn't make you sad.” He circled her, his steps even and graceful.

Haley hesitantly approached Gloves, looking at his twin brother as if afraid of what he would see. Gloves's eyes flicked toward Haley.

Feodor spoke to Gloves. “Kapu
ś
cisko, meet Kapu
ś
cisko.” Then to Haley: “Kapu
ś
—”

Haley exploded.

“Don't call him that!” he shouted at Feodor. “Don't you
ever
call him that! His name is Hianselian Micharainosa! He is not your little cabbage!”

Will and Josh both grabbed Haley's arms to keep him from a full-on assault.

Feodor laughed and leaned his head on Gloves's shoulder, which only made Josh and Will's job harder. Then he slowly straightened, examining Haley with the first sign of seriousness Josh had seen in him.

“Or was it
you
who held on to little Hianselian's soul?” Feodor asked. “For I see his
duch,
his spirit, all around you.”

Haley inched behind Will, as if he could hide Ian's spirit from Feodor's sight.

“But he has changed, I think,” Feodor continued. “I think he is your
anioł stró
ż
now, your…”

“My guardian angel,” Haley whispered, and Feodor smiled, delighted.

“Just so. Who says American children are stupid?” He gave Gloves a slap on the back and said, “Come, smart American children, let me show you my work.”

“We aren't here to see your work,” Josh snapped. “We're here to bring Ian home, and arrest you and take you back to the World to stand trial.”

“You cannot remove me from this universe without causing its collapse,” Feodor told her. He smiled with just one corner of his mouth. “And I suspect there are things here that you would like to see preserved.”

With that, he took off across the rooftop, skirting piles of soot-stained rubble and collapsed chimneys. Gloves followed.

Josh watched them with frustration for a moment. She'd had some idea that she could beat the location of the gate to the Dream out of Feodor, but now she realized how ridiculous that plan had been. Feodor would gladly die without telling her what she needed to know for the sake of his own amusement. Right now, they had no choice but to play his game.

“Are you all right?” Josh asked Haley, concerned by his outburst. But Haley didn't even look at her, just took off after his brother.

“Okay, new plan?” Will asked as they followed.

“We'll have to take them both at once. But not yet. We need to find out where the gate to the Dream is first.”

“It could be anywhere,” Will pointed out. “Warsaw is a big city.”

Josh let her gaze drift across the blocks of rubble, where the fires of burning buildings illuminated columns of smoke, wrecked structures, overturned cars, and objects so thoroughly ruined that Josh couldn't even identify them. Yes, it could take a very long time to find a single gate in all of that.

Feodor led them across the rooftop to a rickety iron fire escape that, against all odds, had survived the every-nine-second bombings. Despite her misgivings, Josh climbed down the wet, rusty stairs, holding the railing at all times. Finally, they reached the street level of the stone-fronted building, and Feodor held open the door while ushering them inside.

“Kapu—I'm sorry, Hianselian, the lights, if you please. Welcome to my laboratory, children.”

Feodor's laboratory looked like a cross between Josh's high school chem lab and a Victorian parlor. The ashes-of-roses wallpaper clashed with the metal tables, and the Tiffany lamps shed colored light on glass beakers and broken mirrors. In one corner, Josh recognized the shrouded form of Feodor's physical body resting on a table.

The far wall of the laboratory was made of clear glass and looked into a room that reminded Josh of the archroom at home—white floors and walls. But it was empty inside.

“Apologies for the mess,” Feodor said, ever the pleasant host. “When my experiments fail, I can't bring myself to bother cleaning them up. It's so … unjust.” He waved a hand. “Please, look around. It's so rare I have the opportunity to share my work.”

Despite the numerous experiments laid out, Josh felt drawn toward the room with the glass wall. Beside the glass wall stood a doorframe fitted with a giant funnel, as though a person could step through the doorway and be squeezed out the funnel's tip. Josh recognized the material the funnel was made of—it was the same silver-white of the canisters Snitch and Gloves wore.

On the wall behind the doorway, canisters were mounted from floor to ceiling, like trophies or deer heads. Tubes running from the valves at the top of each canister connected them directly to the surface of the funnel.

“What is this?” Josh asked.

“A way out,” Feodor said. “I'm going to free myself from this universe. The gateway to the Dream will not admit me—I must burn through the boundaries of this world.”

Josh wasn't surprised by his goal. He had tried to use the machine to break through the window she and Will had built. “What does the funnel do?”

“It is not a funnel,” Feodor replied. “It is a drill. Watch.”

He flipped a switch on the wall. A mechanical whir filled the room, although nothing appeared to be moving. Then, gradually, each canister lit up with a different-colored light: some bright and strong, others weak and pale. Josh saw dark oranges and bright purples and soft blues; the longer she looked, the more colors she saw. She felt drawn to the wall of canisters, and as she walked toward it, the soul lights grew larger and brighter. She heard sparkly sounds—music or laughter—but just as she reached out to touch a particularly beautiful peacock-green light, Feodor put his arm around her.

