A Monster and a Gentleman

by Lila Dubois

  It wasn’t rest she needed.

  She needed to keep her Clan safe.

  In the madness of the night, there was one person they hadn’t dealt with.

  Vernell Neuberger, the location scout. She was the third human on the list and the only one Maeve hadn’t touched.

  It was easy enough to find her address on the papers still scattered across Oren’s table. When she called a cab—something she’d always wanted to do—she found out that the address was not far from Oren’s home.

  The cab agreed to wait for her after she handed him some of the cash Henry had given her. The driver settled into his seat, listening to music as Maeve made her way up the steps to Nell’s home.

  The front door was locked, but Maeve found an open window.

  The woman was asleep in her bed, peaceful and dreaming. She had no idea of the harm she’d done.

  Maeve had to know why they’d been betrayed. Had to know what had motivated the woman.

  Nell jerked awake when Maeve took hold of her. There was a moment where their gazes met before Nell’s eyes rolled back in her head. It was right there, the past that explained her actions.

  Maeve saw her talking to Henry, touching him, trying to entice him. Henry turned away. The same scene played over and over again, the woman wanting Henry, even as she feared him.

  In that past, Maeve saw an imagined future, the woman’s fantasy—she would be on Henry’s arm, she would be at the center of it all when the world turned its attention to them. She would give interviews, meet important people.

  A woman who’d never had the talent to be an actress or the drive to be a producer, but who craved that success and fame.

  In Henry, she’d seen a way to have it, but Henry didn’t want her.

  Maeve released the woman, bowing her own head. Greed and envy. A petty woman’s greed and envy had killed men tonight.

  “Wha…what are you doing here?” Nell sat up in bed, eyes wide. “Did, uh, something happen?”

  “Men died tonight. Men died because a selfish woman didn’t care who was hurt as long as she got what she wanted.”

  Nell’s gaze darted away. She lunged for the side of the bed, but Maeve grabbed her.

  Holding the sides of Nell’s head, Maeve ignored the flailing fists that struck her back and sides. She opened herself to the Everafter, letting it flow through her. Bit by bit she let it in, a river, a sea crashing through her mind.

  And then Maeve let it flow into Nell.

  The woman’s mouth opened on a soundless scream. Her eyes flickered as her brain struggled to process what was happening. It was more than she was meant to hold, more than she could bear.

  Maeve could see it in her eyes, the moment when Nell gave up trying to control something so much greater than she was. Her mind gave in to it, relinquishing its individuality to join with greater the consciousness.

  Maeve could have done much worse and, maybe, for all the damage Nell had done, she should have done worse. But dawn was coming, and all Maeve wanted was Oren’s arms around her. She wanted a moment away from the worry and death.

  Tomorrow would come, and with tomorrow more joy and sorrow. She, more than anyone, knew that time never stopped and that there was nothing sure in this world.

  But for now she loved and was loved, and that was enough to make time slow down, if only for a little while.

  Maeve smoothed the sheets over Nell. The woman lay on her back, eyes open, gaze darting from point to point, as quick and frantic as a hummingbird.

  Maeve had shown her mercy, allowing her mind to join with the purity of the world itself, but it had come at a cost. Nell ceased to exist—now there was only a body being run by a functional brain stem and a mind that was lost to the Everafter. Nell was gone, and in her place was a shell of madness. It was a kind of death, but a painless one.

  Maeve slid back out the window, brushing herself off as she made her way back to the cab.

  “You done?” the driver asked as she climbed in.

  Maeve lay her head back against the seat. “For now. Take me home.”

  The eastern sky was yellow with sunlight as Maeve climbed from the cab. Oren stood in the open door of his home, waiting for her.

  He didn’t ask questions, didn’t demand answers.

  He opened his arms, and Maeve went gratefully into his embrace.

