Page 194 of The Mask Falling

My hand slid into my coat and closed around the grip of my revolver. At the same time, Cade stepped closer.

“Recognize this place, Paige?”

Warm breath on the back of my neck. I managed one stunned look into his eyes, and then—

A blow, as from a battering ram, but not into my body. Into mydreamscape. It smashed through my defenses, into the haven in my mind, the place no one had ever seen. I stumbled backward and fell hard on the ice, and as blood leaked from my nose, Cade bled, too.

My poppies closed in self-defense. Too late. He was already at my centre. Darkness came, swift as a falling sword, as surely as if every light in Paris had gone out.

****

I woke to the far-off sound of a siren. Not the commonplace kind that echoed across every citadel. Not an ambulance or a fire engine, or a black van looking for unnaturals. This was a measured, overlapping drone that rose and fell in waves, far louder than the sirens in the first colony.

A deep ache filled the joints of my arms. When I shifted, the rattle of chain links followed. So did pain.

Agony crested at the front of my skull, a pressure that made my eyes prickle. Afraid to move, I drew in a delicate breath. This was deeper pain than I had ever felt in my life, as if someone had struck me head-on with a spike maul, but worse. A feeling of wrongness and violation leaked through me. Nausea roiled in my stomach, and before I could stop myself, I had coughed bile down my front. The sound of my retching was all I could hear.

Trepidation bubbled in my chest as I tried to latch onto some light. I found none. I could feel myself sliding back into my dark room, and I had nothing to keep me grounded.

No. I had to think. Whatever had happened, however I had gotten here, I needed to stay calm.

I remembered leaving the masquerade. Cade waiting for me under the lamppost. Walking together off the bridge and down the Quai des Grands Augustins—

Then nothing. Just darkness.

There was no point in screaming. No one was close. Beneath the sirens, all I could hear was my own uneven breath. Dreamwalking out of this one was impossible; the migraine was too distracting. And while Eliza had taught me to pick a lock, I had no idea how to slip a chain.

It was pitch-black. From what I could feel, I was manacled by my wrists to the wall, loosely enough that I had some range of motion in my arms. I could also feel something pressing against my side.

The phone. The phone Ducos had given me, tucked into a hidden pocket in my jacket.

I was not going to die in another dark room. Teeth gritted, I got one knee onto the floor and turned over, so I faced the wall.

Using the chains for purchase, I rose, bent my head, and unzipped the pocket with my teeth. Next, I angled my elbow so it was underneath the phone. It slid around like a bar of soap. Finally, I managed to winch it up a couple of inches, so it jutted out enough for me to bite it.

Then I realized. I was underground. No signal.

With a huff of frustration, I let the phone drop back into my pocket. That was when a door opened behind me, and Kornephoros Sheratan appeared.

“Your mistakes have caught up with you, dreamwalker.” He stood in the dim light from beyond. “I trust you are feeling well.”

“Kornephoros. What—” The muted light in his eyes broke the darkness. “Is this the Hôtel Garuche?”

“Indeed. You seem to be the newest test subject. Which you deserve,” came the voice, “given that you did not honor your word to free me. I expected nothing less of a human.”

Ménard must have come after me. His agreement to my plan had been a trap. Cade might already be dead. “I did try.” My tongue felt bee-stung. “I see you got free anyway.”

“I am no bird to be caged, dreamwalker.”

My head was aching too much to fully take in his words. “What the hell is that noise?” I rasped. “Those sirens—”

“Civil defense sirens,” Kornephoros said, with a conversational air. “They are activated by Inquisitorial authority in the event of a national or interimperial emergency. But fear not. You are quite safe here, fleshworm.”

His aura loomed, and suddenly, he was there, in front of me. All I could see were disembodied red eyes.

“I said I would hunt you. In the end,” he said, “someone else did. And now here you are.”

Under the pain, I was waking up to a chilling reality. I was trapped in the dark with a monster, and something terrible was happening above, and I had no idea how or why.

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