Ten

Quinn lifted her face to the night-canvassed sky, to the blood-red moon, and refused to tremble, denied the fear a foothold in her soul. Already, she’d come too close to that happening, and the dreams had only just begun. She had the entire rest of the night to survive.

A chittering echoed from beyond a sand dune. Whatever had made the noise remained out of reach for now, but not long enough. She slouched. So much for downtime.

Weariness shuddered through her. It would be so easy to curl up on the cool white sand beneath her boots and surrender. To let whatever monster came next do its worst and slip into oblivion for a while, despite the cost. Gripping the iron cross, its chain wrapped around her wrist, she closed her eyes. Relaxing for even a second was dangerous, but she was so tired, she almost didn’t care.

“Quinn.” Close, so close, the musical voice sang a shiver through her, more sinister for its serene softness. She didn’t want to open her eyes, didn’t want to know what new horror haunted her nightmares and knew her name.

With a resigned sigh, she faced the voice and froze. Zaire stood in the sand a foot away. He was different than outside the dream. His dark hair was shorter, in a skull cut. Same olive skin, same kiss-me mouth, but his eyes…she inhaled. His eyes, black velvet in life, now held an abysmal void, deeper and more potent than when he’d been a boy. The darkness there pulled at her, grasping for her soul.

She forced her attention to the rest of him, and her brain blanked while her body purred. Black leather boots. Trousers covered in blue-black metallic scales. And a shirt of the same iridescent material as his pants, only lighter. Black weapons hung everywhere, sword at his lean hip, knives strapped across his broad chest, on his belt, in his boots. The whip-end tail of one silver tattoo poked past his collar and licked his collarbone.

Lethal. Vicious. Magnificent.

He was her midnight fantasy and nightmare combined. Fantasy because he embodied everything she wanted. Nightmare because he wasn’t really Zaire. In her childhood, he’d snuck into her dreams, a dark presence watching over her, but whatever wore his face now wasn’t the boy from her past or the man she’d finally met. She gripped her cross tighter.

“Nice sword,” she said, her voice raspy with regret. “Come here often?”

He watched her with those fathomless eyes, unblinking, and she had the strangest impression that he memorized every detail of her. Probably searching for her weak points.

The chittering beyond the sand dune grew closer, and she nearly slumped beneath another wave of fatigue. Fighting a manifestation of Zaire along with whatever else came along made her want to cry.

“Why so sad, dearling?” Deep and soothing, his musical voice only added to her misery.

Dearling. She wouldn’t have minded Zaire calling her that, but she wasn’t about to put up with endearments from a demon, and dishonesty was a waste of time. The demons always knew the secrets she tried to hide.

“Oh, you know. All the usual.” Quinn straightened, pushing the exhaustion aside. “Nonstop nightmares. Delusions in the daytime. Trying not to ruin my mother’s political career. Figuring out what to do with my life. Meeting you.”

“Meeting me brought you sadness?” His voice lowered another octave. He shifted slightly, and his clothing shimmered, like dragon scales in the moonlight. His dark beauty squeezed her heart. What she wouldn’t give to have him be real and with her now, fighting the nightmares together. Calling her sweet names.

“It’s not you, not really. It’s the idea of you. Your existence. Knowing you want to leave.” She should kick herself. Conversing with a demon. Brilliant idea.

“Want and need are not always equal.” Flames danced in his eyes, stirring up annoying embers in her blood.

“Right.” She snorted. “I’ve been around the block a time or two, pal. You read my thoughts, manipulate my desires, and use them to tempt me into despair. Demons one-oh-one.”

He frowned. “I am not your…pal.”

Cresting the dune, a shadow raced toward them, white sand churning beneath it. In archetypal demon fashion, tendrils of fear preceded its arrival, which Quinn ignored. She had enough experience with fear to resist its pull, and the demon two steps away was much more treacherous.

And undeniably intriguing.

“Sorry about that. Do you prefer buddy?” She grinned at an unusual burst of energy. “How about chum, bro, dude, or ol’ chap?”

“Zaire will do,” he said stiffly.

“Nice Zaire costume, by the way. Pal.” She rocked back on her heels, biting her lip to keep from grinning like a crazy person. Typically, a demon staring at her with murderous intent would batter her senses with wave after wave of horror. Instead, she had the irresistible need to bedevil the demon.

Behind him, the darkness loomed larger, speeding closer with each heartbeat. A shadow man, common, familiar, and not particularly threatening. It couldn’t do much physical damage, not when she was ready. She jerked her chin at the phantom barreling down on them, five seconds away tops. Maybe that was what this Zaire waited for, backup. “Friend of yours?”

Smooth as any practiced dancer, Zaire freed a knife, pivoted, and threw it at the shadow three yards away, all before she could flinch. The darkness exploded into black and silver glitter, sparkling and lovely in the night.

He waited in silence until she met his gaze again. “I don’t have friends.”