  About the Author

  Lila Dubois is a tech writer by day and a romance writer by night. She’s living her own version of a romance novel with her Irish Farm Boy, who she imported to Los Angeles. Having spent extensive time in France, Egypt, Turkey, Ireland and England, Lila speaks five languages, none of them—including English—fluently.

  To learn more about Lila, please visit www.liladubois.net or email her at author@liladubois.net.

  Look for these titles by Lila Dubois

  Now Available:

  Sealed with a Kiss

  Calling the Wild

  Monsters in Hollywood

  Lights, Camera…Monster

  My Fair Monster

  Gone with the Monster

  Have Monster, Will Travel

  A Monster and a Gentleman

  Glenncailty Castle

  The Harp and the Fiddle

  Coming Soon:

  Monsters in Hollywood

  The Last of the Monsters

  Glenncailty Castle

  The Fire and the Earth

  The Shadow and the Night

  She’d always heard Hollywood was full of monsters.

  She didn’t know they meant actual monsters.

  Have Monster, Will Travel

  © 2012 Lila Dubois

  Monsters in Hollywood, Book 4

  All of Hollywood is talking about Calypso Production’s new top-secret action movie, and Joanna is tapped to be the Production Designer. There’s just one big issue: the lead actors are monsters. Literally.

  Bound by tradition and discipline, Tokaki’s clan of shapeshifers has maintained the old ways even as they’ve retreated from the human race. When members of another clan come up with a plan to expose and explain their hidden existence, he agrees to help. As the warrior who trains all others, he knows how to inflict both the maximum, and minimum, amount of damage. Because of this experience he’s asked to become something they call a “stunt coordinator.”

  When Joanna and Tokaki meet it’s electric, and not just because Joanna watches him shift from a massive white tiger into a handsome, naked man. Tokaki is fascinated by the outside world, especially Joanna, who’s colorful in more ways than one. When he takes Joanna to a hidden temple deep in the Chinese mountains, neither expects she’ll be risking her very life. In order to save the woman he loves, Tokaki must turn to his family for help, risking the secrets his clan has kept for a millennium.

  Warning: This title contains an artistic woman, a demanding warrior, and sexy misuse of temple grounds.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Have Monster, Will Travel:

  “I know you.” The lightly accented voice was close, almost whispering against her ear.

  The shiver morphed into a total-body skin prickling.

  Jo turned, her bags bumping the man behind her. She was eye level with his chin and his sexy lips. They were thin and sharply defined, a salmon-rose color compared to the tapioca of his skin.

  Jo always thought of people in food terms when she found them attractive.

  The Farmers’ Market was crowded, but still, the Asian man was standing too close. Jo shifted her bag forward, so it rested in front of her, smiled slightly in his direction and turned away.

  “I know you.”

  Jo turned back. “Sorry, I think you’ve got the wrong girl.”

  “No.” He shook his head once.

  Jo cocked her hip to the side and winked, trying to ease out of the situation in a fun and playful way. The skin on her arms was prickled into goose flesh despite the heat. “Good lookin’, I’d remember you. I’m sad to say I think I’m not your girl.”

 
He was wearing a pair of jeans too big for him—she could see the fabric bunched under the belt on his hips. His T-shirt seemed equally big, the shoulder seams hanging on his upper arm. At first glance it made him seem smaller than he was, but he topped six-foot and his forearms were ropes of muscle. He was an XL in XXL clothes.

  “You are one of my human women.”

  “Come again, kimosabe?”

  His eyebrows drew together in a straight black line. “I remember your body.”

  “Is that an insult? Usually I can tell, and I’m pretty damned sure I’d remember you—”

  Jo examined him more closely as she rattled on. She started from his feet, working her way up. When her gaze met his she felt a shock of awareness, so powerful it was almost a physical touch.

  She recognized him then.

  “Oh, oh, oh, oh.” Jo staggered back a step. She nearly went down as the totes on her right shoulder fell down her right arm, catching on her wrist but tangling in her legs.

