Even though this is a nightmare, it's still mine. I can just wake up! I want to wake up! I want to wake up!
But I didn't. I couldn't. I wasn't in control. Kalona was. He'd built this dream, this dark, nightmare meadow, and somehow brought me there, closing the door to reality behind us.
"What do you want?" I said the words quickly so he couldn't hear my voice shaking.
"You know what I want, my love. I want you."
"I am not your love."
"Of course you are." He moved this time, stepping so close to me that I could feel the chill that came from his unsubstantial body. "My A-ya."
A-ya had been the name of the maiden the Cherokee Wise Women had created to trap him centuries ago. Panic spiked through me. "I'm not A-ya!"
"You command the elements," his voice was a caress, awful and wonderful, compelling and terrifying. "Gifts from my Goddess," I said.
"Once before you commanded the elements. You were made from them. Fashioned to love me." His massive dark wings stirred and lifted. Beating forward softly, they enfolded me in a spectral embrace that was cold as frost.
"No! You must have me mixed up with someone else. I'm not A-ya."
"You're wrong, my love. I feel her within you."
His wings pressed against my body, drawing me closer to him. Even though his physical form was only semi-substantial, I could feel him. His wings were soft. Winter cold against the warmth of my dreaming self. The outline of his body was frigid mist. It burned my skin, sending electric currents through me, heating me with a desire I didn't want to feel but was powerless to resist.
His laugh was seductive. I wanted to drown in it. I leaned forward, closing my eyes and gasping aloud as the chill of his spirit brushed against my breasts, sending shooting sensations that were painful but deliciously erotic to places in my body that made me feel out of control.
"You like the pain. It brings you plea sure." His wings got more insistent, his body harder and colder and more passionately painful as it pressed against mine. "Surrender to me." His voice, already beautiful, was unimaginably seductive as he became aroused. "I spent centuries in your arms. This time our joining will be controlled by me, and you will revel in the plea sure I can bring you. Throw off the shackles of your distant goddess and come to me. Be my love, truly, in body as well as soul and I will give you the world!"
The meaning of his words penetrated through the haze of pain and plea sure like sunlight burning away dew. I found my will again, and stumbled out of the embrace of his wings. Tendrils of icy black smoke snaked around my body, clinging...touching...caressing...
I shook myself like a pissed cat shaking off rain and the dark wisps slid from my body. "No! I'm not your love. I'm not A-ya. And I'll never turn my back on Nyx!"
When I spoke Nyx's name, the nightmare shattered.
I sat straight up in bed, shaking and gasping. Stevie Rae was sleeping soundly beside me, but Nala was wide awake. She was growling softly. Her back was arched, her body was totally puffed up, and she was staring slit-eyed at the air above me.
"Ah, hell!" I shrieked and bounded off the bed, spinning around and looking up, expecting to see Kalona hovering like a giant bat-bird over us.
Nothing. There was nothing there.
I grabbed Nala and sat on the bed. With trembling hands I petted her over and over. "It was just a bad dream...it was just a bad dream...it was just a bad dream," I told her, but I knew it was a lie.
Kalona was real, and somehow he was able to reach me through my dreams.
Chapter Two
Okay, so Kalona can get i G zizento your dreams, but you're awake now, so pull yourself together! I told myself sternly as I petted Nala and let my cat's familiar purr soothe me. Stevie Rae stirred in her sleep and murmured something I couldn't hear. Then, still sleeping, she smiled and sighed. I looked down at her, glad that she was having better luck with her dreams.
Gently I pulled back the blanket she'd curled up under and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw no blood seeping through the bandage that covered the terrible arrow wound that had pierced her.
She stirred again. This time Stevie Rae's eyes fluttered and opened. She looked confused for a second, then