Dark Stranger The Dream Read online

  "I've got a good feeling about this, girl... and I hate being disappointed." Amanda poked a warning finger at Syssi's chest before turning to head inside.

  Syssi shook her head. Bossy family.

  Lying down on the lounger Amanda had vacated, she turned on her stomach and cradled her face in her arms. Tired from the day's excitement, the sun pleasantly warm on her back, she closed her eyes as she grew drowsy.

  "Mistress, I brought you supper in case you became peckish." Okidu's voice woke her.

  There was a thick robe draped over her back, which explained why she felt so warm and toasty even though it was getting late. Syssi was touched by the butler's thoughtfulness. With the two of them alone in the place, it must have been Okidu who had covered her. "Thank you for the robe. It was very kind of you." She slipped her arms into the overlong sleeves and looped the belt twice around her waist, then brought the lapels closer to her cheeks. Kian's scent was all over the thing and combined with the warmth of the thick terry fabric it cocooned her in what felt like home—safe, hers. Syssi closed her eyes. She missed Kian. Which was nuts.

  "You are welcome, Mistress. It was getting chilly, and I did not want to wake you. You looked so peaceful. But it is late, and the master would not be happy if I did not provide you with nourishment. Would you like to dine outside? Or should I take the tray inside?"

  By now, it was indeed a little cold out on the terrace, but recalling yesterday's sunset, she wanted to watch it again. "Here would be great, thank you."

  Syssi ate her dinner at the small bistro table, watching the clouds turn all shades of orange, red, and purple until they faded into darkness by the time she was done.

  She couldn't help feel a bit disappointed that Kian had not returned in time to join her for dinner, and as she carried the tray to the kitchen, she wondered what was keeping him. He had been gone for hours. But then, he obviously couldn't just drop everything to be with her.

  And wasn't that a shame.

  Evidently, when Amanda had told her about Kian's insane workload and long hours, she had not been exaggerating.

  The little Syssi knew about him, she had learned from Amanda's complaints about how difficult it was to get him to come see her teach because he was always working; busy running the family business.

  What kind of business? Amanda had never said. It was clear, though, that big money was involved—owning this building for starters—and Amanda certainly couldn't afford her rich taste in apparel on a professor's salary.

  CHAPTER 2: DALHU

  Dalhu paced the length of the mansion's opulent home office, contemplating his newfound knowledge. The professor's little red notebook had been an eye-opener on so many levels.

  It had taken him a while to decipher her illegible handwriting and cryptic references, but eventually an interesting picture had emerged.

  First and foremost, he had discovered that the enemy still adhered to the old taboos against procreating between members of the same matrilineal descent. Second, and not less important, that they had no Dormants of other lines.

  He'd always assumed that they were a cowardly bunch; the kind who preferred running and hiding to honorably facing their enemies in battle. But as the real reason for their tactics became glaringly obvious—that there just weren't enough of them to offer a fight—he was grudgingly compelled to grant them respect.

  How the hell had they managed to achieve so much—stolen knowledge notwithstanding—when there couldn't have been more than a few hundreds of them?

  Making tracks in the luxurious Persian rug, his mind went back to the issue of Dormants. Apparently, the professor believed that finding mortals with special abilities, of the paranormal kind, would lead her to potential Dormants.

  Why?

  None of his brethren had any of the various traits she had mentioned in her notebook. And certainly, none of the Dormants he had encountered as a child had exhibited anything out of the ordinary—not his mother and sister, nor any of the other women in Navuh's 'Special harem'.

  Navuh's powers were to be expected, after all, he was the son of a god, and so were his sons' formidable abilities.

  The rest of the men could thrall most mortals to some extent, but not all—the weaker the mind, the less it resisted manipulation—but that was it.

  As to Dormants, they were a rare and precious commodity, guarded fiercely by Navuh for obvious reasons. And apparently, the despot was the only one to possess any.

  Dalhu closed his eyes as his thoughts drifted back to his mother and sister. His mother had been a whore, as all the other Dormant women in Navuh's special harem—and the same fate had been awaiting his sister—he just hadn't been around to witness it.

  After all this time, he had trouble remembering their features. The only clear memory that he still managed to hold on to was his mother's voice. Some nights, he still heard her singing to him in his dreams.

  Dalhu had been taken away to the training camp and turned at thirteen, never to see his small family again. He hadn't been allowed. The one time he'd tried, he'd gotten off easy with a severe beating as punishment, only because he'd been so young. An older male would've been beheaded.

  The group of Dormant women were Navuh's secret brood-mares. Selling their bodies to serve wealthy mortals provided him with a source of income and male children for his army of near-immortal mercenaries.

  The sons were activated and became soldiers, the daughters were not and were relegated to prostitution like their mothers before them. Neither were given a choice.

