Lorelei's panic surged. There was no way she wanted to stay and talk to him. "I'm a bit cold now actually," she said with a shiver, hoping he couldn't tell that the shiver was more than the breeze. "Maybe I'll go back inside."
When she stepped towards the door, her heart sank—it was still closed from when Caleb came through, and the smokers had disappeared. She reached out to push down the wide metal handle which spanned the width of the door, hoping he couldn't see her hand trembling.
Caleb immediately stepped between her and the door. "I won't keep you long."
Lorelei looked at him. Close together, the presence that weakened her in the nightclub started again.
She shook her head, pulling herself back to the here and now. "Please move."
"I need to talk to you," he said in a low voice, with an insistence in his tone that unnerved her further.
"What about? I don't know you. I haven't got anything to talk to you about." Lorelei's heartbeat grew louder in her ears, and her chest tightened.
"Don't be rude, please," he said in the same soft tones. "People aren't rude to me. They listen."
Lorelei stared into his glittering eyes. Was that a veiled threat? "I think you should let me go inside," she said as sweetly as she could manage. "My friends will be missing me."
"I don't want to sound pushy, but I don't have much time, and I need something from you."
Caleb’s smooth demeanour cracked as his voice took on a sharper edge. His eyes shifted to the right momentarily, as if hearing something, then back to her.
"Need something? You said you wanted to talk to me a minute ago..."
All Lorelei could hear over her breathing was the dull thud of the music back inside. Panic rose: she was trapped outside with someone she was now positive held bad intentions. She needed to get away or at least alert someone, but there wasn't a soul in the quiet of the car park.
The door behind Caleb still firmly closed, and no way of getting around him, she backed away, readying herself to run.
As if he sensed this, Caleb glanced around the empty alleyway. He caught hold of Lorelei's arms, pushing her back to the wall opposite, trapping her between himself and the wall, all before she could react. Caleb's face hovered close to hers, his cool breath on her cheek. Gasping as the air knocked out of her, Lorelei's head spun from his unexpected attack.
“I don't have time for games,” he said, gripping onto her arms.
She winced, and a cold fear spread through her, the light-headedness came on again, the whining returning to her ears. No, no, no she couldn't black out here, with him. She focused on the sensation of the bricks of the wall hard against her back.
"Let me go!" she cried, annoyed at how hoarse her voice was and looked up into his face.
She gasped. The eyes that mesmerised her turned black, the white of his eyes gone. Caleb blinked quickly, his eyes normal again, leaving unnaturally enlarged pupils.
Lorelei swallowed hard, stifling a scream, her mind trying to catch up with what she’d seen.
“Okay...I’ll listen. Just let me go.”
Her eyes darted around looking for an escape route. His grasp on her arms was still tight. She had no choice—if she wanted to stay conscious, he needed to let her go.
"Caleb, please, I can't breathe..." Lorelei relaxed her body, pretending to yield to him and he released her arms, standing back a fraction.
Taking her chance, Lorelei ducked beneath his arm and ran. Caleb grabbed Lorelei's arm again, pulling her back towards him.
“You need to calm down, Lorelei." His fingers dug into her skin. “Don't try to run away. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She pulled at the hand holding her arm, but he didn't flinch. “You are hurting me!”
“You have no idea how long I've been looking for you, so I'm not going to let you go until you hear what I have to say.”
The sound of low voices drifted towards her. A group of people at the opposite end of the car park crossed towards the nightclub, towards where Lorelei and Caleb were struggling. Before Lorelei could react, to call for help, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.
His chest stifled Lorelei’s readied scream, and anyone passing would think they were a couple embracing. Unwillingly transfixed by the physical contact, her senses dulled beyond anything but the awareness of his hard, muscled body against hers. Tensing, Lorelei waited for the visions to come on again, but none came.
Lorelei closed her eyes, trying to concentrate on where she was and how she would get away, as Caleb waited for the group to pass by and out of hearing distance. Concentrate, she murmured to herself, you can get away from this. But the blackness roared through her mind and into her ears as she fought to stay conscious. Lorelei relaxed her body, hoping that Caleb would think she admitted defeat. In response, his grasp loosened.
