Hunt the Dawn

by Abbie Roads

  Underneath his feet, he felt the slight pressure of her walking across the hall, stopping. He opened the door to her.

  “I wanted it that way. I thought it was hot watching you…”

  Her words were a forgiveness and a permission he couldn’t resist.

  He was on her. His mouth on her neck, kissing, licking, tasting. His arms banded around her back, his hands gripped her buttocks, pulling her up into him, grinding his erection into her stomach. Flesh to flesh. Everywhere.

  Somehow, he got them to the bed.

  His mouth found hers. Their tongues dancing together the way their bodies would. Male instinct took hold, overwhelming him with a need. One he couldn’t control.

  He moved over her, covering her body with his. It was so right, the way they fit. He stared into her eyes—saw his own desire mirrored there, but still asked the question, “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.” She reached between them, her cool hand wrapping around him and guiding him to her.

  Timeless pressure built inside him. He pushed into her.

  So hot. She was fire. And tight. Deeper he pressed, until she’d taken all of him.

  Flesh recognized flesh, reacquainted, melded, and moved to the cadence of their combination as if they’d been together throughout a millennium. Every molecule of him became strangely alive. His skin tingled as if a brisk wind rushed over him. He could feel his hair, each strand magnetized, strangely alive. His fingernails, his toenails… Holy Jesus, it was like he could actually feel them growing. Inside his body, his bones grew harder, stronger. He felt powerful. Invincible. Truly alive.

  “Do you feel that?” He heard his own voice. No static. No distortion. He could fucking hear. How? Why? Didn’t matter. He could and there was only one thing he wanted to hear—her voice.

  “My God. Yes.” Her words were a throaty sigh that sang along his nerve endings.

  “Say my name. Quick.”

  “Lathan.” His name dawned on her lips, a glorious sunrise to his ears.

  He closed his eyes. “Again.”

  “Lathan. Lathan. Lathan.”

  “I can hear you.” His voice caught. Almost sounded like a sob, but it wasn’t. No way was he going to cry like a fucking baby.

  “Lathan.” She gasped his name. It was the sexiest sound he’d ever heard, the sound of her on the edge of pleasure. She grabbed his face between her hands and stared into his eyes as he continued to move inside her. “You hear me? Really hear me.”

  “Yes.” He rocked against her, deepening, lengthening his stroke, giving her all of him. Every piece of him.

  They came together with her wrapping her legs around his waist, her body contracting and clenching around his dick. The orgasm slammed into him like a boulder in a still pool of water, radiating out through him in ripples of intense pleasure. He felt reshaped, remolded into something different and new and untested. Something greater.

  Chapter 11

  Eternal whiteness expanded outward in every direction. Silence was sovereign, supreme, and sharp as a scalpel. She remembered what had happened last time when she made a sound. This time she’d keep her lips clamped shut. No one could say she wasn’t a fast learner.

  Knowing she should remain quiet made her want to call out to Lathan. Could she yell loud enough for him to hear her, to wake her up? Surely not. Dr. Stone said she was in a different dimension when she had one of these dreams—a dimension reality couldn’t find. Even if she could yell across dimensions, Lathan wouldn’t be able to hear—unless they were having sex. That was something neither of them knew how to categorize.

  Evil was behind her. She felt its malicious energy changing the air, charging it with apprehension, making it heavy and thick and resistant when she tried to suck it into her lungs. Her arms and hands quivered. Her insides fluttered. Muscles twitched in her eyes. Fear settled on her back, riding her like an invisible demon.

  Wake up. Wake up. Wake up. She pinched her arm. Nothing. Slapped her cheek. Nothing. No escaping.

  “Please. I need your help.” A male voice. Volume normal, not excruciating. So everyone else’s volume was normal, but hers would be punishing?

  She forced herself to face the horror she knew was behind her.

  Lying on the ground was a guy. His brown hair boyishly long, feathered over his forehead like a pop star. In his eyes she saw the fading hubris of someone who thought he’d live forever, but made it only to his early twenties. He looked so normal.

