with all of my armour’s strength behind it. For anyone else, that would have been a killing blow, enough to tear her head right off, but by now I was convinced the Somnambulist wouldn’t even notice anything less. This time she stopped my hand in mid-blow, her hand closing hard over mine and bringing it to an abrupt halt. I was almost thrown off balance at having my attack anticipated and stopped so effortlessly. I might even have fallen if her grasp hadn’t held me so firmly in place. I tried to pull my hand back, and found I couldn’t. Her hand clamped down fiercely on mine, the heavy ringed fingers crushing my armoured hand.
I had to grit my teeth to keep from crying out under my mask. My armoured glove was no protection against her unnatural strength. I could feel the bones of my hand grinding together, and the pain was almost unbelievable. She had to be applying tons of pressure per square inch to reach my hand inside the glove, and that just wasn’t possible. I put all my armoured strength into resisting her, fighting to pull my hand free—and couldn’t.
“I’d surrender,” said Walker, “if I were you. Even the world of the Shifting Lands is no match for the world of dreams.”
“What does that even mean?” I said angrily, fighting to keep the pain out of my voice.
Walker shrugged. “It’s your hand. You tell me.”
“All right!” I said harshly. “I give up! I surrender!”
The Somnambulist let go of my hand. I staggered back a few steps and armoured down, holding my aching hand to my chest. It throbbed painfully, but it didn’t feel like anything was broken. The Somnambulist hadn’t wanted to injure me, just to teach me a lesson. Except . . . if she was asleep, how could she make decisions like that? I looked past her, at Walker, the legendary puppet master of the Nightside. He patted his sleeping enforcer on the shoulder, but she didn’t seem to notice. I flexed my hand, trying to drive out the pain and the weakness.
“Told you,” said Walker. “She has the strength of dreams. Which means she can be as strong as she dreams she is.”
All right, I thought, When in doubt, when all else fails, cheat. Or engage in lateral thinking, if you like.
I stepped forward, thrust my face right into the Somnambulist’s, and shouted “Wake up!” as loudly as I could. “Wake up! Bedtime’s over! Wakey wakey!”
The force of my breath was enough to disturb her long hair, but her expression didn’t change in the least. Even though I was shouting at the top of my voice, screaming right into her face, she didn’t react at all. No ordinary sleeper could have stayed asleep, but she did. I stepped back again, shaking my head. Walker grinned at me, as though pleased at my choice of tactics, and sportingly joined in, shouting right into the Somnambulist’s ear. Still nothing. Walker shrugged easily.
“She can’t hear us,” he said. “She’s asleep. Far beyond the reach of mortal voices. She only hears what the Powers That Be want her to.”
I considered some of the nastier weapons and dirty tricks I still had scattered about my person, that might be of some use against her, or Walker . . . but I couldn’t justify using anything like that against Carrys Galloway. She wasn’t the villain here; she was just the villain’s weapon. And besides, I didn’t want to reveal all the aces I had hidden up my golden sleeves, not this early. It was bad enough I’d allowed Walker to provoke me into using my armour against the Somnambulist, and failing. No . . . there were other ways of getting information out of people besides brute force. I looked thoughtfully at Walker.
“She won’t always be around to protect you.”
“Yes she will,” he said calmly. “As long as I have need of her, she’ll always be here. That’s what she’s for. She’s paying off her debts, Eddie. I wonder what poor Molly will be made to do to make good on all her promises?”
“Don’t go there,” I said. “Really. Don’t.”
And there must have been something in my voice, because he looked at me for a long moment. “What if you could pay off her debts for her? To Heaven, and to Hell? Would you be prepared to do that, Eddie? Suffer her torments and punishments? How much would you be prepared to sacrifice, and how far would you go? For