As soon as his grip slackened, Lorelei pulled together all the energy she still possessed and pushed him as hard against the wall. She turned and yanked at the closed door to the clubs and screamed.
It was pointless. The smokers had left, and no-one could hear her with the door closed and the band playing.
Spinning around, she ran towards the direction of the passing group—she couldn't see them anymore but thought she could hear their voices. Opening her mouth, she screamed for help again. Caleb caught up to her in a split-second and pushed her against the wall.
Growling, he stepped forward again. Tears welled as she saw herself reflected in his coal-black eyes. Darkness climbed inside her head, and she began to slip into unconsciousness.
Caleb's grip loosened as he was pulled violently away from Lorelei. She sucked in oxygen, sliding to the floor and curled up in a ball, her cheek against the cold concrete. A loud sound rang out, of something crashing against a nearby skip.
“What do you think you're doing?” growled another male voice she didn't recognise.
She heard Caleb laugh softly. “I should've expected you.”
“Then why are you here?” asked the second voice. “You knew I wouldn't be far away if you tried to get near her.”
Lorelei opened her eyes and peered through the veil of hair falling across her face. It was difficult to see from her angle on the floor but a little further down the alleyway stood two men. One was Caleb. The other man faced away from her, holding Caleb around the throat, pinned high against the opposite wall as if he weighed nothing more than a small child. Slightly taller than Caleb, with a slimmer build, his blond hair shone in the dim light.
Caleb struggled against the other man’s grip unsuccessfully, and the man snarled something in a low voice she couldn’t hear. Caleb’s eyes widened, and he tried to push the man away.
“I should kill you,” he said, loosening his grip on Caleb’s neck and stepping back.
Caleb brushed himself down and rubbed his neck, smiling at him. “You know you can’t.”
The other man didn't reply, but whatever was unspoken, and passing between them defeated Caleb because he stepped backwards. “And you? Are you still trying? What a good boy you are. I’m sure you’ll be rewarded, eventually.”
The second man pointed a finger at him. “You won’t get what you want.”
Caleb looked past him to Lorelei. “She doesn’t know yet—she might want what I have to offer.”
Stepping nearer, the man put his face as close as he could to Caleb's.
“You’re on your own, aren’t you?" he said. "None of your friends are here to back you up. Did you really expect taking her would be that simple? That I wouldn’t find you? Leave. Now.”
The two men stared at each other for a moment, and Caleb’s eyes flicked to Lorelei, then back to the other man. He held his hands up in a gesture of surrender and backed away towards the car park.
“Another time,” he called to Lorelei with a smirk and turned to disappear into the shadows.
Lorelei’s rescuer turned to face her, and the ground lurched beneath her feet; the clouds spinning above her as if the world t
urned on its head. She slid and lay her face on the cold ground again and struggled for breath.
This man couldn’t be him.
Maybe the whole situation was part of her dreams, or she had a concussion. Lorelei's hand went to her head, touching it gingerly as she looked up at him.
“It’s you...” she whispered. “How...”
The man walked towards her, and she scrambled to sit, shrinking back into the wall, staring up at him. “It can’t be you—you’re not real.”
The man crouched down and held a slender-fingered hand towards her, saying nothing. He looked the same as the times she'd caught glimpses of him in the darkness of her room. She'd seen his face in the shadows, but never so close.
“It's you," she whispered. "How are you here?"
Below a heavy brow, blue eyes looked at her with concern. “I’ll help you up.”
Lorelei put her hand in his. As he pulled her up, her knees buckled and tingling pain coursed through every vein in her body, like she was being electrocuted. Like with Caleb. She stumbled, her mind filled with a stream of images for the second time that evening. As Caleb's face began to form in her mind, the picture was pushed out, replaced by new images spooling through her mind as if her life was on rewind. In her mind's eye, she saw herself as a young girl.