  He reached out and caught her by one shoulder.

  “You’re one of them,” she hissed.

  He leaned closer, his hair swinging forward to brush her cheek. “Them?”

  “The monsters.” Her voice was a bare whisper.

  “Monsters.” He turned to face her. Their faces were so close she could see the flecks of gold in the irises of his eyes.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Is that a derogatory term? What, what should I call you?”

  “Tokaki.”

  “Tokaki?”

  “That’s my name.”

  “Right. Well.” Jo awkwardly hitched the bags hooked around her right wrist up to her elbow and held out her hand.

  Tokaki looked at her hand. He took it awkwardly in his left palm and bowed over it. When he straightened and slipped his hand from hers, the tips of his fingers caressed her palm, causing the second shiver in five minutes to shake her.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Where did you expect to see me?”

  “I had no expectations.” That was the truth. It had been very clear from the way the Calypso girls acted yesterday that the men were theirs. Not only did they seem to be dating several of them, but they’d given off a possessive and protective air. Jo figured she’d be fighting tooth and nail to get a second, non-shocked look at them in order to do character sketches for her production design.

  Tokaki was looking around. Jo took the opportunity to study his profile. He had high, thick cheekbones and black hair falling unevenly to his collar with a pronounced widow’s peak. It was easy to see how a face like his would have served as a model for the artists who painted fierce samurai thousands of years ago.

  “I’m glad to see you. I am,” Tokaki turned back to her, “surprised by how overwhelming it is.”

  “Why would you be surprised?”

  “I’ve been to the human town near my home many times. This market seems like that one, but it is not. I should be able to move among you easily, but I am…”

  He seemed genuinely distressed that he was out of place and overwhelmed. Jo gave herself a little mental head slap. She’d been so wrapped up in her own reactions she hadn’t given any real thought to what the monsters would be going through.

  “Hey, don’t worry. If I were in your position, I’d be curled up in a ball next to the guy back there playing the bongos.” Jo hiked her bags back onto her shoulder and looped her arm through his.

  There was a rill of sensation when their bare skin touched. Whew. He really was something else.

  Tokaki looked down at their linked arms. Slowly he bent his elbow, making the linked arms more natural. Jo smiled at him.

  “Everyone feels out of place when they’re visiting a new place. And you’re doing it in,” she lowered her voice, “a new body.”

  Tokakai’s voice was equally low. “This body is not new. It’s the human body I’ve always used.”

  “Really?” Jo hadn’t stopped to consider what she was doing, where she was leading them, until she noticed they were on their way back to the red line station. “Did you want to stay at the Farmers’ Market?”

  Tokaki was looking at a stripper clothing store as they passed it. Ah, Hollywood. “Where would I go?”

  “If you don’t have plans, you could come back to my studio with me.”

  Tokaki’s head swiveled to her, a lock of hair falling from his widow’s peak to brush his cheek.

  “My studio is a work space. It would be work-related. I mean, to the movie.”

  He just stared at her. Jo drew her arm from his, fiddling with the strap of her bag.

  “And I’d like to…show you around L.A. It’s rude not to show people around when they first get here. You haven’t been to L.A. before, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Great!”

  Jo, stop talking, you idiot.

  Jo took a deep breath. “Or I could call you a cab so you can get back to Akta’s house.”

  “I’m not staying at Akta’s house. I’m staying with Mir’ek, Henry.”

  “Is that where you want to go?”

  “No. I’d like to go with you.”

  Jo relinked their arms. “Then follow me.”

  Dreams don’t come true, but nightmares do.

  Tangible

  © 2013 Jody Wallace

  Dreamwalkers, Book 1

  When Zeke Garrett is reactivated to mentor the next dreamer that pops up on the Somnium’s radar, he’s sure it’s a mistake. The covert organization is still struggling to conceal the fallout from his last assignment, a fatal catastrophe.

