The Hollow Page 0,113

a cold sweat. He could still smell the blood, the hellsmoke, the charred bodies of the doomed and damned. His throat throbbed from the shouts that had ripped out of him in dreams. Running, he thought, he'd been running. His lungs still burned from the effort, and his heart still drummed. He'd been running through the deserted streets of the Hollow, flaming buildings around him, as he tried to reach Layla before she...

He reached over; found her gone.

He leaped out of bed, snagging a pair of boxers on the run. He called out for her, but he knew-before he saw the door standing open, he knew where her own dream lured her.

He was out the door, into the cool spring night, and running, just as he'd run in the dream. Bare feet slapping in a wild tattoo on brick, asphalt, grass. Fetid smoke hazed the deserted streets, stinging his eyes, scoring his throat. All around him, buildings roared with flame. Not real, he told himself. The fires were lies, but the danger was real. Even as the heat scorched his skin, as it seemed to burn up through the bricks to sear his feet, he ran.

His heart hammered even when he saw her, walking through the false flames. She glided through the smoke, like a wraith, the mad lights from the fires rippling over her body. He called, but she didn't turn, didn't stop. When he caught her, yanked her around to face him, her eyes were blind.

"Layla." He shook her. "Wake up. What are you doing?"

"I am damned." She almost sang it, and her smile was tortured. "We are all of us damned."

"Come on. Come home."

"No. No. I am the Mother of Death."

"Layla. You're Layla." He tried to push himself into the haze of her mind, and found only Hester's madness. "Come back." Chaining down his own panic, he tightened his grip. "Layla, come back." As she fought to break free, he simply locked his arms around her. "I love you. Layla, I love you." Holding tight, he drowned everything else, fear, rage, pain, with love.

In his arms, she went limp, then began to shudder. "Fox."

"It's okay. It's not real. I've got you. I'm real. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I can't think. Are we dreaming?"

"Not anymore. We're going to go back. We're going to get inside." He kept an arm firmly around her waist as he turned.

The boy skimmed along the fire. He rode it as a human child might a skateboard, with glee and delight while his dark hair flew in the wild wind. As the rage rolled into Fox, he poised to spring.

"Don't." Her voice was thick with exhaustion as Layla leaned her weight against Fox. "It wants you to, it wants to separate us. I think we're stronger together, holding on to each other."

Death for one, life for the other. I'll drink your blood, boy, then plant my young in your human bitch.

"Don't!" This time Layla had to lock her arms around Fox's neck to keep him from rushing forward. She pushed her thoughts into his head. We can't win here. Stay with me. You have to stay with me. "Don't leave me," she said aloud.

It was brutal, walking away, struggling to ignore the filth the thing hurled at them. To continue to walk as the boy whipped around them in circles, taunting, howling as it flew on its skate of flame. But as they walked, the fires sputtered. By the time they climbed the steps to his apartment, the night was clear and cool again, and carried only the dying hint of brimstone.

"You're cold. Let's get back in bed."

"I just need to sit." She lowered to a chair, and helpless to do otherwise, let the trembling take her. "How did you find me?"

"I dreamed it. Running across town, the fire, all of it." To warm her, he grabbed the throw his mother had made him off the couch, spread it over Layla's bare legs. "To the park, to the pond. But in the dream, I was too late. You were dead when I pulled you out of the water."

She reached for his hands, found them as icy as hers. "I need to tell you. It was like back in New York, when I dreamed it raped me. When I dreamed I was Hester, and how it raped me. I wanted it to stop, to end. I was going to kill myself, drown myself. She was. I couldn't stop her. It had my mind."

"It doesn't have it