In dreams the rain falls from empty skies. A funeral of Officer Michael Sharon had never happened. Only in dreams could we watch his casket lowered into the ground. I knew I was dreaming, yet I still felt fear as I stood alone amid the shadows of the gathered policemen.

It was no ordinary dream. Rather I was there to feel and to know how they fed upon his soul. From my perspective it looked like a funeral attended by shades of living people. They all had their backs turned when I looked up. Only the eyes of his killers watched and fed on the suffering they had caused.

"You spared my life." I recalled.

"A mistake. You have proven to be quite a thorn." Serephiel, Wind Of North, stood between her sisters and spoke to me. "Yet you have learned what I have forgotten. Why should this cursed world be spared? All men are as treacherous and worthless as you. They must all burn for what they have done."

"Why now? So much time has passed. You have even forgotten what you wrote. Men remember, we have translated and kept your words since the Dawn. How can you be so forgetful and remember now what you wished upon us?" I asked her, trembling before her strict gaze. "You sent something that looked like Detective Winters to take back your own words. You wrote the Book of Lilith, how can its contents be a mystery to you?"

"What can you remember from your childhood?" Liminiel, Wind Of South, wondered. Her manner held no malice or resentment, only a kind of disdain.

"When I first heard of your sister's death it was against a creature that guarded Eden. Your book says it was caused by Man." I clarified the confusion.

"Both accounts are true. Pheriel wanted to give fire to the humans as they shivered in the cold of night, cast out from their garden. Long had a harsh desert covered all of the world. No doubt you know of the many thousands of millennia during which the world was ruled by snakes." Ariel sounded tired and wary. She wanted to tell me everything and yet she was careful how she spoke.

"The Great Bloodline. I have known all of their history and forgotten it." I concurred. "How does the Dawn coincide with different origins? I do not understand much about the beginning of this world."

"Of course you do not. It is simple: Creation occurred on seven different days. It is the minds of Man that have presumed that seven such days equal a week, or that they occurred in order or that such days were merely days made of measurable hours." Liminiel was eager to explain. I realized that she had changed already. While Serephiel grew more angry and sinister and Ariel weakened and became passive, Liminiel relished the change.

"That is what it says in the Bible." I muttered defensively.

"Even that account details two separate acts of Creation. Do you think that the same being both created and destroyed? That it was both omnipotent, all knowing and also lacking in foresight? Those are mortal fallacies. We were created by our mother and she was created by her husband and he was created by a willpower, a magical force that can only spark universes. To mix these together is a lack of perspective that is unique to Man. All other animals know their role and obey their instincts. Only Man is confused by any of this." Serephiel fumed.

"You seem confused. You do not know the details of your own curse or how or why you chose not to inflict it. You have forgotten much and yet you still hold a grudge. A revenge that you have delayed for all of human history. Why now?" I asked her again.

"Because all of the magic is going away. Whenever we use our powers we become weakened and forgetful. We fear that our time is ending and our enemies are taking action against us. All things die, all species fall and every world crumbles. Just as there is a Dawn there is also a Dusk. It is why, because of spite, because we choose not to accept that Man should outlast the Lilim. We are greater and you do not deserve to thrive in our place." Ariel answered and revealed at last what I had, on the fringes of my thought, begun to suspect.

"You say too much, sister." Serephiel looked from me to her and back at me.

The shade priest of the funeral was speaking in tongues, but I heard the conclusion: "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust."

"You know all that there is to know. You know too much, more than we know. You are too dangerous to live." Serephiel looked pleased to make such a determination. She lifted her hands, summoning swirling flames to throw upon me. I would be incinerated and surely my death in the dream would ensure that I never woke up again.

"Not with my holy magic. This man is a witness. This man must not die by the hand of the Lilim. I forbid it!" A commanding female voice said in an ancient language. Somehow I understood her words. The three Lilim beheld her and Serephiel's fire became as a gentle breeze that shuddered in all directions. Then they knelt, their long hair hanging as shameful veils.

I turned to behold my rescuer. The ghost of Pheriel stood there, a memory of the Lilim. She was not real, just a vision, just a thought of who she was. Her kind gaze touched me and beheld me. She said:

"I willingly bore my breast for the humans. I chose to face the East and I gave up my secrets of magic. The gift of fire was not stolen, it was freely given." Pheriel proclaimed. Then to her sisters she said: "It took this long for you to forget that. You shame the memory of me. Be fair to this man, he only wishes to see the Dawn. Have you forgotten the beauty and peace that we were born into?"

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"Forgive me, sister." Serephiel's voice had changed. She was weeping.

Then my eyes opened and I was lying in the dirt outside the ranch motel. I got up and looked at La Cucharacha as the sunrise glowed behind it. My crow was flying through the air directly towards me and landed nearby.

"Good morning, Cory." I told him.

"My Lord walked in his sleep and landed here." Cory decided.

"I had a very disturbing slumber." I agreed. "What is for breakfast?"

After so much time reading the book we had met with one of the Triad Killers. I was not sure that I had dreamed only the night before. It seemed to have happened a long time ago, shortly after I had first met the Lilim. I no longer wondered how I was still alive when they had not hesitated to kill so many others. They had chosen not to harm me directly, at least sofar.

"A dream, or a memory, my Lord?" Cory mused.

