“I loved you,” Erik said sadly, “and you used me.”
She shrugged. “People use each other. I know that better than most.”
“You became just as much of a monster as the ones who enslaved you,” Erik told her. He shook his head. “No, you became a worse monster.”
“Worse?” she repeated, her voice a harsh growl, as she sat up suddenly. She gripped his arm and pulled him to face her. He winced as her fingernails dug into his arm, drawing blood. “You know nothing! You have no idea what it’s like to be raped and beaten every day, many times a day. You know nothing of worse!”
Erik glanced down at the blood flowing down his arm. “You’re right. I don’t. But you know nothing of loving someone who will never love you back, someone who will never see you as anything more than a toy, a weapon.”
She rolled her eyes. “You were always so sensitive.”
“Once upon a time, you liked that about me,” Erik muttered.
“Only because it made you so easy to manipulate,” Alana said.
Erik rolled his eyes and crawled out of bed. He began searching his dresser drawers for a pair of sweatpants, anything to put between him and the beautiful but evil seductress lying on his bed. “I hate seeing you here.”
“In your bed?” Alana asked with a raised eyebrow.
“In my dreams,” he corrected. “I should call them nightmares, really.”
She giggled, “Stop being so melodramatic.”
He picked up one of the daggers lying on his dresser and sliced his arm.
Alana sat up suddenly, scowling at him. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to wake myself up,” Erik muttered, wincing at the pain.
She rolled her eyes and hopped out of bed, striding over to him with small, graceful steps, her hips swaying seductively with each step. She took the dagger out of his hand and wrapped one of her small hands around his arm.
He watched her apprehensively as she leaned down and covered the cut with her mouth. She licked from the beginning of the cut to the end, closing her eyes as she swallowed the blood. His eyes darkened hungrily as he watched her.
By the time she pulled back and licked the blood from her lips, the cut had already healed. “You taste just like I remember. I’ve missed your taste.”
“You’re dead,” Erik reminded her, or maybe he was reminding himself.
She smiled. “So you keep saying.”
“I just want to wake up and not see you here,” he said quietly.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’ll wake up when I want you to wake up.”
He frowned at her. “You’re just a figment of my imagination. A memory. You have no control here. You can’t stop me from waking up.”
“Are you sure about that?” Alana said as she fiddled with the dagger.
“Uh, yeah,” Erik stated, “because you’re dead.”
She looked up at him, her lips curving at the edges into her most seductive smirk. “Telepaths can control dreams, you know. Dreams are just illusions. They happen all in the mind.” She tapped her forehead for emphasis.
His brows furrowed. “Of course I know. You used to get into my head all of the time when I was dreaming. You would do it to Kara, too.”
“Kara,” she repeated, smiling. “Kara and I had so much fun together.”
“Yeah, when you weren’t being a bitch to her, too,” Erik muttered.
Those dark blue eyes narrowed at him. “You’re being mean tonight.”
He shrugged. “It’s my dream. I can say whatever I want here.”
She raised a challenging brow at him. “Are you sure about that?”
He frowned at her, not sure what she meant by that.
“Speaking of Kara,” Alana said suddenly, “have you seen her lately?”
“Not since I left the Tomb of Blood,” Erik answered, still frowning.
“You should go see her,” she suggested. “You might need her help.”
His frown deepened. “For what? What the hell are you talking about?”
Alana shrugged. “I suppose I’ve just grown tired of waiting.”
“This dream is making no sense,” Erik muttered under his breath.
She stepped away from him, still carrying the dagger, and began to circle the room. “Your bed stinks of other women,” she muttered bitterly.
“Jealous?” Erik teased with a cocky grin.
She looked back at him. “A little,” she admitted.
His smile faded as he realized how honest she seemed. For a moment, he almost forgot that this was just a dream. “You had tons of lovers.”
“As did you,” Alana murmured. “Maybe that’s why it didn’t work out.”
He glared at her. “It didn’t work out because you controlled me.”
She shrugged. “I’m a telepath. It’s what we do.”
“Kallias doesn’t do that to me,” Erik told her.
“Awww. Does Kallias make love to you, too?” she sneered.
He rolled his eyes at her. “It’s not like that, and you know it.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know anything. I’m dead, remember?”
Erik frowned at her and the mocking tone of her voice.
She continued to circle the room, trailing her hand across the red satin sheets and the oak dresser. “I’ve always thought this was such a sensual room.”
“You’ve never seen it. You’re dead,” he reminded her.
She returned to him. She trailed the tip of the dagger along the dragon that stretched across his torso. “Why did you do this to your beautiful skin?”
He scowled at his tattoo. “I like it.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t,” Alana snarled. “I liked your skin before.”
Erik glanced apprehensively at the dagger. “Good thing you’re dead.”
She narrowed her eyes at him and then leaned in close to him. She entangled her fingers in his wavy, blonde hair and pulled his face closer until she could press her lips to his ear and whisper, “If I were still alive, I would make you claw your skin off until there was nothing left of that ugly mess.”
He jerked back, his heart pounding rapidly in his chest, cold, icy fear rushing through his veins. “My subconscious remembers you a little too well.”
She flashed a taunting smile at him. “Because…you still love me.”
“I think you’re mistaking hate for love, princess,” Erik snarled.
