Waking Nightmares Read Online Free PDF Page A

ran, darting through rooms. Two other bodies, long past hope. But there were the upstairs apartments to think of.
    Octavian raced back into the hallway, hearing the creak and moan and crack of the brownstone’s structural integrity beginning to crumble. Dried, desiccated pot plants gave way like spiderwebs as he ran for the stairs. But he hadn’t made it halfway up to the second floor before a scream of grief and fury rose from beneath the building.
    From the cellar.
    Green shoots erupted between floorboards, and then the boards themselves splintered. The dust of desiccated pot plants sprayed across the foyer. Octavian took a step back, raising his hands, and his fingers contorted into claws as he cast a spell to solidify the air into a defensive shield in front of him.
    The green shoots twined together, branches and leaves and flowers growing off them with a fluid grace, sculpting a figure. Vines crawled along the floor, anchoring it there, spinning a new sort of web. From the budding figure, she bloomed, unfolding herself and standing up to her full height, nearly two feet taller than Octavian. Her hair was golden corn silk, spilling down her back, and her body pulsed with some semblance of breath. The wood god had a female form, lithe and strangely erotic, and Octavian thought of a thousand fairy tales, and the men who had been lured into the forest to find fleeting bliss and enduring regret.
    Her mouth opened, dewy sap stringing between her newborn lips.
    “You’ve hurt me,” the wood god said.
    Octavian made a fist of his right hand, summoning a raging flame. Entropy had not worked on her, but fire might. All he needed was a moment to distract her so that he could work a banishment spell and drive her from this reality.
    “You don’t belong here,” he told her.
    “I don’t belong?” she said, sneering. “It’s you who are the abomination here. You and your accursed civilization !”
    She lunged at him, fingers hooked into thorny claws, ready to flay his flesh from his bones. Octavian lifted a hand, a sphere of fire burning around his fist.
    Which was when the floor gave way, entropy crumbling it away beneath his feet.
    Fuck.

     
    NIKKI Wydra took the stage at The Red Door with a smile on her face, but it felt like a mask. The applause filled the room, blanketing her in welcoming energy and the happy aura of people who were, in that moment, exactly where they wanted to be. She let it wash over her, taking strength from it as she always did. With a nod toward the band—a handful of Montreal musicians she’d played with the last time she’d come through town—she launched into “Not Enough to Exist” and a cheer went up from the audience. People started to move to the music and some to dance. It was the right choice, a track off her second album that had never found its way onto the radio but had taken off online and quickly become a favorite among her fans.
    She tried to focus, feeling that she owed these people that much. They had put up their hard-earned cash for this show, and she wanted to make it worth their while, to connect with them. The set list had been cultivated with care. She pruned it every show, adding and subtracting, playing the best and most popular of her own songs, plus a few of her favorites from other artists. Sarah McLachlan’s “Ice Cream” didn’t always go over as well as she wanted, but she played it for herself, not for them. For them, she did “Cantankerous Bitch,” from her first album—she’d come to hate that song, but God they loved it.
    Finishing up the opener, she scanned the audience. On the last note, the hooting and cheering began. She said something appreciative into the microphone, then repeated it in French, but wasn’t really paying attention. She smiled, but her gaze slipped across the faces, searching for the only one that really mattered. With a glance into the wings, she sought him backstage, but there was still no sign of Peter.
    Nikki figured most