by Emma Dawn
That got me moving more than any other words could have from his mouth. Rose needed me and I wasn’t going to let her down.
I got the truck moving, angling it so we could climb out of the valley between the lanes of the highway. The back end slid a few times, but soon enough, I was back on the road on the far side of the accident scene.
“Your home is north, not south,” Pompous said.
“Yeah, well, St. Martin’s hospital is south and that’s where Rose is going, so I’m going there,” I snapped. “You know what, Pompous, why don’t you just be quiet. Hallucinations should not be back talking their creator.”
Chuckles bent at the waist, howling, the sound of his mirth filling the truck. “Pompous, that’s the name you’re giving him? Really? I thought that was just for the dreamscape.”
“Yes, Chuckles, it is.” I glared at him in the rearview mirror. I didn’t know what to make of these four men, of their sudden and very real appearance in my life. But none of it mattered, not when Rose was . . . God, what if she was dying? My throat tightened and tears filled my eyes, but I didn’t slow down. I was a good driver. I’d been dealing with the northwest weather my whole life and I was not going to let crazy emotions derail that ability.
The men were quiet for a moment, but it didn’t last. “How far to the hospital?” Cranky asked, his voice a deep rumble.
“Probably thirty minutes in this weather,” I said. “Why?”
“Perhaps Pompous should explain a few things before we get there,” he said. I noted more than a hint of irritation in his voice.
I shot a look to him in the rearview mirror. “Why are you being nice? Shouldn’t you be trying to make me cry?” Not that he’d ever made me cry in the dreamscape—if that’s what it was really called—but he’d been the least forthcoming, and the most irritable.
“I’m not being nice. I’m being practical. And I would never actively try to make you cry. Crying women are . . .difficult to soothe.”
Chuckles leaned forward. “Please tell me what you call him again. I love hearing it from your sweet, soft lips.”
“Cranky Pants.” My lips, the lips in question twitched, and Chuckles fell apart again. Normally, I would have joined in with the laughter, but I was too worried about Rose.
“What are you?” I blurted out. “You’re not vampires, seeing as you were out in the sun.”
“No, we are not,” Spanish said. “You saw my magic?”
“I saw your, wait--” My jaw dropped. “Magic?”
“Yes, magic,” Pompous said behind me. This was the strangest, then swung to most terrifying, and then swung back to strangest day again that I’d ever had. “We are Warlocks.”
“Okay, so ... why have you been coming to me in my dreams then?”
There was a shifting of weight on the leather seats that made me narrow my eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Chuckles leaned forward. “You’ve been calling us to you, Dominique. It was you who brought us into your life. And we’d like to know why.”
Chapter 3
“No, no. I did no calling of four strange men, in cloaks, who believe they are wizards—”
“Warlocks,” the four corrected me in unison.
I waved a hand at them, daring to take it off the wheel in order to get my point across that the semantics of a name didn’t really apply here. “Whatever. But I didn’t call you. I didn’t so much as offer up a prayer for a man in my life, never mind four, never mind four who think they are magical and who show up in my dreams half-dressed but hidden from me. If I were calling you, and you were real, we’d be back at my place naked as the day we were all born.” Okay maybe that was a bit much, and far bolder than my normal way of doing things but I’d been pushed to my edge here and I was about done with the crazy. There was no way this was real. End of story.
“You saw the magic,” Spanish said softly. “Will you deny it?”
“I saw green sparkles that could be anything. Fireworks, for all I know,” I said. Why was I having such a hard time with this? I’d met vampires and even werewolves. Why were warlocks so much harder to accept? Because a part of my brain was nodding away, trying to tell me that existence of magic actually made a wicked kind of sense, and helped to explain the depth of reality to the dreams.
I fought it because they were trying to worm their way into my life for some reason I could not figure out, which meant it felt like my choices were being taken from me and I didn’t like that shit.
“Look, I don’t know what I saw back there.” I gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. “Hallucinations are not uncommon under stress. My therapist told me that.”
“You saw us save the lives of a good many people in order to save your life,” Cranky said, his voice gruff. “We exposed ourselves for you and that means we will be held accountable for that exposure.”
“Technically, your clothes were on so there was no exposure,” I quipped, unable to not sass him. He drew it out of me, this need to make him laugh when he seemed to want nothing more than to be a cranky pants.
I frowned, my thoughts catching up to me as I caught on to what he was really saying. “You mean, you wouldn’t have stopped that accident if I had not been in danger?”
“That is not how magic works,” Pompous said. “There must be a strong reason to reveal ourselves. We are the guardians of the magical world. We keep the humans from seeing the monsters in the dark that truly exist. There are strict rules we must follow for the safety of all involved.”
I lifted my eyebrows and looked in the rearview mirror. Still cloaked, I couldn’t see his eyes but that didn’t mean I didn’t try. “Four of you do all that? Amazing.”
My sarcasm was not lost on them.
“There are warlocks all over the world that do as we do. And we are in dire straits—”
Cranky cut off Pompous. “No. She does not need to know our troubles. We are here to figure out why and how she is calling us and then we will wipe her memory and leave her to her boring life as she sees fit to live it.”
