Scorned (5 page)

“What’s wrong with me, pup?” I stroked my
dog’s head, combing his long, fluffy fur away from his eyes so I
could see them. He rolled over onto his back so I could scratch his
belly, and I appeased him. Slowly, so slowly that I didn’t even
notice it was happening, I began to drift into sleep.

I was looking at myself in an ornate, gothic
style mirror. The black framing made the paleness of my skin stand
out.

Lucretious. That one name brought with it
the realization that I wasn’t looking at myself. I was looking at
him through his eyes, and as soon as I realized it, I knew he could
feel me there inside his head. He didn’t say anything, he seemed to
already know I was there, but he leaned into the mirror and
growled. A tingle ran up my arms and spine to the base of my neck.
I shuddered and my head ticked to the side and he was gone.

I woke up a little while later to Bermides
pawing and whining at the bedroom door.

“Stop,” I said sternly and rubbed my neck.
He stopped long enough to come around to the side of the bed and
put his furry little front feet up there to lick my arm. “Quit.” I
bumped him in the nose just hard enough to make him get down. The
stupid mutt went back to pawing at the door until I had no choice
but to get up. My headache had subsided some and I looked at my
cell phone. Only twelve thirty.

Damn.

I let him out and followed him to the door
of the back porch.

“Shh! People are asleep!” I told him, but he
wouldn’t listen. I opened the door quickly, so he wouldn’t wake
anyone, and he ran onto the patio. The bark that he let out was
loud and I jumped and smacked him on the backside before I could
stop myself. “Shut up!” I hooked the leash on him as fast as I
could and opened the door. I realized I’d forgotten to get some
shoes when the cold wet of the porch floor froze the bottoms of my
feet.

I groaned to myself as I stepped into the
cold wet grass. Mud seeped through my toes, blades of grass and
dirt and other things stuck to my feet and I shivered.

“Hurry up!” I growled at the dog, and walked
him a little farther into the yard as he tugged on his leash,
pulling me toward the far side of the yard where the grass stopped
and the woods started. No way was I going in there, but he kept
pulling, kept barking, until I suddenly realized that he didn’t
have to go to the bathroom at all. There was something out there
that he’d sensed from the bedroom. Fear gripped me from the inside
out, and I tugged on his leash.

“Get over here,” I tried to yell in a
whisper. “Bermy, Come here!” He’s not a big dog, only weighs about
fifty pounds, so I had little no trouble pulling him back so I
could lock the leash in place before turning back to the house.

But I didn’t get far. There was a tall,
solid body blocking my path. I couldn’t see much as the light was
behind it, but I knew it was a man, and I knew he was smiling at
me. What frightened me the most was not how I suddenly felt those
eyes again, but that I wasn’t afraid. It didn’t seem right to not
be afraid, and
that
scared me.

“Hello, LeKrista.” I knew that accent, but
the voice was different. He pronounced the Kr deep in his throat so
it sounded very French. My name curled around his tongue, rolling
off like liquid, and I realized why I couldn’t place the accent. It
encompassed every voice, every language, every people group across
the years. The accent that began it all. The voice from the
beginning of time. His was what we all would sound like had we not
been corrupted to build the Tower of Babel.

“Hello. Who are you?” My throat was dry, my
feet were cold and dirty, and my brain had stopped working all
together. I was supposed to be afraid, but I couldn’t quite
remember why.

“You may call me Roman.” A finger stroked my
right cheek, and warmth flooded my body, all the way down to my
frozen toes. For a moment I was afraid the false sensation would
cause me to lose my toes to frostbite, but then Roman was talking
again and I wanted to hear him.

“I wanted to apologize,” he told me, but
that was as far as he went, so I pried.

“For what?”

Yuck! I sound so ugly compared to him!

“Earlier this evening. I fear my friend has
become a little overzealous and his emotional state caused you to
latch on to his thoughts. It hasn’t happened in a very long
time.”

His voice trailed off, but I probably
wouldn’t have been able to hear anything he said after that anyway.
The pounding in my head had returned and unwanted images flashed
across my vision - a woman on her knees, hands pressed to bloody
ears, screaming against a pain that wouldn’t stop. Something popped
inside my head. White light exploded in my vision and I was
falling. My body tilted and I didn’t have the strength to stop
it.