A thrill coasted down Quinn’s spine, not the type of thrill she’d ever experienced in her nightmares. This one spun warmth all the way to her toes and back to her scalp. This demon was dangerous, and she wasn’t even referring to the blades strapped to every limb—weapons that destroyed other demons. He made her needy and achy and tingly in all the right places.

She cleared her throat. “That was unforeseen.”

He stepped closer and dropped his chin. His clothing jangled like chainmail. “No matter what world you’re in, dream or reality, I’ll protect you. Until my last breath.”

“Excuse me?” She sniffed, offended. “Stay with the times, pal. Not all women are fainting damsels in distress. I protect myself just fine.”

His hot gaze raked from her head to the yanked-tight corset, down her leather-clad legs to her kickass boots and back again. Every inch he studied prickled. “I could break you with one hand.”

“You could try.” Tiny did not mean weak. Quinn cocked her hip and gave him the disdainful one eyebrow lift, perfected from all the occasions she’d been on the receiving end from her mother. Behind him, light gleamed, and she lifted her gaze to the sky, all danger momentarily forgotten. Stars burned in the endless stretch of darkness. Never, not once in her years of nightmares, had stars made it into her dreams. A twisted version of the moon, yes; the deep, black night often; but the brilliant scatter of white-hot silver, what she loved best about the evening…it always refused to comfort her when she needed it most. Until this particular demon showed up. A shiver thrummed through her, and she wasn’t sure whether to count it as good or bad.

The sand beside her feet exploded, and a winged, forked-tail beast the size of her head sailed up, claws aiming for her face.

In a quick, sharp strike, she flicked her cross at the demon, holding the chain. The point punctured the beast’s heart a millisecond before the Zaire-demon’s blade lopped off its head. The monster dropped to the sand in two pieces, twitching, steam rising from its black blood.

“No wonder you don’t have friends.” She met his gaze over the corpse. “I got it first. No sparkles. My kill.”

“Killing your enemies is my duty.” Challenge glowed in his black-pit eyes. “Mine.”

Quinn leaned in, tilting her chin up to hold his stare. Tall had never intimidated her. “I might freak out when the things in my nightmares show up in daylight, but in my dreams, I rule.” She poked him once in the chest. His firm, sculpted chest. “I’ll kill whatever I want, including you. Your pretty Zaire mask won’t save you.”

“You’re mistaken, Quinn.” He said her name with such low fervor she swore flames licked her neck. “From this point forward, I rule your dreams.”

Her dreams might not be comforting or refreshing, but they were the one place she didn’t question what she was supposed to do, who she was meant to be. Survival required killing, and that required control. If she gave up dominion of her dreams, she’d be lost.

While they’d discussed who did or did not command her in her dreamscape, a sand spider crept ever closer, coming in from the side. The blood-red moon cast its shadow and was the only reason Quinn noticed it in her peripheral. It matched the white sand perfectly. Without breaking Zaire’s scorching gaze, she flung her cross and impaled the thing between its eyes. It flopped onto its back, twitching.

“My dreams.” She jerked her cross back by the chain. “My house.”

Zaire’s upper lip curled in a snarl, and a wave of fear rolled from him, so strong she staggered back a step.

Quinn planted her feet and held her ground, barely. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

In a flash, he cut the distance between them and loomed over her. Warmth radiated from him, caressing her bare skin with slow fingers. “I will do whatever I wish.” His voice, hardly more than a growl, shot electricity through her nerves. “You can’t stop me, little dreamcaster.”

Watch me. A Carmichael never backed down from a challenge. The word dreamcaster stirred a flicker of curiosity, not enough to splinter her focus. Lifting on tiptoes, she brought her mouth close to his. His breath skated over her face, and her heart rattled in its cage, pressing her to complete the kiss. If only he weren’t a demon wearing Zaire’s form. This nightmare was a special sort of cruel.

“Zaire?” she murmured.

He didn’t answer, his focus fixed on her lips.

“You wish.” She plunged her cross into his heart.

***

Zaire’s eyes snapped open, his animal roar a resounding echo in the night. Perspiration dotted his nose and his breath came in gasps. He pressed his palm against his wildly beating heart, an organ that still convulsed from being stabbed in the dream.

Fire burned in his veins, gasoline to his growing rage. He curled his fingers into trembling fists. She dared. Manipulated his need for her, tricked his senses, and thrust him from her nightmare when he’d only wanted to stay with her, to protect her.

The demons, silenced for days, returned full force. They shrieked in his head, a hundred sibilant voices rattling over each other, each message the same.

Destroy her while you can.

Grasping his throbbing skull, he leaned up from the wooden recliner, and his necklace shifted, scraping his chest in a razor-cut line. Slowly, he lifted the chain from beneath his shirt. The blunt edges of the cross, the one he’d worn since Jenny gifted it to him, had sharpened into four brutal points. Whorls etched the metal, no longer shining gold, but cold iron.

Exactly like the cross in Quinn’s dream.

The voices, so abruptly reawakened, went blessedly and achingly silent.

Zaire threw his head back and laughed.