“I know,” he said, guiding her away, “they're quite hypnotic, aren't they? But they'll only bore you with stories of their lives, and you mustn't encourage them. Besides, this is the truly interesting part.”

He placed her so that she could see through the freestanding doorway and into the funnel, which shuddered as if immense power were running through it. A fog filled the funnel and then coalesced into images—a house, grass, a woman running after a child, a restaurant, the ocean, a nest full of robins' eggs. In short, the World.

Feodor threw the switch back the other way, and in seconds, the fog and the images dispersed. Josh glanced back at the canisters just as their lights faded completely.

“As you can see,” he said, “the machine is incomplete. I have almost pierced the universal barrier into the World, but not quite. I need a few more souls for that.”

Josh remembered what Haley had said when she'd asked why Feodor wanted souls:
Fuel?

He'd been exactly right.

“You made a machine powered by souls,” Will said, coming to stand next to Josh.

“Yes. Nothing here in Warsaw can power an escape—the architects saw to that. Souls were the only things I could acquire that weren't made from the fabric of this universe.”

Josh guessed the wall held close to sixty canisters. “But how do you get the souls into the canisters?” she asked, hoping he would tell her something that would help Winsor.

Feodor responded with a condescending smile, as if he doubted her ability to understand his explanation. “Magnets,” he said simply. “Manipulations of the body's subtle electromagnetic energy field which render the flesh inhospitable to the spirit. Or, if that's too sophisticated for you, think of it this way: the gas tank is a vacuum, the mask is a hose, and the spirit gets sucked out of the lungs like biscuit crumbs from a carpet.” He chuckled. “I think of it as a modern interpretation of the Egyptian ‘opening of the mouth' ceremony.”

Josh didn't know what that meant, and she didn't care. “What does it do to the bodies?”

“The effect is similar to that of being struck by lightning. Without a soul to generate spiritual energy and the will to live, the body is directionless and will eventually wilt.”

“Can the souls be returned to the bodies?”

Feodor made a funny face, as if she were entertainingly queer. “It is possible, should one desire such a thing. The empty bodies are quite useful, however, quite … malleable.”

“What does that mean?” Will asked.

“It means he did something to the bodies he got his hands on,” Josh said, glancing at Gloves. “Something that allows him to control them and allows them to alter the Dream.” She looked back at Feodor; he was smiling at her, pleased by her assessment. “More magnets?” she asked.

“Magnets,” he said, as if making her a promise, “are only the beginning.”

Sickened, Josh turned away from him. Looking back at the wall of canisters, she felt glad that Winsor's soul was not trapped among them.

She hadn't noticed before because she had been so absorbed by the lights, but each canister had a label attached to it near the bottom. Some labels held numbers, others names.

“Do all of those canisters have souls in them?” Will asked. His voice sounded as stricken as Josh felt.

“All but one.”

Feodor reached out and tapped a canister. Josh and Will both leaned close to read the label.

Joshlyn Weavaros.

Josh released a shocked little cry. “What the hell is that?” Will demanded.

“I would have made one for you,” Feodor promised him, “but I didn't know you were coming. Or Hianselian the Second.” He gestured to Haley, who stood by the window to the white room.

Josh went to stand with Haley, wanting to get as far as possible from the canister that bore her name. “How did you know
I
was coming?” she asked Feodor.

Feodor smirked. “Your grandfather told me that you would.”

Too stunned to reply, Josh watched Feodor fiddle with the tubing where it connected to the funnel. “That is why people come here, of course. They bring me their sons, their husbands, their boyfriends, a child once or twice. Some even bring themselves, the arrogant snots.” He glanced back at Josh. “But Peregrine was the first to bring me a granddaughter.”

“Peregrine doesn't even know I'm here,” Josh said. “He didn't send me.”

“No? You came after your Hianselian. I imagine you rushed to action as soon as you learned he was here. How did you come by that information? An anonymous letter? A carelessly spoken word? A document you should not have seen left out by accident?”

Josh's eyes whipped to meet Will's. “Serpico?”

He shook his head, but a line had appeared between his eyebrows. “I don't know. Even if Peregrine did put him up to telling you about Geoff, how could he have known that you would figure out Ian was here?”

“It wasn't that big a leap. It hardly took two minutes.”

Josh felt blood rush to her palms with the desire to grab a weapon.

“Okay, but why set you up to come here?” Will asked.

“Oh,” Feodor said, and laughed again. “He didn't tell you, did he? Sometimes they don't tell them, especially the young ones. After all, you might not have come if you'd known.”

Satisfied that his funnel's valves were sealed, he brushed his hands on a nearby rag and then said matter-of-factly, “Your grandfather believes that you, little Joshlyn, are the True Dream Walker. And he believes a very old rumor that I will initiate the True Dream Walker.”

It was Josh's turn to laugh.

Maybe Will was right and she'd had too many shocks in one day, but she simply could not believe Feodor. Her grandfather didn't think she was a creature of legend. He didn't even like her; he just wanted to control her because she was … talented.

Haley slipped his hand into hers. Josh stopped laughing, startled that he had touched her.

“He's right,” Haley said in a hushed voice. “You
are
the True Dream Walker.”