"Sar, no!"
I screamed to her to get back, but as I did, the . . . thing reached down and swallowed her in flames. It was the Vision-Serpent come to receive her.
"Sarah . . ."
"Can you get up now?" said a voice, cutting through the haze that enveloped my consciousness. At first I thought it was more of the dream, but then someone was touching me and I opened my eyes to see Marcelina standing beside the bed I was in, dressed in white and holding a candle. For a moment I thought I was still atop the rainy pyramid but then I felt the moistness of the sheets and realized the storm Id been dreaming of was being blown in through the slats of the windows. I was shivering.
"Marcelina, where's Sarah?" The nightmare had seemed so real, and now I was hallucinating, having flashes of colors I didn't want to see. "I just had the most horrible dream. I was on the pyramid and there was smoke, rain and some kind of ghastly—"
"It's the elixir. From the toad. It makes you dream dreams of the Old Ones." She took my hand. "She's resting now. He gave her something to calm her."
More drugs, I thought angrily.
Then I caught the "he." Alex Goddard must be back. Everything had gone wrong.
"I've got to get her and—"
"Not now," Marcelina went on, helping me up. "Come. I want to show you the true miracle of Baalum. Now is the time you should know."