Demon of Dreams (Vesperwood Academy: Incubus #1)

1. Cory

1

CORY

I had the dream again last night.

Rough hands against my skin, bared teeth against my neck, the scent of smoke and sweat invading my nostrils. A heat so all-encompassing that I couldn’t think straight, let alone find my voice to speak.

A low growl filled my ears. It lasted a minute, or possibly a lifetime. The surprise and confusion and heart-pounding terror obliterated my concept of time. Something soft—or maybe several somethings, I was never quite sure—caressed my skin and left a trail of burns. It was agony. Torture. And pleasure like I’d never known.

And pulsing underneath it all, like a beating drum, was the part I dreaded most: desire. My desire .

I woke up covered in sweat, on the edge of a scream, and my heart sank when I glanced at the sheets puddled around my waist. I was hard. Revulsion and guilt fought for dominance as I shook myself—hell, I was still shaking from the dream—and tried to think of anything that would make it go down.

I’d been having these dreams for weeks now. It had gotten to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep. I avoided it as long as I could, but working the opening shift at a diner and the evening shift at a motel on the edge of town meant I was constantly tired. The only thing worse than the dream itself was the idea of accidentally drifting off in public, and having people see me dreaming.

My skin crawling at the thought, I pushed myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I’d gotten home at ten last night and had been so tired, I hadn’t bothered to shower. It was 4:30 a.m. now, which meant I had five minutes to get clean if I wanted to make it to Carla’s Diner in time to let Anthony in. He was the cook, and he came from farther away than I did. He hated when he had to wait in the cold.

I ran the shower cool, hoping that would help my erection go down, but it was stubbornly insistent. A shameful thought crossed my mind. If the dream could make me this hard, maybe the fastest way to get rid of it would be to just…

My hand drifted to my cock, my fingers running through the beads of pre-cum at the tip. God, I was so close, it wouldn’t take more than a minute. I leaned against the wall of the shower, grimy-looking no matter how often I cleaned it, and let my mind drift back to the dream.

The heat, the smoke—they intoxicated me with their strangeness. My skin was on fire. My free hand rose, clawed, in a gesture I couldn’t interpret. I might have been trying to fight the… thing off of me, or I might have been digging my fingertips in to pull it closer. That rumbling growl snaked across the back of my neck—

I pulled my hand away from my cock in shock. That growl. What had I been thinking? I couldn’t—there just wasn’t—there was no way I could jack off to this dream.

That growl was crystal clear, even if nothing else about the dream was. And it lit a match of fear inside me that grew and grew until I was near panic. Not because the growl belonged to something inhuman, but because of something much more mundane.

That growl was masculine.

There was just no way a woman would make a noise like that. I wasn’t trying to be sexist. I was sure that if the thing in my dream were some kind of female monster with fangs and eight eyes, she could make a terrifying noise all her own. But this noise—I knew in my heart that this noise was male.

It would almost have been funny, if I hadn’t been cringing with disgust. My subconscious was apparently able to dream up the most unhinged, reality-defying, completely impossible monsters, and they weren't even what scared me the most.

What scared me was what that growl implied. Whoever was touching me—torturing me—in that dream was male.

And part of me liked it.

I felt nauseated. I knew there was nothing wrong with being gay. Hell, my friend Neil was gay, and we’d been best friends since fourth grade. I didn’t have a problem with him. I’d never felt weird around him, or like I had to keep my distance.

But Dad…

Yeah. My dad. That was the problem. My dad had a very different way of looking at things.

My dad was the only parent I’d ever known. He said my mom had passed through our small town of Churchill, Iowa just long enough to get pregnant with me and have the baby before disappearing, leaving my twenty-one-year-old father with an infant he’d never wanted and no idea how to raise him.

He’d done his best. I couldn’t imagine how hard it had been, but with the help of a bunch of neighbors, he’d managed to raise me with some semblance of consistency in his little trailer by the water tower. At the very least, he hadn’t abandoned me like my mom had. I had to give him credit for that.

But that consistency… Sure, there was food in the cupboards (most days) and a fully paid electric bill (most of the time), but there was also his growing contempt, as I got older, with the type of son he had.

