Succubus Shadows Page 0,71

have done what I was supposed to do. I was ready to - then he asked me to marry him and - damn it. I should have done it. I should have lied. It would have been better for everyone. I don't know how this happened...."

"It happened because you get too close to them," said Bastien. He was stern but trying hard to be gentle. "Men like this...anyone like this...they enchant you, Fleur. You get attached and then you get hurt."

"Or I hurt them," I murmured.

"You need to stay indifferent."

"It's getting worse," I said. "Every time, it's harder on me. I don't understand. What's happening to me? What's wrong with me?"

"Immortality," he said wisely. "Too many years."

"What do you know? You're younger than me."

Bastien helped me stand, though I was reluctant to let Luc go. "I know that you can't keep doing this. Listen to what I said: don't get attached to these good ones. No matter what you do, it won't end well."

"I won't go near the good ones at all," I said in a small voice. "No more. I'm staying away from them altogether."

Bastien's kindly mien dropped. "That's ridiculous," he scoffed. "Weren't you listening to me earlier? You can't go after immoral men for eternity. You'd get no energy. You'd have to do it every other day."

I looked down at Luc, Luc who had loved me and gotten killed for me. My fault. All my fault.

"Never again," I said. "I won't ever hurt anyone like that again."

When I returned to the box in the dark, I didn't need the Oneroi to enlighten me. All of that dream had been true - except for the last part. It had been a lie. I had continued to hurt people, over and over.

Chapter 16

Really, when you thought about it, what I was going through wasn't that much different from dying after all. They always said you saw your life flash before your eyes, and that's how it was for me. Dream after dream. I relived the most painful moments of my life, true dreams where I'd done terrible things and seen terrible things done to those I loved. More "realities" that had never happened were shown to me as well. In one, Roman's recent display of affection turned out to be a scam. It was a front to punish me for my role in the death of his sister. Only, he didn't go after me directly. He went after all my friends, mortal and immortal. I watched him kill them one by one as he ignored my pleas to just finish me off instead.

The Oneroi latched onto how I was bothered more by the suffering of those I loved than of myself. They mocked me, claiming that Roman's rampage was a vision of the future that had come through the gate of horn. I didn't believe it...at least, I didn't think I did. Nyx could see the future. Could they? Or were they maybe in contact with her, despite her imprisonment? My higher reasoning was giving way to paranoia as I was stripped further and further of my essence. I even began to dread the true dreams from the mortal world, the ones that showed me my friends. They were no longer a comfort; they only plunged me further into darkness. Because as the Oneroi had predicted, there seemed to be no hope of rescue in sight.

Still, I kept dreaming....

Roman, Hugh, and the vampires were in a van. Peter was driving, and the clock on the dashboard read two o'clock in the morning. No one spoke in the small space, giving me no clue as to what was transpiring. Their headlights illuminated a sign along the freeway that indicated an exit for Idaho State Route 41. Idaho?

"Can you change the station?" asked Hugh. "I hate talk radio."

"Because you might learn something?" asked Peter.

"Because I'm trying to stay awake."

"It's a rule of the road: driver controls the radio."

"What rule book says that?"

"Enough," said Roman. His voice was weary, his face more so. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping much, but considering the time of night, that wasn't a surprise. He unfolded a map and then checked a piece of paper with some notes scrawled on it. "It should be the next exit."

"How'd Carter even find this guy?" asked Cody.

"Because Carter moves in mysterious ways," said Hugh. "Hard-drinking, hard-smoking mysterious ways."

"Yeah, but if he knew, why didn't he tell Jerome?"

"Because Jerome would go into blasting mode if he found out. I