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small handgun and shoots me in the arm.
    A dart. It stings
like hell. I want to pull it out, but my hand won’t move.
    The room blurs,
then goes dark and silent.

6
A Dream of Blood

    {Adam}
    I followed Aya
through a series of labyrinthine halls lined with oil paintings and
electric lamps made to look like gaslights. As we walked I heard
footsteps in the distance, smelled the faintest body odor. The
sensation in my chest became a pulsing, almost as if my heart had
started beating once more, beating so forcefully it seemed on the
verge of failure.
    Human blood.
    A small group of
somberly-dressed men and women rounded a corner in front of us and
walked in our direction. At the sight of them, their scent and the
warmth of their bodies and breath, my gums began to tighten against
my teeth, which sharpened into points. My muscles hummed with
tension. My mind began to race. The weakest one would be the smaller
of the two women—thin arms, not muscular enough to put up a
fight. She’d be easy to pin against the wall—the jugular
easy to find under her pale skin—
    I stopped in my
tracks and turned toward the wall. I closed my eyes, pressed my
fingertips against my eyelids. I could hear them retreating down the
corridor. It was all I could do not to run after them, to seize one
of them from behind, to—
    “Dr.
Fletcher?”
    I opened my eyes,
looked both ways down the hall. Aya and I were alone again, alone
with the portraits.
    “Are you all
right?”
    I stared at the
painting in front of me without really seeing it. “Sorry. Yes.
I’m fine.”
    “It’s
not a problem. As long as you’re okay.”
    She followed my
eyes to the painting. It was a portrait of a thin, tall man just shy
of middle age, dressed in what I supposed was Victorian or Edwardian
clothing, all black and white. His face, shown in profile, was pale
and somewhat severe. His dark hair was pulled back in a short
ponytail at the nape of his neck.
    “That’s
a portrait of Master Radcliffe’s late brother,” Aya said.
“You look a little like him.”
    I shrugged.
    “Shall we
continue?”
    I nodded and fell
into step behind her.
    Soon she stopped
in front of a set of double doors. “This is Master Radcliffe’s
office,” she said. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
She opened the left-hand door and flattened her back against it to
let me pass through.
    The room was cold
and very dimly-lit. Books, papers, and unidentifiable paraphernalia
overflowed from every crevice and collected in every corner.
Bookcases cut the room into haphazard zones. Some kind of modern,
dissonant orchestral music played through unseen speakers.
    I took a few steps
forward, trying not to crush anything underfoot. As Aya closed the
door behind me, Julian’s disembodied voice came from somewhere
in the stacks.
    “Good
afternoon, Dr. Fletcher.”
    He emerged from
behind a bookcase. He was shorter than I’d imagined, and
slighter. He looked less imposing than he sounded. His face was
young—he looked at least ten years younger than me—except
for his eyes, which were green and sharp as daggers. He was carrying
a thin, leather-bound book in his left hand.
    “Good
afternoon,” I replied after too long a pause.
    “Come with
me,” he said, turning to walk further into the stacks. I
followed him to a sitting area in front of an unlit fireplace
furnished with three long couches, each half-full of detritus.
“Please, have a seat.”
    I moved some
papers from a cushion and sat down. He sat across from me, shoving
yellowing newspapers aside without caution, and stared at me for
several long seconds without speaking. His thin lips curled into a
smile. He reminded me of a co-worker of mine, someone I didn’t
particularly like. They had the same ash-brown hair pulled back in a
short ponytail, the same too-large nose, the same slight underbite.
The same affected, pretentious aura.
    “You wanted
to talk to me?”
    “Yes. Of
course.” He laughed. “You’ll have to excuse me. Aya
tells