My dad had been the varsity quarterback in high school. He’d gotten a full ride to college only to blow his knee out sophomore year. He was a guy’s guy. He loved his guns and sports and beer. Boy, did he love his beer. He’d wanted a son who would grow up to be just like him. Instead, he’d gotten me.

I’d been underweight at birth and had never caught up. I remained shrimpy and short my whole life. I’d turned eighteen this past fall, and I still had customers at the diner asking why I wasn’t in school during the middle of the day.

It wasn’t just the physical stuff that disappointed my dad, though. No, I’d been a disappointment to him in other ways, too. I hated guns and violence. I’d cried the first time we went hunting and he’d shot a stag. I hadn’t been able to get the scent of blood out of my nose for days.

I sucked at sports, or pretty much anything that required hand-eye coordination, and I had even less interest in watching sports on TV. I’d never even done any of that normal teenage rebellion stuff, like stealing a case of beer from him and getting wasted with my friends. I honestly think he would have preferred it if I had.

But no, I had to make friends with Neil, the theater kid—singular, Churchill wasn’t big enough to have more than one—and Franny, the school’s one goth. I’d liked drawing, spending my Saturday afternoons at the town’s tiny library, and my Saturday nights in my bedroom with my friends, watching old movies on the janky VCR Franny had fixed up for us.

All of that was bad enough, but when word got around Churchill that Neil had come out as gay? My dad lost it. He told me in no uncertain terms that I was to ‘ stop hanging out with that queer .’ The next time he found me and Neil hanging out in my room, he lost his shit, literally kicking Neil out before throwing me against the wall, saying he wouldn’t have a faggot for a son.

Neil and I stopped hanging out at my place after that, but Churchill’s a small town, and it didn’t take long for my dad to figure out we were still friends. The verbal abuse got worse after that. The physical abuse, too. I wasn’t going to let my dad end my friendship with Neil. Not when Neil needed more support than ever. But that meant I got a reputation for being gay too, which my dad couldn’t stand.

Sometimes it felt like he took all his frustration with how his life had ended up and unleashed it on me. Like he was punishing the world for what it had done to him, and I just happened to be the one taking the punches.

When I was sixteen, he got drunk, parked his truck on the railroad tracks, and passed out. I’d never known why he did it. Was it suicide? An accident? Either way, he was dead as soon as the train hit him.

I told myself not to feel sorry for him. Told myself he’d been a shitty dad, that he’d hated me, and that it was only right to hate him back. I was sixteen by then, old enough that I could live on my own. But I could never get free of my past.

I did hate my dad. But part of me loved him, too. Part of me missed him, no matter how much I knew I shouldn’t. And no matter how much I knew what he’d said was bullshit, I still cringed at what he’d think if he knew about the dreams I was having. If he knew his son was getting hard at the thought of being ravaged by some otherworldly, but still very male, monster.

Fuck, I wasn’t even sure what to make of that. I was doing my best to push the whole mess out of my head, but it got harder and harder each time the dream repeated. I got harder and harder, too.

I forced myself to complete the shower with cold water, shivering from head to toe by the time I got out. My wet hair froze under my knit cap as I walked the twenty minutes into town to Carla’s Diner. I would have loved to live anywhere other than my dad’s old trailer, but even with two jobs, I couldn’t afford to move out.

In January, it was still dark at 5:00 a.m. Pitch black. Churchill doesn’t go in much for streetlights—we barely have enough money to keep the lights on inside our town’s buildings—and there was no moon that night. The stars above looked cold and distant.

The town was silent as I trudged through the weeks-old snow. I didn’t mind. The quiet was peaceful, and the frigid air helped clear my head.

Until I heard it. A shuffling, somewhere behind me. My head whipped around.

I never passed anyone on my pre-dawn walks. The only other people awake at this hour were still snugly ensconced in their homes, or truckers at the gas station near the highway. My eyes searched the darkness in vain. I stood still for thirty seconds, barely breathing, but the sound didn’t repeat.

I blew out a puff of air and turned around. I was probably just imagining things. Not hard to believe, with the sleep—or lack thereof—that I’d been having.

But I’d only walked half a block before I heard it again. A muted shuffling, almost the sound of sheets rubbing against each other in bed. It wasn’t the noise of footsteps, yet I had the distinct sensation that something was following me, and getting closer.

