Broken Illusions: A Midnight Dragonfly Novel (24 page)

A dream, I realized. I’d once again awoken inside a dream.
“You’re still here.”

His eyes find mine, and warmth gleams. “Where else would I be?”

Where he always is when I wake up. “Gone.”

“I told you I wasn’t going anywhere.”

Memories drift, hazy, frayed, but not close enough to touch. “No.” There’s no fear here, no caution or reason, no reservation. “That’s not what you said.”

Against my face, his fingers still. “Then tell me what I did say.”

Sometimes memory sharpens, and sometimes it distorts. But sometimes it crystallizes, and sometimes it sustains. “That you’d always find me,” I murmur, reaching for his hand.

He takes over, sliding his fingers among mine.

For the first time I look around. “But you lied,” I say. “You left.” Without saying good-bye. One second he’d been there, in the morgue, holding a gun on the psychopath with a knife to my throat—and then he’d just been … gone.

“And you didn’t come back.”

“I’m here now.”

Reality edges closer, cuts deeper. “No.” Beyond the curtains, light slips into the small room. The haze will fade then, and he’ll leave. “If you were real…” I squeeze my eyes shut and concentrate on slowing my breath, holding on.

I’m not ready for the dream to end.

“If I was real, what?”

I struggle for words, can find none.

“I’d be right here,” he promises. “Right where I am.”

I want to believe him. I want to grab onto his vow and hold it. But the ledge is narrow, the fall endless. I’ll wake up then, and—

“No.” Reality slips closer. “You’re going to leave again—just like you always do.”

Beside me he shifts, bringing his face to mine. “Not always.”

So close. All I have to do is lift a hand, and touch. “Stop it,” I whisper. “Please.”

“Stop what?”

“Torturing me.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

I’ve never stayed in the dream this long. Sometimes we talk, but these words are different.

“This isn’t right,” I say. I can’t stay. I know that. I have to go back.

“Good-bye,” I make myself say. That’s a first. Always before, he’s the one who leaves. This time it has to be me.

But shadows still fall. Light still leaks around faded brocade curtains. Crimson, I realize. Dark and thick, with gold roses. I still lie in a small bed—and he still sits next to me.

“No…” I whisper. The word burns.

His chest is still bare, endless, impossibly defined. Along his bicep the intricate pattern of the dream catcher—

My breath stops. Or maybe that’s my heart. I’m not sure.

“Welcome back.” His smile is slow, lazy.

I make myself blink again, make myself swallow—can’t stop staring at the lines of the dream catcher inked against his bicep. “Omigod…”

“Easy.” He reaches for me. “You’ve been out—”

I wrench away, yanking the covers with me. “No.” The room is small, sparsely furnished. The heavy curtains are drawn. The bedside clock reads 1:37.

“No, no, no…” Not real. It’s not real, not any of it. He isn’t there—I’m not there. Not really. “This isn’t how it happens. I’m still asleep. This is all just—”

“A dream?” His eyes are so very, very dark. “Afraid not, little girl.”

I freeze, but the months fall away, and for a fractured moment I’m back in the kitchen of that small French Quarter apartment, backed against the cabinets. I hadn’t been thinking clearly. I hadn’t been thinking at all.

“Careful, little girl,”
he’d said.
“You don’t want to start a game without knowing who you’re playing with.”

“Stop it,” I say now, scrambling back. “Please just … stop.”

“
I wish it was that easy,” he says quietly. “But not everything can be stopped once it’s started.”

My throat closes up on me. I try to swallow, to breathe—then I see my clothes, damp and draped over the back of a chair across the room.

And the last of my denial shattered.

“Oh, God,” I whispered, looking up at him, at the angles of his face and the hair slicked back to reveal the burning silver of his eyes, so narrow and concentrated, as if, like me, he didn’t trust himself to blink, much less look away.
“It’s really you.”

TWENTY-TWO

Four months had passed. Four months since three snarling rottweilers had raced toward me, and with one quiet word, he’d stopped them.

Alletez.

