by Lila Dubois
He copied her gesture, trying to wipe away the sensation of her cold, slender fingers and the potency of their connection. For high-level alucinators, walking someone else’s dreams occasionally forged a spontaneous link that could mean a number of things.
Most were undesirable. None could be addressed in an icy, dark alley with corporeal wraiths on the loose.
“Who were those guys?” Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and she clutched the pepper spray in a defensive position. “They looked like... I’m not crazy, but they looked like vampires. How did you make the bodies disappear?”
He was thankful she didn’t carry a gun. A lot of new dreamers did, their unsettling nightmares driving them to protect themselves from horrors they couldn’t yet name.
Since Zeke was still coughing, Rhys answered for him. “Ma’am, we’ll explain everything as soon as we can, but first we have to take care of stragglers.” And onlookers or witnesses, but so far nobody had come to check out the screams.
“Is this a setup?” The woman confronted them, angry and scared. “Reality TV? I signed no contract, gentlemen, and you will be hearing from my lawyer.”
“Do you see any cameras?” Zeke managed, his breathing normalizing. The deserted alley where she’d been attacked was a long, narrow lane separating rows of historic buildings with tiny back yards. Snow coated most exposed surfaces in a pale gleam of winter.
“You could have concealed them.”
Open concrete carports and trash cans bordered the track, providing lots of places for cameramen...or wraiths. Though lurking wasn’t really the monsters’ style.
“It’s not a setup, ma’am,” Rhys assured her. He clapped Zeke on the back. “Will you live?”
“Yeah. Just caught a whiff.” He flicked on his walkie-talkie, stifling another cough. The device crackled, static-riddled. He smacked it until it worked. What he wouldn’t give for earbuds. “Secure the area. We’ve got the neo. Have Lillian confound any witnesses.”
Though he couldn’t see them from his position, his other teammates would fan out, casing the intersecting streets for more wraiths. The creatures were attracted to the dreamers who’d produced them, but that never stopped them from assaulting passersby. When everyone reported the area complication-free, Zeke coughed one last time and turned to the reason for his current suffering.
Enough light filtered in that he could distinguish the woman’s features and form. Not a kid, thank God. Past her twenties—the most common age for neonati. The cut on her throat looked like a failed bite. It would sting but wasn’t dangerous. Caucasian, US citizen from the accent, with long disheveled hair, dark eyes with circles under them, and a round, cold-reddened face. Five-foot-five or six. She boasted what seemed to be generous curves under her heavy coat and fuzzy pants.
She was on the pretty side of ordinary, with intelligence in her sharp gaze and alertness in her body language.
The problem was she wasn’t even slightly ordinary. She was an alucinator. A person whose mind could access the dreamsphere and drag monsters into the terra firma. Untrained and powerful, she was more dangerous than his whole team combined.
How strong was she? Her initial manifestation and their tangible suggested L4. Not L5—since L5s were extremely rare—but his comfort level extended only to L3, no matter what the vigils and Lillian had insisted.
Someone on his team was going to have to take this dreamer off his hands. He’d mentor the next one.
“Who are you talking to on your radio, your cameramen?” She gestured at the walkie. “Can you prove this isn’t a setup?”
Zeke clipped the walkie to his belt. The old-timers in the organization claimed the first-meet between dreamer and field team had been easier before Candid Camera. Reality television had increased humanity’s disbelief threshold tenfold.
“Vamps turning into dust before your eyes not convincing enough for you?” he asked her.
Predictably, it was not. “Special effects. Projection cameras. How many more fake vampires are there?”
As if they could afford special effects and high tech cameras. “They’re not fake and we don’t know yet.”
“A likely story.” Her words were firm but her big eyes and pale face spoke of a woman who was completely shaken up.
Most dreamers manifested between one and four wraiths at first. Not fifteen. The only way she was getting through this alive was if she cooperated with everything he and his team required.
Hell. He’d never been good at the touchy-feely aspects of training, but when he’d reported the neonati last night—after he’d geotracked her odd composite signature in the dreamsphere—HQ had reiterated that his administrative leave from mentoring was over. They wanted him to take this one and his whole team knew it.
As he watched the woman assess him and, from her expression, find him wanting, inspiration struck him like an invisible wraith. If he could make her hate him so much she refused to associate with him, it would force someone else to step in.
Not a bad plan.
A Monster and a Gentleman
Lila Dubois
The heat he brings isn’t movie magic. It’s real.
Monsters in Hollywood, Book 5
Cali knows exactly what will happen if her latest movie fails. It won’t just destroy her directing career and company, Calypso Productions. It might mean global war, and the extinction of an entire race of beings—the monsters.
The last thing she can afford is distraction in the form of a midnight-haired, caramel-skinned monster who can—literally—bring on the heat.
Seling enjoys humans, and not, as some have suggested, as a snack. As one of the stars of a movie that will allow his people to come out of hiding, he especially enjoys watching the movie’s intensely focused, human director.
After one particularly frustrating day on the set, Cali and Seling give in to a blistering night of pleasure. Seling wants more; Cali isn’t ready to risk her heart. But it all may become moot when someone leaks raw footage that could incite the very panic they’re trying to avoid.
And the only way to find the culprit is to unleash a monster so dangerous that it’s like bringing a nuclear bomb to a knife fight.
Warning: This title contains a strong-willed woman, a banshee (no, they’re not the same person) and two men who know how to please their woman.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
A Monster and a Gentleman
Copyright © 2013 by Lila Dubois
ISBN: 978-1-61921-586-3
Edited by Amy Sherwood
Cover by Kendra Egert
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: March 2013
www.samhainpublishing.com
