by Amie Gibbons
My breath caught in my throat and I swallowed bile as heat flushed through me, givin’ me the shakes all over again.
He couldn’t really rape me in my dreams.
Could he?
Truck grinned at me. “So go ahead and make your threats. The only way you stop me is you kill me.”
He tossed me a wink.
“We will,” Grant said, still focusin’ everything on the psycho.
The air filled to near bursting.
“You know that place you’re in right now, Special Agent Grant?” Truck said so quiet I barely made out the words. “That’s what I call going to black. Where the world is completely blank, no right and wrong, no morality. You may be on the side of the angels, but you have some demon in you. Takes one to know one.”
“That’s enough of that,” DiCianni said, making me jump as the locked men blinked and the air released its hold on me.
I sucked in oxygen, like I’d been holdin’ my breath.
Maybe I had.
“Men, get him out of here,” DiCianni said.
They pulled Truck and he went with them, tossing me another wink over his shoulder before disappearing around the corner.
“Special Agent Grant,” DiCianni said, “I don’t know what-”
“Shut the fuck up, DiCianni,” Grant said, turnin’ on his heel and leaving through the interrogation room.
“You people are nuts here,” DiCianni said. “What was that? I’m going to have to report this.”
“Excuse you?” I said, touching his arm. I got a quick flash of a vision of him meeting his wife. “No, nuh uh, and report this to who exactly?”
I touched his arm again.
Focus. I need dirt.
The vision came and I grinned, probably lookin’ as deranged as Truck did when he laughed at Grant.
“The director,” DiCianni said. “We can’t have an agent off the reservation like that. He was going to shoot the prisoner.”
He pushed past me and I caught his arm.
“You will do no such thing, Marco DiCianni,” I said, planting my hands on my hips.
He stared down at me. “Yes, I will. Get out of my way. I need to talk to the director.”
“I've been playing with the psycho all morning, Marco,” I said. “I'm freaked out and nauseous. Don't mess with me.”
“No. I'm sorry, but there's no such thing as psychic attacks or whatever. This is crazy talk. I'm going to have to report this to the director. If an agent is losing it like this-”
“You're cheatin' on your wife with a grad student whose pink panties you wore to work today cuz she thinks that's hot. Oh yeah, she's not gonna fit into them soon cuz she's about five weeks pregnant. Congrats. You want me to keep talkin' or are you gonna drop this whole reporting my boss thing? By the way, the director knows I'm psychic. Who do you think okayed hiring me? You’re gonna keep your mouth shut about Grant pullin’ his gun and tell your agents to too, or I’ll spill the beans on you to your wife. And I don’t just mean about the cross-dressing.”
He stared at me, mouth catchin' flies.
“I've had a really bad day,” I said.
He pulled out his phone, mouth still hanging open as he walked away fast enough to make me feel a little cheerier, and disappeared around the same corner as Truck and the others.
###
“Sir,” I said, holding up my phone, “that witch who runs the new agey shop says she can send over a dreamcatcher.”
“What?” Grant said, lookin’ up from his computer.
“It’s a magical one. She’s legit, I swear. And she says she can spell one to protect the room the dreamer’s in.”
He stared at me.
“I checked with Len’s guy, Kurt, cuz Len isn’t awake. He says she’s good, and she can deliver it to the club tonight.”
“And?” Grant said.
“Can I charge it? It’s work related, sir.”
He took a deep breath. “You sure she’s legit?”
“Unless Len or Kurt is her shill.”
“Go ahead.”
He looked back down and I placed the order, walking over after I hung up.
“Sir?” I asked, leaning against his desk. “I’m gettin’ less from you than normal. What’s wrong? Is it Truck? The witch swears the spelled dreamcatcher will work.”
He didn’t look me in the eye and I gulped.
Grant never avoids eye contact.
It’s like he wants you to know he’s there every time he talks to you so he finds your eyes whether you want him to or not.
He got up and walked away.
I followed him down the hall and into the bathroom.
He pressed against the tiled wall next to the sinks, like he was tryin’ to do vertical pushups up.
“Sir?” I said. “Please talk to me.”
“Black,” Grant said, staying in position. “He called it black. I call it cold. I’m there, Ryder. It takes about twenty minutes to come back.”
My heart raced and he pushed off the wall, turning like he heard it.
“Sir,” I said, voice low and soft, “what does it feel like?”
“Rational,” he said, meeting my eyes. “Animal.”
I took a step back, licking my lips as my belly and groin flushed with heat.
“Get. Out. Ryder,” he said, eyes holdin’ mine.
My breaths were fast and shallow and I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
He stepped forward, bent slightly forward.
Coiled.
Like a cat ready to pounce on the cornered mouse.
“I can’t, sir,” I said, voice too high. “I can’t look away. It’s like you’re tellin’ me to run and to stay at the same time. And I’m pretty sure I’ll do whatever you tell me to right now.”
He moved, too fast for me to react, and wrapped a meaty hand around my neck, pushing me against the wall.
