The Dream-Hunter (Dark-Hunter 10)

Before she could respond or move, Zebulon pushed her aside and ripped Arik's shirt open.

Geary cringed at the ragged wound the knife had left behind. "Don't hurt him."

Zebulon curled his lip at her. "Do you think I came all the way over here to hurt him? If I'd wanted him hurt, I'd have left him to Twiddle Dumb and Dumber." Turning back to Arik, Zebulon hovered his hand about an inch over the wound, and as he moved it back and forth the wound knitted itself closed.

Geary stared, dumbfounded, as shock poured through her.

Of course the wound healed itself. Sure. That made perfect sense, didn't it? Arik had left her alone at the cafe and a weird Scottishesque guy had led her to a battle with two men who'd been in her dreams, who could leap higher than the bionic kangaroo on steroids, and another scary dude who could heal gaping wounds with his hand.

It all made sense.

If you were on massive quantities of illegal drugs.

"Okay, I'm dreaming. Hallucinating. Brought on by stress. I had a hard day today and this is my mind trying to protect itself from... from stuff. Lots of stuff."

The three men were frowning at her, which only served to set off her temper.

"Oh, like I'm any less sane than the three of you just because I talk to myself."

Trieg cleared his throat. "I'm thinking you should wipe her memory, ZT. Do that Were-Hunter thing so that she goes back to normal and forgets all about us."

Zebulon scoffed. "I'm Chthonian, Trieg. We don't do that."

Grimacing at the response, Trieg rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm thinking you should start."

Geary took a step back and pointed with both index fingers over her right shoulder. "And I'm thinking I should take myself home." She pointed her finger at the men, winked, and made a small clicking noise by sucking her breath between her teeth. "You guys have a great night... with whatever it is you people do.

See you later." She turned and took a step away, then swung back to face them. "On second thought, no offense, I never want to see any of you again. Good night."

With a quick word of thanks to ZT, Arik pushed himself up from the ground and ran after Megeara. Just as she left the alley he caught up with her and pulled her to a stop.

"Megeara-"

"Geary," she snapped.

"Geary," he said, hoping to placate her as he rubbed her arm in case he might have harmed her any by stopping her. "Please. I didn't want you to see any of that."

"See what?" she asked with a bit of hysteria in her voice, "I didn't see anything. There were no scary people there. Nothing freaky." She patted him on the biceps, then smiled as if nothing were wrong. "I'm going home now and tomorrow I'm going to have the doctors check for a brain tumor. Full battery of tests. Whole nine yards. Whatever's wrong with me, we'll find it and deal with it. At this point, my vote is either tumor or space alien testing. Either one works for me."

"You don't have a tumor and there aren't any aliens running around here. You're not insane."

"No?" Her face was aghast. "Then what am I?" She held her hands up before he could answer. "No, wait. The better question is what are you ?"

Arik wasn't sure how to answer. But then there was no use keeping anything from her, since she'd already seen so much. It was time for complete honesty. "Do you know what an Oneroi is?"

The sarcasm in her voice was so deep it could drown a champion swimmer. "A Greek god of sleep. I did actually have to study this stuff before they allowed me a doctorate, you know?"

"I know," he said calmly. "Oneroi are gods of sleep." He spoke slowly, enunciating each word carefully.

"You know me, Geary. You've known me for a long time..."

She let out a nervous laugh and he could see the clarity in her eyes as she looked up at him. "So what are you saying? You're an Oneroi?"

He nodded slowly.

Geary laughed. Hard. Until she realized that he wasn't joining her laughter.

She froze as a chill went over her. "You're a god, huh? Then tell me something only a god would know."

He didn't even hesitate with his answer. "The first night I met you in your dreams, you were bathing in a river of chocolate. Your entire body was coated with it and you were cupping your hands under the waterfall, then drinking the chocolate. I came up behind you and kissed your neck, then gave you a goblet that we both drank out of. You filled the cup, then poured the chocolate over me and licked-"

She placed her hand over his mouth to stop him from speaking. "You were there."

"I was there."

Disbelief poured through her. It couldn't be. It just wasn't logical. "What about Vanderbilt?"

"You dream about that at times. Reliving the horror of it. I snooped a bit."

Geary dropped her hand as memory after memory of her making love to the dream Arik played through her mind. Now to find out that it was real...

It pissed her off. "Snooped a bit? No, buddy, you've snooped a lot." Geary was mortified as various memories went through her mind. "I didn't know you were real. No. You can't be real. This is crap. It's all crap. You're lying to me."

"It's real, Geary." He took her hand into his and held it against his chest so that she could feel his beating heart. " I'm real."

She looked down at where he'd been stabbed. There was no blood. No tear in his clothes where she'd seen his wound with her own eyes.

But there was still blood on her hands.

His blood.

He looked just as he had when he'd picked her up at her flat. Just as he'd looked when he had left her at the table and vanished.

Her gaze drifted over his shoulder to where Trieg was watching them from the shadows.

She pulled her hand away from Arik and gestured toward Trieg. "And he's just plain odd." She turned away from Arik and instantly walked into Zebulon again. Okay, it bothered her that he could just appear like that out of the blue, without warning, but she'd had enough. "And what is your problem that you keep putting yourself in my way?"

He answered with a sadistic laugh, "She's feisty, Skotos. I can see the appeal."

Arik snorted. "Oh, you've no idea."

When she tried to move past him, Zebulon stopped her. "Not to be rude, but what the hell? I live for it.

You can't start running your mouth about what you've seen here tonight."

Oh, that was priceless. "Great threat you've got going there, big ZT. News flash, I didn't want to see anything. You people dragged me into this against my will, not the other way around, and who am I going to tell anyway? The last thing I want is to be dragged off and committed because I saw... something that no rational human being has ever seen before."

Zebulon gave her a cocky grin that conveyed both amusement and irritation. "I don't think you understand what's going on here, do you?"

"Not a clue and, no offense, I like it that way. Clueless rules."

Still the beast wouldn't let her pass. Zebulon inclined his head toward Arik. "The Skotos has risked his life to come here to be with you, Geary. Those two who attacked him. They're assassins and I'm sure they're going to be back. Probably with reinforcements. And now that you've seen them, they'll come for you, too, which is the only reason why I'm still talking to you. I feel morally obligated to at least warn you that they're gunning for you. Now in theory I can kill them and save you, but then that just opens up a whole can of worms and gets so messy that I really can't. I'm better off letting you die than taking them out. See my dilemma?"

She gave a bitter laugh. "Not really. The only dilemma I see is my imminent death that you appear ambivalent to. Hello? Did you hear any of what you just said to me?" How could this be happening?

"I heard, but when you get to my age, you understand that some things are just best left alone. Death is only natural."

"Oh yeah," she said, sweeping his body with a derogatory glare, "you're an old man. You're all of what?

Twenty-five?"

He was definitely amused as he responded. "More like twenty-five thousand years old. Give or take a few hundred years. At my age we really don't count anymore."