Читать книгу The Summoner - Alisha Steele - Страница 4

Chapter 1

Alex sat at her vanity, brushing her long toffee-brown hair. One hundred strokes. Every night. Religiously. It didn’t matter that they’d proven it wasn’t at all beneficial and that it, in fact, caused breakage. It was a habit, and Alex Brannigan was nothing if not a slave to her habits.

She’d already washed her face and gotten into her favorite nightie, a short white one with La Nightshirt in big black text across the front. It was so ancient that the fabric was practically see-through at her shoulders and across the top of her modest, B-cup breasts. And didn’t that make her feel older than dirt. She’d dated guys who were younger than her sleep apparel.

“Yep, gettin’ old,” Alex grumbled, leaning in to examine her “not quite” wrinkles in the mirror. She scrunched up her face and pursed her full lips to see the lines more clearly. Nope, not quite wrinkles. Not yet…but soon. Wannabes, that’s what they were. Wannabe wrinkles.

She put down the brush and reached for the new night cream she’d picked up that afternoon. It was guaranteed to make her skin look as dewy and fresh as a sixteen-year-old’s. After all, it had elasticin, whatever that was, and vitamin C! Alex snorted. That was probably twenty bucks well wasted. But hell, with her thirtieth birthday only three years away, she was more than willing to part with a little money in an honest search for the fountain of youth.

She was wrestling with the anti-tamper seal that cosmetics manufacturers think is funny to Krazy Glue to the top of their products when the bathroom lights did that dimming thing, the one the lights always seemed to do right before the power cut out completely.

“Shit!” she hissed, real panic tingeing her voice. “God-damned house!”

Alex lived in an historic Queen Anne two-story complete with a turret room, two unnecessary balconies and abundant stained glass windows. It was lovely, a true pleasure to own—when the power and plumbing were actually working.

“Please, please, please!” She leaped up from the low brass stool, but forgot that she had her left ankle hooked through the stool’s support bracket. Rather than the mad dash out the door she’d been trying to accomplish, all she managed to do was land face-first on the floor. The lights gave another feeble flicker before the room plunged into darkness.

Alex moaned in terror as the familiar, sibilant voices swelled to life.

“Aaalexxx…”

“Alexaaandraaa…”

“Hear me, Summoner…”

All four walls of the bathroom—from waist height to the ceiling—were covered in mirrors. It was a feature that had almost dissuaded her from buying the place. Honestly, what was the look they were going for, Victoriana meets the Playboy Mansion? The fact that no one should have mirrored anything in a period home wasn’t the issue—it was the mirrors themselves. Or rather, what lurked inside them.

But Alex refused to live her life in fear. So she’d gone ahead with the purchase with plans to have the mirrors ripped out at the earliest possible opportunity. It was an opportunity that, unfortunately, hadn’t come yet. She wasn’t even finished unpacking; this was only her second week in the house.

Alex kicked her foot, shaking off the stool and sending it skittering across the tiles. Taking care to keep her head well below the white wainscoting, she scrambled on hands and knees toward the door. There was no moon out tonight and the room was completely black. On the one hand, she was grateful for that. It meant she couldn’t see the owners of those whispering voices beckoning to her from within the glass, the half-formed ghosts that always appeared to her in darkened mirrors. On the other hand, it also meant she misjudged where the exit was by a good foot and a half. Alex, with lowered head, slammed full tilt into the bathroom wall.

“Ahh, there’re the lights,” she mumbled as she crumpled into an undignified heap. Indeed there were lights now, pretty white and purple ones that danced playfully across her vision.

Alex laid her face against the deliciously cool floor and succumbed to unconsciousness.

* * * *

This dream again?

How fabulous.

Not.

Alex tentatively touched the egg-sized knot gracing her forehead. It hurt! People weren’t supposed to feel real pain in dreams. She knew that. But apparently she was an exception. Pain. Pleasure. Hot. Cold. Her subconscious faithfully rendered each sensation.

Her breath misted the already thickly fogged air around her, and she was still clad in just her short nightgown. Alex wrapped her arms around her torso, making a valiant attempt to ignore the chills racking her body, and took stock of her surroundings.

It had been almost ten years since she’d been treated to this particular nightmare. Alas, it looked like nothing much had changed. It was still a never-ending plain of murky darkness, and it still appeared to be full of vague bogeymen whose only motivation, so far as she could tell, was to torment her with their calls while staying just out of sight, hiding in the edge of her peripheral, helped in their shyness by the eternal gray, unrelenting fog.

And yes, it was still a scary, sucky place to find herself.

As if on cue, the voices started up again. The sounds were so much more chilling, so much closer, on this side of the glass.

