Dark Dream’s Unraveling

by I. T. Lucas

  “Okay, kids. Time to go home.” Merlin got up and stretched his long limbs. “We’ve made good progress.”

  Regrettably, they weren’t done, but it was time to call it a night. Ella had been yawning for the past hour, and Julian felt guilty for keeping her up. But when he’d suggested taking her home, she’d refused to leave unless he was ready to head home as well.

  “Did you find anything useful?” Ella asked.

  “I hope so. We will see. Thank you for cleaning up my fridge.” He lifted a finger. “Wait here.”

  Rushing into the kitchen with his purple bathrobe flying behind him like a cape, Merlin pulled out a big box of Godiva chocolates from the pantry cabinet and then rushed back.

  “A small token of my gratitude.” He bowed and offered her the box with both hands.

  For a split second, Ella looked at the box as if she wasn’t sure whether to accept the gift or not, but Julian had a feeling she couldn’t say no to the chocolates any more than she could say no to Merlin. Besides, the guy would be offended if she refused.

  Instead, she curtsied. “Thank you. Your gift is much appreciated and will be consumed promptly.”

  Julian groaned. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to finish it all tonight. You’ll be sick.”

  Eyeing the box wistfully, she handed it to him. “Save it for me and don’t let me have any more than four at a time.” She eyed it again. “Maybe six.”

  Laughing, Merlin patted her back. “Another benefit of turning immortal will be eating as many chocolates as you want and not getting a tummy ache.”

  “What about gaining weight? Are immortals immune to that?”

  “Unfortunately, we are not. But it takes a lot of overindulgence for us to gain excess weight.” He glanced down at his thin frame. “Although in my case, it seems like I can eat and eat and not gain an ounce even though I would like to.”

  Julian chuckled. “You only think that you eat a lot. I think you often forget to eat because your head is somewhere else.”

  “You might be right, my boy. I get distracted by my work, and I don’t have Maggie here to remind me to eat.”

  “Who is Maggie?” Ella asked.

  “His old housekeeper.” Julian took her hand and led her toward the front door. “Good night, Merlin.”

  Hopefully, it would be the last day of that. He had a project to run, which in his absence had fallen on Yamanu’s capable shoulders.

  He was curious to see what progress had been made. Not that much could’ve been accomplished over three days, but this was his baby, and he didn’t like not being on top of that.

  “Would you like to go see the halfway house?” he asked Ella as they took the steps down to the walkway.

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  “It’s after ten at night.”

  “Are you tired?”

  “A little. But what the heck. Let’s go. Do you have your car keys with you?”

  He patted his pocket. “I do.”

  “Then we have all we need.” Ella took his hand. “I didn’t go home yet, so I have my purse and my sunglasses with me.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you about it. I’ve noticed that you no longer wear the contact lenses or eye makeup. Are you sure the glasses are enough?”

  “I’m only going to the sanctuary and back. It’s not like I’m going out.” She looked up at him. “Do you realize that we haven’t gone out on a date since the one time I asked you to take me to the mall?”

  Damn. Way to make him feel like an ass.

  Then again, he really was an ass. Instead of having her come see him at Merlin’s, he should’ve taken her out to a nice restaurant, or to a club. The poor girl had kept herself from getting bored by cleaning the guy’s house.

  “I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you. How about tomorrow night we do something nice together? Would you like to go dancing? Or maybe to the movies?”

  “What’s the point? You have all the new releases right here. We can watch a movie in your theater again. And you have the best popcorn too.”

  Ella was confusing him. “One moment you’re complaining about us not going out, and the next you want to spend Friday night in the village?”

  “I wasn’t complaining. I was just stating a fact.”

  “Are you sure? Because if I’m supposed to get some hidden messages, I can admit right now that I’m clueless.”

  Threading her arm through his, she put her hand in his back pocket. “You are so cute, Julian.”

  Cute was not a term he wanted her associating with him. Women were not attracted to cute. Hot, sexy, manly, brave, those were heat inspiring, not cute.

  As they reached his car, he opened the passenger door for her, but she didn’t get in. “Can I ask you a favor? Can I drive? I haven’t driven a car in so long that I’m afraid that I’ve forgotten how.”

  It was going to be nerve-wracking to let a human drive his car. Ella’s responses were nowhere near as fast as his, and Julian was not looking forward to the trip. But saying no was out of the question.

  His track record as her boyfriend couldn’t count even as decent. This was the least he could do.

  “No problem.” He walked to the driver side and opened the door for her. “I’ll put the address into the GPS, but it will not engage until after the self-driving mechanism disengages.”

  “That’s fine. Until it does, all I have to do is just keep my hands on the steering wheel, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  29

  Ella

  “It’s so dark in here,” Ella whispered. “Can you see anything?”

  The old hotel reminded her of every creepy horror movie she’d seen, and she’d only watched parodies of them because real horror was too scary.

  She and Julian were like the stupid teenagers who on a dare enter a deserted building at night.

