Sweet Nightmares (The Damned Series Book 1)

by Zizi Cole

  After the paramedics left, Cole and I took the women upstairs and settled them down into bed. I had a glass of water waiting by Lex for when she woke up. As soon as she was feeling up to it, she had some explaining to do about what she meant when she said I came.

  I settled into a chair next to her bed and waited.

  ***

  I opened my eyes slowly and looked around the room. I was in my bedroom. I didn’t remember going into my room. For a moment, I didn’t remember much of what had happened. Then it all came rushing back to me. The steam room, being trapped, and Jake coming to save us. I saw that Jake was asleep in a chair next to my bed with a book on his chest. I smiled.

  Jake’s eyes popped open. He watched me resituate. He seemed to be examining and analyzing every move I made. I couldn’t decide if it was comforting or awkward. He leaned forward, the book dropping to the floor. He rested his elbows on his knees.

  “How are you feelin’, Lex?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m okay I think,” I told him. “How long was I out?”

  Jake looked at the bedside table. “About four hours.”

  I nodded. That made sense considering I could tell the sun was setting by the darkening of the room. Jake handed me a glass of water and I took a sip. The cold water felt so wonderful sliding down my throat. I handed him back the glass, and Jake set it on the table.

  “What in the hell happened?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure what to tell him because I really didn’t know myself. I shrugged. “I don’t really know. We worked out, then decided to sit in the steam room to try to relax since the hot tub is off limits right now. When we went to leave the steam room, the door wouldn’t open. Hell, it wouldn’t even budge.”

  “When I got here, that statue that’s usually in the corner was pressed up against the door. It also appeared that someone had tampered with the thermostat of the room. Someone jacked up the heat and then broke off the control,” he told me, voice going hard.

  “I didn’t think we were going to get out of that room,” I said quietly.

  “Speaking of,” Jake started. “How did you do that? I mean I could smell your perfume and I knew that you were in trouble. I also just knew I had to get here as fast as I could. How did I know that?”

  I shrugged again. “When we were in there, I knew that we weren’t going to get out on our own. I concentrated on you. I could see you but I couldn’t talk to you. I don’t know how you got the message, but I’m so glad you did.”

  He reached over and squeezed my hand. “Me too.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes. My body ached. My head ached. I was sure that I was dehydrated but that was to be expected after being locked in a steam room. I just closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, it was morning and Jake was lying in bed next to me. I snuggled into his arms and closed my eyes again.

  20

  A week had passed since the steam room incident. Since my near-death experience, Jake rarely left my side. If he wasn’t around, Mia or Cole were. Mia wasn’t being left alone either, just in case she was also being targeted by this madman. She didn’t think so, but the way I saw it, anything was possible. Deep down, I knew he wasn’t after her; she was just an innocent bystander.

  I had a sense of foreboding that kept getting stronger daily. Nothing significant had happened since the steam room, but I didn’t think he was given another chance. There had been someone at the house constantly since the incident in the steam room. I wasn’t stupid enough to think that it was over.

  Mia and I were sitting in the living room watching a lighthearted, carefree comedy when there was a knock at the door. We looked at each other. I stood up and headed to the door. When I peeked through the peephole, there was a delivery man in a brown uniform standing there. I opened the door.

  “I have a package for an Alexandrea Cooper,” he read off the order.

  “I’m Alexandrea.” I told him, opening the door the rest of the way. He handed me the clipboard and I signed my name.

  He picked up the box and handed it to me. As he turned to walk away, he tipped his hat and said, “Have a good day.”

  “You too.” I smiled, shutting the door.

  I carried the package into the kitchen and set it on the island. I studied the package, looking for a return address. I didn’t remember ordering anything off the internet and couldn’t imagine who would send me a package, but I didn’t think too much about it. There was probably a note inside the box. I walked around to the utility drawer and pulled out a box knife. I slid the box knife along the tape to open the package. I set the knife on the island, opened the box, and peeked inside. When I saw the contents of the package, I screamed and jumped back.

  Mia ran into the room. She looked around, clearly confused because she wasn’t seeing the danger. She walked up to me and peeked into the box. The color drained from her face. Then her face developed a green tint. I thought she was going to vomit. Hell, I thought I was going to vomit.

  I stepped back up to the box and looked inside. It was a bloody heart. Pinned to the heart, which I was certain was human, was a laminated note. The note read:

  Here is a gift for you, my sweetheart.

  Just a token of my affection.

  He will never hurt you again.

  See you soon.

  That couldn’t be. Could it? Was it really Michael’s heart? The note did say that he would never hurt me again. Michael was the only person that had ever truly hurt me. I was staring at the heart and it seemed that the heart was moving. Was the heart beating outside the body? Was my nightmare becoming reality? I glanced at Mia and saw she was also staring at the heart.

  “Mia, is the heart moving?” I asked quietly. I was afraid to raise my voice any louder.

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  Then something crawled out of one of the valves of the heart. I looked closer and it was a tiny spider. There was another one. Then another. Suddenly hundreds of spiders came pouring out of every opening available of the heart.

