The Sandman Read Online Free

places—one to the black market, the other to the Agora.
    The impulse to shout and wake them was almost overpowering, though they’d already told him that since none of them were in their own dreamscapes, they’d be too far away from the waking world to hear.
    A low thump on the front door sent tension crackling along his nerves.
    Gary glanced back at the front room where Eleanor slept on the pullout sofa. With her hair falling away from her face, she looked twenty years younger, as if dipping into the dreamwaters had erased decades from her skin. She would want him to defend the kids. Their work was so important. He couldn’t be prouder of Harlen and the tremendous job he’d undertaken. But how to protect them?
    With a sudden, harsh splintering of wood, the front door crashed open. Two men in black body armor were suddenly pointing rifles at him. Bright lights glared from the tops of their weapons. “Drop the knife!”
    Like hell.
    “Drop the knife, now !” The insignia on the soldier’s sleeve was Chimera. The agency’s logo of the three-headed mythical creature was on a patch right beneath it.
    “Harlen Fawkes is here. He’s Chimera! He’s one of you!” Gary shouted to them, though Harlen had warned him that the Oneiros had infiltrated Chimera. “He’s one of you!”
    Were these the good guys or the bad guys?
    “We’ve got an elderly man with a knife blocking the hallway to the back of the house,” one of the soldiers said into a throat mic. “Elderly woman is unconscious in the front room, a Rêve crown on her head. Some kind of hookup in place, as well.”
    Oh, dear Lord… Gary hadn’t thought… The hookup led directly to Maze City, the only place that was safe Darkside.
    Another mistake.
    The soldier seemed to listen for a moment before saying, “Roger that.”
    He was a blur of black movement as he approached, fast. Gary stumbled backward, and suddenly darkness was hulking before him. A sharp ache shot through his wrist, and the knife clattered to the floor. There was a small explosion of pain above his ear, and then the darkness became complete.
     
    ***
     
    Pain boomed on the side of Gary’s head. His wrists were bound behind his back, something cutting into them, and his legs were restrained at his ankles so that he could only bicycle his knees as he was dragged from the hallway to a chair by the kitchen table.
    His heart thumped hard as realization struck him like thunder. He must have been out for only a minute or two.
    “We have five revelers in the residence,” a male voice was saying. “Including Director Harlen Fawkes.”
    So they did know that Harlen was here. Chimera had been infiltrated, then.
    “No Vincent Blackman or Mirren Lambert?” a female voice asked.
    Gary had heard those last two names before, but he couldn’t immediately place them. He scanned the small beach house: Eleanor was still asleep on the pullout, but now, two armed men stood on each side of the large front window. The curtains were closed.
    “No, ma’am,” the male voice said. “According to their identification, we have Serafina Rochan in the same room as Director Fawkes. We also have Marshal Malcolm Rook, and a woman he’d been recruiting for Chimera, Jordan Lane.”
    Another armed man stood by the front door, the frame splintered on one side. And Gary knew that still more were in the back rooms where the kids were sleeping.
    “And him?” said the woman to what appeared to be the Chimera in charge, who stood next to her.
    Gary finally focused on her. Fancy lady in a blue skirt suit, a pin on her lapel. He tried to memorize her face, which was made square by the slight sag of skin. Her blond hair waved to her chin, each strand perfectly in place. She had small blue eyes with very little makeup. Tasteful is what people would call her.
    “The old man and woman have no identification on them,” the marshal said to her.
    Gary hadn’t exactly had time to grab his wallet when Sera had burst into his