My jaw ticked and my skin flushed. “I do not have a boring life.”
“You do. You hide in that house and you hide in your dreams.”
Tears crept to the edges of my eyes. “Well, maybe I have a reason for that. Did you ever think of that, asshole? And if you don’t like women crying, maybe you should try to not be such a dick.”
I didn’t realize I’d shouted at him until the words echoed in the air around us. I hunched over the steering wheel. “I don’t want any of you in my life. So why don’t you just go?”
“We cannot. At least, not until we find the reason between this connection between us all,” Spanish said.
Silence fell over the truck after that and I didn’t break it with so much as a sniffle, though tears tracked down my cheeks. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing me cry. Spanish sat across from me, and I felt his eyes on me the most. I refused to look at him. Besides, they hadn’t so much as given me their real names, or taken their hoods off, which only leant the whole situation to being not real. Again, more? I didn’t know anymore. My head was so muddled with fear for Rose and confusion over the four warlocks.
The hospital finally appeared in the distance and I pulled in, not bothering to find a parking spot or buy a ticket. Who thought making hospital parking pay parking was a good idea anyway? What a bunch of assholes.
Assholes, I was surrounded by assholes. The four men in cloaks who believed they were warlocks strode in with me, or maybe around me was more accurate. I pushed at their bodies in frustration as they drew close enough that their bulk blocked the majority of the gusting in wind and snow, but also blocked my ability to see where I was going. “Get out of my way!”
“We are going to protect you until we know why it is you have called to us,” Pompous said as he turned to face me.
Damn them all. I shoved him hard, the palms of my hands flat against his chest. Yup, he was just as rock hard as I remembered
from my dreams. Maybe harder. A snap of lust caught hold of me and I fell forward into his arms as my knees buckled. He wrapped his arms around me and then I was staring up into the shadows of his hood. A flicker of green in the depths of the hood were the only indicator of eyes. Eyes that glowed like a cat’s, deep in the jungle. I clutched at his shirt, struggling to breathe. “Let me go. Rose needs me.”
“You first.” His lips twitched and those hands of his slid down my back until they rested in the hollow of my spine, touching the edge of my shirt still damp from the snow. As if he just had to slide a finger under it and then he’d be touching my skin.
And the scars that were there waiting to be seen.
I jerked away from him so hard, my back slammed into Cranky. He caught me so my back was against his chest, his warmth seeping through me. I didn’t even realize I was cold until his body was there, chasing away the winter. I laid my hands on his forearms, feeling his muscles twitch under my fingertips. Again, a powerful pull in the center of my body made me want to spin around and . . .not just kiss him, I wanted to fuck him until I was unable to move. I gasped and once more jerked away, only this time Chuckles and Spanish put their hands out at the same time, steadying me.
Their combined touch left me swaying on the spot, shivers running up and down my spine, pooling near my center that ached for nothing more than to let them touch me however they wanted. I tensed, pulling my arms in tightly around me so I didn’t reach out and touch them. I stared at the concrete and hurried away from them toward the doors of the emergency room entrance. Confusion, lust, and fear danced through me or maybe chased me was a better word than dancing.
I reached the intake station and the nurse took one look at me and her eyes widened. “Miss, what happened?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” I said through suddenly chattering teeth. “My friend was in a car accident. They brought her here, or they said there were bringing her here.” Shit I should have checked to make sure this was the right hospital.
“What’s her name, honey?” Her kind words undid me and the tears spilled over the edges of my eyes.
“Rose Duvall.”
“Hang on, let me see.” She tapped on her keyboard, plugging in Rose’s name. “Okay, she just came in. She’s in emergency still. You’ll have to wait until they move her to a room.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “So, she’s okay?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes were sad. “There is nothing on her chart yet and even if there was, I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you unless you are a spouse or parent.”
I slumped where I stood. “No. I’m not either. Is there somewhere I can wait?”
“I suggest you go home.” She paused and then nodded as if to herself. “I’ll take your number and as soon as they move her, I’ll have you notified. Does she have any other family we can reach out to?”
I shook my head. “No, they’re estranged.”
“Even so, we should let them know.” Her words echoed as if she were holding back from saying something that would upset me. She wanted to let Rose’s family know where she was in case Rose didn’t make it, and maybe her estranged family would want to say goodbye.
I bit my lower lip. “I’ll just wait here. I don’t want her to wake up and be scared and think I wasn’t worried about her.”
“Well, if you’re going to wait, there is a patient waiting room over there.” The nurse pointed back the way I’d come. I expected to see four large men standing there, but there was no one. Just the waiting room with a couple of vending machines and what looked like a relic of a coffee machine that hummed and shook on unsteady legs.
“Here. Take this and get warm,” the nurse handed me a folded blanket, “and I’ll let you know as soon as something changes.”
I mumbled my thanks, all the adrenaline leaving me in a rush. I moved to the poorly padded chairs and slid into one, my mind going blank in an instant. The fatigue from poor sleep and the energy my body had exerted with all the adrenaline left me numb, empty. I sat for hours, unmoving as people rushed in and out around me like I wasn’t even there. And maybe I wasn’t.
