The Darkness in Dreams (Enforcer's Legacy, #1)(5)

“How vivid?”

Lexi couldn’t answer. Instead, she leaned back, pressed her spine against the rock. Exhaustion was overwhelming. The air was warm and the sound of Arsen’s voice softened, not the words, but a male timbre until the comfort wrapped around her.

Lexi relaxed. Her resistance dissolved in front of her like mist beneath a morning sun. She felt the comfort seeping into her lungs, anxiety seeping out as she breathed. Slowly, without even realizing it, she let go of the reluctance to talk about the dreams. About why she couldn’t sleep after the night terrors tore her awake. Why there were other dreams so detailed she thought they were real.

“Have you ever been shot, Arsen?”

“Yes,” he said, so far away Lexi could barely hear him.

“So have I, in dreams. And I can tell you what it’s like, how I’m riding a bike down a dirt road. It's night, and there are trees on either side of the road. The bike jangles so loudly I worry that the noise will give me away. I have on my wool coat and the brown shoes that are too big, so I’ve stuffed paper in the toes to keep them on my feet. Only I’m afraid about the paper, too, because it might let the stupid shoe fall off my foot. The handle bars jiggle. My hands are sweaty and they slip and I pedal harder until I round a bend and they’re waiting. All I see are flashes of light. I don’t feel pain like they say; the impact knocks me to the ground with such force I can’t describe it.

“But I can tell you how it feels to fall in a ditch,” she continued. “The sharp way my legs get caught in the broken spokes. I hear the crunching of their boots and know mud is on my face—it’s cold and smells of rot. I know I’m thirteen years old and haven’t lived my life yet. I even know my name. It’s Gabrielle, and I have a little white and brown puppy I named Cammi, because it was the name of a warrior girl in an old story my meme told me, and I wanted to be like the warrior girl. But I’m not. I’m lying in a ditch and I can’t breathe. I ask why it hurts so much. And a voice says it’s because I’m not dead yet.”

Her breath came hard in her throat. Her eyes were closed and she was lost.

“Do you dream like that, Arsen?”





CHAPTER 3





Her voice was an irritation. It was the way she caught her breath at the oddest times or dipped her head. He found himself listening, and he didn’t like it.

Christan had been created for a single purpose. His morality was predetermined and the details were not his problem. He was controlled by the Calata of Six, although once there had been Seven, and that had not been his problem, either. Enemies feared him. Friends did, too. He was the terror in the dark, the icy wind before the warm rush. He’d learned there were no true immortals, only those who were harder to kill, and Christan thrived, locked in his solitary world until the day she held out a hand, inviting him into her world.

Before her, Christan had been different. He was an enforcer above all others. Death was his intimate friend. He craved the vicious battles and impossible needs. The blood. Existence mattered, but he took risks and had nothing to lose. His life was meaningless, tied as it was to immortals who reeked with power, who used him to manipulate humans whose lives were fleeting and powerless.

But she, she changed him, rescued him. Taught him how to be more. How to feel. How to love. In that first life, in the lifetimes after, until all she had left to teach him was hate.

Christan levered away from the rock. At his worst, he was predatory, violent, and he’d stayed too long in the Void. No one remained unscathed in that place between space and matter. Now he wondered if he’d lost all traces of human connection, become too empty to ever find a way back. The Void had been filled with both memory and oblivion, but even oblivion hadn’t isolated him from an awareness of her. That he hadn’t expected. Christan had known every minute of every life she ever lived, with him, and without.

To be watching her now, counting the strands of her hair. Blond, like a shaft of sunlight in winter. It still drifted, in that silky wave around her face. Skimmed and hid her breasts when she leaned forward and he would fist his hand...

But memory made him volatile. When he’d gone to her office, he’d felt a wave of aggression so startling it had alarmed him. His body had grown hard, the muscles so tense he thought his bones would break. He’d wanted to pin her to the wall. He still wanted to pin her to the rocky wall behind her head. Her legs were long and the jeans she wore reminded him of something else. Once, maybe he would have given her a second chance. But not now.

“Arsen.” Using their telepathic connection, Christan reached out for his second-in-command.

“Tell me what you want to know, and I’ll ask her.”

“Nothing. Her dreams hold no interest.”

“Christan—if she remembers, it will be hard on her.”

“She has no meaning in this lifetime.”

“Give yourself time. What you’re experiencing, we’ve all been there. It passes.”

Christan wasn’t as sure. Power burned until the air vibrated hot and electric. He wanted to shift and run, release the energy pounding in his veins. This girl reminded him of what they’d once been and what they’d become in their mutually destructive dance. He’d been no innocent but neither had she, and somewhere, in his darkest recesses, faint traces of those emotions still lived.