Unmade (Unborn #4) - Amber Lynn Natusch Page 0,26

volume until what had been only noise became a voice, deep and clear and terrifying.

“Your mind resists me when you are awake now,” Phobos said, his voice echoing in my mind, “so I have come to see you here—in your dreams.”

I searched the darkness but found nothing. No visions. No Phobos. Just infinite black.

“You will never be in my dreams,” I replied. “You are a thing of nightmares.”

“How you flatter me,” he said, his delight plain. “Tell me, Khara, where are you now?”

“Nowhere.”

“You cannot be nowhere.”

I focused on the darkness to keep my mind from betraying my location. In sleep, I could not manage to pull free of his hold, as I apparently had at the Victorian. Until I awoke or he released me, I was his prisoner.

“And yet I am…”

A chill settled around me. “It would be unwise to toy with me, Khara. Others have done so in the past. It did not end well for them.”

“Is that what happened to Eos?” I asked, baiting him. “Did she challenge you and pay the price?”

“Careful, now—”

“Or what? You will climb into my mind and kill me? I think not. You need me for whatever dark purpose you are set on enacting.”

“I cannot kill you here even if I wished to, that much is true. But I can bring you to heel in many creative ways. You’ve barely seen the lengths I’m willing to go to to secure what I want. Your ridiculous PC brother, the Underworld nymph—just the beginning. The veritable tip of the iceberg, as they say.”

“And you have barely seen the lengths I am willing to go in order to protect those I care for.”

Laughter rumbled through my head like thundering hooves. “I am counting on them…” His voice drifted off before he spoke again, any hint of amusement gone from his tone; only anger and mania were left in its wake. “I will remove any obstacle in my way to get to you, Khara—to do what I have wanted to for so long. But first I must find something before we can be together in the flesh. Once I do, I will come for you. Only then will it be time…”

The pressure in my head increased to an unbearable level until, all at once, it relented with a loud, popping sound. I gasped as my eyes shot open, my unconscious struggle to escape his hold during our conversation apparent from the pace of my heart and the sweat coating my body.

As I sat up, I saw a spot in the darkness a shade blacker than the rest at the end of the bed. The silhouette of a body. Without thinking, I whipped a blade from the sheath on my leg and launched it at the shadow. The darkness dodged it, and I reached for another, prepared to throw it in my panic. But before I could let it fly, that shadow pounced, pinning my arms to the bed.

“It’s me, Khara,” Oz said, breathing nearly as hard as I was. “It’s me…” He held me there until the fight and the fear in my body gave way to calm, my normal state taking over. The aftereffects of Phobos’ hold on my slumbering mind wore off, leaving Oz and me in a compromising position. “Say something.”

“It appears my aim still needs work,” I replied. The rumble of his laughter coursed through me.

“I’m grateful for that at the moment. I knew you were pissed at me, but I didn’t expect to be dodging daggers when I returned.”

“He came to me in my sleep—the fear god.”

All humor left him in a second, his body suddenly rigid, prepared for a fight he could not yet have.

“What did you see? What did he say?”

He pulled away just enough to look at me in the darkness, as though he could see my expression without a shred of light. I felt him shift, the sound of rustling feathers echoing through the room. Then dim firelight illuminated the space, as well as the one still pinning both my arms and my body to the bed. The look on Oz’s face was full of anger, concern, and mixture of other emotions I could not yet place.

“I saw nothing, only heard him. He said things.”

Oz let out a sigh. “Your literal interpretation of my questions isn’t appreciated at the moment—”

“Where were you?” I asked as I tried to pull my arms from his grasp.

His hands gripped them tighter. “Out.”

“Out where?”

“In Detroit.”

“Must you be so literal?”

“I’m just following your