18. The Dreamer-It Is Planning

It watched them leave the hospital.  The man, the girl, and the child.  Its form quivered as it followed.  It wanted to pull the man apart, lap up his screaming blood, and then feast in front of the child.  The girl he wanted to watch her slowly disintegrate into nothing as no bond or vow could tie her to this world any longer.

But he couldn't do those things.  The last meal its Other supped was from the man.  He had awoken without the ability to visit the border world, the world where the spirit world overlapped with the solid world.  The place of Dreams.  The man awoke and still lived.  Its Other did not.  The man had stopped its Other while feeding on the child and sacrificed himself.  But it had been a trap.  The poison had shriveled its Other as it shrieked and screamed into memory.

And now the man was beyond his reach.  Oh, he could still be killed.  But not yet.  It wanted that pleasure for itself.  And without the man and the girl stopping It, It had fed.  And fed.  And fed.  With each feeding, It had grown stronger.  One more should allow It to become a physical form and taste real, warm, living, fresh blood.

The child would be that final feeding.  The child had grown now, but It would finish the meal its Other had started.  Then it would enter the solid world.  Its first physical meal would be the man, the one who had killed its Other.  The one who thought he had escaped It.

The bomb had been a mistake, It had learned that.  It had hoped she would leap from death to pure Dreaming, a spirit trapped between worlds.  Then It could have hunted and fed at leisure.  But the girl had warned and saved the child.  Its catspaw had been awake, so It had been unable to change and adapt the plan.  Not being physical made certain things difficult.

The woman jerked her head up and stood ready with her scythe.  The other two of importance walked blissfully unaware out of the hospital.  It melted away into the shadows to think.  When there were two of them, it had been easier to hunt.  Now, It would have to deal with the Scythe Girl on its own.