Excerpt:

(I am too lazy to do the html so forgive me if you don't see italics where I seem them. )
This dream scene takes place towards the end of the novel. Lillith has been searching for her twin brother Lyle. Because of their peculiar relationship, they can communicate through dreams. However, Lyle has been avoiding Lillith and she has had to enlist the aid of Mahamaya (Hindu goddess), Morpheus (Greek god), and, unasked, Mara (Scandinavian folklore wraith). Enjoy!

***
Lillith Dreams

“Lyle”

He stood there, before her, dressed as he had been the last time they were together. The dark silk shirt, black slacks. The only difference Lillith could discern was that his hair was gone, his head as smoothly shaved as his face.

He raised his hands and in one he held the dead wreath of flowers she had woven for him, in the other he held out the engagement ring Michael had given to her and she had, in turn, passed into her brother’s keeping. Lillith began to move towards him and stopped when she saw a seeping wound, blood flowing, in the center of his palms. The withered wreath was soon saturated and ring lost in the blood that filled his palms.

“Lyle,” she said and reached out, in spite of her natural repulsion at the blood. She took a hold of his hands and he was gone. She looked at her now empty hands, saw there her brother’s blood. Pausing a moment, she wiped her hands on her gown, staining it in an effort to cleanse herself.

Her chest felt the tightness of Mara’s presence. She knew this was another nightmare and waited for more blood soaked images to present themselves. She steeled herself, prepared for the onslaught, the violence of her past paraded before her.

Instead there was only the cold and silence, darkness so weighted that she could feel it the way a fog could become so thick as to be tangible. Fighting to breathe against the solid cold, she lowered her head and knelt where she stood. When she could bear the silence no longer she spoke, her voice barely more than a breath, not even a whisper.

“Lyle.”

On the mountaintop, the same one where Morpheus had brought her, Lillith knelt in the dirt, stones cutting into her knees. The grass was mostly gone and what remained was dry, rasping in the wind. Stiff from kneeling so long, Lillith stood slowly, looking around. The sky was grey, clouds drooping down to the other mountaintops. Turning more, she sought the image of her brother, a flicker or ripple that would indicate his appearance but there was none.

Closing her eyes, she held her still blood soaked hands out to either side, expecting that once again Lyle would reach out to her. Instead, with her eyes closed, she could hear a sound that she had not noticed before. She followed the sound, a moan and grunt that was familiar but too far away for her to discern. Making her way cautiously among the stones and rocks, catching herself when her misstep caused her to slip on a patch of snow, she almost stumbled into a small grotto. The sounds were coming from within and she paused only a moment before entering, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dimness within.

At first, she saw Morpheus himself crouching over the body of a woman. There was blood everywhere she could see. The woman was also covered in blood, her dress ripped open, breasts exposed and bouncing as Morpheus pushed himself into her prone body.

Lillith did not dare reach out to disturb Morpheus and was about to turn away when she realized that the moan was not that of the god but of her brother. Stepping forward, she disturbed a stone and in that moment, the woman that lay beneath across the floor of the cave sat up, pulling her dress around her, blood dripping from where her hands gripped, squeezing liquid from the soaked fabric.

The woman pointed at her and in the same moment Lillith recognized the woman, through the paint of blood. “Mother?”

Morpheus let out a groan, a release of sexual power, and although it was his body Lillith knew the voice was her brother’s. The god’s climax finished, he collapsed over
Lillith’s mother.

Lillith had taken a step backward, sickened at this vision, confused that she was still in Mara’s world with Morpheus before her, his back covering the small body of her mother. She had never seen her mother before, not in any of her dreams. A primal fury rose from somewhere inside. Lillith flew at the god’s back, grabbed his shoulders and tried to pull him off the woman.

In a swift and smooth motion, Morpheus swung around, his arm outstretched, grabbing Lillith by the throat. He smiled and as he smiled his face changed into Lyle’s, a manic grin across his face, tears of blood pouring from his eyes.

The hand on her throat closed tighter and once again Lillith was fighting to breathe.
Looking down at the floor of the cave she saw her mother, no longer covered in blood, beautiful in a way that only her earliest memories could recall. Her mother, in the meantime, looked at her and smiled, the smile changing her features until Lillith realized she was looking down at herself, lying beneath her brother as she had done so many times before.

Clawing at the hand with which Lyle held her, she struggled to release herself. Still smiling, he reached his other hand down to the Lillith that still lay beneath him, slid his hands around her throat as well, and began choking her.

In her last moments of consciousness, Lillith watched as her doppelganger reached up to Lyle’s face and instead of fighting him off, wiped the bloody tears from his face and, drawing her fingers into her own mouth, licked the blood from her hands.

***

Lillith.

Her eyelids fluttered before she opened them.

Daughter.

Mahamaya was standing over her. Lillith lifted herself slowly, her neck painful and probably bruised. She lifted a hand to her throat, the blood on her hand was dry, flaking away as she moved her fingers.

“Help.”

Mahamaya smiled and for a moment Lillith cringed, afraid the goddesses face would evolve into something else, that she was in yet another nightmare.

I am me. No other.

“Please.” The words were a knife through her throat, a pain that defied description, as if the horrors she had seen had taken a physical form somewhere inside.

These are your prayers.

Struggling to rise, Lillith presumed to reach out to Mahamaya but stumbled when the goddess stepped away. “Lyle.”

Yes.

“Where?” It hurt too much to speak but she forced herself to swallow and say one more word. “Maya.”

The goddess did not move. Rather, there was the ripple of dreams, the vision shifting from one place to another, one reality to another.

Lillith was kneeling, now on a knoll somewhere arid and a storm was roiling towards where she was. Lifting her head, she saw a stream of blood, dripping swift and steady down the beam vertical before her. Looking up, grateful for the overcast sky, she first saw the feet of a man, a spike driven through the feet.

She fell back, catching herself with her hands, clawing the dirt between her fingers.

Her brother, Lyle, was stretched out before her, crucified on the primitive form of judgment that had become a symbol of something sacred not long after they had lost their mother and home. His arms reaching outward, pierced through the wrists, held him upright on the cross beam, his head drooping, hanging with the weight of his imminent death. The crown of flowers, vibrant with life, lopsided on his brow fell and floated to her feet. Reaching out to pick it up, she saw the glint of her engagement ring on her left hand.

A shriek formed in her bowels, built strength, climbing up and out of her ravaged throat. “No,” she shouted.

In her bed she lurched upward, the sound of her scream filling the room, breaking through the dream, leaving her heaving for breath, heart racing, reaching to where her brother was not crucified, the engagement ring once again on her finger.