Waking Nightmares Read Free

not quite a lie. Nikki had not been entirely pleased with his leaving her to meet Tremblay, but neither was she selfish enough to have attempted to stop him. Her career had become more and more important to her. The time they spent apart had grown more frequent thanks to her music and to his work. Whenever unexplained supernatural phenomena appeared, he would get a phone call. Sometimes he had to get involved. When the two of them were alone together, without the pressures of the outside world, it was easy for her to forget that he was supernatural, and for him to forget that she was not—that she was ordinary and mortal and could not imagine some of the things he had seen and lived.
    So it was no trouble for him to meet with Tremblay today. He was in Montreal, after all. But it certainly did nothing to heal the rift that he felt beginning to grow between himself and Nikki. He loved her, but of late he had begun to wonder if that was enough.
    “I’m happy to help, if I can,” Octavian continued. “Derek and I go back a long way.”
    The professor smiled awkwardly. “I knew Peter before he came out as a vampire,” he said, and then he glanced quickly at Octavian. “Sorry. A shadow. No offense.”
    Octavian waved it away, though it did make him tense, being called a vampire. The world had learned the truth of their existence years before, thanks to live news coverage of a bloody battle in Venice between shadows—the blood-drinking shapeshifters who were the source of the world’s vampire legends—and a rogue sect of Vatican sorcerers who’d murdered the pope and launched a crusade to exterminate all shadows, whether good or evil. The world was still feeling the aftershocks both of that revelation and of the events that followed. The Roman Catholic Church had splintered and was severely weakened. Shadows lived peacefully, side by side with humanity, but there were still some who embraced the word vampire and all of the savagery it entailed, and those creatures were hunted by human and shadow alike.
    “No offense taken,” Octavian said. “Though you know I’m not one of them anymore.”
    Viviane nodded. “I read that somewhere. How does that work, exactly? How do you stop being a vam—I mean, a shadow?”
    Octavian thought about answering, considered telling her about the thousand years he’d spent in Hell learning magic, and the metamorphosis that had evolved him from shadow to human mage. But then he remembered why he had come.
    “It’s a long story,” he said, remembering how much trouble people had understanding how he could have spent a thousand years in Hell while only five years had passed in the human world. Infernal physics was enough of an answer for someone used to dealing with the supernatural, but just another conundrum for a regular citizen. “Another time, maybe.”
    Guilt and sadness washed over Viviane’s face, as though she had been trying just for a moment to forget her troubles and knew she couldn’t put them off any longer.
    “Sure,” she said. She glanced at the professor and then back at Octavian. “He’s in my bedroom.”
    Octavian gestured for Viviane to lead the way, and at last she did, walking down the hall as if she wished she were anywhere else. When she reached for the bedroom doorknob, her hand trembled. She pushed the door open and stood aside to let them enter first.
    “Jesus,” the professor said, wrinkling his nose. “What’s that smell?”
    Octavian had caught it as well, earthy and damp, like a hothouse full of dying flowers. Both bedroom windows were open, but the warm breeze did nothing to diminish the aroma. And unless Viviane had a wilting, rotten garden hidden underneath her bed, there could be no doubt about the source of the smell.
    A young guy lay sprawled on the bed, legs tangled in the sheets like he’d been sleeping off a bad drunk or ugly nightmares. His arms were flung wide and his head lolled to one side, a thin stream of yellowish drool trailing