“Why did you do it?”
“Because…I was too weak to tell the truth?”
“Because,” she said pointedly, “you didn’t want to hurt the people you loved.”
“I lied to you.”
“Again,” she said, “because you wanted so desperately to be the thing I needed. You wanted to help me, Painter. And yes, maybe you wanted to pretend to be someone great. That’s not the action of a liar, but a dreamer.” She nodded sharply. “I was taught that a liar is someone who takes advantage of others to get gain. That’s not you. It’s never been you.”
She leaned closer to him, as close as they could get without touching. “I don’t blame you, Nikaro. Maybe stop blaming yourself. You see, I’ve learned one thing from your world, more than any other.”
“Which…is?”
“Answers,” she said, “are not simple. They never were.”
He smiled back, then closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. It was strange how much of a difference those words meant. That someone didn’t judge him. That she knew exactly what he’d done, in all its horrors, and…didn’t care? Didn’t blame?
Perhaps he should have been strong enough to come to a similar conclusion on his own. Perhaps he should have been a lot of things he wasn’t. But in this case, having someone say it—someone who mattered…
It was like a painting he could share. He opened his eyes…
To find Yumi stumbling backward, eyes wide, lips frozen in a mask of terror. He spun to see something lurking from the alley behind them: a nightmare of jagged blackness, fully eleven feet tall, with claws that sliced the wall in large gouges. Eyes like pits of white, and a mouth with actual teeth.
The nightmare. It was fully stable now.
It had, inexplicably, come looking for them.
It was Yumi’s second time seeing a nightmare.
The other was to this one as a puppy was to a wolf. The stable nightmare reared on two lupine legs, powerful and somehow more real than the previous one she’d seen. Its darkness had coalesced, hardened, its skin spines, and those eyes—voids of anger. It towered over them, and when it stepped the nails on its feet tore gouges in the pavement.
“Run,” Painter said. “Yumi, RUN!”
His voice sliced through her terror, and she recovered enough to turn and dash away, clinging to her painter’s bag—not because it would be helpful, but because she needed something to hold on to.
The nightmare gave chase. Silent save for what sounded like metal on stone. Painter ran out in front of her, looking as frantic as she felt—she thought he was leaving her, but no. He was leading her. He waved as he dashed for an alley just ahead of her. She followed him in, nearly tripping at the hard left turn.
The nightmare beast, far more bulky, responded less quickly. It skidded past, then had to heave itself back after them. Yumi—against her better interests—glanced behind her as she ran, and saw it darkening the mouth of the alley. It reached in with two enormous hands, one against each wall, raking the stone and cracking a window. Then it fell to all fours and began charging again.
“The bell!” Painter shouted as they burst out the other end of the alley. “Ring the bell!”
They crossed a street, entering a wide open place with smooth stone ground that held sections full of wood chips and strange erections of metal and wood. The first time she’d seen one of these, she had thought it might be some kind of art installation—and had laughed when she was told it was a sports court and playground.
Painter led them past some of the playground equipment, perhaps thinking it would slow the beast—but the nightmare ripped through the metal, tossing a jungle gym. Hopefully the noise would attract someone. Yumi added a belated scream to the cacophony, and almost pulled the bell free—but a chunk of metal hurled by the monster clipped her, knocking her to the ground. Her bag skidded out of her hands.
A crack followed, then ink stained the bag, flowing from the opening.
The beast hesitated, seeing that.
“Come on,” Painter said, hovering near Yumi, waving urgently.
She found her feet and turned toward the bag.
“No,” he said. “Leave it.”
Trusting his instincts, she ran with him across the playground.
“Head this way,” he said, pointing down another alleyway. “The nightmare can see me. I’ll lead it to the south. You curve around the block, then sneak up and grab the bell. Ring it. Don’t try to confront the thing. Understand?”
She nodded, too terrified to trust her voice. If she opened her mouth, she’d scream.
Out in the playground, the thing had given the ink a wide berth, but now came for them again. Painter took a deep, wide-eyed breath—even though he was a ghost—then ran back out. He didn’t wave at the thing to draw its attention; he just ran. The thing turned after him, and Yumi didn’t wait to see the result of their chase. She did as Painter had said, running down her own alley and ducking around the rear of a building, breathing heavily.
There, she stood trembling, spine pressed to the bricks, sweating and taut—every muscle like a rope trying to haul a tree from the sky. She knew she needed to keep moving. She needed to sneak back and grab the bell.
She should move. Painter was running for his life. Move!
Her body refused.
It’s difficult for one who hasn’t experienced it to understand how powerfully the body can react to trauma like this. Seeing something so terrible come for you—knowing it intends to not merely harm you, but likely feed upon you—goes against all rational experience. You end up reaching someplace deeper than your thoughts can go, sinking to instincts hard-coded into your very essence.
Overriding those is not simply a matter of willpower. It requires training and experience. So Yumi trembled there, huffing, dazed—and had to fight to keep herself from running away as fast as she could. It is to her credit, not her condemnation, that she remained frozen. The only viable alternative her body would accept involved mad, uncontrollable flight.
A hand grabbed Yumi on the arm.
She bolted upright, finding a large figure standing beside her that had approached completely unseen—not because it had been particularly quiet, but because she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything other than her fear.
Hysterical, she swung her fist at it—and it grunted. Then…then said her name? Her eyes focused, and she saw for the first time that it was…Tojin?
Yes, the painter Tojin, sleeves rolled up, shaking her arm and saying her name. Again. Again. Finally she registered it, and emerged a tiny bit from her frenzy.
“I told you it sounded like her,” Tojin said over his shoulder. Calm. Too calm. He didn’t know.
Akane walked up, arms folded, painter’s bag over her shoulder. “Yumi,” she said. “You promised you wouldn’t go out anymore. We told you how dangerous this was.”
Technically, Yumi hadn’t promised she wouldn’t go back out. They’d just lectured her on it, and had assumed compliance from her contrite bows.
She wasn’t in any state to argue that point. “How?” she said, her voice hoarse. “How did you find me?”
“We tailed you,” Tojin said, “when you left the apartment earlier. We…well, I thought you’d go back to it.”