Dark Stranger The Dream: New & Lengthened 2017 Edition (The Children Of The Gods Paranormal Romance Series)

by I. T. Lucas

  He was casting light on her.

  She’d seen something like that before. Amanda’s eyes were the same. Maybe that was where her brain had taken the idea from.

  The last vestiges of her lucidity flew away when she felt the tip of his finger press against her opening. Gently, he gathered moisture before pushing his finger a little farther, then retreated to do it again.

  He treated her like a virgin, and in a way she was. It had been so long that she might as well have turned back into one.

  Slow, maddeningly slow, he was getting her accustomed to his touch. Not expecting such gentleness and consideration from a man as dominant as him, Syssi felt her heart swell with gratitude.

  Hell, it was more than that.

  Her heart was swelling with love for her dream lover.

  A man she’d conjured in her mind.

  And how devastatingly sad was that?

  Chapter 34: Amanda

  Amanda’s phone was dancing the jig on her kitchen counter, buzzing and chiming at the same time. Reaching for it, she smiled at Onidu’s quirky face on the screen.

  The picture had been taken during last year’s trip to Hawaii, capturing perfectly his look of repugnance at the shorts and T-shirt she had insisted he should wear in place of his habitual suit. It was the best picture she had of him; with his expression so close to the real thing, she could almost believe it was genuine.

  “Yes, darling.”

  “I have grave news, Mistress. It seems your laboratory has been ransacked by vandals. All is in disarray, with pieces of equipment strewn about and loose wires dangling precariously from what is left standing. Every last drawer has been pulled out of its place and its contents lie torn to pieces, littering the floor. But the worst are the disgraceful, hateful words—which I am too much of a gentleman to repeat—scribbled all over the walls. It is terrible! What should I do, Mistress?”

  Onidu sounded truly distraught, and Amanda had to remind herself that it was nothing more than his programming providing the appropriate tone for the situation at hand.

  “Onidu, sweetie, can you record what you see with your phone and send it to me?” Amanda knew it was no use trying to persuade him to recite the graffiti. His programming prevented the use of profanities; her mother’s work no doubt.

  “Yes, Mistress, right away.”

  WHORE, SLUT, HARLOT, TART, DIE... were some of the endearments scribbled with a black sharpie on the walls, and a sloppy drawing of the Doomers’ emblem ensured she knew whom the message was from.

  Very creative boys. Nice vocab. Amanda’s face tightened with distaste as she turned off the phone and dropped it on the granite counter. Shaking her head, she crossed the kitchen to pour herself more brew. But then, as she lifted the carafe, she froze with the thing suspended in midair.

  What if she had left something behind? The thought sent a cold shiver of unease up her spine. What if the Doomers had found something?

  Chewing on her lower lip, she tried to remember if there had been anything left in the lab that the Doomers could use. The test results from her pet project were safely stored on her laptop, which she remembered taking with her. And the small notebook with her hastily jotted ideas and random thoughts was always in her purse, ready for whenever and wherever inspiration struck...

  That uneasy feeling gaining sudden momentum, Amanda raced to her bedroom and started rummaging through the multitude of pockets in her purse. Getting frustrated, she upended it, emptying the whole thing on her bed.

  The notebook wasn’t there.

  Running back to the living room, she repeated the routine with her laptop case.

  It wasn’t there either.

  Oh, shit, shit, shit... Amanda raced back to the kitchen for her phone.

  “Kian, we’ve got a big problem,” she said the moment he answered.

  “What’s going on?” He tensed, picking up on her urgency.

  “I left something behind in the lab, and if the minions-of-all-that-is-evil have found it, we are in deep shit!” She relayed Onidu’s report, telling Kian about the break-in and the graffiti.

  Kian wasn’t interested in the details. “What did you leave in the lab, Amanda?”

  “Look, I’m sorry! I thought I had it in my purse, but I didn’t... I must have left it somewhere.” She was on the verge of tears.

  “Just tell me what the fuck it is, Amanda!” Obviously, Kian had lost his patience.

