Lay Me Down (14 page)
Authors: Erin Kellison
“I hope so,” he purred.
“Well, what is it?”
He’d get to that in a sec. “Can I just say you look like a dream, and I should know, because I work every night in Rêve.”
All the girls liked Rêve, and he was the Rêve Master.
Her eyes went dull in an expression of excruciating patience.
Okay, fine. She wasn’t into him. “I’m looking for Vincent Blackman’s room.”
Her patient expression didn’t waver as she pointed with her stylus to a room not ten feet from his position, a policeman posted outside. Some might think that was a dead giveaway.
“He’s pretty shaken up,” she said. “Go easy.”
“Will do,” Harlen said, and peeled away from the counter.
Vincent Blackman had been lost for five days in the Scrape. No one expected to find him, much less that the man would emerge from sleep on his own. When the call came from the hospital, Harlen had been sent to debrief.
He flashed his Chimera badge at the officer and proceeded into the room. A blue curtain was pulled around Blackman’s bed. Harlen tugged it aside. Monitors beeped. An IV hung nearby.
The man hadn’t been in the dreamwaters a week, but he looked like he’d been stranded for years. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, his skin was sickly pale and dry, sagging slightly, as if he’d lost muscle tone in his face. The tremor in Blackman’s hands reminded Harlen of the PTSD common to soldiers returned after the war.
Harlen clenched his hands so that his own tremors wouldn’t come back.
Vince turned his head, but his gaze remained askance. “You from Chimera?”
Harlen had heard that Vince had awakened blind, even though dream injury couldn’t manifest in the waking world. Had to be psychosomatic.
“I am. Marshal Harlen Fawkes.” He paused. “I’ve been in the Scrape myself. I know how difficult it is to get out. You showed remarkable courage and strength.”
“My father?”
Harlen had known the question was coming, though the details in the Blackman report had been a little vague, submitted by some Vegas Chimera that Harlen had never met.
“I’m sorry,” Harlen said. “Your father is gone. We were too late.”
Vince closed his eyes. “I kind of knew it already. He’d been doing business with the wrong people. There was no way to keep up, to give them what they wanted.”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
Vince fell silent, and Harlen was about to bring up the Scrape, or specifically, the creatures that lurked in it—the reason he’d been assigned to come today. Rook’s report on what had attacked him and Jordan had been widely criticized as a nightmare and nothing else.
But Vince beat him to it. “There are monsters in the storm.”
Harlen hadn’t doubted Rook for a moment; he’d seen the scary little fucker of a creature himself. So he pulled up a chair and took out his recorder. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”
Vince’s hands shook harder on the bedsheets. He turned his head to face Harlen, though his focus was still off. “Well, the most important thing…”
“Go on.”
The tremor took Vince’s whole body, but he smiled harshly in spite of it. “They can be killed.”
EPILOGUE
“So you don’t have a dreamscape either?” Maisie lay naked, centered on his chest, her legs between his, the covers in a tangle at their feet. The position gave her a contented sense of possession. Steve Coll was trapped. Hers.
“Nope. Never,” he said. “At first I thought it was one more way I was different. But then later, I thought if I searched hard enough, I’d find it. Now I know I’m not going to.”
Different.
She didn’t like his subtle hints about when he was young, but she listened as carefully as she could because he downplayed or skipped over the most important parts. The man was chronically,
clinically
reserved about himself and his past. Every once in a while, and only Darkside, she’d get a sense of his acute isolation and pain.
If it took a lifetime of chipping away, she fully intended to break him.
“Well,” she said, “if it’s any consolation, you wouldn’t be having the best sex of your life if you were normal. You’d probably be an accountant.”
“You wouldn’t be with me if I were an accountant?”
“Nope. Sorry.” A worse thought occurred to her. “Or, God, a podiatrist.”
“You have something against feet?”
“No, boredom. Monotony. Suburbia.” Although she kind of enjoyed being holed up with him in a cozy cabin in the mountains.
“There are accountants and podiatrists who live in cities.”
“You’d live in the suburbs. I know it. You should be grateful you’re different. You should thank God and Maisie every day on your knees that you were born a freak.”
He grasped a fistful of her hair in his hand and tilted her head back so she could see his silver eyes. She could feel him stirring against her belly, too.
Much better.
“We only have ten minutes before we’re wanted Darkside,” she said, skimming her hands up his chest.
Rook was bringing Marshal Harlen Fawkes into Maze City. Rook trusted him enough to let him know what had really happened, since it seemed that Lambert had indeed survived her letter opener. She’d failed her first murder attempt.
Steve gave her a mocking frown. “Don’t feel bad. You’ll get him next time.”
“Ten minutes, Steve,” she said impatiently.
“You seemed upset about it.”
“Read my mind now,” she demanded.
But he was already gathering her up, turning her in the bed, so that he pinned her beneath him. “Once again, Maisie, you are absolutely right.”
THE END
Book Three in the Reveler Series will be released on June 9, 2014
THANK YOU!
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OTHER BOOKS BY ERIN KELLISON
The Reveler Series
UNTITLED (book three - coming soon)
The Shadow Series
The Shadow Kissed Series
The Shadow Touch Novella Series
Hotter On The Edge Anthologies
Anthologies of science fiction romance novellas
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Erin Kellison is the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling and award-winning author of the Shadow series and Shadow Kissed series, which share the same world, where dark fantasy meets modern fairy tale. RT calls
Soul Kissed
, “a dark fairy tale with a twist, perfect for readers who love passion with their fantasy.” Delve into dreamscapes in her new Reveler series, releasing Spring 2014.
LAY ME DOWN
Copyright © 2014 by Erin Kellison
ISBN: 978-0-9904107-1-3
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