  Except his torso was severed from his hips and legs.

  Organs oozed out of him onto the stark white surface. Blood pooled around him, framing him in crimson. His foot twitched, slapped in a puddle of blood. Splack. Splack. Splack.

  Vomit gushed from her mouth, slobbering down her chin and neck. She bent and heaved on the floor. Splatters of her foulness pelted the guy’s face. He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink.

  “God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—” She fastened a hand over her mouth, but then realized her volume was normal. Normal. Not the magnified resonance that threatened to liquefy her brain.

  Her legs wobbled, threatened to let her down, but she locked her knees. She might be shaking so badly she looked like she was seizing, but she was going to keep control of her body this time.

  The guy’s chocolate-colored gaze met hers. “Tell my mom to stop looking for me. I don’t want her to find out about this.” Water swelled in his eyes, overflowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and cleared his throat. “It would kill her, and she needs to be strong for Kallie.”

  “Kallie?” She shouldn’t have asked, shouldn’t encourage communication with him when he felt so, so…evil.

  A genuine smile brightened his eyes. “My little sister. She’s my heart. She has leukemia. Me being gone will be hard on her, but if something happened to Mom, it would decimate her. She’s only twelve. She has an entire lifetime in front of her.”

  Evanee’s eyes burned, but she swallowed back the tears that wanted to form. Crying never solved a problem. “I’ll tell your mom. And I’ll tell your sister how much you love her and want her to live.”

  Maybe she could handle these dreams. If all she had to do was relay a message.

  “You need to take this.” He held his hand out to her. Scarlet covered his fingers, coating the chunky ring he held.

  “I’ll give her your message. That’ll be enough.” She felt like a shit for saying that, but she didn’t want to touch him or his ring. He might look like a typical guy—except for the severed torso—but there was still an aura of wrongness about him.

  The Thing, that invisible force that controlled her, grabbed her arm, yanked her toward what the guy offered.

  She clenched her fist. The Thing hadn’t taken over her hand yet. And she wasn’t going to let it. She concentrated all her energy on clenching her fingers as tight as they would go. Her jagged nails sliced into her palm. A bead of blood welled up, higher and higher until it hit the tipping point and dripped. It hung suspended in midair for an impossible length of time. Then crashed to the floor.

  A sonic boom gusted over her, whipping her hair around her face, burning her ears so badly she swore they had to be bleeding, but still she didn’t open her hand.

  The Thing, invisible to her eyes but very real, tugged at her fingers, harder and harder. Her hand shook with the effort it took to maintain a fist.

  The pressure vanished.

  Had she won?

  She watched her thumb rip backward, felt the crack, the pop of her bone being torn out of its socket, but didn’t hear anything. Pain ricocheted from her thumb to her wrist, up her arm to her elbow, and faded as it got closer to her shoulder, then boomeranged back down to her thumb and back up again with each beat of her heart.

  Her knees buckled. She fell, landing in her own vomit, but her arm remained bizarrely suspended in air. Her shoulder socket
stretched and strained from the suspension of her hand. The warm, wet weight of the ring fell into her palm.

  “Honey. Wake up.” Lathan’s voice penetrated the White Place like the omniscient voice of God.

  The white faded away. Underneath was nothing. Nothing she could see, name, hear, or feel. A void.

  Her heart, already running a sprint, kicked up the speed as if it recognized a threat her mind couldn’t comprehend. “What’s going on?” she asked the guy, but he was gone. The blood was gone. She was alone.

  And then she fell. Arms flailing. Body twisting. Screaming. Waiting for impact.

  * * *

  Impact. Her entire body—arms, legs, torso, head—hit at the same time. But it didn’t hurt. And it should’ve. Was she dead? She held her breath, waiting for someone to answer that question for her. But if she was asking the question, that at least meant the neurons in her brain were still firing, so she had to be alive. Right?

  Awareness, true awareness dove into her mind with all the grace of a belly flop.

