Eleven

Quinn’s dream collapsed on itself with a deafening roar, and she fell into a black, eternal void. She snapped awake, sucking in a great gulp of air.

The last whisper of a laugh reverberated in the sanctuary, ancient, cold, and cruel. Not a remnant of her nightmare, not in her head. That laugh was real, and as much as it should have scared her, it awakened the same unexpected thrill as her dream.

Zaire.

Rolling to her back, she pushed a palm against her pounding heart and willed it to slow. Shadows hid the rafters and corners, morning still a long way off. Nothing like that had ever happened in her dreams before. And why was Zaire laughing without her?

Drawing a shaky breath, she replayed the nightmare. Or rather, the ironically good parts. Arrogance aside, the version of Zaire spun by her dream had been delicious. She closed her eyes, her body throbbing in all the best places. Dark. Sexy. Deadly. She should’ve snagged his sword before exterminating him. No demon deserved such a lovely weapon.

But if he reappeared, she wouldn’t complain.

The floorboard creaked—the only reason she knew she wasn’t alone—and Quinn sat up. Zaire crouched beside the pew, so close she could touch him, his black eyes glittering in the shadows, so much like the boy from the past. For an instant, he wore the same iridescent blue-black scales from her dreams. In the next blink, he was back to wearing Isaac’s sweater and sweats. She rubbed her eyes. Stupid delusions.

“I heard you laughing.” She didn’t bother hiding the accusation in her voice. “Without me, which hurts. The most I get from you is a step up from a scowl.”

He tilted his head in an almost inhuman way and studied her for a long, thrumming moment. As the silence went on, the memory of that wicked laugh returned, taunting her with doubt. She could still be dreaming. This could be another nightmare. On rare occasion, she lost control of her dreams. It happened less and less, but maybe Zaire’s presence had triggered something from her past.

His focus still on her, he pulled the chain from beneath his sweater and lifted it free.

Her mouth went dust-dry. Instead of the plain, gold cross he’d worn before, her weapon of choice flashed in the gloom, plucked straight from her dream. Sharp, lethal points for killing demons, iron, and delicate whorls etched on every surface. She curled her empty fingers, missing the chain around her wrist. “Am I still asleep?”

He shook his head once curtly.

“How?” she croaked.

He glanced at her own cross hanging cool and solid between her breasts, and his mouth twitched. “You stabbed me in the heart with it.”

But…that was a dream. The Zaire in her nightmare had been a demon, not really him. Still, how would he know if he wasn’t there? The room seemed to tilt, and only the wooden bench beneath her prevented a tumble. She swayed where she sat. Her nightmares and reality collided, this time too tangible, too solid. If she couldn’t decipher delusion from the real world, she could kiss any future career, future anything goodbye.

Zaire hissed and grasped her elbows with strong, callused hands, bringing her close to his solid heat. He smelled of new snow and midnight secrets, which did nothing to help her balance.

“You were there.” She sagged against him, her head still on a tilt-a-whirl. “That was really you.”

“It was.”

Her words weren’t phrased as a question, but his answer confirmed everything her mind couldn’t process and her heart said was true. “Merde.” She eased back and stared at the center of his chest as if she could see through wool to the evidence of the wound. With trembling fingers, she grazed the spot she’d stabbed, and he flinched. She pulled away, her stomach clenching. “I hurt you.”

“I’d define it as viciously and gloriously surprised.” One corner of his mouth ticked up. He took her fingers and drew them back to where they’d been, back to his heart. Holding her gaze, he pressed his hand against hers. “Dearling.”

Everything inside her went still—her mind, her body, her soul. “When I was only a girl,” she whispered haltingly, “in my dreams, in the darkness, there was a boy.”

He sucked in a soft breath, and his eyes glittered with starlight.

“He was you, wasn’t he?”

Zaire cocked his head again in that animal way, studying her like she was a mystery he dared not solve for fear of the answers he might find. Just when she thought he wouldn’t respond at all, he nodded.