  “I can’t find my notebook, the one with all my great ideas and all the other stuff I like to keep handy. The thing is, I wrote in it the first names and cell phone numbers of all my paranormal test subjects.” She sighed. “And the rankings I assigned to them. Most are between one and three, Syssi is a ten, and another boy is an eight. If the Doomers have half a brain between them, they’ll go after these two, but if they are all morons, they might go after each person on that list.”

  Amanda paused, waiting for Kian to explode. When all she heard was his heavy breathing she continued, offering what she believed was a slight glimmer of hope. “It’s only first names and phone numbers, maybe it’s not enough for the Doomers to go by?”

  “Oh, that’s plenty enough. It may take them some time and some cash to find someone to dig through the phone records, but when they do, it will be child’s play for them to zero in on your subjects’ cellular signal and locate them. We are probably out of time already. Call Syssi and tell her not to leave her home. I’m going to pick her up myself. Text me the info for the boy. I’ll send Guardians for him as well.”

  The line went dead.

  “Damn.” Amanda searched for Syssi’s contact, pressing call before it crossed her mind that the girl was probably still sleeping. Six o’clock on a Saturday morning was too early to call a human.

  Syssi picked up after several rings. “Hello?” As Amanda had expected, her voice was groggy from sleep.

  “Good morning, sweetie. I’m so sorry to wake you. I wanted you to do something for me and didn’t realize how early it was. Are you planning on going anywhere in the next couple of hours?”

  “No. But later I’m going to the retirement home. Why? What do you need?”

  Explaining the whole mess to Syssi while she didn’t remember a thing was too much. Better leave it up to Kian. Shit, she wouldn’t remember who he was either.

  “I’ll call you later, after you had a few cups of coffee. I know you don’t function before your third one.”

  Syssi yawned. “Thanks.”

  Chapter 35: Kian

  “Meet me down in the garage, and bring your weapons,” Kian barked into his phone, then shoved it in his back pocket as he rushed out the door.

  It had never crossed his mind that the Doomers might pose a threat to Syssi. The only one he’d been concerned about was Amanda. Frantic with worry for the girl, he punched the button for the elevator over and over again, and when he finally stepped inside, he couldn’t wait for it to descend fast enough.

  His body pulsing with pent-up aggression, Kian wasn’t surprised at what he saw when he caught his reflection in the mirror. He looked like a killer. Eyes glowing and fangs protruding over his lower lip, the face staring back at him didn’t look even remotely human—the vicious expression reflecting his murderous intent.

  Damn, he would have to calm down before showing up at Syssi’s doorstep. One look at him and the girl would drop in a dead faint. Which could actually work to his advantage. She wouldn’t resist when he picked her up in his arms and took off with her.

  Not the best way to go about it, but Kian doubted that he’d be able to calm down enough to pass for a human during the short drive to her place, leaving him no other choice.

  As he raced through the parking level toward the Lexus, Anandur’s and Brundar’s heavy boots pounding behind him, he was inundated with gruesome images of Syssi in the hands of his enemies. Like snippets out of a nightmare, they were flashing in his mind one worse than the next.

  “What’s going on, boss?” Anandur called from b
ehind him.

  “The Doomers have Amanda’s list of paranormals. They will go after at least two of them. We are picking up her assistant, Syssi. She tops the damn list.”

  Snarling, his lips peeling away from his elongated fangs, he vowed that if anything happened to her, if the sick fucks laid a finger on her, hell had not known the fury he’d unleash on them.

  As he turned on the ignition, Amanda’s text came in, reassuring him that Syssi was home and wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon. It had done little to calm him down. He wouldn’t relax until he had her in the safety of his keep.

  Ranting and cursing at LA’s goddamned traffic, Kian drove recklessly, speeding and weaving in between cars. It was a miracle he hadn’t gotten pulled over yet. He prayed his luck would hold, not because he was concerned with getting a ticket, but because of the delay it would introduce.