"Perhaps both. A memory of a dream, a dream of something that can only be remembered. Something that never happened." I held my head, trying not to think any harder about it.

"Almost as though there is another world with different outcomes." Cory mentioned something familiar.

"Two worlds. I am meant to bridge two worlds." I suddenly recalled.

"No sense in burning bridges, as it is still very early in the day." Cory hopped up onto my shoulder and clicked once for food.

We went into the lobby where a buffet was being served. I wondered vaguely at the budget of the investigation as I assembled a continental menu breakfast. Cory had his own plate of food he had chosen and that I had served for him.

"Have you finished reading the book?" Agent Heller asked me. Several others had tried and gotten nowhere.

"I have." I nodded with my mouthful of food.

"It amazes me that you did so within just under a month." Agent Heller decided. I blinked. I had not realized an entire month had gone by while I worked on it.

"There is another serial killer, it would seem." Agent Nomak mentioned.

After breakfast the lead investigator was announced to both teams. Agent Nomak was being reassigned to the new case in town.

"I am heading into town to help the police to profile a suspect. The fact is that three murders have occurred at Shaded Village and the police suspect that there might be more. The murders were only discovered after we arrived. I am guessing that they might be somehow connected to the Triad Killers. I would like to take our guests with us and see if they notice anything." Agent Nomak spoke up.

"That's a good idea." Agent Saint agreed as she sipped her coffee. "They will see."

We went with Agent Nomak, Cory and I. At Shaded Village we put on masks and began looking around with nametags stuck to our shirts. We visited the rooms of each of the victims.

Agent Nomak questioned everyone and when we were done we went to the police to compare notes.

"The death rate has tripled since we got here. We can presume that the killer has taken about twice as many, six all together." Agent Nomak postulated. "And the autopsies indicated that a needle was used with potassium to kill them. You suspect that a nurse or doctor did this. Have you examined the guest logs?"

"Yes. Those weren't unusual. My parents and grandparents went there. The place is old." The chief of police digressed.

"All of the victims were already dying. Why were they killed?" Agent Nomak thought out loud.

"Someone couldn't wait. Someone who needed a death nearby and chose the dying for victims. Needed to control the moment of death, to avoid observation with the victims." I pointed out.

"You have spent too much time around murder investigations. You sound like you know what you are talking about." Agent Nomak complimented me.

"We still don't know what for." The chief of police said.

"Let's go back and see who is too busy to notice." Cory suggested. Agent Nomak agreed. We returned to Shaded Village around evening and watched from the gloom outside as the elderly gathered for dinner and board games and cards.

One teenage girl walked among them, a candystriper, smiling and talking to all of them. We all noticed the contrast between her and the staff. She cared about them and yet she moved with purpose and an agenda.

"We never interviewed her." Agent Nomak realized. He had made a point of asking several questions of every staff member. Somehow she had avoided us, despite her presence.

Someone we presumed was her mom came and picked her up. Agent Nomak followed them home and observed their humble home on the edge of town. Later that night someone we presumed was her father came home. Her bedroom light went out. We sat there all night and in the morning the parents left and she went to a school bus stop.

Agent Nomak got out. I asked him: "Where are you going?"

"I just want to have a look. It is probably nothing." He said and went up to the front door. He tried it and found it unlocked. Thus he let himself in.

While we waited for him to finish breaking and entering we saw the girl returning from around the corner, looking around nervously as she skipped class. "Keep her busy." I told Cory and rushed to go warn Agent Nomak.

I found him inside and he had, in one hand, a composition notebook and in the other he held a gallon ziplock with syringes and vials of potassium. "Dad is a pharmacist. Seems Sheila is more than just a teenage girl."

"She is coming." I said, the relevance of my worries dissipating.

"I know. I have instincts too." Agent Nomak set down the evidence and got out his handcuffs.

"What an amazing bird!" Sheila proclaimed. She then noticed the front door was open and then she saw us coming out to meet her. She dropped her bag and ran.

"Don't run! You can't escape!" Cory squawked.

"Help!" She was screaming as she ran down the street.

I heard a police siren and realized someone had already called the police. She kept running and we just waited at her house. When the police arrived, Agent Nomak showed them his badge and explained that she was the killer.

Later in the afternoon she was arrested by the police at her friend's house. She had gone there to hide and a phonecall to home had revealed she was wanted by the police. Her sanctuary became a trap as the parent's of her friend called her in.

We had a chance to interview her at the police station.

"You're facing three counts of murder one. In this state they will try you as an adult and give you the big sentence. I would hate to see a writer with such potential go to waste." Agent Nomak told her.

"Tell us something useful about your writing." Cory suggested. Sheila smiled at my crow and nodded.

"The words came from those I put down." Sheila claimed. "I was writing a grimoire. Mine has spells that really work. It is real."

"This grimoire you were writing." I held the composition notebook. "How did you learn to write it from the words spoken by the dying?"

"From the Manuscript Killer." Sheila looked puzzled. "Aren't you with the FBI?"

"I am and I worked on that case. How did you hear the details of Jeremy Peterson?" Agent Nomak leaned forward.

"I've known him my whole life. He is my father." Sheila revealed.

"I will see to it that you two are reunited." Agent Nomak promised. "At Dellfriar."

As we left I asked him: "You really think she is insane?"

"No." Nomak shook his head. "But she is merciful and that deserves mercy, don't you think?"