“The Summoner…”

“She has come…”

“Alex…”

“Alexandr—”

Her name rose on a growling howl, only to abruptly cut off.

Alex whirled in place, trying to catch sight of her tormentors, but the mist was too dense. All she caught were hints of large, misshapen forms sliding inhumanly fast through the fog. Her skin was already goose-pebbled from the cold air but, nonetheless, it tried to tighten even further. Her hair did its best to lift straight off her body, as if it were planning to leave regardless of whether she was fool enough to stay.

From previous experience, Alex knew that trying to find a way out would be futile. There wasn’t one. And though she had always awoken after her regulation eight hours, often more tired than when she’d fallen asleep, while she was here time stood still. This was eternity, and she was trapped in it.

She twirled again when unseen hands stroked her back, only to lose her footing and stumble to her knees in the gray mud. Her admirer, as usual, was nowhere to be seen.

“Aaalexxx…”

“Shit!” Tears sprang to her eyes. She hated feeling alone and afraid. In her real life, she was always strong. People admired her for her calm manner, for her level-headedness in the face of any crises, for her guts. She couldn’t have run the Seattle chapter of Dovescot, a refuge for battered women, without her share of guts. Many was the time she’d chased a pissed-off Bubba from the front lawn of the sprawling women’s shelter with only a rifle and her own unswerving faith in her invincibility. Never mind that she was only five-two and weighed all of a hundred pounds; Alex knew she could take those wife-beaters down, and when they looked into her cold blue eyes, the bastards usually realized that they weren’t all that willing to test her resolve on the issue.

Yet here she was, crying in the mud. Well, she’d be damned if she’d give them the pleasure.

Alex had been having this dream since she was a child. Not every year. Not even every second or third year. Not often at all. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d been subjected to this hell, but the infrequency didn’t make the experience any less terrifying. The difference now, though, was that she wasn’t a child anymore.

“Alexandra…”

“What?” she shrieked. Mud squelched between her fingers as her hands clenched. “What? What the hell do you want?”

“Summoner…”

The whispering was driving her mad, but the voices weren’t answering. Again she was touched, on her head this time. Alex refused to acknowledge the phantom hand and, in a moment, it retreated. “Summoner,” they’d called her. Over and over.

Well, all right then.

“Come on, already!” she said. “Show yourselves. I… I summon you!”

* * * *

“And it’s about bloody time too.”

The fingers were back, smoothing over her hair, and this time they didn’t disappear.

Crap! That had definitely not been a well thought-out plan.

The tendons in Alex’s neck creaked as she turned her head to look up at the speaker. Her breath left her in a gasp. She scrambled out from underneath his palm, any dignity she still possessed quickly lost in her slipping, sliding retreat. “Jesus Christ!”

He smirked and crossed his magnificently muscled arms across his chest. “No, I’m afraid not, pet. I’ve never even met the man, though he and my brother have a passing acquaintance.”

When she finally regained her feet, Alex took stock of the creature standing at ease in front of her. The huge black wings were so distracting that it actually took her a moment to notice he was unclothed. Her gaze followed the sweep of feathers down to the earth in fascination, and it was only on the return journey that Alex realized the alabaster white of his skin was a naked expanse in front of those wings.

Her cheeks flamed and she rushed to bring her gaze to his face. At least, she tried to look up; her stare kept getting snared along the way. She’d never seen a man with elegant feet before! From there, her gaze naturally wandered up his strong, smooth legs. A thatch of black decorated their apex, surrounding his cock, which was half hard but lengthening quickly. The heft of it made her mouth water.

It took some strength of will but she managed, after a second or two, to look away. His pubic curls pointed a graceful arrow to the indent of his navel, lovingly framed by a perfectly formed…eight pack? Was that even possible? Up and up—he was so tall, easily six and a half feet—to his sharply defined pecs and the alluring shadows of his nipples: tiny, perfect dots of mauve peeking cheekily at her above his folded arms.

Her mouth watered again, and she had to swallow the flood of liquid to avoid drooling. The knife edge of his clavicle was swept by shimmering waves of hair the same sultry blue-black as his stunning wings. His throat was long and graceful, his jawline chiseled. Of course. His lips, when she finally got there, were wide, lush and curved up into the most egotistical grin she’d ever seen. Perfect teeth flashed behind them.

At the sight of that mocking smile, Alex’s gaze leaped the short distance to his eyes. She hardly noticed the ruler-straight line of his nose or the proud flare of his nostrils. A fan of black lashes, which would probably have looked more appropriate on a cow, outlined his midnight eyes. One thick, black brow winged up.

“Looked your fill yet?” His voice was deeper than the first time he’d spoken.

“Jesus,” she whispered again.

“No.” His wings unfurled to stir the air behind his shoulders. “Kasdeya.”