The answer she’d wanted, the confirmation she’d waited so long to hear hit her harder than she expected. Quinn whispered, the best she could do. “You never spoke or came near, and even though the monsters feared you, I was never afraid of you.” Her voice thickened with emotions kept locked away for years, feelings she’d thought long ago surrendered to the past. “One night, you just…weren’t there, and I was alone with my nightmares. You never came back.”

Quinn bowed her head to hide the sudden burn of unwanted tears. He’d been there, nameless and apart, the one steady element she didn’t dread in a nightmare landscape. When he never returned, it was as if she’d banished him to Hell with the other monsters, as if she’d lost some piece of herself and had no way of getting it back.

“I relinquished hope.” Zaire lifted her chin with one finger and brushed the wetness from her face with his thumb. “In doing so, I failed us both.”

“Never.” He didn’t deserve any blame. He’d been a child, too, and his life had been far worse than hers. “All this time, I hoped you were real. I hoped you’d find me.”

He dropped his hands and squeezed his eyes shut as though her words pained him.

Unable to resist touching him, comforting him, she leaned in and pressed a light kiss to his sandpaper-rough cheek. He tensed, and her heart sank. His acknowledgment of their strange past, woven in dreams, didn’t mean he felt the same way. Quinn eased away, ready to face the emotional blowback.

Zaire’s eyes were ebony storms, his attention fixed unabashedly on her lips.

As if still in her dream with no lingering consequences, she lifted her fingers to his mouth and traced the softness. Fire became an inferno sliding into all her secret places, and before she could reconsider, she replaced her fingers with her mouth.

He shuddered, and as she withdrew, he grasped her arms, holding her in place. Their faces only an inch apart, his breath tangled with hers, warm and unsteady. Keeping her gaze, he slid his long fingers into her hair and curled them around her skull, as though she might try to escape him. Silly man. He shifted to his knees and snared her waist with his other arm, pulling her tightly against his chest.

She dragged in a shaky breath. Being this near to him, in his arms, was her dream come true. She was thankful he held her so hard. Otherwise, she’d melt into a gooey puddle on the floor.

“Again.” His voice was hardly more than a rasp, but not a request. A command.

Either her lungs were failing, or all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, she wasn’t sure. Didn’t care. There were worse ways to die than asphyxiation by Zaire. Trembling, she leaned forward and kissed him again.

Any inhibition from before vanished. He was all deep heat and dark hunger, his callused hand exploring her ribs while his lips destroyed her senses. She arched into him, needing him closer, needing him to fill the blank, throbbing space their years apart had left behind, the emptiness when she doubted he existed outside her mind.

Without warning, Zaire ripped his mouth from hers and buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing hard, his entire body trembling and stretched tautly.

“What is it?” Her voice didn’t sound like her own, frantic and breathless.

“One moment.” The words were hardly more than a growl.

Quinn stroked a hand up his back, marveling at the muscles, the masculine ridges of ribs and shoulder. The silent boy from her dreams, the lost boy she’d secretly loved all her life, was real and in her arms. If this turned out to be a nightmare, she’d kill something. Something that wasn’t Zaire, anyway. She whispered near his ear, “I’m sorry for stabbing you.”

He huffed, the closest thing to a laugh yet, and guided her back to the pew. His expression turned grim as he sat on his heels. “My apologies. I should not have…” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I momentarily forgot my situation. It won’t happen again.”

“I disagree.” A chill crept over her skin, the loss of his contact leaving her anchorless. “You should have kissed me two days ago, and you should definitely do it again.”

His big hands curled into fists on his thighs, and he averted his face. For a second, the shadows deepened, molding around him. “I am not the same boy from your dreams all those years ago. I am not fit for a relationship of any type. But the full blame doesn’t lay at the feet of the Crows or the V’alkara. I destroy everyone and everything connected to me.” He lifted his gaze to hers. All the starlight had disappeared, replaced by an endless void. “I refuse to add you to my list of casualties.”

Quinn steadied her breath, her body still aching for him. No matter what he said, his hands had been gentle, his kiss desperate. The boy from her dreams, at least a fragment of him, still resided somewhere, deep down. Now that she’d found him, she would never let go.