Four months since I’d turned to see him standing in the shadow of his father’s patio, since he’d kneeled before me and gently applied the amber, sulfur-smelling salve to my palms, and within hours, they’d healed.

Four months since he’d gone into the river after me, giving me first his breath, then his shirt. Since he’d spun around when I screamed, silently lifting his gun. I’d had no doubt he would kill the man pressing the knife to my throat.

Four months since he walked away.

I’d never seen him again.

Except that wasn’t true, either. That was just what I remembered. The rest, the images that came to me behind closed eyes, belonged to some alternate time and place.

“Give yourself a few minutes,” he said, leaning closer. “You’ve been out awhile.”

Fragments of memory hovered, but none of them fit. Everything was fuzzy and jumbled—hazy.

I’m not sure why I lifted my hand, but all I could think was touch—I had to touch.

His skin was like fire. I laid my palm there, against the inked feathers along his bicep, and felt the warmth seep through the fog.

“I don’t understand,” I murmured. “How is this not a dream—I was driving—”

It hit me hard, and it hit me fast. I surged forward, my throat tightening all over again. The car—the canal—the water pouring in—someone had dragged me out. “Oh, my God, it was you—”

I tried to scramble back, but Dylan caught me, taking me by the arms with a gentle strength that stopped me. It was only then that I realized how badly I was shaking.

“
Trinity.
” His voice was druggingly steady. “Don’t even go there,” he said, his eyes holding mine. “You know that’s not true.”

I did. I knew that. Dylan would never hurt—

“But I don’t understand…” Beyond the width of his shoulders, the walls of the small hotel room pressed in on me. “The guy in the gold car. He—”

“—can’t hurt you anymore.” Gently, Dylan eased me back against the bed and pulled the sheet to my shoulders.

Nothing made sense. “He had a syringe—”

“It was a sedative. You’ve been out awhile.”

Memory flashed—and my arm throbbed. Robotically I looked down, lifting my hand to touch the small red welt. “But…” I had no idea where the dream ended and reality took over. “You … you were there? I didn’t see—”

But I
had
heard …

“Get your goddamn hands off her!”

The voice had been furious—lethal. I stared at him now, watched his face twist with something I didn’t understand.

This was the second time, I realized numbly, the second time I’d gone under, and he’d pulled me back.

The second time I’d opened my eyes to the silver of his.

“How did you know?” The words scraped. “How are you always here when everything falls apart?”

The corner of his mouth, with the faintest residue of dried blood, lifted. “Good timing, I guess.”

“And bodyguarding,” I murmured.

The smile, if it had even been one, faded. “It’d be easier if it was only about your body.”

I looked away, across the room, where a gun that looked like the one he’d held in the basement of Big Charity lay on the dresser.

“My father was worried. He didn’t have a good feeling when you left.”

“He … he said he was going to make some calls,” I remembered. “He told you to follow me?”

“When you never showed at Enduring Grace, it didn’t take much to realize you were headed for Belle Terre.”

A whole new picture began to form. “You were
looking
for me?”

The silver went really dark. “I got to the End of the Road about ten minutes after you,” he said roughly. “Raymond remembered you—and the guy with the gold car.”

My throat tightened. If he’d been a few minutes later—

“The bastard already had you out of the water when I got there,” he said, and finally the light in Dylan’s eyes dimmed and he looked away, down toward the edge of the mattress—but I was pretty sure he was not seeing the floral bedspread.

“I ran. I shouted your name—”

“I heard you.” My voice was as raw as my throat. “But I thought it was a dream…”

His shoulders tensed, drawing my attention to a scar across the left side. “Is that why you asked me to stop torturing you?”

Looking away, I stared at my clothes draped over the back of the chair. But I knew it didn’t matter. I could look away, walk away.
Run away.
But this was one memory I could not rewrite. Dylan had been there. He’d heard my incoherent ramblings.

I’d been so sure it was a dream, the way the sun had been slanted through the trees, falling around us. The way he’d cradled me. I’d felt so safe …

“Hold me,”
I’d whispered.
“Please just hold me.”

