Dreams and Shadows - By C. Robert Cargill Page 0,109

loosening his grip. She elbowed him off her, bolted toward Ewan, but was halted by Knocks’s outstretched hand. “Go near him and you both die. Right here, right now. Leave and you live.”

“But I—,” she began.

“But nothing,” said Knocks, refusing eye contact. “You leave or I’ll let my friends here have their way with your corpse.” The words languished in the air like rotting flesh. Dietrich smiled broadly.

Mallaidh shivered, staring gravely at Ewan. His eyes were hollow, confused and loveless. She turned and ran, never once looking back, her sobs trailing into the night, flecks of glamour trickling off, leaving a brief glistening comet’s tail behind as she faded into the dark. In an instant, she was gone.

“Now, how best to kill you?” Knocks stroked his chin, pacing the length of the alley. “Pick him up.”

Time slowed, Ewan’s mind wandering blindly through a thousand memories—things he remembered, but wasn’t sure how. They were someone else’s thoughts, someone else’s dreams, though they swam around in his head as if they were his own. And as a redcap reached down, slinging Ewan’s flopping, broken body over its arm, Ewan reached out and snatched the bloody red cap from atop his head. The redcap went limp, bowing under the weight of the grown man atop it, and the two fell to the ground.

Ewan rolled the cap around in his hand, wondering what to do with it, for what seemed like the better part of an hour. In truth, he’d raised it to his own skull before the body had hit the pavement. He didn’t know why; he just did it. Strength surged through every fiber of his being. His wounds no longer ached; his shattered bones no longer stung against the inside of his flesh. He felt whole. Powerful. Invincible. Most of all, he was pissed, angrier than he’d ever been. The other redcaps scampered fleetly toward him, but it was too late. Ewan had donned the hat of a redcap.

He rose to his feet. He picked the redcap up off the ground by the scruff of his neck, then slammed him headfirst into the brick wall beside them. His head popped like a rotten tomato, spraying the wall, catching Ewan in the back splatter. As the redcap’s blood hit the cap, Ewan felt stronger still.

He spun around and swung a wild haymaker into an oncoming redcap. His fist connected with a crack of thunder, shattering the redcap’s jaw, sending him backward through the alley, across the street, and, with the force of a truck, into a brick storefront.

With time moving more slowly than he’d ever known it, Ewan kicked squarely the chest of another redcap running toward him, its rib cage turning to powder. It flew backward into Dietrich, picking him up off the ground, carrying them both into the street.

Only Knocks and Otto remained standing. Redcap blood dripped off Ewan’s fist; he smeared it across the bit of cap covering his brow. Ewan grew stronger still. Knocks could tell by the look in his eye that there was little chance of surviving this. Something had gone horribly wrong and once again the stolen child of Tiffany and Jared Thatcher had somehow gained the upper hand.

It was time for a strategic retreat.

“Run!” shouted Knocks as he turned the corner, scrambling for his life. The redcap followed in kind. Dietrich rose to his feet, offered his companion a meaty, taloned hand, picking him off the ground. They too ran. And before Ewan could reach the end of the alley, the final broken redcap across the street was limping away with the rest of them.

Ewan’s head pounded, his heart raced, memories nearly a decade and a half old echoing in pieces through his thoughts. He still couldn’t put it together; there was no way to be sure if what he was remembering were even memories at all. It was all so horrific. His nightmares of little men had been plucked from his brain and brought into the real world to beat the life out of him.

But how did he know to take their hat? And what the fuck was Nora? He looked to the sky, trying to find answers in the stars; he begged, but no answers came. Only one name stuck out. The name of a little boy he remembered once turning a redcap into rose petals; who chased off devils with a poem about lightning; who had once pulled him off an altar and walked him through the forest, away from a