  Mia and I screamed and ran from the room. I grabbed Mia’s hand and led her out the front door. I slammed it closed behind us. I looked at her. She had wild eyes. It had obviously shaken her up just as badly as it had me. When I withdrew my hands, they were trembling so badly, I couldn’t keep my hands still.

  “You call 9-1-1 and I’ll call Jake!” I told her, pulling out my cell phone. I dialed my phone while I watched Mia dial hers. I mumbled to myself the whole time I was waiting for the phone to dial, though. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!”

  Jake answered on the first ring. “Hey.”

  “Jake,” I said, my voice wobbling.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, voice on alert.

  “I need you to come home,” I told him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll see when you get here. Just hurry!” I said, hanging up.

  I could hear Mia talking on the phone, describing what was in the box. I half listened as she talked to dispatch. I heard sirens as I listened to her talk. I glanced at her. It was surprising that someone from the sheriff’s department could get out here so fast.

  The vehicle turned into the driveway. I watched the flashing lights get closer. The car stopped and the officer got out of the car. I watched his silhouette come closer. As he approached us, I recognized it as Deputy Evans.

  He stopped a couple of steps away. “What seems to be the problem, Ms. Cooper?”

  I motioned him towards the house. “It’s in there, on the island.”

  As he started to walk towards the door, I called out to him. “Umm, can you hold up until Jake gets here? He’s on his way. I would feel better if everyone was here before we go in there. Besides, there are probably spiders everywhere and I’ll need to call an exterminator.”

  He looked at me, “I really need to get in there, ma’am, and see what’s going on.”

  I heard a truck pulling down the drive. It didn’t sound like we were going to have to
wait much longer for Jake to show up. I turned and watched his truck fly down the drive and skid to a halt inches in front of the garage.

  He got out of the truck and rushed up the stairs. I watched him with admiration. He always looked calm, cool and collected. He walked past us and stormed into the house. We filed in after him. He stopped at the entryway and glanced around before heading into the kitchen. No one spoke while we were filing into the kitchen. He saw the box and swore.

  Spiders were covering the box and the top of the island. I stepped back and stood a little bit farther away from the island. The spiders were everywhere. I couldn’t figure out how those spiders all fit inside that heart. There were so many spiders that the island looked like a black moving mass on the table. Watching it made my skin crawl.

  Jake stepped closer to the box, Deputy Price right beside him. It didn’t look as if the spiders phased either one of them. Jake peered down into the box and read the note attached to the heart. He stepped back and frowned at me. I knew by the look on his face that it wasn’t good. He turned to the deputy without saying anything to me. I knew that he would talk to me later after he had gathered his thoughts.

  “Deputy, thanks for coming out,” he said. “I am going to call in the DAMNED agency and take over from here. This, whatever is going on, is escalating. We’re going to need highly trained, more sophisticated resources, and they’ll have them available for us.”

  Deputy Price seemed uneasy. He looked around the room. “I don’t know if the Sheriff will let me hand the case over to the Feds that easily.”

  Jake just looked at him. “It’s okay, Deputy, I’ll have my boss call yours and go through the proper channels. You can stay here until it’s done if it makes you feel better.”

  Jake pulled out his phone and made a phone call. “Hey, it’s Morris. I’m requesting a forensics team to come over and do a thorough sweep. I’m also requesting that we officially take over this case. Yes, sir. There was a package delivered with a heart in it, and spiders. I have my suspicions about who the heart belongs to, and I’ll brief you on it tomorrow when I come into the office. I also want an additional protection detail. Yes, sir. I understand. Thank you, sir.”

  Jake ended his call, then typed out a quick text. He looked at me and then glanced back at the deputy. “My boss is calling yours and is arranging to have the case and all files transferred to DAMNED.”

  I looked at Jake. “What are we going to do about the spiders?”

  He smiled at me. “Don’t worry about the spiders, darlin’. The team will get rid of them as soon as they get here. I also texted Cole and he is gonna have an exterminator come in to finish the job.”

  I smiled. Jake knew me so well. He knew how I felt about spiders. He was always one step ahead of me. He seemed to anticipate what I needed and wanted. I wondered what my life would be like without him. I knew my life had been pretty bleak the years I was in the city.

  I glanced back at the island full of spiders. “I think I’m going to go upstairs and hide from that mess. Let me know when you’re ready to talk to me.”

  I headed upstairs and went into my room. After grabbing some night clothes, I took a shower, watching for spiders. I didn’t want to become a scene in a horror flick. I laughed at the thought. My life really had turned into a horror flick. I couldn’t really remember a time in the past ten years that I was truly content. I was just about there when my parents died. I had been starting to pick up the pieces of my life and put them back together.

  I finished my shower quickly and dressed. I dried my hair and went back into my bedroom. I sat on the bed with a book, opened it, and attempted to read. It was my favorite book. The book was a horror story about some poor girl who had been entangled in a web of lies and deceit.

  “You know, you shouldn’t be reading something that will scare you,” a soft voice said from the corner of the room.

  I jumped and the book flew out of my hands. I looked up at the corner where my mother sat in a chair. Did ghosts actually sit? “Probably not,” I replied.

