The queen was entirely at his disposal.

The archangel had finally shown up, though it was only to confirm he was a useless son of a bitch, after all.

Sam leaned back on his luxurious bed, as if stretching. But that wasn’t what he was doing. It wasn’t morning; it was the middle of the night. He couldn’t fall asleep.

He could add sleeping in a luxurious bed—rather than the first piece of crap they found along the way—to the list of good things that had happened today. But even so, he wasn’t satisfied. He simply couldn’t sleep.

That had little to do with the fact that his sisters shared the same bed, which made him want to screw rather than sleep. A little, yes, but not much. He wasn’t even sure why. Maybe it was just the exhaustion itself. Ironically, he had discovered that sometimes, when he was truly tired, there was no way to fall asleep. Probably everyone was like that.

Being worn out, completely exhausted, didn’t even let you sleep properly.

He snorted, tossing and turning a bit more under the sheets, trying in vain to find the right position, the most comfortable one possible—as if there was a position that wouldn’t become uncomfortable in a matter of seconds or minutes. As if his mind would stop spinning, leave him alone, and set him free to sleep.

But he was wrong. All of that happened eventually, though it took him a while to fall into Morpheus’s arms.

——

Sam woke up in what looked like a five-star restaurant from his world. Everything was too modern, too shiny. He was aware he was dreaming, but it didn’t seem to matter one bit.

Perhaps Satan’s intrusions into his mind had given him the practice needed to hold onto his awareness, even in dreams. Not enough practice to affect them, apparently.

He was aware of what was happening but still floated through the dream like a human actor. Nothing more. Facing no audience. A cold, empty stage with no light. Many champagne glasses clinking and clicking.

He was having dinner with a family of ghosts, it seemed. And a ghost waiter was also the one who brought him his dinner on a very solid silver tray. When he uncovered it, the only thing inside was a human head, decapitated, of course.

It took him a few seconds to recognize it as Evelyn’s head. It wasn’t his fault. It was in such a state that even her mother would have a hard time recognizing it.

The head opened its eyes and moved its lips. It scared the hell out of him. In the dream, he didn’t react. Not even a raised eyebrow.

“You’re a murderer. You deserve the gallows,” it said.

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“And I’m supposed to believe you were a damn saint when you played that innocent little girl act? I’m sure it was nothing more than that. An act. I’m sure you just wanted to trap the other Sam by cozying up to him, insinuating yourself, because you knew that was the only way to get your hands on the family fortune. I don’t buy it, Evelyn. You weren’t any kind of angel, I’m sure. I have no proof, but I also have no doubts.”

“You’re a murderer. You deserve the gallows.”

“You’ve said that already.”

“You deserve to burn, burn in hell, along with everyone else you’ll kill. Because the apocalypse is coming, the end of times.”

“And why the hell do you care? You should be grateful, applauding me,” Sam said, stuffing his hands into his pockets. Part of him wanted to get up from the table—part of him—but something held him back. “After all, they say the dead rise in the apocalypse, don’t they? Or something like that, anyway.”

“I’d only need something like that because you killed me. You killed me, and you even enjoyed it. That was the last thing I saw, Samuel. Your smile, your hard dick, your sexual pleasure at my suffering. And for what? To gain a power that Satan wants to snatch from you and will take sooner or later.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re nothing more than a pawn on his chessboard. Nothing more, nothing less.”

For a decapitated head, Evelyn never ran out of words.

“You are something that should never have been born since you are defective as a human being.”

“I’m not human,” Sam nearly shouted back. “I’m the Antichrist. I’ve always been.”

His eyes burned, golden and bright like gold coins. The flames in his eyes flickered, oscillated. Everything was oscillating, really. Nothing could stay still.

“Always?”

“Always.”

The damn decapitated head somehow managed to shake itself.

“No, not always. You were born a pathetic human, like all of us. At first, at least, you were human.”

“Rot in hell, where you belong.”

Evelyn smiled. Then her teeth started falling out, one by one, and her mouth filled with blood—too much blood. More than her body could have contained, let alone just her head.

A grotesque, impossible amount of blood.

As impossible as talking to a dead person. As impossible as everything he had seen and heard, because it was just a dream.

“The trumpets are sounding, Samuel. Judgment Day is coming, and you are no exception. No exception. Just a pawn. White or black. Either way, a pawn on the board.”

Sam woke up suddenly, his heart in his throat. His body was covered in cold sweat, colder than the ice he could conjure.

“Damn it! What a nightmare.”

He turned, placing a hand on Christina’s shoulder, intending to shake her, grope her. He hoped she’d let him screw her, even next to her older sister. All the better, really. Maybe he’d get lucky enough to start a threesome.

But then he turned, and what stared back at him wasn’t Christina, but Evelyn’s dead face. Not as it had appeared in the dream, but as it had looked after she fell. That is to say, there was no face at all, just the mangled mess left when your damn skull explodes.

A disaster her own mother wouldn’t recognize, but he would. No one forgets their first time.

That disaster was stitched onto Christina’s neck with a fine black thread. A thread as fine as a spider’s web.

The weaver, he thought. It’s destiny’s doing. Everything is destiny’s doing.

Where’s Christina’s head? he wondered stupidly. If it’s not here, then where the hell is it?

Impulsively, he lifted the sheets and found out.

Then he really woke up.

“Goddamn it!” he muttered.

He looked at Christina and then at Heather, making sure he hadn’t woken them. Better that way, because he wasn’t in the mood to talk about his damn feelings.

Sam let himself fall back, resting his head and taking a deep breath.

“What a goddamn nightmare.”

The trumpets of the apocalypse. Yeah, even I can hear them blaring from here.