  With his anxiety for Syssi growing worse with each passing moment, constricting his chest and twisting his gut, the pain he was feeling was more than physical—the unfamiliar sensation one he hoped never to feel again.

  Shaken by the ferocity of his reaction, Kian was forced to admit that she’d awoken in him something he believed had been long dead. Feelings that he had sworn off long ago because experience had taught him that they were nothing but a prelude to disaster.

  Kian had loved once.

  It had been so long ago, the memory of the actual events had faded, but he still remembered the pain of it ending.

  Her name was Lavena, a beautiful seventeen-year-old mortal girl. He had just turned nineteen. Too young and too inexperienced to know better, he fell head over heels in love with her. And as the young often do, he believed himself invincible; there were no obstacles he couldn’t overcome, no difficulties great enough to deter him from his beloved.

  Disregarding his mother’s dictum, he ran away and married the girl. They loved each other passionately, and as he tended to the small farm he’d bought for them, and she to their modest home, for a short time they lived in simple bliss.

  Slowly, though, Lavena’s mind began showing the effects of the frequent thralls he was forced to subject her to. Even as impetuous as he was, he knew he had to make sure she never found out what he was.

  Lavena grew distraught, believing she was losing her mind; finding herself time and again spacing out and forgetting where she was or what she was doing.

  In his effort to lessen the damage, Kian refined his thralling technique to a level of fine art, doing his best to keep it minimal, but the episodes kept coming. By the time he realized the fairy tale had to end, it was too late. They were expecting a child.

  Their life together became a nightmare.

  At first, he tried to abstain as much as he could. When it became clear he couldn’t hold back his raging immortal hormones, he resorted to the use of prostitutes.

  Kian hated himself, hated what he was doing to the girl he loved, hated the kind of twisted life he was forced to live.

  Lavena became distant and mistrustful. No longer blinded by her adoration, she began noticing that he never got sick and that his scrapes and bruises would disappear just as soon as he got them. She began to fear him, believing he wielded some kind of dark magic.

  He had to leave.

  It was easy to fake his own death. All it took to convince Lavena and the rest of the villagers that he had been mauled by wild beasts was for his torn, bloodstained tunic to be found in the woods. With no body to bury, his wife buried that shirt.

  Shrouding himself, he watched from a distance as Lavena mourned his death, as she delivered their beautiful, healthy daughter, as she got better, as she married a widower with four kids of his own.

  Kian kept coming back. He watched his child get married and have children of her own. He watched them live their lives, get old and die, while he remained unchanged; their lifetimes but a blink of an eye on the horizon of his own.

  Years upon years of gut-wrenching sorrow and regret.

  Kian had vowed never to be that stupid or careless again.

  He had kept that vow for nineteen hundred and seventy-six years.

  Chapter 36: Syssi

  Syssi cursed, burying her face in a pillow. Amanda’s call had woken her up from the most amazing dream way before she’d been ready for it to be over. Heck, if it were up to her, she would’ve been happy staying in that dream world with her dream lover forever.

  Like the other night, he’d brought her to an earth-shattering climax, moments before the dream had abruptly ended. This time, by an annoying ringing.

  Worse, she had no name to go with the memory of his gorgeous face.

  And yet, the big difference was that this morning she wasn’t consumed by melancholy. The thing that kept the sadness at bay was hope that she would dream of him again. Two nights in a row was the beginning of a pattern.

  As she showered and dressed, Syssi wondered what brought on the dreams. Last night it had obviously been the paranormal romance novel she’d been reading. It could explain the fangs. Except, the leading guy’s, or rather vampire’s, description didn’t match that of her dream lover. Besides, the book couldn’t explain the night before. Nothing could. Except perhaps for her subconscious trying to tell her the same thing as the three wise old ladies; that it was time to end her self-imposed celibacy and take a chance on life.

  Trouble was, just thinking about it made her anxious.

  She wasn’t ready for the dating world. Hell, she had never been ready. Syssi hated the whole process of sifting through numerous guys in the hopes that one of them would turn out to be the one. She hated the awkward dates and having to say it was nice but no thank you.

