House of Blood

by Bryan Smith

  He’d just made love to a woman.

  Really made love to a woman.

  A beautiful, transcendent thing, one of nature’s greatest gifts. The most natural, normal thing in the world. How good it was to feel normal again, even if for only a few fleeting moments. How he would love to perpetuate this moment forever, render this carnal interlude eternal.

  But that could not be.

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  Somehow he knew it.

  And so he was not surprised when Giselle said, “Our time here is short.”

  Eddie sighed. “I thought you might say something like that.”

  She stroked his cheek. “A time of reckoning is nearly at hand. Now… tell me about your dreams.”

  So he told her. He described the woman called Dream, whose recurring presence in his dreams was so like a portent, a sign of some momentous event, something he was somehow tied to. He told her of his growing surety that Dream was a real person, not merely some symbol of the subconscious.

  “But the dreams themselves, I think, are symbolic. Something catastrophic will happen. I keep picturing fiery conflagrations. There’s a sense of temptation, a psychic war for this woman’s soul.” Eddie shook his head. “I can’t make sense of a lot of it, but I get the feeling she’s the key to… everything.”

  Giselle’s gaze flicked to the bed canopy. She looked thoughtful. “Tell me about your escape. Leave nothing out. Spare no detail, no matter how minor.”

  So he told her about the escape. The supply run to the checkpoint. How he’d slipped into one of the upbound tunnels while the guards at the undermanned station were busy taking advantage of the female members of the supply team. He was more than a hundred yards into the tunnel before he heard the dim echo of raised voices behind him. He told her of his frantic dash through the tunnels. At some point the shapeshifters picked up his scent. The memory of that awful snorting, a hungry intake of unnatural

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  breath, made him shudder in Giselle’s arms. Next he related his passage through the security booth and the surreal trip up the endless staircase.

  Giselle made a sound.

  Eddie frowned. “What?”

  She ran fingers through his hair. “I was thinking how much easier this would have been for you had we been able to approach you.”

  “We?”

  Giselle just smiled.

  Eddie’s mind reeled. There was so much he didn’t understand. “Shit. Look, I don’t care who all’s involved in … whatever’s happening. But if you needed me up here, if I’ve really got some kind of destiny to meet… why not tell me up front?”

  Giselle’s smile never wavered. “Destiny can’t be coerced.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  She kissed him lightly on the mouth. “You had to come to me of your own free will, Eddie, with no foreknowledge of the role you’re to play here.”

  “But why?”

  She sighed. “A higher power decreed it.” Her smile finally faltered. “I doubt you would have come here had you known what was in store for you.”

  Eddie didn’t like the sound of that. This rendezvous with so-called destiny gave every indication of placing him in great danger.

  Life-threatening danger.

  Which wasn’t his cuppa Joe, thank you very fucking much.

  He cleared his throat. “Look…”

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  “Shush.” She placed a finger to his mouth. “You have a rare opportunity, Eddie, a chance to achieve greatness. To do a good thing.” Something flickered in her eyes, a barely glimpsed shadow of regret. “And to help me atone …”

  He frowned again. “Wait… are you saying what I think-“

  She cut him off again. “Yes. Then we’ll be gone from here.”

  Gone?

  Eddie knew better than to hope.

  Hope was heartache waiting to happen.

  But Giselle said, “Yes, Eddie, we will.”

  She drew him into her again.

  And gasped.

  “I promise.”

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  Dream couldn’t get over how gorgeous King was. His square jaw and cool blue eyes were the stuff of steamy erotic fantasies. A wavy wedge of brown hair swept back from his brow. He was dressed in black slacks with razor creases, a starched white shirt open at the collar, and polished nut-brown loafers. A class ring of some sort glittered on one of his fingers. But the attraction was about more than appearance. There was something in the knowing way he looked at her that made her weak in the knees.

  A shudder went through her every time he turned that dazzling smile on her, as he did now. “Tell me, Dream, if you don’t mind my asking, were your parents…” He pursed his lips, as if considering the proper way to address a potentially delicate subject.”… the sort who lived on communes and traveled around the country in the wake of nomadic musicians?”

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  Alicia snorted.

  Dream shot her a look, then showed King her most open, inviting smile. “No, I don’t mind the question. I know what you’re getting at. My name.”

  King arched an eyebrow. “And a lovely name it is.”

  Dream was peripherally aware of Alicia rolling her eyes. She knew what Alicia would say privately about King. That he was phony. That he dripped false sincerity the way construction workers dripped sweat-profusely. And perhaps there would be some truth in those accusations, but Dream didn’t care. She knew King’s demeanor toward her was typical predatory male stuff. His interest in her was obvious in both the set of his features and the rapt attention he paid to her.

  And Dream loved it.

  The memories of recent wounds were still so fresh in her mind. Disillusionment caused by Dan Bishop, the ultimate phony. Rejection and scorn from Chad, the man who didn’t know-and now would never know-he was the love of her life.

  It felt good to be the object of such blatant desire.