Cool, strong arms wrapped around me as my
legs crumpled. Roman held me against his chest for a long moment as
I waited for my strength to return and my vision to clear.

“Quiet, dog!” Roman’s voice sounded much
harsher than I thought it should have, but I attributed it to the
headache making my ears sensitive. “I am so sorry, my sweet.” His
accent was suddenly very, very thick with pain and regret. “Can you
hear me?”

“Yes,” I answered weakly. “What
happened?”

Roman shook his head. “I will explain when
you are better. For now you need to rest.” Those cool fingers
stroked my cheek again and the warmth returned, my head cleared,
and I was very, very sleepy. Roman turned and carried me to the
house. His gait was smooth and fluid. Like everything else about
him, it was perfect and precise as if he’d practiced a very long
time.

“No, I don’t want to sleep,” I protested,
suddenly panicked, but Roman brushed his fingers against my cheek
one last time and my body relaxed into exhaustion.

“You will not dream, my sweet. I promise you
this.”

When Roman set me back down on my feet, I
melted down to the porch floor. My pajama pants soaked up the cold
wet from the drenched wood.

“LeKrista, you must go inside now,” his
voice was deeper than I remembered and strong. His accent had
kicked up a notch and I found it hard to focus on anything else.
“And take your dog.” He spat the word
dog
like an
insult.

“But, that’s what he is.” I couldn’t really
understand his distaste. “He treats everyone like that.”

I heard a low rumble and looked up as Roman
reached down for me. He was laughing at me. He lifted me to my feet
and held me there by my upper arms, his grip firm but gentle. “Miss
LeKrista, what is your surname?”

“Scott,” I answered. “What’s yours?”

He laughed again. “Miss Scott, stand
up.”

I felt something zing through me like a jolt
of electricity. I think I actually heard it buzz as it passed
through me. It entered through my stomach and hit my spine hard. I
jerked and it tried to stretch up my backbone. I felt myself
straighten some and I had strength in my legs again, but something
just didn’t feel right. Roman was frowning at me. Or was he
scowling?

It felt like someone was trying to stretch a
steel rod through my spine, but instead of steel, they’d gotten the
order wrong and made it of rubber instead.

“Go inside with your dog and go to sleep.”
Again, that
zing
shot through me, and I had the feeling
that, whatever Roman was trying to do to me it wasn’t working
correctly.

“I promise,” Roman said one last time, “you
will not dream.” He brushed the tips of his fingers down the side
of my cheek once more, and this time I did not feel heat spread
through my body. Instead, his previously cool fingers were now warm
against my chilled skin. I blinked, my eyelids refusing to come
back up, and I half smiled.

“I’d better get inside,” I said, feeling
exhaustion spread through my limbs. Whatever had given me the
strength to stand was wearing off quickly. “My toes are numb.” No,
they really weren’t, but Roman didn’t need to know that. He grinned
at me, leaned in, and kissed my forehead.

I have a boyfriend. Awkward...

“Yes. Sleep well, my sweet.”

“You too,” I mumbled before I stumbled into
the house, silent dog in tow. I don’t remember anything after
that.

I dreamed all night, but instead of the
nightmares I’d expected, the dreams were comical, like the kind you
wake up from and think, “I can’t believe I dreamed something so
incredibly stupid! What did I eat before I went to bed?”

The glowing, red eyes still haunted my
dreams, but instead of the terrible, starving face they were
attached to before, The Count had stepped off of Sesame Street to
take a staring role. I’m surprised there was even a dream to
remember, what with all the counting and the repeating and the “ah
ah ah!” I woke up in hysterics, laughing so hard there were tears
streaming down my cheeks that I didn’t want to try to explain to
anyone.

But the headache was gone, and so was most
of the nightmare of the day before. When I woke up laughing,
Pierce’s ringtone singing in my ear, I couldn’t remember why I was
dreaming of glowy-eyed vampires. Or why, for that matter, my feet
were dirty and the foot of my bed was caked in mud.

