Into the Darkness (4 page)

Chapter Four

I huddled on my bed later that night with my knees pulled up to my chest. Thinking. Focusing on what it was I couldn’t remember. It was there, hovering around my conscious mind. Nudging me. Waiting for me to pay attention. To remember. It was the key to that insane situation in the park.

I flung my wet hair out of my face
, pulled the sleeves of my pajamas over my hands, and glanced out the window.

The stranger
waited. Outside, he watched, staring up at my shaded windows, just wanting me to know he was there. He was waiting for me to come down to him. He had the same questions I did—I was certain he felt the same things.

How did I
know this? I just did. And that scared the holy crap outta me!

“Get a grip, Sasha!” I exhaled nosily, lightly rocking back and forth. There was no way in hell I was going outside. What
, with Jared’s strange desires, bordering on constant desperation, our inability to remember the night before, a stranger stalking me, and shadows magically coming to life—

I mentally tried to trap the Pterodactyl wings of memory. Shadows, anal,
Jared’s car—why the hell wouldn’t it come clear? It was like a mental block shielding the memories from my awareness. They were there, behind a thick veil, I just had to find a way to them.

I shook my head, shoving aside the presence I felt loitering outside my apartment
like a creep and settled into my bed. I doubted sleep would come, but I might as well try. It was midnight and I had to get up early for a test.

My eyes snapped open. I looked around wildly, my room
was still and quiet. The red letters on the clock read 4:09. I’d been asleep for four hours. I’d had a dream.

Drenched in sweat, I bolted up into a sitting
position and focused on my tweed window shade; but instead, all I saw were two men battering into my boyfriend. Something had unlocked that mental vault in my sleep, and I remembered everything.

Everything.

“Oh my God.” My words sounded like gunshots in my quiet room.

I replayed every scene, from walking out of the restaurant, to Charles approaching me with a hungry smile
after the stranger—the Boss—had left. Charles had stopped right in front of me, his eyes raking down my body. Faster than lightening, he grabbed my head and stared into my eyes. I watched in petrified confusion as his smile slipped. His fluffy eyebrows settled over his eyes like low-lying clouds.

“I can’t penetrate,” he’d admonished, speaking to the shadow
man behind him.

They were real!

“You aren’t supposed to touch her,” the other had said, releasing Jared. “The Boss will rip you apart if you defy a direct order.”

Jared stared straight ahead, his eyes glazed and unseeing. He looked like a robot powering down.

“I can’t wipe her memory.” Charles had leaned closer to me, searching my eyes for a clue to solve his puzzle.

“Some humans are extraordinar
ily dimwitted. Here, I’ll help.”

I’d had time to feel indignation before my mind went blank.

What the hell had we stumbled upon? They had called us humans. They had made Jared want to have sex with a man when the guy barely wanted to have sex with his girlfriend—I was still pretty sure he was straight. Somehow, they’d used their minds to assert their will.

It s
ounded like a fable.

That
same damned trickle of adrenaline I always got when riding in a really fast car had my heart hammering and my energy zinging. My whole world was topsy-turvy, but one thing was clear.

I had to see him again.
I had to see the Boss.

I needed to know what the hell was going on. Was I losing my mind? Were the mushrooms on my steak the funny kind that made me see things? Did I ingest some Ecstasy without knowing it? Because
Jared had been right: only drugs could explain last night. It was the only plausible reason for what I was sure transpired.

I slowly lowered my head to the pillow, eyes trying to bore a hole through my window shade. What I had sensed earlier was no longer there.
The Boss was gone.

I sti
ll had no idea how I knew.

As
the next evening fell, I was in street clothes and running shoes. It had not escaped me that I was doing something so stupid, it was life-threatening. At the very least I was heading to a bad neighborhood. Even if I didn’t find man-shaped shadows, and even if I didn’t prove that what I’d experienced was real, if not completely outlandish, I was still heading toward a pack of dangerous homeless hoodlums. There was a reason people on that side of town steered clear of shelters and church-goers offering help. Even wearing grubby black clothes, I still looked like a spoiled brat from a middle-classed family.

God, I was stupid.
But I had to know.

Some part of me thought
only these shadow men would know why I was different. They might be able to shed a glimmer of light on why I noticed them and others didn’t. Why my memory was returned to me, and not Jared, who was still a clueless, humping mess.

I stepped out into the night, a strange new
world now that I suspected what the darkness harvested. I peered into each shadow I passed, and even scanned under my car for hidden villains. I imagined the headlights of my old, dilapidated Firebird scurrying strange critters out of my way.

“I should go home.” My voice echoed in the quiet car. “I should turn around, right now, and go home.”

A second later I was walking at a fast pace toward last’s night’s episode with my hood over my head and my hands in my pockets.
I’d have to work on self-control another time. A man to my right took a blanket from his shopping cart, his smell churning my stomach as I hurried past. Another man, ten feet down the sidewalk, was lighting a cigarette, the flame flickering light across his focused brow. Eyes the color and cloudiness of smoke peered upwards, noticing me.

I hurried on, now approaching the alley
where I knew we’d stood. I recognized the shamble of a broken chair and the sparse remnants of a car window sprinkled over the curb. The alleyway was empty.

Damn!

“Hey pretty lady.”

A
man in a tattered coat stood behind me at an awkward lean. His pants were baggy and tied to his waist with a frayed rope.

“What you lookin’ for way over here?
You needin’ a good time?” The man stepped closer, his face obscured by a matted brown beard.