  She smiled at me. “My brave girl, I know you’ve been through a lot in the past months, but you are going to need your strength and courage soon.”

  “Momma, I’m not strong. I’m weak and afraid,” I admitted. I hated to admit that I was afraid. I didn’t like anyone being aware of my weaknesses.

  “Honey, being afraid means you’re smart. I don’t believe for a moment that you’re weak. You just don’t know your strengths. That’s partly my fault. I shouldn’t have hidden it from you. I did what I did to protect you, I now realize that it only hurt you. We come from a long line of... well, witches is the best word I can come up with. Witches aren’t exactly accurate either. We have more than witch blood running through our veins. We also have Fae blood. Your grandmother, my mother, was a witch. Your grandfather, my father, was Fae from the Seelie Court. We are full of magic, mystique, grace. We’ve had magic in our family for hundreds of years.”

  “Why did you hide my magic from me?” I asked.

  She sighed. “You were probably about three when I decided to bind your magic and keep you out of the magical world. I would walk into your nursery and you would have all of your toys floating in the air. That, I didn’t mind. In fact, I thought it was funny and it was good practice for control. What I did mind, though, was that you were talking to someone who wasn’t there. You kept saying the name ‘Damon.’ You would talk about Damon a lot. He was the topic of dinner conversations and you would talk about him before bed. I thought it was your imaginary friend and harmless. One of the days that I came into your room, the toys were floating, but you weren’t laughing. You were crying. When you noticed me standing in the room, the toys fell. You ran to me and hugged my legs.”

  Momma looked tired, “It took me about thirty minutes to calm you down. When you did finally calm down, you told me that Damon had gone away and a bad man was in your room. I don’t know what happened to Damon. I tried telling you that the bad man wasn’t real and couldn’t hurt you until you showed me that your arm had a red mark on it. You told me that the bad man did it. You said that the bad man wanted you to come with him. That he was going to come back for you. It scared me. I called Aunt Christina and explained what happened. Together, we decided what we needed to do. She came over and we bound your powers. Since Mia didn’t have any active powers, we didn’t bind hers. Then to be safe, we hid the book so you would never come across it.”

  I frowned, trying to remember what she was talking about. “How did you keep the bad man from coming back for me?”

  “That’s when I gave you the necklace. I told you that it was a special necklace that would keep the bad man away. You loved it. It was more than a necklace; it was an amulet for protection. The amulet kept you safe while Christina and I worked around the clock to come up with a spell to keep spirits out of your room. Then, we decided to treat the whole house with the spell to keep any spirits, benign or malevolent, out.”

  I glanced at my jewelry box. I knew the necklace was inside it. I had always kept it with me. I had taken it off when I moved to New York because I didn’t want it to get lost or stolen. I looked back at my mother. She was being really chatty tonight.

  “Why tell me all of this now?” I asked.

  “You need to know. I need to keep you safe. You need to find the book, but it isn’t the priority today. You needed me today. Remember what I told you all through school when you didn’t want to do your homework or thought it was too hard?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Knowledge is power. Without knowledge you are nothing and vulnerable.”

  Momma smiled. “That’s right. My beautiful girl, you have the knowledge you need. You always have. Just remember this. The knowledge will come to you when the time is right. The knowledge will be there when you need it. If you really need me, I’ll be there for you. Everything will be fine if you follow your heart.”

  “I love you, Momma,” I whispered softly.

  “I love you too
, my sweet girl,” she said as she disappeared.

  21

  The room was pitch black. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, hoping my eyes would adjust to the darkness. I opened my eyes and looked around. Still nothing. I started to feel my way around the room. I knew that my life depended on getting out of the darkness and out into the open. I needed to be able to run for my life, if the situation called for it.

  I could feel my heart beating against my chest. My heartbeat was echoing in my ears. I ran my hands along the walls. I needed to figure out where I was so I could find my way out. The walls felt cold and slightly damp. They felt like cement. I couldn’t think of anywhere that had walls that felt like this.

  I stumbled over something. I felt around trying to figure out what it was. It felt like a wooden stepstool. I released that I was holding my breath. I stood back up and started making my way around the room, feeling for a door.

  Suddenly a strong smell hit my senses. I wasn’t sure if I had been smelling it the whole time or if it just appeared. I recognized the smell immediately. It smelled like pennies and death. There was blood somewhere in this room.

  I stopped. I couldn’t decide if I should try to escape or if I should find the source of the smell. I was sure the smell was the dead body of a loved one of mine. I didn’t really want to see that. I decided to keep going. I slid my hand along the wall. I touched something slimy and squishy. I paused and gently explored it with my fingertips. It was round and had string or chord attached to it. Then I felt the second one. I started to get a sick feeling in my stomach. Please, don’t let it be what I think it is.

  Suddenly a light came on and blinded me for a second. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw what I was fondling. I had a pair of eyeballs in my hand. I saw the brown irises and recognized the eyes immediately. I was holding Jake’s eyeballs. I let go and stepped back. They bounced on the wall and continued to hang there. They had been strung together with a fishing line. I stepped back, turned, and looked around the room. I was still alone.