“Hello?” I laughed into the phone.

“What’s so funny?” Pierce wanted to know,
and I recounted the dream in full detail until he was laughing too.
“Girl, you’re stupid. But I’m glad that’s all it was, and nothing
worse.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked,
confused by his sudden change of direction.

“Well, after what happened last night I
expected you to have a nightmare or two. Petrice is worried about
you. Gable asked about you this morning too. So did the man next
door.”

I tried to think. I racked my brain,
convinced I’d forgotten something, but unable to connect to what it
was. Something important had happened last night, but as for what
it was... I was saved the trouble of figuring it out, and the
embarrassment of asking. Pierce’s next words brought it all
back.

“It really freaked her out when you started
screaming, ‘get it off me.’ She couldn’t handle that. I thought she
was going to drop the baby right there on the porch.”

It all came back to me in a jumbled rush. My
brain, in its frantic attempt to put things together confused the
actual vision with the nightmare from earlier in the night. I saw
glowing eyes in that hateful face, a hungry smile stretched across
too long, too sharp fangs. I felt the place where the initial
vision’s bite began to sting and burn and I sucked in a gasp of
air.

“Stace?” Pierce’s voice was flat, and I knew
he was angry with himself. “You’d forgotten hadn’t you?” he asked.
“You’d completely forgotten and I reminded you.”

“It’s okay,” I lied. “It’s better that I
don’t forget.” I realized I believed that only after I’d already
said it, but Pierce changed the subject.

“Petrice didn’t want me to tell you. She
doesn’t want you to feel bad, especially after last night, but you
missed her doctor’s appointment.”

“That’s impossible,” I told him. “Her
appointment isn’t until one thirty.”

“I know.”

I sat up in the bed. “Pierce, what time is
it?”

“Almost two.”

“Damn.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Damn, damn!”

“LeKrista, listen. It’s no big deal. She’s
already rescheduled for next week on a day she knows you’re off.
She understands. You needed your rest after what happened.”

“But that’s no excuse for me to sleep until
two o’clock in the afternoon!” I exclaimed appalled. Why had I
slept so late?

“You were tired.”

“But-"

"Baby, listen,” he interrupted. “It’s no big
deal. I know you feel bad. I shouldn’t have told you. But no one is
worried about it. Everyone involved understands. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed, but I racked my brain for
a reason for my slothfulness.

“ I’ll see you soon, love. And don’t worry
about it,” he told me again.

“I won’t.”

I’ll just have to set an alarm next
time.

I showered quickly. Amazingly, it was
sunshiny outside. The sky was blue with no trace of clouds
anywhere. I love rainy days, but I love beautiful winter days just
as much. I threw on some clothes that I found on the floor. They
weren’t dirty enough to wash yet, but they weren’t clean enough to
put back in the drawer. Just right for today. I could smell what I
hoped to be bacon, which was usually accompanied by eggs and French
toast or pancakes.

I lucked out. Chocolate chip pancakes,
scrambled eggs, and bacon. My aunt was busy making a special batch
just for me at two fifteen in the afternoon.

“Well, look who’s up,” she smiled when I
walked out of my room, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Good afternoon,” I told her and took a seat
as she set a plate in front of me.

“I cooked for everyone else, so it’s only
fair that I cook for you too.”

“Thank you.” I squirted syrup all over my
pancakes, said a silent prayer, and dug in.

“We heard you up last night,” she told me,
her curious tone of voice rearing its ugly head. “Did you have to
take Bermy out?”

I frowned. Did I? “I can’t remember,” I told
her. “Did I?”

She smiled sweetly at me. “He must have
woken you up. He was barking at something.”

Barking...

Be quiet, dog.

An image flashed in my head. Beer,
cardboard, and my feet were suddenly cold.

“It’s not a big deal,” she was telling
me.

But it was a big deal, because once again, I
couldn’t remember anything and it was important.

Go inside now.

Zing!
And I remembered everything;
Roman, the rubbery strength in my spine, my frozen toes, the dirt
in my bed. I remembered what happened last night, and I didn’t
think I was supposed to.