Night Terrors by Tim Waggoner Read Free Book Online Page A

enough. Past that is a ring that’s simply referred to as The Murk. Incubi who are so nightmarish that they even terrify others of their kind live there, and very few non-residents go there if they can avoid it. This is where Deadlock Prison is located. The outer ring is called the Edgelands. It’s a barren, desolate place where only the strongest and most savage Incubi can survive. Once you enter the Edgelands – so the stories say – you can never return.
    I’ve been there twice.
    Jinx and I escorted our prisoner centerwise, the direction in which Oldtown lay. Our fellow pedestrians gave us a wide berth because our reputation, as the saying goes, preceded us. Jinx grinned maniacally at any Incubus who was brave enough to meet his wild-eyed gaze, and that was usually enough to get them to quickly avert their eyes and pretend we didn’t exist. Anyone else would’ve been satisfied to have his badassness recognized like that, but I knew that, at least on one level, Jinx was disappointed. He grinned like that as much to provoke others into attacking him as to warn them to keep their distance.
    Ah, the joys of working with a psychotic nightmare clown. They are without number.
    But one Incubus didn’t step aside as she approached us. I say she only because I knew her. She possessed no outward signs of gender or, for that matter, humanity – unless you count the fact that she walked upright. She stood eight feet tall and her reptilian body was unclothed. Her shoulders were broad, her limbs thick and well-muscled, and her scales gleamed as if she’d spent a fair amount of time polishing them. She had a long, powerful tail which swayed side to side behind her as she walked, in a kind of reptilian swagger. Her head was that of a crocodile but with eyes and a mouth that could, when she wished, approximate human expression. She had large hands which were humanlike too, with opposable thumbs, but the wicked-looking claws that jutted from her fingers were longer and – because she filed them every day – sharper than a true crocodile’s.
    She stopped in front of us and smiled, revealing a mouthful of teeth. Thin lines of electricity coruscated across the yellowed enamel with soft crackling sounds. “Hello, Audra, Jinx.”
    She gave my partner a nod, her smile widening and her teeth throwing off a few angry sparks.
    She spoke in a thick Australian accent, her voice deep and guttural – exactly the way you’d expect a crocodile to sound.
    “Shocktooth,” I said in acknowledgment, if not in greeting. “I’m surprised to see you bare-necked.”
    “And I’m surprised to see you walking without a limp,” Jinx said to her. “I guess I’ll have to break both your legs next time.”
    Shocktooth ground her teeth together, and the electric current that surged between them sizzled and popped.
    A few years ago, Jinx and I had caught wind of a jumper operating in the Maul. Jumpers import adrenaline from Earth and sell it on the streets of Nod as jump juice. Since Incubi are nightmares made manifest, adrenaline is a highly pleasurable and addictive drug to them, and one for which they’ll pay through the nose.
    Shocktooth had been working “security” for the jumper, meaning that she made sure transactions went down smoothly, and if they didn’t, she started snapping bones and demonstrating how she’d come by her name. Jinx and I busted the jumper and hauled him and his “associates” in.
    The law in Nod is more lax than on Earth. Incubi are expected to behave chaotically. They are nightmares, after all. So the jumper was sentenced to Deadlock, but Shocktooth received only a three-year collaring. But she was bare-necked now, and that meant she was dangerous. And of course, she had a grudge to settle.
    Quietus didn’t show any outward reaction to Shocktooth’s arrival, but I felt his arm tense beneath my grip, just the merest amount, but I knew what it meant. Quietus saw a chance to escape, and he was preparing to take