Fade to Midnight

by Shannon McKenna

  She should just stop drawing altogether. Turn away from that part of her brain. Pretend it didn't exist. But she couldn't. Like a drug addiction. She couldn't resist that free, whole, connected feeling.

  It was just the consequences that she couldn't bear to face.

  She sighed and started gathering up her pens and charcoal, her sketchbooks, and shoved them into her big shoulder bag. She'd go straight home, not looking to the right or left. She'd lock the door.

  And if she ended up crying there in the dark, who would ever know?

  She picked up the napkin, thinking to sponge at the sketchbook once more, hoping to salvage at least a few sheets of the--

  She froze, staring down at the sketch she'd doodled of her father, still and cold as a block of stone. The wine had run over it in such a way that it seemed as if the stiffly upright figure with the disapproving mouth and the long, narrow nose was submerged in a pool of blood.

  Chills shook her. That familiar far away drumbeat of doom.

  I'll just make a strategic retreat now. Before I get my fortune told. Her father's words echoed in her head. He would never listen if she warned him. She could not help him. No more than she'd been able to help her mother. She was helpless. Hands tied.

  And her father was in deadly danger.

  The little girl floated over the tumbled boulders of dream landscape like a butterfly, darting out of sight, flitting back into it. Barefoot, thin, long dark hair. She wore a white tunic. When she looked back, her huge eyes looked scared, sad. She stopped beside a crack in the cliff wall. She bent. In a flash of thin legs, of dirty little feet, she was gone.

  Sean followed her in, bound by the heavy inevitability that came from having dreamed it before. This feeling of being locked in breathless ignorance was horribly familiar. Like a rock sitting on his brain, blacking out the center of his being. Obscuring his sense of place in space and time. Leaving him blundering and helpless in the darkness.

  The tunnel wound down, then the cavern opened out. Vastness around him. Cathedral ceilings, buttressed with gnarled stalactites and stalagmites. A forest of pallid, misshapen trees, glowing like radioactive tumors in the dark. Water, slowly dripping. The stink of batshit.

  Dread grew inside him, but he had to go on, to do the hard thing. The path curved, through a choked grove of dead, white calcite columns.

  A clearing was before him, a slab of stone in the center. Torches flickered in a circle around it, and the reddish light of dancing flames wavered evilly upon the man who lay on it like a pagan sacrifice.

  Rocks were piled on his torso. Only his sprawled legs, arms, and head emerged. He had to be dead under that weight, lungs flattened, organs crushed. His head was turned away. He wore a blindfold. All Sean saw was the jut of a cheekbone, lank strands of ash colored hair.

  A hole yawned in the rocks before the altar. Something stirred inside. Rustling, a chittering rasp. The flash of some nonhuman eyes in the hole, moving before he could make sense of the gleaming shapes.

  Something monstrous, something hideous. Something...hungry.

  Then a hairy, jointed leg extended delicately, prodding with its hooked claw. The chittering rasp grew louder.

  Sean's heart thudded, but he couldn't run. He leaned down to grab the first boulder heaped on his brother, and the thing burst from its hole, eyes gilttering, barbed feet slashing at Sean's face like whiplashes--

  Sean jolted bolt upright, gasping for air. Heart racing. Gasps racked his torso, as if he'd been sprinting. The dreams about his lost twin had been getting more frequent, more intense. He was zonked out from sleep deprivation. As if it wasn't enough for them to deal with, the fallout they'd worked through together from that horrific encounter with the mad psycho scientist Christopher Osterman. They'd been supremely lucky to get through that with their lives and their sanity intact. More or less.

  They'd been doing better. Convinced they were through the worst of it. And now, here he was. Tormented by fucking nightmares again.

  Liv stirred, lifted her head. She shoved fuzzy, sleep-snarled dark curls back from her face. She touched his shoulder, in silent question.

  "Shit. Sorry I woke you." He hardly got the words out, his chest jerked so hard.

  Liv sat up, curling her legs up, and putting an unconscious hand over her pregnant belly. "Another dream? Same one, I take it?"

  His shoulders jerked in assent, and he hunched. Trying to hide, like a turtle in his shell. "I got farther into the cave this time."

