“Good. He should listen. I know his secret. If he can read minds, then he knows what I’m going to do next. Come and get me, asshole.” Only four more floors. The flashlight from above shined in my eyes. It was Jason Lacoco. The squat shadow behind him could only be Edward. “Get ready,” I warned them. Once I got the Nachtmar’s attention, things would probably get really hairy. Lacoco only grunted. He might have hated my guts, but this was business. Edward took the lead. Lacoco grabbed onto my left arm and helped me along. The son of a bitch was so strong that he actually began dragging me. Not that I was complaining. My leg muscles had turned to jelly.

The information that Sam had given to me was all there, crammed painfully in between my own orderly memories. Of course I was the one picked for this. My brain was like a filing cabinet stuffed with folders from multiple people. Hell, I spoke sixteenth-century Portuguese because of this sort of thing. I was prepped for this sort of craziness. Thanks, stupid Old Ones and your stupid artifact. I flipped through the files, examined what my brother had overheard, until I found what I needed.

I kept broadcasting. “We’ve been calling him Nachtmar, Nightmare, things like that. We guessed right all along. That’s all he is. He’s nothing without us. He needs humans to give him form. He can’t do anything without us. He feeds on our fear. The Nachtmar is just an alp. He’s a parasite. He’s a worm. Humans made him strong and he’s only this powerful because of his human host. If he’s connected to somebody weak, he’s nothing. He’s a pathetic little alp. The Nachtmar ain’t shit.”

It was working. I could tell the monster was listening. The hotel rumbled. Edward turned to look at me as if to ask are you sure this is a good idea?

“This particular little nightmare spirit was lucky enough to find a powerful human to stick himself to a long time ago. One of the Chosen.” Like me, I didn’t add. There was only so much fate I wanted to tempt at one time, and I didn’t know what to make of that possession business that Dr. Blish had spoken about near the end of the memories. “The Nachtmar was too pathetic to take a man like this over on his own. It was the scientists that broke him and let the Nachtmar in. All of this? The dream monsters, the destruction, it’s all from the power of a special human mind. The Nachtmar likes being thought of as a wrathful god, but he’s just a manipulative little prick piggybacking off a great man.”

“This is Julie. Owen, you’ve got incoming.”