“You may think you can break me with one hand, but I’m not a victim.” She scooted to the edge of the pew and ran her finger down the etched whorls of the cross laying outside his sweater. “Not even close.” Changing his mind about a belief so deeply ingrained wouldn’t happen in a day, so she had to give him reasons to stay around long enough to prove him wrong. “I’m too tired to show you the error of your perspective right now. Instead, explain how you brought my favorite weapon out of my dream. And why you called me dreamcaster.”

***

Zaire dropped his head, suddenly weary to his very bones even as lightning simmered through him, an aftershock of Quinn’s kiss, her touch, her very nearness. Her taste still lingered on his tongue, the imprint of her hands and curves permanent marks on his body and soul. It took every ounce of restraint he possessed not to drag her back against him and never let her go again. But if he did that, he’d be worse than the demons from her nightmares. He couldn’t have her, not without destroying her.

He drew a deep breath and held it, forcing his desire back into the cage where it belonged. He should have left while he had the chance, defied the need to enter Quinn’s dreams and instead limped off into the night while she slept. Now, his only option was to tell her everything, pulling her deeper into his world—one he wouldn’t be in long. His chest constricted. The thought of her involved with the Crows or the V’alkara without him to protect her made him want to kill them all.

“Hello in there,” Quinn murmured, amusement in her voice. “Still with me, sunshine?”

He lifted his head and took in her dark curls, her sweet face, the smile always lurking on her lovely lips. Heat jolted through him anew, and he fisted his hands before he gave in to the longing and reached for her again. He couldn’t leave her alone and vulnerable and ignorant. If he had to leave, he’d provide her all the tools she needed to survive.

Without him.

“Put your shoes on.” Bracing on his crutches, he stood. Tingles scampered along his entire foot and up his calf. Soon enough, he’d walk. He needed cold air to clear his head, remind him of what must be done, and freeze the burning, twisting need to take her and damn the consequences. “I’ll tell you everything outside.”

Quinn met him on the porch in less than two minutes, ski jacket and shoes on, a fleece hat squashing her curls and her face alight with excitement. She was not at all as afraid as she should be.

He hobbled down the steps and along the gravel path leading into the trees, the moon lighting the way.

“Looks like you’ll be giving up the Peg-Leg Pete routine soon.” Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she kept an easy pace beside him. “Only yesterday you couldn’t put any weight on your leg.”

“Is it my limbs you wish to discuss, Quinn?” He arched an eyebrow at her.

“I could think of worse subjects.” She lifted her face to the star-studded sky, and her grin faded. “Did you know that I’ve never been afraid of the dark?”

Shaking his head, he shouldered his way past an overgrown tree branch and held it for her. Quinn passed in a wafting breeze of apples and autumn.

“My first memory of the dark held you. You were there, watching over me like my own shadow guardian, and I wasn’t afraid.” She met his gaze. “Because you were there. Even when I couldn’t see you, I knew you were there. And you weren’t that different back then than you are now.”

He jerked to a stop, paralyzed by her words. She’d sensed him when he masked his presence. She compelled him when V’alkara couldn’t be compelled. As a child, she’d pulled him into her dreams and then effectively remained hidden from him for years—so long that he questioned having met her at all. He wasn’t sure whether her power over him related to the fact that he was her V’alkara…or her dreamcaster strength. Perhaps both. No matter the source, she’d managed to accomplish acts no one else ever had. That would make her even more coveted by his kind.

“You’re bigger, older, scarier, but that same, soothing darkness that made me feel safe in my nightmares years ago hasn’t changed.” She lifted her hand and laid it a centimeter above his heart, not touching, but close enough that her warmth seeped through his sweater. He hated that bit of space separating them as much as he was grateful for it. “I trusted you then, and I trust you now. I’m not afraid.”

“You should be afraid. You must be.” Bitterness and yearning coiled around him in a fierce hold, and he briefly closed his eyes. The night wind sliced through the leaves, a sibilant hiss beneath a heavy silence. Somewhere in the trees, pine needles crunched, a predator stalking its quarry. He would pay any price to rewind his life and find her while there was still hope for an existence together. The best he could do was leave her with everything she needed to endure the inevitable.