  Out of nowhere, an image of a huge and scary man flitted through her mind. Vaguely, she remembered someone like that asking her out, but it didn’t feel like an actual memory, more like a dream. Not a good one, though. Perhaps she’d dreamt it before dreaming of her imaginary lover.

  Except, she had a nagging suspicion that there was more to it. Not a premonition, not exactly, but a gut feeling that something dark and dangerous was lurking outside, waiting for her to make the wrong move. It was the same feeling that had prompted her to leave the retirement home early and avoid driving in the dark. And she was pretty sure it was somehow connected to her premonition about Amanda.

  Great, now she was anxious, and feeding off her thoughts the fear was gathering momentum. She needed a distraction before it turned into a full blown panic attack.

  Syssi turned on the television and made herself a fresh cup of coffee, spiking it with Kahlua to help calm her down.

  After two more spiked coffees and an old episode of Friends, she felt her anxiety ebb.

  Until the startling screech of tires brought it back.

  Syssi ran up to the window to see if anyone was hurt.

  Trouble was, her guesthouse was all the way at the end of the driveway in the back of the lot, and only a small section of the street was visible from where she was standing and peeking from behind the curtain. The main house was blocking the rest.

  She didn’t see a car, but clearing the side of the main house were three large men. One rushed down her driveway, leaving the other two at the curb.

  What was going on?

  Fear gripping her, she let the curtain drop back into place, taking a step sideways to get out of his line of sight. As he kept getting closer, the sound of his pounding boots thundering in the quiet of the peaceful morning, her fear morphed into panic.

  Tall and muscular, the guy looked like a menacing predator closing in for the kill—that is, until his beautiful face came into focus.

  Recognizing him, Syssi’s hand flew to her mouth and she gasped.

  It couldn’t be. Backing away from the window, she lifted her hand to her forehead.

  Was it possible the dream had been a premonition? Or had all that Kahlua addled her brain and she was seeing things; superimposing the face of her dream lover on that of a stranger?

  Not sure she had the
guts to find out, Syssi took another step back.

  The man must’ve seen her backing away and figured he was frightening her. Slowing down, he stopped several feet away from her front door.

  “Syssi, it’s me, Kian…,” he called out. “Amanda’s brother. Don’t be afraid. Please open the door.”

  With her hand on her heaving chest, Syssi moved back to the window and pushed the curtain aside to take a better look.

  Kian? Amanda’s brother?

  Her frantic heartbeat had slowed down a bit, but her hands were still clammy and shaky.

  What was Amanda’s brother doing in my dream? What is he doing here? Is Amanda okay? Why didn’t she mention him when she called?

  Suddenly worried about her friend, Syssi rushed to open the door. “What happened? Is Amanda okay?”

  “Amanda is fine. I’m sorry to have given you a fright, but we have a bit of a situation. Everything is under control, no need to panic, but I do need to talk to you. May I come in?” he asked and stepped closer.

  Now that he was standing right in front of her, she could appreciate how really tall he was. To look at his strikingly beautiful face, she had to crank her neck way up. But even though her worry for Amanda had been assuaged, and she was feeling calmer, she was still scared of this man. Or rather of what his appearance on her doorstep at six thirty in the morning could mean.

  Syssi swallowed nervously.

  Amanda’s brother was even more intimidating than her conjured dream lover. With all those muscles coiled and ready to pounce, he looked like a killer—the tension and menace radiating from him a sure sign that the situation was not as trivial as he’d tried to make it sound.

  God, all this gorgeous maleness was turning her head into mush.

  He was gazing at her intently as if expecting her to say something.

  Oh, that’s right, she was supposed to invite him to come in. Damn, Syssi felt her cheeks redden. Not only was she acting like a moonstruck teenager, but her place wasn’t as tidy as she would’ve liked when inviting someone like him inside. There was nothing that she could do about it, though. She couldn’t just leave him standing outside when he’d so politely asked if he could come in.