“You need to go home, Lorelei.” He dropped her hand and stepped back, mouth pursed. “Please find your friends and leave."
"Why did Caleb attack me? Who are you?"
His proximity overwhelmed her as much as Caleb's. They didn't appear entirely alike, but there was something about them that was very similar, something in their presence. This man didn't seem to be as aware of it as Caleb, distracted and not entirely engaged with her or the situation.
"I have to go and find him, you understand?” he said.
"But..." She needed to ask so many questions, not about the evening but about the years before.
Could it be him? It wasn't possible. Lorelei opened her mouth to speak, but he’d already turned to leave.
"Wait!" she called.
Stopping, he turned back to her and Lorelei felt a surge of anticipation.
“I'm sorry that this happened. Caleb shouldn't have found you. I'll fix this.” The stilted speech was all offered before he turned and carried on walking.
Lorelei watched him, trying to comprehend everything that happened. A longing for someone she never thought existed reawakened as she watched the stranger. His tall figure blended into her night as he had many times before.
Chapter Three
"Holy crap, Lolly. And you didn't go to the police because...?"
Lorelei pushed the straw around the long glass of soda in front of her, stirring the ice inside, not looking at her friend. They were sitting outside one of the local cafes, on white plastic chairs at a matching table. The kind of furniture Lorelei imagined better suited around swimming pools in holiday resorts. The owners hoped the new outdoor seating would give a cosmopolitan air, which didn't work. Neither did the fact that the pavement was a thoroughfare for high street shoppers, who needed to squeeze around the chairs.
Somewhere public seemed a better place for Lorelei to discuss with Scarlet why she hadn't been out of the house for several days. Scarlet often overreacted and Lorelei’s story guaranteed a ‘Scarlet meltdown’. To her relief, the presence of other people toned down Scarlet's response.
"Go to the police and say what exactly?" asked Lorelei.
"I don't know—I mean, is it even too late now? It was three days ago..." Scarlet frowned at her across the table. "Why didn't you tell me all this before?"
After Caleb and the other man left her alone outside the nightclub, Lorelei stumbled back inside, called an Uber, made her excuses and left before anyone asked any questions. Scarlet had consumed more alcohol than usual and lay with her head on a table while Jamie coaxed her into moving. She wondered if she should stay and help Jamie, but all she'd wanted to do was to get home.
"I didn't want to talk about it," said Lorelei.
"But what if he does it to someone else—attacks them worse than you? If the other guy hadn't scared him off..." Scarlet paused.
Lorelei knew where the conversation was heading. "It wasn't like that. He didn't try to touch me...like that. It was something else, something about me. He wanted to talk to me, and when I refused, he got angry."
"That makes no sense—why would someone do that?"
"I have no idea."
"The other guy who was there—he knew him? This is all very weird, Lolly. I should say something to someone—do you feel safe?"
The terror and confusion stopped Lorelei sleeping the first night, her bedroom becoming a place of fear again. She fought sleep, expecting the man in the shadows to return if she succumbed to her dreams. Now she knew he was real. No proof existed though, only her conviction it was him. Lorelei shared everything with Scarlet; they understood and supported each other from their days in primary school to high school dramas. Would she still understand now?
"Scarlet, you remember the dreams I used to have?"
Scarlet nodded.
"They started happening again. This last week or so."
Her friend leaned forward, eyes searching Lorelei's face. "The same dreams? You haven't mentioned them for about four years."
"I haven't dreamed about him for four years." She took a deep breath. "Or seen him."
As soon as she saw the look on Scarlet's face, she knew she'd made a mistake saying anything—the sympathy replaced by wide-eyed disbelief.
"Him?"
"The man in the shadows. It was him." Lorelei looked down at the table.
Scarlet reached a hand across the table, her black painted fingernails curling around Lorelei's tense hand. "Who was? Caleb?"
Lorelei shook her head. "The other man."
Scarlet exhaled and rearranged her features back into a sympathetic look. "He doesn't exist, Lolly. I don't know who the other man was, but obviously, it can't be him."