  “Perfectly.” He held her to him tightly. “Let me find the light switch.”

  Clinging to Julian, Ella was very glad that he was a big guy. Potential attackers wouldn’t know that he was the gentlest soul. All they would see was a tall, muscular guy and, hopefully, it would be enough of a deterrent.

  Did he even know how to fight?

  Ella doubted it was included in his medical training, but he had to work out to look so good.

  When Julian found the light switch, Ella let out a relieved breath. All the scary shadows that had looked like crouching monsters or potential robbers were nothing more than piles of either construction material or debris.

  “That’s the lobby, right?”

  He nodded as they walked deeper inside. “We are going to build a wall right there.” He pointed. “That will create a separate entry, where a guard station can be put, or a receptionist’s desk. The area behind the wall is going to be the communal living room where people can hang out together and where the different activities are going to take place.”

  “Like what?”

  He chuckled. “Right now we have only one idea. Yamanu wants to organize a karaoke night.”

  “Sounds like fun. And my mom can have a bedazzling evening. The girls are loving it.”

  He arched a brow. “Is that some make-believe magic?”

  That was funny, and not entirely out of left field. Bedazzling sounded like something similar to thralling.

  “It’s make-believe alright, just not magic. It’s about decorating clothes and accessories with rhinestones. Fake bling. My mother’s original idea was to have an arts and crafts sewing class about refreshing old things in all kinds of creative ways. She started with the rhinestones and got stuck there. That’s all the girls want to do.”

  “Fascinating. I would’ve never guessed that would be a popular activity.”

  She patted his bicep. “That’s because you are a guy.”

  Suddenly, the muscle under her hand tensed, and Julian’s head tilted up.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He put his finger to his lip
s and then pointed up. “Someone is upstairs,” he whispered. “I’m taking you back to the car.” He started to back away with her clutched tightly against his side.

  Ella had no idea what he’d heard, but she trusted his superior hearing. Except, the place was probably infested with rats and that was what he’d heard.

  “Maybe you heard a rat?” She whispered so quietly that no one other than an immortal could’ve heard her.

  “Yeah, rats who walk on two.”

  They were almost back to the front door when the sound of several footfalls running down the stairs confirmed Julian’s assessment.

  It seemed like there was more than one two-legged rat in the building.

  As one of those rats jumped down from the half-story landing, Julian pushed her behind his back.

  “What do we have here?” one of them said.

  Hiding behind Julian, she couldn’t see the guy, but he sounded either drunk or high.

  There was another thud, which she guessed was one more junkie jumping off the landing.

  “A pretty boy.” This was a different voice than the first. “What are you hiding there, pretty boy? A pretty girl?”

  “I’ll take either. I don’t care which,” the first one said.

  The low growl that started deep in Julian’s stomach didn’t sound human, and if those guys weren’t so shit-faced, they would have scurried away.

  “Look, Vince. Pretty boy is baring his teeth at us. Do you think he’ll bite?”

  “Not if one of us holds a knife to his girlfriend’s throat while the other shoves his cock deep down pretty boy’s.”

  As the guy talked, the growl intensified until there was no way the idiots didn’t hear it.

  “Stay back,” was the only warning she got before Julian turned into a blur.

  If Ella had any doubts about his ability to fight, they were gone now.

  Closing the distance in one giant leap, Julian caught both guys by their throats and lifted them up, each dangling from a hand.

  One of them had a knife, and Ella screamed as he jabbed at Julian with it, but Julian saw it coming and flung the guy away before he had a chance to stab him.

  Sailing through the air, the guy landed at least thirty feet away in a pile of debris, the impact sending it flying every which way.

  He didn’t get up.

  And the one still dangling from Julian’s hand wasn’t moving either.

  “Are they dead?” Ella whispered.

  Her hands were shaking, and she was cold despite Carol’s warm sweater, but she couldn’t fall apart yet. Julian had enough to deal with without a panicky girl making a scene.

  “Not yet,” he hissed.

  His fangs were fully descended and dripping venom.

  “Don’t kill them.”

  “Why not?”

  She came up to him and put a hand on his back. “Because you’re a doctor. You save lives, not take them.”

  Releasing his grip, he let the one he’d been choking drop down to the floor.

  Julian was in a weird state, looking dazed as if shocked by the violence that had exploded out of him. He needed her help.

  Letting out a breath, Ella collected her wits about her and forced her hands to stop shaking. There was a situation she needed to defuse, and a boyfriend who looked as if he was suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder.

  “Can you thrall them to forget what happened here?”

  He nodded.

  “Then do that, and then call the police.”

  “I’m still not sure I want to let them live.”

  She wasn’t sure either. If left alive, those two would attack someone else. But Julian wasn’t a killer, and this wasn’t the Wild West. The police should handle it.

  First, though, she had to talk Julian down from his murderous rage.