  From the first blast of her pepper spray, he realizes this neonati, whose nightmares manifest vampires straight from the pages of pop-culture, is more than he bargained for—a potential dreamwalker. But before her training can begin, he has to convince the stubborn, mouthy woman she’s not dreaming.

  Maggie Mackey hasn’t slept well in a month, but that doesn’t explain how the monsters from her nightmares suddenly seem so real. Or why, when a team of intimidating, sword-wielding toughs rescue her, their leader captures her mouth in a swift, knee-weakening kiss.

  Once he tears himself away, Zeke’s mental forehead smacking begins. Their embrace has confirmed they have a rare tangible bond, a phenomenon which fooled him once before. Somehow he must tutor the woman of his dreams without getting attached. Otherwise her nightmares could become his own.

  Warning: Contains lots of cussing, pop-culture references and monsters with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Tangible:

  Zeke hated it when the dreamers were Joss Whedon fans. Based on the pixel-perfect accuracy of the vampires she’d conjured—vamps who were now attempting to eat her—this dreamer had memorized every incarnation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the show transcripts to the books to the comics.

  Cursing, he flung his knife at an oncoming vamp and whirled to stake a second. The ugly mother snarled its way up the spike before exploding into a million particles of dust. How the hell many were there? The density of the pack wasn’t a good sign.

  In fact, it was very, very bad. Especially for him.

  The neo they were here to collar huddled in the alley behind him, brandishing a gigantic pocketbook like a flail. Blood from a small wound at her throat trickled down her skin and stained the collar of her coat. He had to hand it to her. She had moxie. And a seriously overactive imagination that had to be harnessed before it got her and everyone else killed.

  Well, at least she’d stopped screaming.

  “Zeke, five o’clock!” Rhys called. The vamp with the knife sticking out of its shoulder barreled into him, knocked him down and attempted to sink jagged teeth into his neck. His vest and coat protected his torso but not his throat. He grabbed the monster’s head. Yellow goat-like eyes gleamed in the shadows of the buildings that lined the alley.

  The rest of the field team was a minute away. His arms trembled with strain and his vision
tunneled as he concentrated on keeping himself whole. As many vamps as they’d had the past ten years, they should add gorgets to their field gear.

  Not that they could afford it, but it was a nice fantasy.

  “Shut your eyes,” commanded a female voice. The dreamer. His dreamer.

  “Stay out of this!”

  She didn’t. A hand clutching pepper spray appeared between him and his attacker. Desperately, Zeke shoved away the vamp right before a noxious blast hosed its wrinkly mug.

  With a howl, the monster convulsed, clawing its head. Zeke rolled the other way fast. Fire bloomed all over his face anyway.

  “Excuse me, ma’am!” Rhys thundered up, huge feet kicking snow and gravel every direction, and pounced on the vamp. Zeke heard growls, curses. Over the sound of his own hacking, he detected the telltale whoomp of a monster getting dusted.

  The dreamer, her voice anxious, blurted out, “Are you okay, sir?”

  No thanks to you. Zeke blinked, coughed and scooped up snow to hold against his face. The icy wetness relieved the burn somewhat. Thank God he’d missed most of the spray or he’d be out of commission. He dabbed his eyes on his jacket sleeve, careful not to smear the residue. With blurred vision, he glanced up to see his target extend her hand to him.

  After a long hesitation he accepted, though she’d been more than enough help already. Right before their skin touched, his palm warmed. A whisper of sensation, a magnetic pull, shivered up his arm.

  He bit back a curse. A tangible bond—and he’d only been in her head once.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. He was supposed to get saddled with an L2 at most. Screw Sean and his statistics.

  The woman tensed, perhaps feeling the faint zing, perhaps sensing his hostility. She hauled him to his feet anyway. The process was complicated by the fact his lungs burned, the ground was slick and he couldn’t see straight. Once he was upright, she sidled away, rubbing her hand on her pants.