I stopped and turned around a second time. The night-washed houses and bare trees stared back at me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. What was out there?

Stop being stupid , I scolded myself. Who the hell would be following you, of all people? And if they are following you, why can’t you hear their footsteps?

Wings .

The answer flashed through my mind like it had been waiting for me to ask the question. But that was even dumber. People didn’t fly, and just because I’d been having creepy dreams about some kind of demon didn’t mean that one was chasing me now.

I turned back towards the diner and began walking, but I couldn’t help keeping one ear focused on the hush of the night around me. Five seconds in, I heard it again. A muffled sort of fluttering, or floating, getting ever closer.

It took all my willpower to keep walking. I felt like I had a target on my back. I passed into the pale orange glow of the porchlight in front of the McCabes’ house, forcing myself to go a few more steps before whirling around when I judged that the thing following me would be illuminated.

A large, black bird stood in the middle of the snowy sidewalk (the McCabes weren’t great at shoveling), wings folded. It was a crow. Nothing supernatural about it. I would have felt embarrassed, if I hadn’t been so relieved.

Was it staring at me? It looked like it was, eyeing me curiously in the orange light. Then again, we were the only two living beings out here, and I was staring at it . I supposed it had the right to stare back.

“Sorry,” I muttered, then shook my head. What was I doing, apologizing to a bird? I turned back towards the diner and continued my walk.

I cast a glance over my shoulder a couple of times, and the bird was still standing there in the snow. Not following me. What a ridiculous thought that had been. Stupid, stupid, stupid . Still, I was glad when I turned onto Canton Street and out of its eyeshot.

Sure enough, Anthony was waiting for me, his lit cigarette a tiny beacon in the dark as I approached the diner’s back entrance. He pushed away from the brick wall and met me at the door. The motion sensor flicked on, casting us in bright white light.

“You’re late, dude,” he said, grinding his cigarette out with his shoe. “Thought you might have been kidnapped.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes, getting my heavy ring of keys out.

“Almost froze my balls off,” he continued as I fit the key into the lock. I swung open the outer, metal door and searched for the second key to open the inner, wooden one. “And you didn’t even have the decency to get kidnapped after all. Why would you make a man suffer like that, I ask you?”

“Because I know there’s nothing you love more than complaining,” I told him, forcing a laugh. The kidnapping comment had sent a shiver down my back. “Consider it a gift from me to you.”

“I’d rather have balls that weren’t ice co—what the fuck?”

Anthony’s complaint turned into a shout, then a crash, as he banged into the metal door. I turned around, fear gripping my heart, and saw him staring up at the roof of the diner. The building was a one-story square, and the roof sloped gently down from a peak in the center.

The crow perched along the edge, watching us.

No. Watching me .

“Fucking asshole went for me,” Anthony said. “Just swooped in out of nowhere, trying to scratch my eyes out.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the crow. Was it the same one? My gut told me it was, but that could have just been the fear talking. How many crows were there in Churchill, anyway? Before today, I’d never really noticed.

“Left something on you,” Anthony said, pointing at my shoulder.

I looked down in confusion as he brushed a hand across my body. A single black feather floated to the cement under our feet.

“What the fuck?” I said, echoing Anthony softly.

“Better a feather than bird shit,” he said, turning around in a circle, looking at the ground.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for a fucking rock, dude. Let’s see how he likes having something fly at his head.”

“Don’t.” My hand darted out and grabbed Anthony’s wrist before I even knew it was moving.

“What?”

“Just…don’t,” I told him. “Let’s just leave it and go inside.”

I couldn’t explain why, but the idea of throwing a rock at the bird seemed wrong . I wasn’t sure if I was afraid of what it might do, or feeling protective. Maybe a little of both.

I got the inner door unlocked and stepped into the diner, waving for Anthony to come in after me. With a sigh, he left off his search and came inside, the metal door slamming closed with a bang. I shut the wooden door firmly after it. It felt unaccountably good to be inside, where the bird couldn’t follow.

The morning was slow and easy after that, and I relaxed a little as I settled into my routine. Check that Inge had cashed out correctly last night. Take the chairs down from the tables, wipe everything down with cleaner. Refill all the jam caddies and sugar packet baskets. Make sure each table has ketchup.