  "Ah. That's good."

  A harsh laugh jerked out of him. "Oh, yeah? Is it?"

  She shrank from his ugly tone. "Sorry. Just said that, you know. To say something."

  He kicked himself. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I shouldn't snarl at you." He forced himself to go on. "I saw him, this time."

  She didn't even have to ask who. "And? How was it?"

  He let out an explosive sigh. "Bad. He was blindfolded. Laid out on a stone altar. Covered with a pile of boulders. Staked out in front of the lair of some gigantic insect. Could I dream up anything worse?"

  "I see." She had that careful voice his brothers used. Talking Sean down out of his freakout. Let's scrape Sean off the ceiling again.

  He hated it from Con and Davy. He hated it from his wife, too.

  "Sounds like a picture on a Tarot card," she commented. "How did you know it was Kev, if he was covered with rocks and blindfolds?"

  "I just knew. You know how it is in dreams."

  "Yeah." Liv dropped a kiss onto his shoulder. "Hey. Sean? Have you considered that these dreams might not be about Kev at all?"

  "What do you mean? Who else could they be about?"

  He could feel her caution, how she chose her words carefully, so as not to set him off. It made his teeth grind. "It's been about four months since you started having these dreams," she began.

  "No," Sean said. "I've had these dreams for eighteen years, Liv. Ever since Kev disappeared. And when we found out it wasn't him, in the grave..." He shrugged. "I know he's not dead."

  "I know. But nightmares where you wake up screaming? These are new." She kissed his shoulder again. "I feel compelled to point out to you that they started right about when I found out that I was pregnant."

  He went rigid. "You think this is about that?" His voice was so tight, it felt like his throat would implode.

  "Don't be mad. Please, consider it. I've read that images in dreams are self-referential. Whoever you dream about, and whatever they do, it's mostly about you. Your own feelings, your own issues."

  "Maybe for most people, but not these dreams," he said.

  "No? Why not?"

  "For a lot of reasons!" He stopped, tried to modulate his voice. "Kev woke me up when Gordon kidnapped you. He stopped me from walking off a cliff. That's not fluff crap about my issues, Liv!"

  "I never said it was fluff crap," she said quietly. "But couldn't those incidents have been you all along? Your own awareness, your own intelligence? Just using Kev's image to get your attention?"

  "No." His rejection of the idea was violent and absolute. "It is not."

  "Sean, please. I just want you to--"

  "You think I'm scared because we're having a kid?" His voice cracked. "You think I'm freaked out by fatherhood, Liv? That I consider myself buried under a ton of boulders? What does that make you in this dream? The monster? A giant bug who eats her mate? Jesus, Liv! What kind of coward wuss do you take me for?"

  She pulled her hands away. "Well. I guess you're a whole lot braver than me, then." Her voice was clipped. "I'm certainly afraid. I keep having dreams that I'll leave the baby at a public bathroom, or the seat of a city bus. But that just means I'm a cowardly wuss, hmm?" She swung her legs over the side of the bed. "Fine. Whatever."

  Sean lunged, grabbing her waist and wrapping his arms above her baby bulge before she could slide off the bed. "No. Stop."

  "You stop." She batted at his arms, and he could feel the anger, but he just held her there, in a steely gri
p, taking care not to put any pressure on that precious bump.

  She could pick and pry and pummel him to her heart's content, but he wasn't letting her go. No way. He knew what was good for him.

  She finally gave up, with a sharp sigh of irritation. He took that as a cue to drag her back onto the bed, pulling her down, and rolling her over so her stiff, resistant body faced his.

  He pressed his face against her throat, dragging in her sweet, hot scent of her skin, the silken tickle of her hair. "Please, don't be mad at me," he said, his voice muffled against her. "I can't take that, too."

  He held onto her with all his strength. After a few minutes, she relaxed, with a shuddering sigh, giving in. She wound her fingers into his hair, which had grown into a shaggy mop almost to his shoulders.

  "You piss me off," she said, petting him. "You big, rude jerk."

  "I know. I'm sorry." He lifted his head, fixing her with a pleading gaze. "But that guy in my dream? He's not me, babe. I swear." She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. "And I'm not scared about the baby. Really. At least not any more than a normal guy would be."