Alana glared at him and shoved the dagger into his stomach. He fell forward and braced his hands on her shoulders to stop himself from collapsing on the floor, feeling the pain as intensely as he would have if it were real life.
“You hurt my feelings,” she said, the dagger still buried in his stomach.
“So you stabbed me?!” he croaked.
Alana pulled the dagger from his stomach and glanced down at the wound that wasn’t healing. He fell back against the wall, covering the wound with his hand as he tried to slow the bleeding somehow. “You’re starving yourself. It’s ridiculous,” she snarled. “If you were still with me, I would make you feed.”
“I don’t want to feed,” he said hoarsely.
She rolled her eyes. “You can’t lie to me. I see your thoughts.”
“Fine. You’re right,” Erik admitted. “But that’s not who I am anymore.”
“I don’t like seeing you in pain like this,” Alana sighed.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You just stabbed me!”
“You deserved that. You were being mean to me,” she muttered.
He glared at her. “Forgive me, princess. Should I bow? Kiss your feet?”
She laughed. “Now you’re just being snarky.”
“This is my dream,” Erik whined.
“Is it?” Alana said, raising an eyebrow. She placed her hand over his stab wound, letting the blood ooze through her fingers, as she stared at it.
Erik’s eyes widened as he realized that the wound was healing.
“Because it seems to me,” she sighed, “that
I’m the one in control.”
He stared at the closed wound in shock. Aside from the remaining blood that coated his skin, it looked as if it had never been there. He had to remind himself that, of course, it had never been there. This was only a dream.
“I brought you a gift,” Alana announced, her blue eyes wide and bright.
He scowled at her. “A gift,” he repeated dully.
Alana held out her hand, which was still coated with his blood, and as he stared at the empty hand, an orchid suddenly materialized out of thin air.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “What? Are you a magician now?”
“It is pretty neat, isn’t it? This is why I like dreams,” she said, smiling.
As he saw that innocent, childlike smile on her face, he almost smiled back, but then he caught himself. He couldn’t keep doing this to himself.
“Do you remember?” she asked, holding out the orchid to him.
Erik glanced at the orchid. The blood on her hands stained the petals, turning some of them black in places, but he could still clearly see that it was a blue orchid. It wasn’t a common type of flower, but he knew one place where he could always find them. It was a place he’d gone often…back when he loved her.
“Of course I remember,” he murmured.
“You used to give them to me,” she said, smiling. “You’d say…”
“It matches your eyes,” Erik finished for her, returning the smile.
Alana twirled the orchid’s stem between her fingers. Her eyes seemed reminiscent and sad as she stared at it. “You loved me so much back then.”
“And you didn’t love me at all,” Erik said bitterly.
She looked up at him, her blue eyes soft and sad. “Maybe I tried.”
“Maybe,” he agreed.
She skipped happily over to the nightstand and deposited the orchid beside an empty liquor bottle. She seemed so innocent now, so good, but that was the way Alana always was. She seemed good until she wasn’t. She returned to him and pulled him in for another kiss, and he didn’t resist. He was hurting too much to resist right now, not from the stab wound, but from the memory of her.
They kissed for the longest time, a slow, affectionate kiss that Erik had never shared with anyone else. Finally, he pulled away, breathless and wanting.
“I want you back, Erik,” she whispered against his lips. She stepped backward, flashing a seductive smile at him. “And I always get what I want.”
—
Erik came awake with a start, his heart pounding rapidly against his chest. He glanced around the dark bedroom and breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that he was alone. He ran his hand over his stomach, paranoid that there would be blood, but of course, there was none. He was fine, and he was alone.
“Alana is dead,” he told himself over and over. “It was just a dream.”
He briefly considered finding Kallias and Rose and telling them about the unsettling dream, but he decided against it. They had bigger problems to deal with—life-or-death problems, problems far more immediate than his weird dream about a dead, psychotic ex-girlfriend. Certain that he wouldn’t fall asleep again anytime soon, he crawled out of bed and began sifting through drawers, searching for clean clothes. He froze as he noticed something on the nightstand.
Erik forced his feet to move back over to it, his heart now thundering in his chest again. Lying on the nightstand was a blue orchid with blood-soaked petals, the same exact orchid that Alana had given him in the dream.
To Be Continued…
To Be Continued
in
THE TOMB OF
BLOOD
CREATURES OF DARKNESS: BOOK TWO
BY BRITNEY JACKSON
Find updates at:
www.britneyjackson.com
About The Author
BRITNEY JACKSON
Britney Jackson is a fiction author who especially enjoys writing fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror stories. She is the mother of two beautiful, little boys that she loves with all of her heart. She resides in Tuscumbia, Alabama. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Fine Arts and Religion, and she is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in English. Britney has been passionate about writing for as long as she can remember. Art, such as literature and music, helped her endure some of the darkest periods of her life, and she hopes that her books will be there for others who need a literary escape. When she is not writing, she can be found drinking massive cups of coffee, playing music, obsessing over some awesome fictional characters, or embarking on the wild and dangerous adventure known as motherhood.
Or…in Britney’s words, “Basically, I’m weird, and I write.”
You can learn more about Britney Jackson and her books on www.britneyjackson.com.
You can also connect with Britney Jackson and see updates about her books by becoming her friend on Facebook at www.facebook.com/britneymjackson.
The Stone of the Eklektos Page 81