  She vaulted upright, but something anchored her left hand, holding it immobile. Panic burned through her stomach. The Thing. Her gaze swung wildly, found Dr. Stone standing at the foot of the bed—What was he doing here?—then landed on Lathan. He knelt on the floor next to the bed, cradling her hand against the tattoo on his cheek. Worry wrinkles creased his forehead, and concern colored his eyes in sadness.

  “Hey, I’m all right.” She reached out to him to massage the wrinkles from his face, but her hand was splinted and wrapped in a thick, brown bandage. “What happened?”

  “Your thumb was dislocated,” Dr. Stone answered.

  “What are you doing here?” she blurted out.

  “I called him.” Lathan pressed her hand tighter to his cheek. His stubble licked against her skin, eliciting a very specific memory from their afternoon of sex. The memory of him rubbing his cheek against her inner thigh right before he’d tasted her. “You vomited in your sleep. Your thumb was dislocated. You wouldn’t wake up. It’s been over an hour.” Worry rode each syllable he spoke.

  His words seeped through her skin, struggled to get through the thick bone of her skull, then finally permeated deep enough to make sense. She looked down. She’d fallen asleep naked—in Lathan’s arms—but now she was wearing one of his thick sweatshirts. And the sheets were not the same ones she’d slept on the past few days. “My dream… It was…bad, really bad, and then I heard you.” She flexed her fingers against his cheek. “I heard you tell me to wake up, and the White Place disappeared and—”

  “We’ll talk about your dream in a moment.” Impatience sped Dr. Stone’s speech. “Any dizziness? Disorientation? Brain fog?”

  “No. I feel fine.” If she were being totally honest, she would’ve said she felt better than fine. She felt good. Energized. Like she was ready to run a 5K forward and backward.

  “Doesn’t your thumb hurt?” Dr. Stone asked.

  “Not at all. Is that weird? I’ve never dislocated a bone before.”

  Dr. Stone’s gaze locked on her hand pressed to Lathan’s cheek. She could see him analyzing and formulating an opinion about them. Yeah, it probably looked odd. So what? Lathan didn’t mind and neither did she. It was sweet the way he held her hand so tightly to him like he didn’t ever want to let her go. Like she was precious.

  “I set your thumb, but you’ll need X-rays to be sure there aren’t any chips or bone fragments. Come by the house tomorrow, and I’ll do that for you.”

  “How much will I owe you?”

  A calculating gleam narrowed his eyes. “A small favor is all.”

  Warning. Warning. Warning. Lights, sirens, alarms all shrieked through her brain. “What kind of favor?”

  “I’d simply like for you to take your hand off Mr. Montgomery’s cheek.”

  “That’s it?” If that’s the only thing he wanted, she was getting a super door-buster deal. She tried to tug her hand away from Lathan, but he held on to her. His eyes seemed to speak the word his mouth never uttered. Don’t. But then he released her.

  A chill sank into her chest, settled into her heart, pumped out into her extremities. She began shaking, her teeth clacked, and her hand pulsated sharp stabs of frigid pain. She hunched in on herself, cradling her injury to her chest.

  “You’re hurting now, aren’t you?” Dr. Stone stated.

  Lathan grabbed her hand and slapped it against his cheek.

  Heat spread through her, melting away the frigid agony. Dear Mother of Mercy, what was going on?

  “Pain is gone, isn’t it?” A satisfied-with-himself smile quirked the corners of Dr. Stone’s mouth. “I knew it.”

  “Why? How? What’s going on?”

  Lathan answered, “I don’t know what’s happening, but I know you feel better when you’re touching me.”

  “You feel it too?” Dr. Stone spoke to Lathan, but Lathan’s attention was on her.

  “It’s a cool, fluid connection, almost like a magnet drawing us together.” Lathan never took his gaze off her.

  “It feels warm to me.”

  “You feel connected because you are. Mr. Montgomery, you are her protector. And she is yours. You possess the power to heal each other.”

