Move!” Harlen yelled against the gale, and then spat out the Scrape sand that had coated in his mouth and teeth. The grains cut at Harlen’s eyes, but he gripped the writhing and bucking nightmare’s ankle with both hands as he charged into the wind. Marshal Neumann gripped its right ankle, while two others held its arms. The skin of the creature had broken where Harlen held it, and his hands were slick with frigid black oil—what had to be the same stuff that had stained Vince. Nightmare blood. The twist and slide of its skin over bone was disgusting, but the contortions the creature attempted, bending in wrong ways, breaking into unnatural joints that tricked Harlen’s grip, had him sweating and cursing. The skinny fucker was a nightmare. It’s face… God! And eyes. Seeing it for a few seconds in that gaming Rêve was nothing in comparison to touching it. His Darkside Division marshals made a traveling ring around the moving center sprawl of the captured nightmare. The glimmer of the Agora was close, but so too were the flashes of icy wind that presaged the dart and strike of other nightmares hiding in the gusts.