I couldn’t even react before he was staring at me, full weight of his focus pounding into me.
I fell into his eyes, drownin’ in frosty green as he held me there.
He inched in and my legs shook as my lips parted.
But he looked away.
I sagged as the crush of deep ocean lifted off me and I took a full deep breath.
“The only reason I haven’t done anything I will regret is because I am coming out of it,” Grant whispered in my ear, tightening his grip just enough for me to feel it. “I am back enough to know what I should not do. I am not back enough to care to stop myself if you push me.”
My lips and groin throbbed in time with each other and my legs gave out.
He pressed against me, big body the only thing keeping me standing against the wall.
“Grant,” I said, voice breathy and high.
He pulled back, wrapped his arm around my waist and half dragged me to the door, shoving me out so hard I fell on my knees. He pushed the door closed and the click of the lock made me flinch.
I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, shakin’ so bad I couldn’t have stood if I wanted to.
The door opened some time later and I looked up.
Grant sat by me, eyes forward.
I gulped. I had to ask.
“Sir?”
“Don’t ask, Ryder.”
I laughed my nervous laugh. “You a mind reader now, sir?”
“No. Don’t need to be to read you.”
I turned my head to look at him. “What would have happened?”
“You know exactly what would have happened.”
“What’s it like, now that you’re outta it?”
He sighed. “It is a cold, calculating place, where you can do what needs to be done, or what you want. I have only ever gone there when I have needed to, to protect someone. When I come out of it, it’s… bad, because I have done something I shouldn’t have, but I knew was necessary.”
“So you’re not outta control then?”
“No, the opposite. You control all. Reflexes and senses are heightened, adrenalin
e deadens the pain, and you know you will fight to the death. You’re processing so fast, it’s almost like others are in slow motion. You choose what to do, but all morality and feeling is stripped away, leaving logic, calculations, and motion.”
“And after?”
“No. Ryder.”
“I’ve never seen you do that, sir, and I’m curious.”
“No, you’re pushing it because you liked it.”
I blushed, lookin’ down at my hands. “You’ve said you see me as a child, but in there, you weren’t treating me that way. You weren’t lookin’ at me like I was a child.”
“Yeah. When I go cold, after the danger is passed, if I am functioning… It is animal and uncaring. There is no nice, no emotion, no connection. Just instinct.”
So his instincts said what? To mate?
“How often have you gone there?” I asked.
“This makes four in my life.”
Four? Four in thirty-eight years?
If this was so unusual, why did he go there with the tiniest push with Truck?
I had to ask.
Pretty sure I’m part cat, cuz of the curiosity thing.
“Why this time? Truck wasn’t an immediate threat.”
He shook his head. “I… I can not explain it, but I knew in that moment that he was, and he needs to be killed, just as clearly as I knew you had to be protected.”
I cleared my throat. Nope, not goin’ there.
“You said if you were functioning,” I said. “Has there been a time-”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
He didn’t say anything and I risked a glance over at him again.
He stared straight forward at the wall across from us like he was trying to beat it into submission with the power of his mind.
“Six against one,” he finally said. “I stayed in cold until I could get to a hospital. It was the second time I had gone there. I knew if I stayed in it, the adrenaline, the focus, would keep me mobile.”
I didn’t have to ask which side he was on.
“And the six?” I asked.
“Gang members who deserved what they got. When I showed up, they were herding a teenage girl into an alley. They weren’t missed.”
Holy crap in a basket of crackers.
I giggled, high and half crazy, and slammed my hand over my mouth.
There was a whole side to Grant I didn’t know.
“Grant?”
“No, Ryder. The answer is no. It will stay no.”
Wait, what the quack did he think I was askin’?
Well, since he brought it up.
“What happened in there says otherwise, sir,” I said. “You said it was instinct.”
He finally turned to look at me, but his eyes held no power now. Like he was holding back.
“What happened in there is one of many reasons why it’s no. Because I can’t trust you to tell me no when you need to.”
Well, that stung.
“Would you have felt bad, sir?” I asked.
“When I am in that mindset, I am no better than Truck. And I would never forgive myself.”
“Then, if you’re ever in that mindset again, I’ll leave you alone, let you walk it off.”
“Thank you.”
We sat in silence for a little while longer and he finally pushed up to his feet.
“Paperwork, Ryder,” he said, not looking down. “I’ll see you Monday.”
He walked away, leaving me staring at his back.
Chapter six
I finished my paperwork and got home in time to get ready for the night.
I showered (after those visions, I needed it), twisted my hair up into curlers, ate some leftovers, did my makeup a little heavier than usual, and turned to my clothes.
Tonight was the grand reopening of Len’s club, The Kickback. It was gonna be a huge party, and I was singing, so I needed to look good.
What happened to his club? Well, it was shot up last month by a demon. It would’ve been opened back up pretty skippy since they really only needed to fix some parts of the roof and floor, except Grant kinda blew up the bathroom.
