Chapter 44:I’m holding him here

“You will be silent before your betters. You are not required to understand, only to hear our judgement and to receive it.”

Michael felt anger overcoming fear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What have you done to Julia? Was it your people who attacked my mother?” He took a step forward and two of the goons flanking the judge’s throne stepped forward, drawing bulky-looking automatic pistols from under their jackets.

“We are the presiding judges of The Council,” said the dark figure. “Ours is the power to seek out and pass judgement over all transgressors of the Council’s Rule.”

“I know nothing about your Council or its rules.”

“Ignorance is no defence. Miss Calvin should have instructed you of The Council by the end of your sixth week of training…”

“I haven’t been training for six weeks,” Michael pointed out.

“Your obvious power denies that statement. Her transgressions will be punished as will yours. You will be taken from this place…”

And Michael realised that the man before him was afraid. All of them were. The suspicion emerging from the back of his mind was that he was what they were afraid of. These were the people Cleopatra had warned him of. They would come to harm him and those around him. But they were afraid of him. Michael’s back straitened.

“…your mind will be destroyed. Miss Calvin will be placed in eternal servitude in one of the dungeon dreamscapes. Your mother and the girl Lucy will be killed since they have been affected by your power.” Michael clenched his fist and lashed out with his will. The man stopped speaking as his throne was tossed backwards by a massive blow.

“I suppose you think you’ll be able to do that, do you?” Michael growled. The goons drew their guns and fired, but Michael had seen this stuff in ‘The Matrix’ and there was not much different between a computer simulation and a dream. The bullets slowed to a stop feet away from him and hung in the air, spinning gently. Michael swept his hand out in a long arc and one of the goons flanking the spilled throne jerked violently sideways. He crumpled into a heap, his head at an odd angle on his neck.

Images were flashing through Michael’s brain as the judges’ fear grew. He saw people with his talent for affecting the real world being hunted for centuries. For all those years the mass of lucid dreamers and minor magicians had tried the few stronger ones for supposed crimes against the Rule of the Council. Everyone who had come into contact with them had been destroyed to keep the existence of magicians and sorcerers secret from the majority of dreamers and the public at large.

“Kill him!” one of the judges shrieked. “Kill him now.”

Michael’s anger flared white hot and he lashed out. Three of the goons exploded into showers of white light. Another began to twist slowly until his spine snapped as his head achieved looking a one-hundred and eighty degree turn. The others fired repeatedly, achieving nothing, until their guns exploded one by one throwing shards of hot metal into their faces.

With a wave of his hand, Michael banished Julia’s bonds and helped her stand.

“Thank you,” she said in a tired voice. “Why hasn’t that one gone?”

The judge that had been on the throne remained standing while his fellows had faded when Michael began destroying the guards. The look of terror on his face was most satisfying. “I’m holding him here,” Michael replied, “and now I’m going to pass my judgement.”

He walked up to where the man in the black coat was standing and looked him in his black eyes. “I’m not going to kill you; death would be, as they say, too good for you. I’m going to seal you up in your body. You will never have another dream, lucid or otherwise. You will have no powers and, since I understand dreaming is required for sanity, I expect you’ll go slowly mad. You’ll end your days a gibbering wreck in a mad house, and you’ll always know what power you once had.” As Michael finished, the judge’s body faded away, vanishing into the air as the others had done. But this one was screaming as he did so.

“We should get you back to your body,” Michael said and the dreamscape melted around them. They were left standing in the astral projection of Julia’s kitchen.

“I’m… afraid that won’t be possible, Michael,” she said.

“Sorry?” He had half-carried her into the lounge by now and suddenly he knew what she meant.

There were dead goons lying around the room; five of them, all naked. He recognised them as some of the men he had just taken apart in the dreamscape. On the floor between them was Julia’s body, lying face down, her hips propped up on cushions. She had been raped, repeatedly from the looks of it, and then her neck had been broken. “Oh shit!” Michael managed to get out.

“Never mind now, Michael,” Julia said. “Take me to Cleopatra and then help your mother. Then you need to get Lucy and get away from here. There’s money in a draw in my bedroom. I’ll tell you where we go. You can catch the Amtrak from Charlottesville. Go down to New Orleans. There are people I know who can help you there.”

“H-how can you be so calm?” he stammered. “L-look what they did to you.”

“I suppose it’s my body and I’m dead. Being dead gives you a new perspective. C’mon, you have to hurry. The Council will be sending hunters out after you and as long as you’re here you’re a danger to all those around you.”

With a strangled sob Michael summoned his will and drove them upward into the land of dreams.