Alone.

“More V’alkara will come for you.” He exhaled, long and slow, and held her gaze. “Because of what you are. Dreamcaster.”

The smile on her face froze, and her heart beat hard enough to reach his ears, a distant drum in the night. Good. She was finally giving her situation the gravity it deserved.

“As long as there have been rumors of monsters, the Dreamless, the V’alkara have existed,” he continued, “and as long as they’ve existed, they have searched for a cure. Dreamcasters are the closest remedy ever found. Their dreams alone hold enough emotion and intensity to keep a V’alkara human and balanced.”

She licked her lips, a nervous tell. “Why do you think I’m a…dreamcaster?”

He snorted even as his mouth twitched into an almost smile. “It’s far too late to play oblivious now, Quinn. Even if I hadn’t recognized your face, the moment you removed your adder stone—the necklace you wear—your very essence alerted me to your nature. Further, the most I can do with a human’s dream is absorb fleeting images from their minds. With a dreamcaster, a V’alkara can immerse in a dream as though it is his own, experience it fully. Like I did with you tonight.” Like he longed to do with her every night.

Quinn wrapped her arms around herself, a thousand questions gleaming in her dark eyes. “Do dreamcasters typically have delusions during the day?”

Delusions? The word sent a ripple of unease through him. Dreamcasters were as susceptible to madness as the V’alkara for the opposite reason, and the fact that Quinn was firmly grounded strengthened his decision to leave. Obviously, she didn’t need a V’alkara to thrive.

Didn’t need him.

He embraced the hollow ache in his heart. “Typically, the creatures from a dreamcaster’s nightmares manifest while she slumbers, not while awake. Delusions would imply mental impairment.” He cupped her chin when she bit her lip, her soft skin on his driving a hot shiver down his neck. “You aren’t demented, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Good to know.” Her smile wobbled as she stuck her hands in her back pockets. “So there are others like me, other dreamcasters?”

“Dreamcasters are a rarity and difficult to find.” He didn’t want to tell her that the V’alkara currently had two in their ranks, didn’t want to give her any information that would lead her to others of his kind. “I have only encountered a handful in my lifetime, most of whom died at the hands of the V’alkara.” He shrugged, shoving away the thought of Quinn as one of those women and relaxing his grip on the crutch before it cracked. “Better dead than a mindless slave.”

She stiffened, her face paling. “If dreamcasters are a cure, why kill them?”

“Dreamcasters threaten a V’alkara’s control, and to a V’alkara, control is everything. We are ranked according to our power and control—White chose colors to identify his status system. Grays are boys and men who have V’alkara powers with no control, no training.” Fortunate enough to be not yet broken by White. “Browns are the weakest, and the colors rise to purple, green, and red. Blue to black to white. The higher the rank, the firmer the control.” Even remembering his life with the V’alkara made him want to kill them all.

“What color were you?” she asked, the question solemn.

“There is no color dark enough for me.” He moved on before she voiced all the other questions sparking in her eyes, refusing to spend his last moments with her discussing his torturous existence with the V’alkara. “Losing control was my former master’s greatest fear. He preferred to strip dreamcasters of their nightmares quickly and take what he needed, rather than risk keeping them alive long.” The demons had whispered that once upon a time, White had a dreamcaster of his own. And lost her. That loss had driven him into twisted research for a cure, for control, so he’d never endure such pain again. The demons had laughed endlessly at the tragedy—a tragedy that affected not only White, but every V’alkara he found and imprisoned and broke.

Zaire shook off the memory, and as Quinn’s features twisted, no doubt recalling the V’alkara who’d attempted to strip her mind of dreams, he softened his voice. “If it gives you any peace, while asleep, dreamcasters are potentially lethal.”

“I know that.” She dropped her gaze to the cross at his throat, the emblem he’d cherished since Jenny gifted it to him, now doubly precious. Quinn wasn’t getting it back.

He unleashed an evil smile, and her sharp intake of breath made his pulse dance faster. “And I’m going to teach you how to use your power on more than just demons.”