Page 5 of Sergi
I set the bucket down and pulled out the clothing, laying each article on the bed. A new shift, this time, though the fabric was still rough, it was blue—or, various shades of it. The cloth had been bleached so many times the color had become a variety of hues, but it was good enough to signify I’d be working in the labs. The slippers were similar except for a thicker sole. There was new underwear and underneath the first set was a second identical one. The last item was a white lab coat.
It made sense. It was impossible to go an entire day without smearing blood on my lab coat. The shift would be mostly protected, but I’d have a second set available while the first was being washed, which, if I remembered correctly, was every third day.
A new lab coat was provided at the end of each day after the bloodstained one was dropped in a hazardous waste receptacle. In some way, it made me sad.
At least the blood added some color to the monotone environment.
I giggled at my macabre humor.
Perhaps it was my first step into madness.
Chapter Three
Cressa Langtry tossedin her sleep, the dream forming in bits and pieces. Sweat broke out on her forehead, and she reached for her temple, her skin damp under her touch. She slowed her breathing, searching the room that was both foreign and familiar.
She sat at a long dining table and her eyes caught on the flickering light of flames in the centerpiece display. Her breaths slowed as she focused on one steady flame, her meditation technique calming her.
This wasn’t a dreamwalk of her making. And it was too realistic to be a mere dream. Was she in some dreamwalker nightmare?
She glanced down at the sage silk dress she wore. A gold tennis bracelet scratched against her left wrist. The aromatic scent of what she knew without looking came from the remains of a roasted pheasant dinner woke a few buds of hunger.
She was tempted to take a drink from the half-empty wineglass because this wasn’t a normal dreamwalk. How could a memory be so vivid, as if she had time warped back to the actual event?
Voices snapped her out of her reverie but not out of the dream. She gasped when she turned to the right.
Lorenzo Venizi leaned back in his seat at the head of the table.
What the holy hell?
The earlier anxiety returned. Her heart raced, and the cold hands of fear snaked through her when she couldn’t rise from the chair. Okay. So, she had limited control of this dream. Was that because when she’d been on Shadow Island, she’d been mesmerized at this point?
Lorenzo’s gray suit matched the hair at his temples. The vamp was a handsome male. Sophisticated, well-educated, and charming—when he wanted to be. He commanded a room and had many like-minded friends, but at the end of the day, he was nothing more than an asshole with evil intent. No better than a sleazy bounty hunter like Sorrento.
If he’d noticed her gasp when she first set eyes on him, he didn’t show it. In fact, he wasn’t looking at her at all.
She turned her head to follow his line of sight to find a thin man with a severely balding head. The few thin strands that remained were a dull, dusty blond. Almost transparent in the low light of the room. His equally dull brown suit hung from him as if, at one time, he’d weighed fifty pounds more and never thought to buy a new one after losing the weight. He wore glasses that perched halfway down the bridge of his nose, and she itched to push them back up.
He seemed familiar.
She tapped the table with her fork, surprised she could do that much.
“Hello.”
When no one acknowledged her greeting or the tapping of the utensil, she determined she’d reached the parameters of the dream. She didn’t appear to be needed for the dream tocontinue, so she let her gaze drift around the room as she recalled her memory of this event.
She’d only been on Shadow Island for two or three days before Lorenzo brought home a dinner guest and wanted her to attend the meal. Dinner conversation was subpar as the little man had fidgeted through most of the meal, though it hadn’t been from fear of being in Lorenzo’s home. They had business to discuss, and he wanted to get to it. He was almost salivating.
Lorenzo had been aggravated but finally relented once the main course was finished. When the crème brûlée and coffee were served, he placed a new linen napkin over his lap and said, “Tell me what’s so important, you’ve squirmed all through dinner.”
She remembered being bored as she played with her dessert, more interested in the coffee, and, unknowingly at the time, she’d let Pandora out to search the room for valuables. Try as she might, she’d always be a thief at heart.
At some point, the cadence of Lorenzo’s tone shifted, and though she hadn’t thought much of it at the time, he sat up and leaned into the table. She’d seen that look before. A long stare, his gaze unfocused, like a robot that froze as it ran multiple calculations.
What had they been talking about?
Then it flashed before her as the little man in her dream replayed part of the conversation she’d missed from her memories. He was working on a special project. Tests had been performed, but the earlier formulas hadn’t provided satisfactory results. Until recently. Someone had stumbled upon a formula that performed to most of Lorenzo’s specifications. They would need to perform more testing before it could be considered reliable in the field, but they were very close.
Lorenzo’s entire demeanor had changed to one of extreme interest and eerie satisfaction. His focus shifted, catching her off guard as his gaze locked with hers—it was the eyes of his beast.