  “Thank you,” she said, flushing. “To answer your question, my parents weren’t classic hippies. They went through a phase of that when they were very young, which happened to coincide with when I was born. My folks were eighteen and nineteen at the time. My mother named me. She later said she would have named me anything else if she’d known there’d be a hit song in the seventies of the same name. At any rate, I don’t mind the name. It’s not the burden everyone assumes.”

  King laughed. “Oh, I would hope not. A name like that’s

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  a gift. You should wear it proudly, the way a queen wears her crown.”

  Alicia echoed his laughter. “Flaunt it, baby”

  King appeared to miss her sarcastic tone. “Precisely. Let it set you apart, distinguish you from the masses. You should move through the world with arrogance, smirking at the ordinary people who can never know how it is to feel special… the way you are, Dream.”

  Dream’s smile faltered. “Yeah. …”

  What King said ran contrary to everything she believed. She disdained arrogance in people. Ditto crass displays of unchecked ego. King exuded those qualities in abundance. Everything about him, his clothes, his home, his attitude, bespoke a measure of wealth and success that was disquieting. Exceptionally attractive women, women like herself, were magnets for men like King. A lot of women allowed themselves to be seduced by money and material things. Dream couldn’t fault them. It was only human to seek security. But her experiences with successful men always left her cold. Wise in the ways of finance and business, none of them were versed enough in the nuances of the human heart to suit her. She needed a man who would prize her more for her worth as a person than her value as a trophy arm-piece. Somewhere along the way she’d decided the right man for her, whoever he turned out to be, probably wouldn’t be a slice of society’s upper crust.

  Why, then, should she find herself so drawn to King?

  But the answer was obvious, wasn’t it?

  This was a time of great upheaval in her life. Life, in fact, had beaten her. Like a hooker left broken and bloody in a ravi
ne. She had struggled so hard for so long,

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  and now she was ready to give up. She was ready to die. The enormity of it hit her for the first time since entering King’s house. Maybe her bleak mind-set was to blame. A person facing imminent death at her own hands had no reason to be bound by a lifetime’s worth of insecurities and inhibitions. The same went for principles once held dear. A man like King, cocky and so polar opposite of her ostensible ideal, was maybe exactly the right man for this set of circumstances.

  King got up to freshen his drink, then returned to the sofa opposite her. “You seem troubled, Dream. Is something bothering you?”

  Dream frowned.

  He’d known her less than ten minutes and already he was probing her for personal information. It seemed inappropriate, but… yes, she felt like she could talk to him. Something in his eyes spoke to her, indicated that all her darkest secrets could be shared in confidence. But that was ridiculous. She was assuming things she couldn’t know. Perhaps all she was seeing was lust, naked desire transformed by the filter of her desperation into something else. It was silly, even absurd, the notion that he was appealing to her on some deeper level.

  But the feeling was there, imbued with an unlikely emotional heft.

  She sighed. “Well…”

  “Oh, Christ.”

  Dream flinched at the exasperation in Alicia’s voice. She glanced hesitantly at her friend, whose unwavering gaze was locked on King.

  “I hate to interrupt your little mating dance, but tough

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  shit, we’ve all got some things bothering us.” Her eyes, hard brown pebbles set in porcelain, flicked briefly at Dream before returning to King. “We didn’t show up at your door because we had nothing better to do, Edward. We’re lost, you see, and we’re out of gas. We’re here because your place is literally the end of the road. We need help.”

  King stroked his jutting chin with a thumb and forefinger. His brow furrowed with concern. “I see.”

  Alicia smirked. “Do you? I’m not sure, man. One of our friends is dead.” She jerked a thumb at Karen Hidecki, whose face was a numb, unreadable mask. “Her boyfriend. And we’re not talking about natural causes. He was murdered.”

  Dream saw a shudder shake Karen’s thin shoulders. Shame assailed her all over again. The woman’s obvious state of shock was the only barrier holding back a complete mental meltdown. Jesus, Alicia was right to sound pissed off.

  What’s wrong with me? she wondered.

  How many times had she asked herself that very question?

  Too many.

  A picture of the Glock filled her mind.

  She breathed very slowly.

  In. Out.

  In. Out.

  She looked at King and had a thought. A thought so startling it made her swallow with difficulty. This house, this place high up in the mountains, would be the stage upon which the last great drama of her life would play out. She would either kill herself with the Glock during the night, or

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  King would turn out to be the lover she’d always needed. The heterosexual alpha male she could cling to like a life raft. She listened to the flow of words between Alicia and King, sensed on some level what was being said, but she wasn’t really listening to it.

  She was thinking of King that way again-imagining herself undoing the buttons of that clean white shirt and pulling it off him …

  … thrusting a hand inside his slacks …

  She felt wanton.

  Slutty.

  She felt disconnected from the scene in the living room. Cut off from her friends. All of existence was composed of herself and King, a vivid image of their naked bodies entwined, desperately fucking away all the pain in the world.

  She became aware of someone saying her name.

  It was Alicia.