And he had.

“Tell me what I did,” he said now, and without thinking I looked back up, and felt my blood thicken.

“I was confused,” I sidestepped. “Mixing up my dreams—”

His eyes did exactly as I’d asked—held me. “And I was there?” he asked. “In your dreams?”

Wrong,
was all I could think. This was so wrong, being here with him, feeling what I felt …

I glanced away, noticing a paper bag on the dresser, plastic bottles sitting next to his gun. “I’m thirsty…”

A garbled sound ripped from his throat. “I bet you are.” Standing, he retrieved one of the bottles. He was taller than Chase, but leaner, his shoulders wide but not bulky. “It’s not much but—”

“Where are we?” The question just hit me—I had no idea how I hadn’t asked before.

“Belle Terre.”

I felt my eyes widen. I was there … the place from my dreams. Scrambling, I fisted the covers around me and swung my legs over the edge of the bed—

The room wobbled. “Easy,” he said, catching me as my knees buckled, guiding me to a cheap wing chair.

Sitting, I lifted a hand to the throb at my temple. “It hurts,” I whispered as he went down on a knee beside me.

“Probably the airbag,” he said. “It’s normal for things to be fuzzy.”

I looked at him, knew it was wrong to hold on. “Everything keeps spinning…”

“That’s shock.” He edged closer, his eyes concentrated on my face.

I tried to look away, to breathe, but something wouldn’t let me move. I had no precedent for this, no fallback for waking up in a hotel room with a guy I hardly knew—and the realization that somewhere along the line my clothes had been removed.

I tried to remember. I wanted to. Maybe I’d taken them off by myself. Maybe he’d held up a blanket or closed his eyes.

I wasn’t about to ask—especially when his eyes darkened, and his voice quieted. “I need to touch you.”

Something inside me quickened. “Touch me?”

“Your head,” he murmured, lifting a hand toward my face. “Is that okay?”

My mouth was so dry I could barely swallow.
“Yes.”

Gently, with a deliberation I remembered from before, he skimmed a finger beside my eye. “Am I hurting you?”

I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath, until it whispered from me. “No.”

“Good.” The pad of his finger made a slow, soft circle. “What about this?”

I closed my eyes.

“The bleeding stopped,” he said, and then his hand was gone, and with it the steady current of warmth. “Open your eyes for me.”

Wordlessly, I did.

I looked away as he leaned in, concentrated on the dream catcher against his bicep. It was the same, the exact same as the one that hung outside his father’s house—the one he had designed.
To trap bad dreams.

“Pupils look good,” he said, and pulled back. “Nothing’s changed.”

But that wasn’t true. Everything had changed.

“You could have taken me back,” I said, not understanding why my voice was so hoarse. “You could have taken me back to New Orleans.”

“No.” He handed me the water bottle he’d retrieved a few minutes before. “I couldn’t have.”

The words did cruel, cruel things to my equilibrium.

I unscrewed the cap and took a much-needed drink.
“Why not?”
I needed to know. “Why couldn’t you take me back to New Orleans?”

Still kneeling in front of me, he rocked back, and his eyes found mine. “Because that’s not where you wanted to be.”

He made it sound so simple. “What about the guy in the gold car—you don’t think he’ll come after me again?”

Now his eyes gleamed, the silver lit from the fire inside him. “Not stopping you doesn’t mean I won’t stop him.”

Words. They were just words, that was all. Words from a veritable stranger.

But they drifted around me, drifted through me, and in that moment, they were more than enough.

“You ready?” he asked.

I looked from the water to his outstretched hand, to the sunlight leaking through the curtains.

“To see?”

I reached for him, holding on as my feet found the ground and I stood. This time I didn’t sway.

Dylan opened the curtains to a mostly empty parking lot bordering a wooded area. “My father said you dreamed of this place.”

“Last night.” Along the street, seriously old-looking buildings stretched in both directions. But they weren’t the falling down kind of old, but the restored kind—the cool kind, like brightly colored …
gingerbread houses.