It was the only way to kill the demon.
“What to wear. What to wear,” I said, starin’ at my clothes.
I finally settled on the classic little black dress and a pair of red heels. I slid on a custom-made thigh holster Quil got me last week and put the little Baby Browning Grant gave me, and silver push knife in it. It was the first thigh holster I’d ever had that stayed up without practically cutting off the circulation.
I left a note for Pyro for when he woke at sunset, and left early. I wanted to be there before my set just in case they needed help.
Or, you know, in case Quil had a spare minute.
The Kickback’s near Vanderbilt, just across the street from Centennial Park. It took twice as long to get there as it should’ve due to the Friday night traffic.
I parked in the gravel lot alongside the BMWs, Ferraris, and Porsches.
A lot of the vamps live in the maze of rooms under the park and would just walk over, so the fact that there were so many cars in the parking lot meant the place was gonna be packed.
I wonder what the fire marshal’s gonna say if the place is too full.
If anyone showed up, they’d probably just hypnotize them and send them on their way.
I went through the backdoor and a beefy guy with arms as big as my waist and no neck stopped me.
“Can I help you, miss?” he asked in a strangely high voice for a man so large.
“I’m Ariana. I’m a... a friend of Len’s,” I said, nervous grin slippin’ into place as he checked the list in his giant ham hands.
Wait, why did I feel nervous?
Maybe the psycho after me had something to do with that?
“You’re right here.” He pointed to the list even though I couldn’t see it from my angle, and sat back down next to the door.
“Ariana!” an exuberant voice said before I could get to the hallway.
“Hey, Len!” I said.
Len looked great. His open purple leather vest showed off his built chest and arms, and that with his stubble made him look shabby chic. His purple cowboy hat and boots, tight jeans and a big silver (not real silver obviously) belt buckle completed the look.
I don’t know if he dresses that way cuz he likes how he looks, or just cuz he wants to make sure that no matter what, everyone knows he’s gay and proud of it.
Len swooped me up in his arms, squeezin’ me so hard I squeaked.
“Len, air,” I said.
“Sorry.” He loosened his grip, whispering, “My office. I’ll explain.”
I stiffened.
Explain what? There’s something to explain?
We pulled apart and it didn’t take a genius to figure out something was wrong, but if I didn’t get it before, his plastered on fake smile would’ve been a dead giveaway.
I followed him to his office and he held the door open for me, closing it behind us.
“Len, what-” I said.
He held up a finger and I nodded as he walked behind his desk and hit a few keys on the keyboard.
“Sorry, darling,” he said. “Have to make sure there’s no one listening in.”
“What’s going on, Len?” I asked, heart sinkin’.
He sighed. “I don’t know how to tell ya this, so I just am.”
I grabbed the chair next to the desk and sat fast.
Something told me I wanted to be seated for this.
“You remember last month, your lab tech friend?” he said.
“Irish,” I said. “That was his nickname.”
“You know how he was forced to do the queen’s will since he was turned by her?”
“Yeahhhhhhh.”
“Okay. That’s a general rule. New vamps usually can’t fight the pull of their makers. They have to obey.”
“Yeah, kinda got that last month when my friend tried to kill me.”
I searched his face. “What?”
He took a deep breath and I stared at him. “The queen is planning on turning you herself.”
My mouth dropped open.
“Darling?” Len asked after a moment.
“I, ugh, nope. No, not happening,” I said.
“She’s not planning on asking.”
“But she can’t just jump me and-”
“Yes, she can.” Len reached across the desk and took my hands in his. “Ariana, she is planning on grabbing you when she can. We just heard the rumor this morning and Quil has spent the day chasing it down. We’re pretty sure it’s real.”
Adrenaline zapped through my body like it was on a trigger and metal coated my tongue as I searched his face.
“What do I do?” I asked, pullin’ my hands back to rub my arms.
“Stay in crowded areas. I would say stay away from here, but she’s not going to try anything with all of us around. The more vamps around you, the safer you’ll be.”
“Unless they’re loyalists,” I said.
“Yeah.” He looked down, licking his lips. “Ariana, we’re trying to stop her.”
“No, you’re not. If you were tryin’ to stop her, she’d be dead.”
“We can’t just go around assassinating people.”
“But it’s okay when she does it?”
“Of course not.” He glared at me. “It’s not okay. It’s not allowed. We just have word that she’s going to try it in such a way as to make it look like you wanted it. Now, that does give you some protection. If she slips away to stalk you, people will get suspicious. If she has any of her people do it, they’ll talk, that’s how we heard about it in the first place. If she tries anything when you’re surrounded, people will really talk.”
I took a deep breath. “So what you’re saying is, I’m not in immediate danger, because she has to play these stupid shadow games too?”
“Kind of.”
“What does Quil have to say about all this?”
“Mostly swear words.”
I huffed a sorta laugh.
“You know what’s funny?” I asked. “This is not the scariest thing to happen to me today.”