  “Dream? You hear me, girl?”

  Dream gave her head a good shake. The world regained definition; random, senseless sounds coalesced again into recognizable words and language.

  She nodded. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “Of course.”

  But that inappropriate erotic tingle was still very present. She recrossed her legs and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. She made herself look at Alicia instead of King. “I’m sorry.” She searched for a good excuse for her distraction. The most valid one occurred immediately. “I’m just so tired. This day has gone on forever.”

  She didn’t have to fake the yawn that came then.

  Alicia’s expression softened. “I know, girl.” She smiled, a sad upturning of her lips that spoke of weariness and loss.

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  “Just bear with me a bit longer. I’m having a bit of an argument with Miss Scully here.”

  She nodded at Karen.

  Dream was startled by the Asian girl’s tear-soaked countenance. A fresh stab of shame made her wince inwardly. Christ, how could a person get so lost in fantasy that she’d miss a friend’s emotional meltdown? The grotesque inappropriateness of her thoughts made her want to cry.

  But… Jesus … the thoughts weren’t going away.

  She made herself say, “What are you arguing about?”

  Alicia scowled. “You are really out of it.” She sighed, glanced again at Karen before continuing. “We’re arguing about… the way Shane died.”

  Karen whimpered, a sound that tugged at Dream’s battered heart.

  “What about it?”

  Alicia’s expression grew more solemn. “She’s still insisting he was killed by a monster. She’s been telling Edward here about what she believes she saw in the woods, a vivid description, granted, but obviously a product of hysteria and stress. I say she didn’t clearly see Shane’s killer, so her mind supplied her with images gleaned from movies and books. Delusions-“

  Karen turned on her. “I saw what I fucking saw, Alicia!” She scooted to the far end of the sofa, away from Alicia. “I’m not fucking crazy, I’m not on drugs, and I don’t hallucinate monsters. My mind’s not so goddamn brittle. You don’t have to believe me, fine, shit, I don’t care, but please stop insulting me.”

  Alicia closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Her lips moved, and Dream knew she was counting to ten. She was

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  trying to find a calm center within herself, the place she always tapped to drain away excess hostility. Dream had seen her do it a million times.

  Her eyes fluttered open. She turned an unblinking gaze on Karen. “I’m sorry if you feel insulted, Karen. It wasn’t my intention to insult you. We’re all under a lot of stress, and I think we’ll all feel a lot better as soon as we can get a ride to the nearest hotel.” Her gaze shifted to Dream. “Right, Dream?”

  Dream’s breath caught in her throat. She was uncomfortably aware of how closely the sound resembled a gasp. A disappointed sound. She couldn’t help the quick glance she shot King’s way. “Um … yeah, sure.”

  But she didn’t like that, acquiescing to Alicia’s unflinching drive to steer them in the right direction. She didn’t like being cajoled. And she didn’t want to kill herself in a fucking hotel. She wanted to spend her possibly last night on earth under King’s roof.

  In his bed.

  She sighed.

  A frustrated-little-girl sound. She didn’t like making that sound. It embarrassed her, made her feel childish, but she couldn’t help it.

  She didn’t want to go.

  She wouldn’t go.

  Fuck it. Fuck them. Fuck everything.

  A look of exasperation creased Alicia’s face. “Oh, what, Dream?” She shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated way. “Please don’t get weird on me. I’ve seen you making googly eyes at studly here. Cool, fine, I understand lust. What I don’t understand is this lack of grace under pressure.

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  This is the wrong goddamn time for hanky-panky. I’m counting on you, girl. Help me get us out of this.”

  Dream seethed.

  Alicia’s famous bluntness was intact, but it had be
en a long time-since shortly after the escapade with the razor-since Dream had felt the brunt of it.

  So she lashed out.

  “You’re not my fucking nanny”

  But Dream was instantly appalled by the utterance.

  “I’m sorry, Alicia.” She sobbed. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”

  Alicia came to her without words, took her into an embrace, and wiped her tears away. She held Dream close, cradling her face against her neck. Dream snuggled into the crook of her friend’s neck. Sobs continued to shake her body. Her friend’s strong arms around her were a reassuring statement of strength. It was what she liked best about Alicia. She was stolid. Dependable. Implacable. She would absolutely never, ever crack under pressure.

  As always when Alicia comforted her, she quickly began to feel better. She breathed a shuddery sigh and broke the embrace. “I’m okay now.”

  Alicia looked at her with concern. “You sure, hon?”

  Dream wiped her eyes. “Yes.” She managed a fragile smile. “Sorry about that.”

  Alicia rolled her eyes. “Oh, hell, don’t apologize for being human.”

  King loudly cleared his throat.

  They all turned their heads toward him. He sat in his chair with one leg propped over another, his big hands clasped over a knee. A look of bemusement played across

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  his handsome features. Dream found herself unsettled by the expression. There was a disturbing quality to it, something she couldn’t quite pinpoint, something … And then she had it. The realization struck her like a sack of rocks.