  To heal each other? The words echoed in Evanee’s mind. Was that why Lathan could hear when they were intimately connected? “Can you hear right now?”

  “Only when your hand is on my cheek.” He turned to Dr. Stone. “Why? Why can I hear when her hand is on my cheek, but when she takes it off, I can’t?”

  “What is the nature of your hearing problem?”

  “When I was thirteen, I was attacked. My eardrums were punctured.” He spoke the words matter-of-factly.

  She gasped. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t imagine Lathan ever being a victim. And yet in some ways he still was. He still reacted with fear whenever someone touched him from behind.

  “The doctors repaired as much of the damage as possible, so I do hear some sounds.”

  “I would speculate that your ears are healed. They just never healed properly, and something about touching her hand to your tattoo bridges the healing gap. It’s no coincidence that the tattoo on your cheek is a Native American symbol for healing.”

  She’d forgotten about that. “I don’t understand what’s happening.” She sounded like a whiny brat.

  Lathan moved from kneeling next to the bed to sitting with her. It was awkward trying to keep her hand pressed to his face at the same time he moved. They probably looked like they were playing some odd form of Twister, but she didn’t want to let go of him any more than he wanted to let go of her.

  “You know the bear, right?” Dr. Stone asked.

  “The bear?” She and Lathan spoke at the same time.

  “The carved bear at the top of the hill. Near my place.”

  Just this morning she’d noticed how lifelike the totem appeared, had half expected the bear to turn its head and follow their progress toward Dr. Stone’s driveway. “I’m not following what the bear has to do with anything.”

  “Damn…” Lathan spoke the word as if he’d gained some long-lost recognition.

  “Not many people know the story behind the bear. But I do. And you both need to hear it. It will explain so much about you both.” Dr. Stone pulled a small leather book from his pocket—the binding worn and frayed from many readings. With care, he opened the book, stared at the page for a moment, then began speaking.

  “A man, different than all others, used to roam this land. A man who was more than man. He carried a bit of spirit inside him. But even that bit of spirit was too great to contain within. Some of it showed on his skin…” Dr. Stone’s voice spread, completely immersing her in another time.

  Evanee saw in her mind the outcast man named Bear and the abused maiden he rescued named Fearless. Witnessed how Bear kept Fear
less safe even though the Bad Ones constantly stalked them and tried to steal Fearless from him. But nothing could hurt Fearless and Bear when they were together. They possessed a bond stronger than the hills. They were a shield against harm. Both carrying the power to heal each other.

  “As long as the light shines in one of you, the other shall live.” Dr. Stone’s words resonated through her like someone had plucked a chord of pure truth.

  Evanee’s mind delved back into the story. Watching Fearless find joy and laughter with Bear. Watching her possess night sight and, with Bear by her side, becoming the wisest woman in the region—sought after for her guidance and counsel. Together she and Bear brought peace and prosperity to the region unlike any seen before.

  Dr. Stone’s voice became heavy and labored as if he were speaking through great emotion. “As they approached the end of their earthly lives, Bear carved a totem on the crest of the highest hill to remind all in the region; he would protect Fearless into eternity.

  “They went to the ancestors together. The tribe built a great funeral pyre in honor of them and anointed their bodies in bear grease before setting the blaze. Every village in the region witnessed the black smoke burning in the sky.

  “A week later, after the fire cooled, the tribe gathered the ash and rubbed it over Bear’s totem to seal their power together inside the carving for eternity.”

  Silence broke the story’s spell.

  Fearless and Bear’s world faded from her vision—as if it had been playing out in her memory instead of being just a story. An iron knot lodged itself in Evanee’s throat, and unshed tears burned her eyes. She wouldn’t let herself grieve for Fearless and Bear—that just seemed silly.

  Dr. Stone scrutinized her and Lathan, almost like he saw through them, beyond normal to the realm of possibilities. “I believe you are Fearless and Bear come to life.”

  She had anticipated those words, and yet they split her into two halves.