Things That Go Hump In The Night (19 page)

"Good God," he said in a choked voice. "If I do end up buying this house from your landlady, that wallpaper will be the
first
thing to go."

"I've learned not to look at it too long," advised Nicole, "to avoid having afterimages burned into my retinas." Then she added, "For what it's worth, I don't think my landlady is old enough to have been responsible for some of the, uh, more
interesting
decorating choices in this house. But I really wish that whoever modernized this place had done it with a bit more—"

"—taste?" interjected Gabriel, helpfully.

"Yeah, that," agreed Nicole.

She looked at the couch, which was an inexpensive but comfortable modern design from IKEA, and tried to think of a way to delay having this conversation just a little longer.

Gabriel moved past her, put the wine glasses down on the sleek Scandinavian coffee table, and refilled them from the bottle he held.

Then he sat down on the couch and held his hand out to her. "Would it make things easier if I held you while you tell me what happened to you?"

"Yes," she said gratefully and sank down next to him.

Gabriel put his arm around her, and she drew her legs up and curled into his side, putting her head on his shoulder. 

"I don't know where to start," she said after a moment and looked up him.

His lips quirked. Not quite a smile, but a wry expression. "Start at the beginning. How did you meet him?"

"That's the weird thing," said Nicole. "I didn't. He just...found me, somehow."

* * *

When the dreams began, Nicole was still living in her skeevy student apartment, located in a questionable Cambridge neighborhood.

She had just graduated from MIT and was really hoping that the medical technology company where she'd worked as a summer intern the year before would hire her. She had loved her boss and believed that the company's products could change lives. But there was an internal war raging over budgeting and staffing, so her chances of becoming a full-time employee there were uncertain, at best.

In the meanwhile, Nicole had also been speaking with recruiters from West Coast-based tech firms and had even played with the idea of taking some time off, then going to grad school.

It was stressful, and she worried about picking the right company, about moving away from the Boston area where her parents lived and where she'd grown up, and about whether she was selling out by chasing a high-paying job instead of applying to grad school.

Still, she'd never had dreams like this before, so vivid that they felt real. They were...kinky.
Really
kinky, and always with the same partner, a big, shadowy man who did things to her that she'd only read about.

Nicole always woke up feeling exhausted the morning after. At first, she had the dreams once a week. Then every couple of days.

Then, as she began interviewing for jobs by Skype and in person, she found herself playing out hardcore porn scenes in her dreams every night. The intensity of her nighttime experiences began to frighten and worry her. As did the nagging feeling that someone had been in her apartment as she slept, standing over her, watching her while she did nasty things with a stranger in her dreams.

But she could never find any proof of an intruder, so she chalked it up to stress and didn't tell anyone, because she knew it would make her sound crazy.

Finally, she accepted a job offer at Copper Shark Systems, a startup located near Seattle. Despite still having some doubts about whether she was making the right move, Nicole was relieved to begin packing up her apartment.

Now that her immediate future was settled, she hoped that the weird dreams would die down. She didn’t even have to worry about a place to live when she arrived in Seattle—her new employer had promised her corporate housing and storage for the first two months, giving her time to apartment-hunt.

But things didn't work out that way.

The night before the moving truck was scheduled to arrive, Nicole went to sleep in her own bed.

Her dreams were different that night—not porn, for a change, but really weird.

She dreamed that she had been captured by a mad scientist and stuck into a machine that slowly turned her inside out as she screamed and screamed.

Nicole woke up in a cage in someone's basement.

The cage was large enough to let her stretch out full-length. It held a large dog-bed, a blanket, a large, stainless steel bowl of water, and an empty bucket that she later figured out was for toilet emergencies.

She was naked except for a red string bracelet that felt weird against her skin. All of her senses had seemingly turned into super-senses. She could hear and smell things she shouldn't have, and she felt really odd and off-kilter.

Nicole panicked. Oh yeah, she had screamed and yelled for help and made a ruckus, hoping someone would hear her and phone the police.

But no one came...until she had screamed herself hoarse.

And then Erik appeared, and she realized that he was the man who had haunted her dreams. And that he wasn't human.

He looked like a demon, with horns, and leathery wings, and reptilian scales on his arms and legs. Each of his fingers was tipped with a long black talon, and when he reached into the cage to pet her, even the lightest brush of his fingers cut into her skin like razor blades, leaving long, bloody lines.

Her captor introduced himself and told her that he'd been watching her for weeks, because she was
very
special. And when he saw that she intended to leave him, he had been forced to take action.

And then he told her that he had changed her into something even more special, so that now she was truly extraordinary.

For the next year and a day, Nicole had been allowed out of the cage twice a day, to shower, use the facilities, and to exercise, all under Erik's avid gaze.

Every third day, Erik had raped her. It always hurt. If she fought back, if she tried to resist him, he made it hurt so badly that she wanted to die, if only to stop the pain.

He had some kind of magical powers. He could force her to do whatever he wanted without laying a finger on her. All he had to do was give her an order. If she didn't obey, he would simply
make
her do what he wanted, invisible hands grabbing her and positioning her.

And then he would hurt her. A lot.

In the beginning, Nicole had tried to resist him as long as she could, but at some point, she figured out that he liked hurting her, liked it when she fought.