  “Have you ever killed anyone before, Julian?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then you don’t want to start tonight with these rats. They are not worth the stain it will leave on your soul. Let the police deal with the trash collection.”

  30

  Julian

  With the haze of rage receding, Julian looked at what he’d done and prepared to feel contempt for himself and the violence he’d committed, but all he felt was satisfaction.

  Up until tonight, he’d believed himself to be a nonviolent man, but apparently his inner beast had just lain dormant, waiting to emerge when it was needed.

  At first, Julian had been ready to deal with the vagabonds rationally and defuse the situation, but they’d made the mistake of threatening Ella. The thought of one of those junkies holding a knife to her throat had flipped a switch inside his head. It had brought out the savage he hadn’t known existed inside him, shutting off everything else.

  Julian the scholar had turned into Julian the barbarian, and the worst part was that it had felt damn good to annihilate the threat.

  If not for Ella’s gentle touch and calm voice, he would’ve finished what he’d started and killed the scum, ridding the world of the two maggots. With their ugly words still reverberating in his head, Julian wasn’t sure he’d done the right thing by not finishing them off.

  Except, he was dimly aware that he wasn’t thinking straight because his rage was still at a near-boiling point.

  “Come on, Julian. You need to thrall them before they wake up and start screaming murder, or worse, pull out a phone and send a picture of you with your fangs showing to all of their friends.”

  He shook his head to clear the haze. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  First, though, he had to arrange them in a way that would make his thrall plausible. He was going to make them think that they’d knocked each other out, and that wouldn’t make sense if they were thirty feet apart when they woke up.

  Grabbing the leg of the one he’d choked, Julian started dragging him closer to the other one.

  “What are you doing?” Ella asked.

  “I’m staging them to look like they’ve gotten into a fight and knocked each other out.”

  “Don’t. Drop him where he is.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we want them to get arrested and locked up.”

  He arched a brow. “Trespassing is an offense, but I don’t think it’s serious enough to serve time for.”

  “Exactly. But rape is. Put it in their heads that they raped me. After all, if you weren’t who you are, they would have done it, so it’s not as if they’re innocent and we are framing them for a crime they didn’t commit. In this case, the line between their intentions and what actually happened is very thin.”

  That was a crazy idea, but he was curious to hear the rest. “And in this scenario, who knocked them out?”

  “A bunch of my friends showed up and beat them up. I’m going to call the police, crying hysterically, but refuse to give my name or give a statement in person. But that won’t be necessary because you will thrall them to confess to the rape.”

  Ella didn’t understand what she was asking of him. But what he found amazing was how calmly she was approaching this after the scare she’d had. The poor girl had grown accustomed to dealing with intense situations.

  “I can’t do that.”

  She grimaced. “The thrall is too complicated?”

  “It’s not that. In order to put these images in their heads, I need to create them in mine first. I can’t do that without killing them.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “And going crazy while I’m at it.”

  She nodded. “Okay, I get it. What about drugs? I’m sure they were high, and we can probably find their stash upstairs. We’ll call in the trespassing, and when the police find the drugs, they will arrest them.”

  “That’s better.”

  He picked up the leg he’d dropped and dragged the junkie over to join his friend. Thralling them to forget what had happened required much less effort than planting new memories in their ugly brains. He also added a command to keep sleeping.

  “All done.
Let’s see what’s going on upstairs.” He took her hand. “Stay close to me. There might be more of them.”

  “I don’t think so. With all the ruckus, they would have either showed up or run away.”

  “Normally yes, but what if whoever is up there is stoned out of his mind?”

  She got closer to him. “That’s possible.”

  They found where the scumbags had been staying after opening the first door.

  Ella pinched her nose with her fingers. “You’ll have to burn everything in this room.”

  “I just hope that it’s the only one they infested. Let’s check.”

  They went from room to room, but fortunately found the rest of them intact.

  When they went back to the contaminated room, Ella glanced at the contents. “Do you think these drugs are enough to get them arrested?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Should we drop a few syringes next to them? Just to make sure the police search for the rest?”

  “Good idea. Do you have tissues in your purse? I don’t want to touch anything with my hands.”

  “I have a fabric swatch.” She pulled out a folded piece of blue fabric. “Here you go.”

  It had a small flower design made from rhinestones.

  “Are you sure you don’t need it?”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “There are plenty more where that one came from.”

  When they were done staging the scene, Julian regarded it for a moment. Would a cop buy that?

  He didn’t know, but Turner would.

  Pulling out his phone, Julian shook his head. “I’m an idiot. I should’ve called Turner right away. He would know what to do.”

  Turner listened to the story with his usual stoic detachment. “I’ll take care of it, Julian. You and Ella can go home.”

  Julian raked his fingers through his hair. “Did I mess things up? I shouldn’t have staged anything.”

  “Don’t worry about it. As far as you and Ella are concerned this is over. Go home.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.”

  Julian returned the phone to his back pocket. “We can go. He’s going to take care of everything.” He took Ella’s hand and headed toward the front door.