  Her eyes narrowed. "And what would you know about normal?"

  "You have a point," he conceded, wiggling down the length of her body until he could press his face against her belly. It was something he loved to do. Just lie there, feeling the little flutters against his cheek. It gave him such a rush, imagining his kid in there. So small. Swimming, turning and spinning in the primordial soup. About the size of his fist, on their last ultrasound. A fucking miracle. An amazing little creature.

  No way. It wasn't that sweet tiny thing he was afraid of. No monsters there. Just everything that was fine, good.

  "I'm ecstatic about our kid," he repeated. "Over the moon. And you don't have to be scared. You won't leave the kid on a bus. You'll be an incredible mother. A freaking Titan of a mother."

  She batted at his shoulders, vibrating with laughter. "Oh, shut up. It's not like I have the greatest model for motherhood."

  He winced, in the darkness. True enough. Liv's mother was one of his least favorite people on the planet. A total whack job, to put it politely. Unfortunately, Liv's impending motherhood had inspired the woman to try to make peace with her daughter. She wanted that grandchild. God help the poor, unsuspecting kid. God help them all.

  "No, really," he pleaded. He shoved the oversized T-shirt she slept in up, and found her naked beneath it. Thank God, she had finally realized wearing panties to bed was just a blatant challenge to him.

  He nuzzled the velvet of her skin, working his way down into the warm bush of her pubic hair, exploring all the angles and curves of her, changed by her pregnancy, but that soft, electrifying fuzz, the slick silky ringlets that adorned her pink girl parts, were as perfect in every detail as ever. No, better. Tender flower petals. Meltingly juicy, pulling at him.

  "Sean!" Liv wiggled, giggling. "This is no way to win an argument!"

  "What argument? Were we arguing?"

  "Don't be facetious. We have to communicate."

  "We are communicating. In the best possible way. And this isn't an attempt to win an argument." He slid his tongue teasingly across her slit. "This is just changing the subject."

  "Yeah, right. Tell me about it." She smothered more giggles. "Your all-time favorite subject."

  "Busted." He nuzzled her groin. "Now, let's see. The new subject is better than the old one. I was just going to go on about how excellent and admirable you are. What a fabulous mother you'll be. Your courage, your beauty, your character..." He slid his finger inside her, followed its path with his tongue, in a slow, hungry swipe that hit all her external sweet spots. "Your yummy succulent pussy. My princess, my queen, my goddess, my world. No arguments. What's to argue?"

  She dug her fingernails into his shoulders. "Seriously, Sean. Don't change the subject. We're not done with this subject."

  He raised his head, wiped his mouth. "We're not?"

  "No." She tilted up his chin. "You make me feel like I'm one of the bad guys in this story. Trying to make you doubt yourself. Undermining you. About Kev, for all those years. You're so angry at everyone for doing that to you, even Davy and Con. And I don't deserve any part of that anger. Not one little speck. You hear me?"

  The raw emotion in her voice penetrated the hot lust that gripped him, and he lifted up, sobered. "No, baby, you sure don't," he agreed.

  She stared up, blinking in the moonlight. Her beautiful eyes were shimmering with tears. Remorse bit him in the ass, and he slid up her body, kissing his way apologetically over the curve of her belly, and into the bounty of her even more bodacious than usual tits.

  "I'm sorry, baby," he whispered. "Please don't cry. You'll make me cry, too, and I hate crying. Makes my nose run."

  She laughed, soggily, to his immense relief. "Oh, shut up, you clown. I just want...I want..."

  Her voice trailed off, and he waited, in an agony of suspense. "Yeah?" he prompted. "What do you want?" He held his breath, hoping to God it was something he was humanly capable of granting her.

  She blew out a sharp breath. "I don't want you to be forever yearning for something that might not even exist, for the rest of your life. I just want you to...to get over it. To be whole. And happy."

  Whew. Talk about a challenge.