So she used the only weapon she had—she faked indifference, resignation, even boredom. She pretended he had broken her spirit, and it was even mostly true.

No one knew she was here, so no one would rescue her.

All she could do was wait, and watch, and hope for a chance.

Erik had occasionally had visitors of some kind—from time to time, she could hear people moving around upstairs and heard occasional bursts of laughter and music. But by then, he'd laid the
geas
on her that kept her from screaming for help,

He told her that if she was a good girl and behaved herself, then eventually, he'd give her clothing and permit her to accompany him when he went out to run errands.

His
geas
prohibited her from mentioning his name or talking about the bracelet, but either through an oversight or sheer arrogance, he left out one very important prohibition: he did not forbid her from running away.

So she was a
very
good girl and made herself eagerly agree to do
anything
he asked, as long as he didn't hurt her too badly.

Because someday, he was going to let her out of her cage.

Then, one day, he did. He brought her clothes, girly trendy stuff that she wouldn't have worn in a million years...
before
...and took her grocery shopping.

But she could tell he was watching her closely, waiting for her to do something for which he could punish her. So she was very, very good while they were away from the house, and she thanked him profusely when they returned.

He liked that. Liked being in charge. Liked thinking that he had turned her into his willing slave.

* * *

"God, I was such a coward!" Nicole said with loathing.

She was curled on Gabriel's lap now, her head against his chest as she told him what had happened to her during that long, strange, terrible year. His strong arms were around her, making her feel safe and protected.

"Not a coward," Gabriel told her. "But smart and as patient as a hunter. A survivor. The willow that bends but doesn't break. How did you escape?"

"I waited until he got cocky and started bringing me to a shopping mall once in a while," Nicole said. "I'd spent months trying to figure out how his magic worked, because I knew I'd only get one chance to make a break for it. If he used those invisible hand things to grab me and hold me down, then I was screwed, and he'd
never
let me out of that cage again."

"And you figured out that that particular spell is based on being able to see the target?" Gabriel asked.

She felt him kiss her hair.

"Yeah. So I waited for him to get distracted, and then I disappeared. Slipped behind a rack of clothes, hunched down, and ran like hell," Nicole continued. "It took me three months to plan the whole thing out. I was scouting out possible escape routes every time he took me to that fucking mall, trying to figure out how to get out of the place while remaining completely out of sight."

She shook her head. "You know what? I think he really got off on bringing me there and knowing that I was his slave while everyone who saw us thought we were some happy couple," she finished.

"And he couldn't locate you through the
philtatos
charm you wore?" Gabriel asked.

"I guess not. I didn't know that it could be used to track me down. Maybe
he
didn't either, until later." She paused, thinking. "I’m glad I didn't know. I don't think I would have had the guts to make a break for it if I knew he had a magical thingamabob keeping tabs on me."

"And so you freed yourself," Gabriel commented.

Nicole made a face. "Not quite. A month after getting away from him, I turned into a werewolf for the first time, and it's happened every month since then."

"You hadn't transformed before then?" Gabriel asked. He stroked her hair with long, soothing caresses.

"No. I'd notice that I'd changed, somehow, and acquired super-senses, but nothing like that ever happened while I was living in that cage."

"Probably because he was feeding on you and drinking up your beast-magic," Gabriel said. "Once you got away, it began building up."

"But I don't understand
how
he did that to me," said Nicole.

This question had been gnawing away at her since she woke up in the woods, covered in blood.

"Don't you have to be attacked by a werewolf to become one? At least, that's the way it works in all the movies. I just got a—a stupid string bracelet that I couldn't remove. Or is Erik a werewolf, too?"

"Well, the movies are actually pretty spot-on with how most shape-shifters are made," Gabriel said. "They're infected with beast-magic when they're attacked and nearly killed by another shape-shifter. But I've heard there's another way. Remember how I said that some of the Children of Lilith are sorcerers? My mother used to tell me stories from the old days, and she once said that the first shape-shifters were created by the Children of Lilith, using some kind of magical technique that's now lost."

Nicole considered Gabriel's words. "So if there's a Child of Lilith who knows how to turn people like me into shape-shifters, then he's either really old, or his family has secretly been handing down ancient spells?" She gave a short laugh. "That sounds like one of those 800-page fantasy epics."

"If this Erik is who I think he is...and your description makes me think I'm right…, then he's a member of the Asura clan. I'll do some research to narrow down a suspect, and then I'll put Mark and Korinna on the case. Trust me, Nicole, we
will
find him. He's a monster, and he needs to be stopped—and punished."

They sat on her couch for a while longer, until the wine was gone. It felt so good when Gabriel held her like this.

Finally, he stirred beneath her, and she slid off his lap and got to her feet. He rose with a graceful, cat-like movement and stood looking down at her, his expression serious.

"Thank you," he said. "I know that talking about your experiences wasn't easy. I'm grateful that you trusted me enough to tell me."

"You're a good guy," Nicole said, repeating what she had told him earlier. "And I appreciate everything you've done for me...offering me the job and not firing me, Werewolf Boot Camp...you know," she finished, feeling a bit awkward under his intense gaze.

"You're...grateful," Gabriel said, musingly, and she knew that she hadn't managed to tell him the really important part.