Maybe I was still inside some sort of trapped dream I couldn’t escape. Could it possibly be that my dreams had ramped up and I’d created this whole thing inside my head? Was it possible that I was asleep and Rose was just fine? Maybe the four men were just a hallucination I didn’t want to let go of and that was why I kept making up reasons to see them.
That’s probably what my therapist would say. She was still trying to get me to admit I knew who had cut me up, and that’s why I “didn’t recall” the night in question. I sighed and burrowed deeper into the thin blanket.
There was a TV to the right above my head and one of the other people waiting in the room turned it up, drawing my attention. The patient with the remote in his hand turned to me and then gestured at the TV.
“Did you see this accident? It’s unreal. Two semis slammed through twenty some odd cars and only two people were killed. Crazy. Not to mention the nutjub in the pickup truck driving into the scene.”
I lifted my head to see the footage of the accident playing out in front of me. The same accident I’d lived through. Someone on the other side of the highway had caught it on their camera phone. There was me in Ally’s truck driving down into the valley between the highway, snow spraying out around me, then I was jumping out and then . . .there were no men in cloaks. The two semi-trucks slowed, stopping before they crashed into the accident scene. There was no magic. Nothing but the reality I was obviously in deep trouble.
“I’m losing my mind,” I whispered to myself. “Completely and utterly insane. That’s the only answer.”
I slid further into my chair and pulled the blanket around my shoulders making a type of hood, not unlike the four men who were apparently haunting me. I didn’t care if I looked like them. I was not going anywhere until Rose could walk out with me, and she would help me get a hold on this madness. She always had before. I closed my eyes and then forced them open. I didn’t dare go to sleep and chance meeting up with the four figments of my imagination, not in the state of mind I was in.
God, I wished Ally was with me. I wished she could just tell me that it would be okay. She only had a couple of years on me at thirty-nine now. And you’d think that by the time a woman was in her late to mid-thirties, like me, she would be surer of herself.
But . . .after the scars appeared, I’d lost some of my mojo. I knew that. I knew that I’d pulled away from life and from doing things that were even remotely risky because I was afraid I would black out again. Because I didn’t want to get hurt again, not my body and more than that, not my heart. I rubbed a hand against my cheek and forced my eyes open again.
“Miss?”
I snapped my head up. The intake nurse stood in front of me, her eyes kind and her smile gentle. “Your friend has been moved to a room. You can go see her now.”
“Thank you.” I stood and she gave me the floor and room number: 7175, seventh floor. I made my way to the elevator bank and hit the button. Seventh floor, I could do this. Heights were not always my friend, and even the thought could send me running, but my legs were like jelly. Exhaustion was taking its toll and I felt it in every fiber of my body.
I stepped into the waiting elevator, the only passenger. I reached out and touched the button for the seventh floor and the doors slid shut, and I let out a long sigh.
“You didn’t think we would leave you, did you?”
I spun around to see the four figments of my imagination leaning against the back and sides of the elevator. I pointed at them one at a time. “You are not real. I just saw the footage for the accident and you were not on it. Get out of my head!”
“We are real,” Chuckles said. “We made it so the humans couldn’t see us. Can you imagine the panic if they knew magic was real? Or worse, what they would do to try and control it?”
I closed my eyes and pressed my hands against them. “That’s exactly the kind o
f logic I would come up with if I was trying to explain you away. Now, when I open my eyes, you will all be gone. Figments be gone.”
The door dinged and I cracked one eye open, and then the other.
The four men were gone.
I didn’t know if I should be happy or sad. Happy, I was happy because this was a good start. If I could banish figments of my imagination then I could find a therapist who could help me with whatever breakdown I was having. I doubted the one I had would be anything close to capable. I went to her because she was the one the police officer recommended.
I nodded as I stepped off the elevator, continued nodding to myself as I made my way down the hall to Rose’s room. The door was open and when I peered in, there were four beds set up. I stepped in and looked at the first two, which held older women sleeping soundly if the snoring was any indication. The next bed on the left was empty and on the right near the window was Rose. She was hooked up to an IV and several monitors, and her eyes were closed. I let out a sigh of relief.
“Rosie, you gave me quite the scare.” I pulled up a chair and sat by her bed. “Rose?”
She didn’t move. I leaned over her and touched her cheek. “Rose. Wake up.”
“Excuse me, are you her family?”
I turned. A doctor in a white lab coat with chart in hand stood behind me. He was in his mid-fifties, salt and pepper gray hair, and kind eyes. I knew him. He had been the doctor on call here when I came in to see about the wounds cut into me. “Dr. Etterson?”
He blinked a couple of times and then nodded. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember your name but I do remember your case. You are the woman who had the knife cuts into your back and chest?”
I nodded. “Yes. I am.”
He gave me a gentle smile. “Is this your sister?”
I nodded again. Close enough for me to call her my sister friend.
He picked up the chart at the end of her bed and looked it over. “I’m very sorry, but Rose is in a coma. The impact to her brain was intense.”