  Once the boys were turned, they were never allowed near the Dormants again. Fornicating with one carried the death penalty for both.

  The Dormants were to serve mortals only.

  In the past Dalhu, like the rest of the soldiers, had assumed that the women weren't turned because according to the teachings of Mortdh they were deemed inferior. It took him centuries to piece together the real reason behind the segregation. If turned by an immortal male's venom, an immortal female's chances of conceiving dropped to nearly nonexistent. And Navuh needed the women to bear as many children as possible, which they had, providing over the millennia thousands of warriors for his army.

  The special harem had always been heavily guarded—nowadays even more so as a fenced-off enclave of Passion-Island.

  A selective breeding program was pairing Dormants with clients believed to possess the traits valuable to Navuh; mainly physical size and strength, with sociopathic tendencies a close second.

  Navuh needed his soldiers to be strong and ruthless—nothing more.

  Dalhu sat back at the desk and pulled out a quarter from his pocket. He tossed it up in the air and slammed it onto the desk when it came down. Repeating his experiment twenty times, he was assured of having no special precognition ability.

  As expected, his predictions came true roughly half of the time.

  Returning the quarter back to his pocket, he wondered if these abilities could be somehow developed, learned. He wouldn't have put it past Navuh to conceal this kind of information from his troops. As power hungry as Navuh was, the despot would not have wanted his divine status undermined by his lowly soldiers exhibiting even a fraction of his abilities.

  Dalhu lifted the professor's small red notebook off the desk and leaned back in the heavy executive swivel chair. Flipping through the pages, he searched for the one containing the list of paranormal subjects.

  Interesting stuff really... Telepathy, both sending and receiving, or only one-way transmission. Remote viewing, past viewing, precognition, influencing—emotional and otherwise. The ability to cast illusions. Communication with the dearly departed.

  Most of the test subjects exhibited dismal talent. Except two.

  A woman named Syssi, a lab employee, was the sole recipient of the score of ten—the highest. Her talent was precognition. What a powerful tool that could be, he mused, wondering what kind of predictions she could make.

  The other interesting subject was a guy named
Michael: a student on the same campus. His talent was telepathy—of the receiving kind—his ranking was eight. Not bad... being able to read other people's minds could be a great asset too, probably a more useful tool than that of the female's.

  Soon, Dalhu would have both to do with as he pleased.

  The woman's address had been easy to find. The hacker he had hired had very little trouble retrieving her record from the university's HR database; especially with that weird spelling of her given name.

  The telepath posed a greater challenge, but it was nothing money couldn't overcome. His cellphone number was listed to his parents' account in Minnesota, so the phone bill was useless for finding his address. And there were five students named Michael Gross living on campus. He had to be located by his phone's signal.

  The guy Dalhu had found to do it had been expensive but worth it. Unfortunately, he had gotten the job done only late in the evening, pinpointing the boy's location to a popular student hangout, a club not far from the dorms, which was currently teeming with people.

  Dalhu had men in position at both locations.

  The team at the woman's house was poised to snatch her as soon as she came home. Though if she didn’t show up soon, he planned to fork out the money for the guy to track her cellphone as well.

  The other team, dispatched to bring the telepath, was hanging outside the club. Without a picture to identify him by, they would wait for the boy to get out and separate from his friends. Regrettably, the acuity of the tracking device was limited to pinpointing the place, but not one individual out of a tightly packed crowd.

  But it wouldn't be much longer.

  Soon, Dalhu's phone would be buzzing with the confirmations of their capture.

  CHAPTER 3: KIAN

  As Kian made his way up to the penthouse, he was looking forward to picking up where he had left off with Syssi.

  During the long hours he had spent attending to the most pressing items on his agenda, his resolve to do the right thing and leave her alone had crumbled to dust. Delegating and postponing every task he possibly could, he had been counting the seconds until he could get away.

  Except, when he finally made it back, she wasn't there.

  Searching, he poked his head into every room, checking even out on the terrace, but she was nowhere to be found.

  Where the hell can she be?

  He pulled out his phone and ringed Amanda. "Is Syssi with you?" he asked without preamble.

  "No, did you manage to scare her off already?" Amanda taunted.

  With a grunt, he ended the call and shoved the phone back in his pocket.

  The obvious conclusion was that she had left. Though, how she had managed to do that without a thumbprint access to the elevators, or security letting him know, baffled him.

  Maybe Okidu had helped her, taking her down in the elevator. With that main obstacle out of the way, there would have been nothing preventing her from waltzing away.

  And as the guys in security were more concerned with people coming into the building than leaving it, they would have thought nothing of her casually strolling out the front door.

  With a vile curse, Kian kicked a planter, wincing as the thing toppled.

  He had no one to blame but himself.

  After all, he hadn't specifically forbidden her to leave, or informed security to detain her if she tried.

  * * *

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