Fear stabbed my chest. This was one of the many reasons why I shouldn’t have come.

I cleared my throat and raised my chin, fingering the whistle in my pocket.

Yes, that was the only weapon I could procure.
A stinkin’ rape whistle. I wasn’t batting a thousand in the preparedness department.

“I was just leaving.” I turned quickly and headed back the way I’d come, only to realize I’d been followed.

Two men blocked the sidewalk, dressed similar to the man stepping to my back.

This was very bad news.

Before I could run, or even get my whistle to my mouth, rough hands took hold of my shoulders and jostled me, my body crashing against the stone wall. He was on me a moment later, his smell making me retch, his hands fumbling at my breasts.

I screamed, fighting him,
trying to bat his hands away and get my knee in a position to crush his balls. His hand came up, poised, ready to strike my face. I had one second to feel an all-consuming terror, a crawling sensation dominating my panic-stricken thoughts, before suddenly his whole body was ripped away, thrown to the side like he was made of rags.

The man’s head
thunked
against the side of the alley before his body slid to the ground.

I looked up with
wild eyes.

In fro
nt of me was the stranger. The Boss. Six-and-a-half feet of lethal muscle, poised over me possessively. He turned his broad shoulders toward the two men cornering me. Everyone scattered.

Literally.

As if an invisible shock wave of fear washed over the street, everybody in sight fled. Some men hobbling, some moving in jerky thrusts of knees, some with the speed only PCP could lend, they all took off. One man didn’t even bother to buckle his britches. His lady love in tow, street weathered and down-trodden, wiping her mouth as she galloped after him.

I turned back to the giant in front of me, eyes wide, fear still pinging through my body.

“You aren’t real bright, even for a human.”

I saw
him more clearly now than I ever had. He had a chiseled face with high cheek bones and a straight nose. His strong jaw lent him a heavy dose of masculinity, but his long lashes and dark eyebrows softened him into something out of a magazine. The effect was stunning.

My whole body bowed in a huge sigh of relief.
Safety.
“Thank God you showed up.”

“Why are you here?”

I held up my palm and shook my head. “Wait. Just… wait.” I took a few steps away. “I thought I was going to get raped. God, that was stupid!” With hands on hips, I took a few big, lung-filling breaths. When the bursts of fear completely subsided, I strolled back to my previous position, looking up at the holder of, hopefully, many answers.

As I met his black eyes,
his puzzled expression deepened. “You’re human…”

“We established that, yes. What I want to know is, if I am human, what does that make you? And why do I notice you when others usually don’t?”

His head cocked to the side. His easy balance, his lethal edge; he was like a blade resting on billowing silk. “Very few humans are able to withstand our pheromones. Fewer still to break a
Kolma
once it has been placed. You’ve not been trained, that’s obvious; so how is this possible when you’re definitely human? Do you possess the blood of another species?”

I could barely think past the pounding ache of my body
, begging to touch him. I needed to get a grip! He was revealing some very interesting factoids I needed to jot down in my mental notebook.

His nostrils flared. “Charles was
right; your arousal is a unique scent. Like a spicy, warm drink on a mid-winter’s night. It rises above other smells, entrancing the mind.”

“U
mm,” charged with questions, determination, anger, and demands, I thrust forward, “Listen, what did you mean about withstanding the…pher-thing? Or breaking the other thing? How can you trap someone’s head with pleasure? Because I’m pretty sure—not positive, but pretty sure—that Jared is straight. And also, I really think we should circle back to what the hell you are, and why nobody knows that you exist? Because this whole people scattering thing is not normal, and I think an explanation is probably in order.”

He stepped closer, not hearing me, or not caring that I spoke. His eyes looked at me like I was a life-sized riddle. They delved, searching. He took another step, forcing me to retreat two steps to keep distance between our bodies. Another step back had my back to the wall.

A small smile curved his lips. “I exude pleasure, you run. I exude fear, you come calling. You want me, I can smell it. I can feel it, almost like a palpable thing. Give in to it. Yield to me.”

Oh God I wanted to. His body was mere inches from mine, his intense eyes looking down into my soul from a face out of a Renaissance painting. The power of him, the sheer strength, had strange, primal fantasies running amok through my head. My core tingled, my chest surged,
and my nipples were so hard they could cut this stone wall.

Why had I come here, again?

He bent, sucking in a big breath through his nose. His face dipped to my neck, hot breath soaking into my fevered skin. A large hand landed on the swell of my hip, firm and in control.

“Nu-uh
.” I pushed at him, unable to help my sigh. His leg slid in-between my thighs, pressing up against my core, applying warm heat to an area sodden with desire. My hands fell to my sides weakly as his tongue flicked out, tasting my hot skin. He moaned, a deep sound resonating from the base of him, licking down my body like a tongue.

“That’s right.” His mouth lightly sucked at the base of my neck.
Lingering on my pulse. A scrape of tooth had me moaning, honing in on his fingers as they lightly grazed my skin.

“Shouldn’t,” I muttered, my eyes fluttering as his fingertips trailed over my body. His groin was moving against me in slow, rhythmic thrusts, unhurried and self-assured I would submit. “Can’t.”

His mouth glanced across my chin then up to my
lips. As his full lips touched mine, my thoughts started to swirl. He tasted like wild wine and spice—decadent heaven. His tongue entered my mouth in needful thrusts, expertly playful and sexy at the same time. His bulge was hitting my sweet spot, turning my body into liquid fire.