Lorelei exhaled the relief of finally telling someone what happened, speaking the words she'd rehearsed in her head. The reaction wasn't what she wanted.
"How do you know that?" asked Lorelei.
Scarlet pushed a strand of her red bobbed hair behind her ear. "We're not fourteen anymore with silly fantasies about mysterious supernatural boyfriends watching over us at night. Hell, mine was a vampire, and I'm certainly glad he doesn't exist!"
Making light of the situation wasn't what Lorelei needed. The moment she finished the sentence Scarlet also knew she'd said the wrong thing. Lorelei's lips pursed as she glowered at Scarlet.
"Why would I say anything if I didn't think it was true? You know that it was always real to me," Lorelei said.
"To you—until you admitted it was fantasies."
Lorelei gripped the glass in front of her, the condensation cool against her palm. "I needed to say that. My parents were going to take me to a shrink. I thought you understood and believed me."
"Lolly, I do understand but let's rationalise this. You're under a lot of stress, you had a bad experience the other night, and you're putting it all together to come up with the wrong answer. This is calm, sensible Lorelei I'm talking to here—what logical reason could you have to say the man you saw was the fantasy from your childhood?"
Lorelei rubbed her temples. If she couldn't explain to herself precisely what happened, how could she make Scarlet understand? Maybe Scarlet was right, the stress of the last few months and the worry about her future was messing with her mind. Over the last few days, she'd relived every moment of her encounters, trying to get a clearer picture in her mind of the second man. But every time his face began to form in her mind it melded with her memories of Caleb's face, looking down at her, terrifying.
The same questions echoed through her mind, over and over—was Caleb going to keep looking for her? Did he know where she lived? Would she see the other man again?
"Scarlet, he was there. He helped me, threatened the
other guy, and forced him to leave me alone. Then when he touched me, and I knew it was him..."
Scarlet's eyes turned upwards, and she breathed a heavy sigh. "Oh, Lolly..."
"‘Oh, Lolly’ what?"
"Was that before or after he banged your head on the wall? I don't want to sound horrible, but did you imagine him? Because of the fear and bang on the head and your...history, maybe? Surely if someone had been there to help you, they would've taken you inside to find someone safe, made sure you were okay?" Scarlet's eyes widened as a thought struck her. "Maybe your drink was spiked! That must be it..."
Lorelei closed her eyes against Scarlet's words. Why did she expect eighteen-year-old Scarlet to believe her the same as fourteen-year-old Scarlet would’ve? Considering the situation in reverse, she'd probably say the same things to Scarlet.
She'd reached out to Scarlet, wanting her to confirm her lack of reality. Instead, Scarlet gave her a series of rational explanations she didn't want to accept, overwriting the irrational explanations Lorelei's mind made up.
Why couldn't she accept that an ordinary man attacked an ordinary girl, outside a nightclub, and then run off when he was disturbed?
Because it wasn't true.
Lorelei dragged a hand through her hair, tapping her foot on the floor as she tried to process Scarlet's words. No, she couldn't sit and listen to this, to someone explaining away something—someone—she knew was real. He was real. He'd always been real. The man was not a random stranger—and neither was Caleb. For some reason, two men with strange connections to her entered Lorelei's world that night. If she needed to deal with this situation alone, then she would.
Lorelei's chair clattered to the pavement as she stood and walked away without another word, leaving a wide-eyed Scarlet wondering how to help her friend.
Lorelei gritted her teeth as she stomped through the town, weaving between the busy Saturday shoppers. A small part of her knew she should go back and speak to Scarlet, but she was too angry with her to do that. She spent three days preparing to leave her house, three days of rehearsing what she would say to Scarlet. Her best friend—the person who should be there, to support and not dismiss her like that. And to top it all the typical British summer weather rolled in rain clouds, replacing the summer sun with drizzling rain to match her black mood. At least she was only a few streets away from where she'd parked her car, and if the rain held off, she wouldn't get too wet—if she hurried.
Hidden (Her Immortal Guardians Book 1) Page 2