Page 33 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness

Some slayer I am.

I snorted. Did I even count as a slayer anymore? Had I ever counted? Did what happen in Romania change everything?

Would they be able to tell me what in the hell I was now? Slayer? Vampire? Something that belonged on the island of misfit toys? Would the constant hunger I felt every stop? Would my sister ever be able to control her wolf side?

And what was the rest of our lives going to be like?

Would we always have to chain Willa during full moons, or would she develop control? Would I always have an insatiable hunger in me that nothing seemed to satisfy? Would I always fight the urge to be out at night, hunting for baddies? And would I ever find forgiveness for my multitude of sins? Would some other nut job show up thinking Willa and I were the key to freeing the demon in Romania?

Enough. Get some more sleep and then spiral into doomsday scenarios in your head.

I sighed and hit my pillows a few times, attempting to fluff it while also working out some aggression. I closed my eyes, briefly wondering what had caused me to wake to begin with.

Chapter Eleven

Mina

As I driftedoff to sleep, my mind ran the cave events over and over again—a never-ending nightmare I couldn’t stop or wake from. It’s part of why I hated falling asleep. Sleep often brought with it an endless reminder of what Willa and I had lived through. Of our aunt’s betrayal.

But this time, the dream was different. It included the horrible ordeal in the cave but instead of waking when Helen stabbed me in the chest, I saw more—saw myself being pushed out of the cave by Willa. I saw myself being caught by a beautiful woman with long dark hair—a woman Willa had told me was one of The Weird Sisters.

The dream continued, giving me flashes of someone I didn’t remember being there.

Another man.

Different from Naked Wolf Guy. While I wasn’t a super fan of the man, looking at him naked had been no hardship. The guy had an amazing body. And if you didn’t mind the fact he ranaround with The Weird Sisters and may or may not have led my sister and I to what could have been our death, he was a ten.

The new guy somehow managed to outdo that. I caught flashes of the new guy that didn’t make a lot of sense. He wasn’t in the cave. He’d been outside of it, in the rain, above me—holding me in his arms. Lightning flashed behind him, giving me a glimpse of his powerful frame—his long, wet hair, obscuring his face from my view.

“Pay him no mind,uciga?a mea mica de mon?tri.”

The stranger’s deep voice echoed in my mind. He had a heavy accent— Eastern European maybe. And he sounded hot. If his shadowy outline was an indication, he was a twenty out of ten. I really, really hoped this dream would show me him naked.

I stirred slightly, teetering on the edge of waking.

Any other time, I’d have welcomed the chance to think about anythingotherthan what happened in Romania but the new guy changed things. Suddenly, I found myself wanting to remain, wanting to see his face. Okay, I wanted to see all of him, preferably minus clothing.

If only real men came that way, I thought, grinning a little as I let myself relax into the dream state more.

I wasn’t going to turn down the potential for a hot sex dream, even if it did spawn from memories of the worst night of my life. Maybe having a few dreams that included a mysterious hottie would help keep away the ugly memories of the cave incident.

So what if I was inventing the guy and he didn’t really exist?

I’d earned the right to fantasize, hadn’t I? Maybe this was my brain’s way of processing the trauma. I doubt it was therapist recommended but if I walked into a shrink’s office talking about demons in a cave and my aunt wanting to take things back to the days when slayers slayed and demons demoned, I’d be in a straight jacket.

No thanks.

Dream sex sounded like a much better option. I just hoped the dream went that way.

I did my best to get lost in the moment, hoping beyond hopes the dream morphed into bedroom territory. The dream changed quickly. It went from being outside the cave at night in a thunderstorm to being in a stone cell.

I found myself going at someone, attacking them with raw fury consuming me. I couldn’t focus. Everything was chaotic. I caught brief glimpses of the other person in the room with me. He was large, well over six feet tall, and incredibly toned. The kind of body hours and hours in a gym provided. I waged an inner war, part of me wanting to attack him and kill him, the other wanting to lick him all over.

I struggled to focus on his face—a face that didn’t want to come to me. It was as if someone had taken the blur feature used on television to hide explicit content and put it over his face.

Weird.

It would have made more sense for them to put it over his groin, which I could clearly see the outline of through his dark pants. They were that tailored to him and he was that fit.

---