Free Night's Deep Hush: Reveler Series 4 by Erin Kellison Page B

safe.”
    “No one is.” Vince had been trying to protect Jordan—he owed it to her—and even in her moment of happiness, a nightmare stood behind her. The nightmare had dark, alien eyes, just like the one he’d killed in the Scrape. It must’ve followed Malcolm Rook into the Rêve by casting some kind of illusion. Sneaking in. Sneaking close. Only Vince had seen through her trick so far.
    “You’ll learn to feel safe again,” Fawkes said.
    “She’s one of them.” Vince stared at the nightmare so Fawkes would know where to look.
    Fawkes glanced toward the whispering couple, then back to him. Still couldn’t see the nightmare. “We can make a plan now. Because of you, Jordan’s going to be okay, too.”
    Vince wasn’t looking at Jordan, though. He was looking beyond her to another woman. The nightmare was shaped like a goddess—a beauty with a body curved to incite reckless sinning. She wore an angry pout that he knew would burn his mouth. She had hair like snow and eyes as cold and fathomless as the deepest reaches of space. How like a nightmare to seduce and terrify at the same time. Both emotions cut the strings of control; Vince felt the raw heat of lust and cold poison of terror within him. He knew from experience that the creatures could take on the worst of forms to torment. What better way, now that he’d become a killer, than to make him want her, too?
    Gold ribbons were snaking up from the thick fake rug and curling around Jordan’s ankles. “Jordan’s caught,” Vince said.
    Fawkes looked back again, and this time he stood up. “Rook!”
    “Fuck!” Rook finally spotted the nightmare and turned his back to it, shielding Jordan with his body. “Let Jordan go, Mirren!”
    “Who is she?” Fawkes asked.
    “Lambert’s daughter,” Rook answered. “She must’ve been following me. She’s the one who has me in the waking world. Mirren, let Jordan go now .”
    Vince slowly stood, as well. He’d killed one nightmare; he’d kill this one, too.
    The room seemed to revolve on its own, but more likely, he’d walked around the people standing in his way.
    The nightmare finally looked over at Vince—those eyes, he’d never forget those eyes—and said, “Who are you?”
    Nightmares didn’t talk, so Vince didn’t answer. He darted, grabbed the thing by the head, and threw her to the ground. The trick was to be quick and strong. Rip it apart before it could get its claws in you.
    This nightmare wasn’t cold, which was strange. The others in the Scrape had been icy.
    He straddled the thing, but something gold snaked up from the ground and pulled him back.
    Damn Scrape sand. Vince shook himself free, and the grains fell in hiss and disappeared in the leopard-print rug again. He lunged forward to choke her, his hands still black with the other nightmare’s blood, but again he was restrained, this time by Fawkes and Rook at his shoulders.
    “Let me go. I can kill her. Nightmares can die.”
    “Blackman, get off her!” Rook said.
    The nightmare wiggled beneath Vince. He couldn’t help getting hard. “Nightmare,” he named her through clenched teeth. “They have to be stopped.”
    “She’s not like that,” Rook said. “She’s bad, but she’s not that bad.”
    The creature had the temerity to bring tears to its alien eyes. “ I am not a nightmare. I am a person .”
    “You killed my father,” Vince said to it.
    “Wasn’t her, man,” Rook said behind him. “It’s Didier Lambert you want. He’s hurt her, too.”
    Jordan scoffed. “That woman abducted you. Let Vince finish what he’s started.”
    Vince glanced at Jordan, whose expression had gone just about as mean as he felt. They were connected in more than one way.
    “My father has my son,” the nightmare woman said. Vince wanted to laugh—a story to pluck the heartstrings. “I needed Mr. Rook to find him.”
    “I said I’d get him back,” Rook told her while still grappling with Vince.
    “But you came here ,” the