Page 225 of Lost in the Dark
He decided he would call upon the cat himself. He did not like this weak, soft center he had developed, but he did not know how to rid himself of it. The thought of putting the girl through something that she would find unpleasant made his stomach twist and his feathers raise, his fingers snapping in irritation. No, he would not send her back to the man’s store. He would deal with the cat himself.
It had not been easy. He had been able to find him through the girl’s dreams, following him home from the shop she had visited to a garden-level apartment on a tight alley of a street. He waited until the sky within the waking world was black, banking on the residenst of the apartment to be asleep.
He was surprised to find the “man” still wearing his human skin. He was, in fact, asleep; sound asleep in his bed beside a human woman, curled at his side. Corviss sensed no magic in her. She was a lump of flesh, just like the lump he had waiting for him in a different department. Entering this sleeping man’s dreams, however, was a different story.
The cat man’s dreamsea was a pitch black vault, not a sea at all. Corviss rustled his wings when the doors slammed shut around him, realizing he was trapped and that this cat was more powerful than he had originally anticipated. Golden sparks formed a fiery circle that the man stepped through, his eyes narrowed, bristling with annoyance.
“You have no power here, Dreamweaver. Fly away and go squat on someone else.”
This was not a dreamscape at all, he realized. The man was there, standing before him on a different plane, as aware and cognizant of what he was doing as Corviss was before him.
“I seek your assistance, cat. You are not at liberty to deny me.”
The man had smiled, a smug feline smile, and he knew that this was likely a hopeless situation. There was no cat anywhere who did what it was asked, let alone the first time, and certainly not without threat or punishment.
“You’re not really in a position to demand anything of me at all, are you? I serve no master or mistress, and you cannot bend me to your will. As I said—you have no power here, Dreamweaver. Be gone with you.”
Corviss was smart enough to know when he was beaten. He’d flown away that night and had brooded in his cave in the Stygian mountains. The cat man was right. He could not impede upon another’s magic in such a way . . but he was not without vulnerability.
The girl in the bed beside the cat man was a sweet thing. Sweet and anxious. Like his lump of flesh, she had convinced herself that oddities and cheap knick-knacks were a good use of her time and space, wore too much eyeliner, and dressed in monochromatic black. She thought she liked horror, but she did not know what horror was. Corviss decided he would make sure of that.
Tara had provided him an empty canvas and a treasure trove of memories upon which to work. Every person who had been cruel to her was punished in her dreams, over and over again, until he was satisfied with their punishment, and she had begun to view them as not worth her precious feelings. There were certain dreams he was positive she enjoyed—the semi trucks smashing into a teenage crush who had jilted her, a relative she did not like being flattened like a pancake. And then there were others that aroused her fear, sharp and delicious, and those too he revisited over and over. He had put her on that plane more than once, made her witness the gruesome end of one of her neighbors who had the stink of a predator all over him.
He put her in dark alleys and abandoned parking garages, terrified her to her very core, seeking vengeance on those who had ever done her harm. He had not realized the unintended consequence of the dreams he threaded would be a change in her demeanor in the waking world.
She walked a little taller. Took up more space and seemed happy to do so, and his feathers puffed out in pride each time he dipped into her eyes to review her memories from the previous day.
This other young woman was a stranger to him, but he had been creating nightmares from the memories of strangers all his life, and it did not take long to strike into the root of her terrors. Her fear was acrid and smoky, and he inhaled it greedily. A fire in her car, a fire in her childhood home, a fire in the cat’s apartment. Tires and chemicals, burning mattresses, and screaming children. He burned her and the cat in their bed. Sometimes she escaped and listened to his screams, while other nights, she made it to the windows, with the clean air and the chill of the outdoors only inches away but unable to be opened. He sucked in her fear greedily, striking the match within her mind again and again until she was left screaming. Eventually, she stopped sleeping at the cat’s apartment altogether, deciding something there must be haunting her. She wasn’t wrong, Corviss thought gleefully.
“What is it that you want?” The man’s voice was tired and irritated, but Corviss could tell he was ready to acquiesce.
“I thought I had no power here? Eh, witch?”
The man glowered, and he preened.
“My request is a simple one. Just think, we could have done this a week ago. I want you to send instructions on how to close the door to whatever you had summoned to Tara Perez’s apartment. There will be no more tricks from you, cat. Otherwise, there will be no sleep for your pretty friend. How long are humans able to go without sleep? What is it, a week? Maybe two, before their minds break irreparably?”
“What business is that of yours?” he sneered, but Corviss only shook his head and flapped his wings.
“This is not a conversation, witch. You did this, and now you will undo it. The rule of three. Is that not the credo your sort lives by? What you put into the world you shall reap threefold? You had her call up a nightmare, and now the nightmare has come seeking payment for your trickery. Will you close the connection? Or will your pretty friend continue to pay in your stead?”
The girl received the package a few days later, sent directly to her apartment. Clear directions in plain words, unambiguous and straightforward. It was more than he expected from a cat, but he would have been lying if he claimed to not be pleased.
The month had reached its end, and his debt was nearly repaid in full. There were only two days left on his balance, and then he would be back to his job, free of this life as an incubus. He had no intention of leaving the girl. Corviss would sooner pluck out his own eyeballs. She was still soft and warm, a tight glove around his cock, sweet smelling and wide-eyed... Only now, she was active and vocal, pushed back against him, rolled her hips into his own, squeezing and stroking and screaming her ecstasy out like a song. He devoured her desire, fed on her arousal and the byproduct of their lust, and he had never been so full. He had a quota to fill, but now he no longer needed to worry about filling it to eat. Blow a load and clock out, it’s really that simple.
He pecked the bread she left him each night, wings rustling as she shifted in her bed. Soon he would climb atop her, rendering her immobile and insensible to his presence before dipping into her mind where they were together on her curiously colored sea.
It was never wise to make deals with devils, but every once in a while, his gamble paid off.
Tara
“What happens now?”
They were sitting in a small boat, gilded and sturdy, even if it was little more than a dinghy. It was sunset. Unsurprising, as it was always sunset here on the surface. She remembered having nightmares once, bobbing along a pitch black sea, but it seemed impossible that this hazy-colored ocean could be anything other than shimmering and lit with pink and violet light. The water glittered beneath the setting sun, reflecting the wash of color at the horizon, leaving it a deep inky purple. It was the end of their month. His shift was complete, the deal with his devil fulfilled. He would have no reason to enter her apartment, no reason to perch on her sleeping form.
“I don’t understand why you have to call itbird foodevery night.”
His voice was peevish as he tore at the bread, and Tara grinned. Regardless of the note she left on her bedside table in front of the paper plate with bread each night, he still ate it.Still tore it into little pieces, exactly like a bird. Which is why I call it bird food.She discovered he was not fond of generic sandwich bread, nor did he seem to care for the sweet dessert bread she had purchased on a whim at the bakery up the block. He liked fresh, yeasty bread the best, soft in the middle with crisp edges, which was a relief, as she liked it best as well. It toasted beautifully, provided a fat cushion for a slather of jam and made the most heavenly French toast.And it was the easiest for tearing?He ignored her question, and continued to eat his offering.