  He positioned himself carefully over her body so that he put no pressure on that precious bulge, and pressed himself inside her. They sighed, in tandem, at the throbbing clasp of her body around him. "I'm working on that," he said. "It's complicated. But I'm trying. Just keep loving me. That's gotten me the closest I've ever been. Closer than I ever deserved to get." He sucked in air, at the perfection of being so close. "Just keep loving me," he repeated, his voice raw.

  "Oh, please." Tearful laughter made her body contract, minute shudders of perfection around his cock. "As if I ever had a choice."

  He rocked inside her. "I'm not scared about the baby," he told her.

  She clutched at him, with arms, legs, every part of her. "It would be nothing to be ashamed if you were, doofus."

  "But I'm not," he protested, stubbornly. "Really. I'm so happy about that baby, it just about makes my heart explode. Believe me."

  She gave him a tremulous smile. "Um," she murmured. "OK. That's nice to know. And now," she wiggled against him, and he gasped with delight as she squeezed him, deliciously inside herself. "So. You were talking about, ah, exploding? You want to elaborate on that?"

  He grinned at her, and proceeded to do just exactly that.

  CHAPTER 3

  The guy across the poker table in the big blind position was staring at him. Chilikers. The one who'd cornered him in the mens' room and begged him for a stake a couple of hours back. Chilikers had been desperate to get back into the game and make up his losses, so Kev had fronted the guy fifteen thou against his car. But he hadn't done Chilikers any favors tonight. Kev could practically smell the guy's shit luck. As bad as his foul breath. And now he was staring.

  To be fair, there was a lot to stare at. It was weird for a guy to wear sunglasses at four in the morning in a darkened room. Add to that the webwork of old scars across one side of Kev's face, the redder, fresher scars that showed through the spiky ash-colored hair sticking up all over his scalp; mementos from the waterfall bashing and the subsequent surgeries. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. The tremor in his hands had nothing to do with the cards he held, but if his fellow players should misinterpret that as a tell, fine with him.

  Chilikers snapped to attention as the dealer distributed starting hands. Kev glanced around for tells. Laker was petting a stack of chips even before the rest of the cards were dealt. Moriarty didn't like his hand. Kev felt it, from the set of his shoulders, the muscles contracted on either side of his nostrils. Chilikers's eyes had a hot gleam of excitement. Kev's eyes swept the other players, plugging in data.

  He squeezed out his hole cards. An ace of hearts and an ace of spades. In a ten-handed game, pocket aces were good almost a th
ird of the time, but the table was modestly tight. There'd probably only be three or four players in the pot, and he'd be a 3-2 favorite. He wished he could take pleasure in it, but he hurt too much. His head throbbed, and he had a heavy knot in his guts. Sensory overload. The volume was turned up to the highest decibel, and he couldn't turn it down. Whatever had damped him down before was gone. Going over Twin Tails Falls hugging an enormous tree had killed it.

  And ah, Christ, how he missed it now.

  Sunglasses helped, and ear plugs, and the poker game itself. But smells got him, too, and he could hardly go around with a plug on his nose. He was used to being stared at, but even he had his limits.

  He could have endured the sensory overload, if that had been all it was, but the overload came from inside, too. Emotions blazed through him, leaving charred trails in their wake. He wasn't equipped to handle such violent endocrinal activity, after years of floating numbness.

  Still, he preferred to call this state emotional overload rather than bugfuck insanity. Not that he could really quantify the difference.

  All day, he surfed waves of rage and free-floating terror. When those eased down, aching melancholy awaited him, interspersed with jittery euphoria. And the lust was through the ceiling. He'd steeled himself to ask Bruno about that, and Bruno solemnly informed him that constant sexual awareness was more or less normal for a healthy guy, and welcome to the club, already. According to Bruno, normal guys thought about sex constantly. All night and all day, porn footage unspooled in their heads. How normal guys managed to get through their days without totally humiliating themselves was a mystery to him.

  At night, if he slept at all, his dreams were turbo-charged nightmares that spat him into waking consciousness flash-fried on adrenaline. He was taking a protracted break from sleep. He couldn't take the stress anymore. All-night poker was more restful.

  If he could keep his mind on it, that is. He yanked his attention back to see Laker limp in with 200. Kev raised 600, three times the big blind, breathing with his mouth so as not to smell the guy's aftershave.