When Darkness Calls

Chapter 3: Five Years Away.

POV: LUCIEN

Five years.

That was how long I'd been away from the human world.

Five years since I'd left everything behind and gone to war with my own kind, five years since I'd last seen the city, my company, and the life I'd built here.

I'd been back in the human world for three weeks.

The war was over, and the borders were secure. There was nothing stopping me from returning to my normal life. Yet I hadn't left the house.

"You can't keep doing this," Damon said, leaning against the door of my study.

I looked up from my drink. "Doing what?"

"Hiding."

Mira sat across from me, with her arms folded. "He's right."

"Kael said the same thing," Damon added.

"You've been hiding in here for three weeks."

"Kael talks too much," I muttered.

From somewhere down the hallway, Kael's voice carried back. "I heard that."

Mira laughed under her breath.

I said nothing. The truth was, I didn't want to be around anyone. The dreams had gotten worse since I returned, the same woman, the same symbol, and every morning I woke with a headache sharp enough to blur my vision for an hour after.

"You're coming with us tonight," Mira said.

"No."

"That wasn't a question."

"I have work to do."

"You have people for that."

"I have things to handle.”

"You have a mansion, three assistants, and enough money to buy half this city. You'll survive one night outside."

I sighed and grabbed my coat off the chair.

The bar Mira picked was loud, too loud, packed with humans who had no idea what kind of company they were keeping tonight.

I found a spot near the end of the counter and ordered something strong. Damon and Mira drifted toward a table, giving me space I hadn't asked for.

I was halfway through my drink when someone bumped my arm hard enough to spill a few drops onto the counter.

"Watch it," I said, not even looking up.

"Maybe don't take up half the counter with your elbow."

I turned. A woman stood there, annoyed, arms crossed.

"I was here first," I said.

"And I need to order a drink, so."

"So order it somewhere else."

"Wow." She stared at me like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Okay."

"Glad we agree."

"I didn't say I agreed with anything. I said wow, because you're actually this rude to a stranger over a bar space."

"I'm rude to everyone. Consider yourself lucky."

"Lucky." She laughed, but it wasn't a nice laugh. "You're something else."

"I get that a lot."

"I bet you do." She leaned past me to signal the bartender, close enough that I caught the smell of her perfume, simple, nothing like the women who usually stood this close to me.

"Do you mind?" I said.

"Yes, actually, I do mind, because you're taking up space that isn't yours."

"I own the space I'm standing in."

"Oh, you own the bar too? Impressive." She rolled her eyes. "Let me guess. Rich, arrogant, thinks the world owes him something."

"You don't know anything about me."

"I know enough. I've met men like you my whole life." Something flickered across her face when she said it, but she covered it fast, before I could ask what it meant.

"Sounds like a personal problem."

"It became one tonight, thanks to you."

The bartender set her drink down and she grabbed it without looking at me again.

"Enjoy your evening," she said, flat.

"I was, until you showed up."

She turned and walked toward a table without another word, and I watched her go longer than made any sense.

Something about her felt strangely familiar.

I frowned at the thought. Ridiculous. I'd never seen her before in my life.

Damon slid onto the stool beside me a moment later. "You were staring."

"I wasn't."

Mira joined a second later, smirking as she glanced toward the same table. "You absolutely were."

"She was annoying."

"Of course," Damon said. "That's why you watched her leave."

I gave him a cold look.

He smiled. "Touchy."

"Drop it."

"Dropped." Damon didn't look like he meant it.

I glanced toward the door. Kael had stayed behind at the house. I wasn't about to explain myself to him either.

I finished my drink and stood. "I'm heading home."

"Already?" Mira frowned. "We just got here."

"Early morning."

"You don't have anything early tomorrow, I checked your schedule myself."

"Then I'm making something early."

Damon studied my face a second too long. "You sure that's all this is?"

"I'm sure."

I left before either of them could push further, walked out into the cold night air, and stopped at the door for no reason I could explain.

I looked back through the glass. She was laughing at something one of her friends said, with her head tilted back, and it wasn't the kind of laugh people forced in my world.

It was careless and real, the way nothing around me had sounded in longer than I could remember.

I turned away before I could understand why I was still looking, got in the car, and told myself the whole thing meant nothing…

By the time I got home, the feeling still hadn't faded.

I sat on the edge of my bed for a long while before finally lying back, staring at the ceiling, running the argument over in my head like it mattered more than it should have.

I know enough. I've met men like you my whole life. What had she meant by that?

I didn't have an answer, and eventually the question blurred into sleep before I noticed it happening.

The dream came again that night.

The forest was still there, but something had changed. There was no blood, no pain.

The woman stood in front of me, her hand reaching toward mine, and this time she didn't flicker at the edges the way she always had before.

Then I stepped closer.

For the first time, she didn't disappear. Her lips moved."Lucien."

I froze. It was the first time I'd heard her voice clearly, not a whisper cut short, not a scream swallowed by darkness, just my name, steady and certain, the way someone says a name they've said a thousand times before.

Then I woke up.

I lay there in the dark, waiting for the familiar pain behind my eyes, the one that always followed, the one that had never once failed to come. But nothing came.

I touched my forehead, confused, and sat up slowly, staring across the room at nothing in particular.

The dream had never changed before tonight.

And somehow, without any reason I could explain, the only thing my mind kept circling back to was the woman I'd argued with at the bar just a few hours earlier.