He pulled back abruptly and lifted her chin, forcing her to look him in the face, and when their eyes met, all the breath rushed from his lungs. Familiar turquoise eyes stared at her beneath a furrowed brow, and she watched as the pieces came together.
“It’s you,” he said under his breath. “I’m not crazy, am I, Olivia? The second I laid eyes on you tonight outside the club, I knew you were mine. I’ve dreamt of you since I can remember, but I never thought you could be real.” He moved closer, brushing his lips along the corner of her mouth. “And then, there you were on a New York City sidewalk in living color.”
She studied his face, and her fingers trailed along the strong line of his jaw. The sun in the dreamscape bathed them in a golden glow and made her recall their stolen kiss in the alley. She had been weakened, but not burned, by the light of early dawn; his blood gave her life, making her heart beat for the first time in centuries, and even some of their memories were the same… all the evidence was right in front of her.
His blood. Just one small taste of his blood. Staring into those painfully beautiful blue eyes, the impossible became reality, and Olivia knew there was no mistaking it now. No pretending. She could have kept up the dream trysts and made love to him again in this plane, God knows she wanted to, but how could she do that knowing what she knew?
How could she allow this to continue? It would only be torturous for both of them. She had to end it, make him think it was nothing more than a dream, and never come to him again. She was vampire. He was human. She had no right to play with his new life and drag him into the darkness. She would not doom him to eternal darkness when he had a promising human life ahead.
She stared back, praying her eyes did not betray her sadness. Olivia pressed his hand against her cheek and closed her eyes. She was weak. She wanted to cuddle up against his chest, let him hold her until sundown, turn him into an immortal, and keep him with her forever. But that would be a selfish, shitty thing to do.
He deserved a real life. A human life. A wife. Children.
All she could bring him was death and blood.
“I’m not who or what you think I am,” she said quietly.
Before he could protest, her eyes flicked open, and sadness was replaced with the cold detachment she learned to master as a sentry. Olivia put both hands on his chest and shoved him away with more force than she had ever shown him. She watched as he stumbled backward but managed to keep his balance. The look of confusion on his face broke her withered, beef jerky excuse of a heart.
Barefoot, she hopped onto the hood of the cab in one fluid motion, her red hair flowing over her shoulders as the sun set with time-lapse speed. The long black negligee clung to her feminine curves, and she knew her nipples poked through the fabric, her body cruelly contradicting her words.
“It’s just a dream, Detective Paxton,” she said in a shaky voice. She never attempted to glamour a human in a dreamscape, but she had to give it a try. If it worked, he would forget and move on with his life without her. Olivia steeled her resolve and kept her eyes locked with Doug’s, dropping her voice to the low, seductive tone of the glamour effect.
“Detective Paxton,” she murmured. “Dreams end, just like this one will. Eventually, we all have to wake up and deal with the reality of the life we’ve been given. We’re nothing to each other. Do you understand? I merely look like the woman you’ve dreamed of and nothing more. You’ll have no memory of asking me to dinner, this dream, or the kiss in the alley.” Tears stung her eyes as she fought to keep her voice steady. “The next time you see me, I will merely be a person to interview and nothing more. I mean nothing to you, Doug Paxton.”
Seconds later, she shot into the air in one swift leap and streaked across the orange sky like a bullet. She prayed for silence and some kind of sign that her attempt to glamour him worked; however, as she fled the dreamscape, his gritty voice echoed.
“You’re wrong about that, sweetheart,” Doug shouted. “Dreams may end, but you and I are in it for eternity.”
Chapter 5
They caught the case not long after coming on duty that night, and while he wasn’t pleased another murder had taken place, he was thrilled to have something to get his mind off the crazy, fucking dream he had. It was the most realistic dream he ever experienced, and if he didn’t know better, he would swear Olivia Hollingsworth had actually been there with him.
The dreams were no longer of an unknown redheaded beauty—now they were most definitely of Olivia. Between that weird hallucination in the alley and the dreams, he was starting to think he was going insane. Maybe he hit his head harder than he thought when he tripped outside the ME’s building.
Doug stood over the corpse of the young woman and squelched the ugly head of rage that threatened to consume him. He had been on the job long enough that seeing dead bodies shouldn’t affect him, but he would never get used to seeing brutalized women or children.
He squatted to get a closer look as Tom spoke to the college kids who found her. Washington Square Park had gotten cleaner and safer over the past few years, and most of the park had been renovated, but the bathroom facility was still under development. The city labeled it a Comfort Station, but with all the drug use and sex trade that went down in the crumbling brick building, Doug thought comfort was probably the least appropriate word.
Doug looked over his shoulder and through the open door to see Tom interviewing the shaken up kids. They looked like they were going to puke, but he didn’t have pity for them, only for the dead girl on the cracked tile floor. The three of them could go home or go on Facebook and blather about how traumatized they were, but the only place the girl was going was to the medical examiner’s office and then the funeral home.
He turned his attention back to the victim. Her bleached blond, blood-splattered hair covered her face, but the wounds on her throat and arms were similar to the ones sustained by Ronald. Her purse had been found in the corner of the busted-up bathroom and still had her money and credit cards, so it wasn’t a robbery gone bad.
Based on the outfit, she had obviously been out clubbing. One of her heels was broken, and the other had fallen off during the attack. Her black dress was pushed to her waist, and her underwear was around her ankles. She had been raped on top of everything, but this was no run-of-the-mill sex crime.
Doug stood, needing to put distance between himself and the victim, but a mark on her hand caught his eye.
“Hey,” he called to one of the techies from the examiner’s office, “pass me a pair of gloves, would ya?”
He took the gloves from a guy who looked like he had been on the job for about a day and half.
“You got all the pictures of the body and the crime scene, right?”
The young man nodded wordlessly. Doug pulled on the gloves as Tom came in with the victim’s purse in his hands.
“Victim’s name is Brittany Diamond. She’s twenty-five and has a Nebraska driver’s license.” Tom made a tsking sound. “Looks like another set of big city dreams have been snuffed out. Whatcha got, kid?”
“I’m not sure.” Her left arm was draped over her abdomen, but it was the dark mark on her hand that captured his attention. Doug carefully lifted her pale hand and turned it, so that both he and Tom could see. Doug’s jaw clenched as he looked at the familiar stamp. The lettering and the gothic design that encircled it was smudged but still readable, and right there, as plain as day, it said The Coven.