Our regulars began to file in at six, the sky still dark, but the diner a cheerful yellow, blazing away in the early morning. I waved at Harry Franz as he walked in and headed for his booth in the corner.

“Be with you in a second,” I called. “Make yourself comfortable.” Then I turned back to Alicia Umberto, perched on her usual stool at the counter. “Black coffee and the double-egg special?”

“You got it,” she said, rolling her sleeves up with a smile.

I liked the early morning shift at Carla’s. It was never too busy, and there was time to chat with people. Churchill was a friendly town, for the most part, and I liked our customers.

I’d been lonely, ever since Neil had moved to New York after high school graduation. Franny had headed off to Des Moines. It was only two hours, but it felt like she was an ocean away. The diner regulars weren’t friends, exactly, but they were the closest I had at this point.

“You seeing this?” Leecey Davis called two hours later. She was talking to Melvin Ortega, who was sitting three booths away. I was half-listening to their chatter as I grabbed the coffee pot to come around with refills, but Melvin’s answer stopped me in my tracks.

“That’s a damn big bird.”

I spun around, splashing coffee out of the pot and onto my hand, but I barely noticed the scalding heat. I was too focused on Melvin, who was peering out of the diner’s windows, and Leecey, who was pointing at something in the front parking lot.

I didn’t want to go over and look, but something drew me to the front of the diner anyway. My heart skipped a beat when I saw what I’d known I would: the crow, perched on the front steps of the diner. It was looking at Melvin, but its head swiveled in my direction as soon as I came into sight.

“Just a crow,” I said, more to myself than to anyone else.

“A crow?” Leecey said with a laugh. “That’s a raven, Cory. It could eat a crow for breakfast, if you ask me.”

“It seems to like Cory,” Melvin cracked. “Maybe it wants him for breakfast.”

I backed away from the windows, trying not to let Melvin’s comment get to me. I was just imagining things. It wasn’t the same bird. And even if it was, what did it matter? Didn’t people say crows—or ravens, I supposed—were smart? Maybe it just wanted food. Maybe it had seen me by chance this morning and followed me, hoping I’d drop something.

It didn’t mean anything sinister. And it definitely didn’t have anything to do with my dream. I was just being paranoid.

Still, I avoided the windows for the rest of my shift.

I was exhausted by the time I reached Red’s Motel at four p.m. that afternoon. The sky had grown overcast, and the sun was just a faint yellowish patch in the clouds, sinking towards the horizon. I’d almost convinced myself I’d been imagining things that morning, out of sheer tiredness. Easy to let your mind run away with you when you’re short on sleep.

It was a good thing I didn’t own a car, honestly. I wouldn’t have trusted myself behind the wheel at that point. I was so zoned out that I was halfway across the motel parking lot before I saw the raven, sitting atop the vacancy sign. Watching me.

How the hell had it known I would be here? Or had it followed me as I’d walked across town, silently dogging my commute? Either answer freaked me out. But by now, I was as frustrated as I was scared.

“Go away!” I shouted up at it. “I mean it. If you’re just going to sit there and be creepy, go be creepy at someone else. I have fucking work to do.”

The raven regarded me silently.

“Get lost!” I shouted—and then stared in shock as the raven fluffed its wings and took to the sky.

Had it actually listened? Or was it just coincidence?

A dark green minivan pulled into the parking lot, and I flushed. Coincidence or not, I looked insane, shouting at birds. Red’s didn’t get a lot of business, and if I scared away its clientele, they wouldn’t have enough money to pay me. I waved at the van, plastering a cheerful smile on my face, and headed inside.

The evening was uneventful, thank God. I was so tired, I was practically falling asleep on my feet. Room eleven needed its linens changed, and room fourteen had a stopped-up toilet. Around eight p.m., I set a new pot of coffee going in the lobby—sometimes it felt like my life was just one big, Sisyphean coffee pot that constantly needed refilling—and moved back behind the front desk.

All two of our reservations had arrived and checked in. It was a Wednesday, and we weren’t likely to get any walk-ins. I was on for another hour and a half, but I hoped it would be a quiet evening.

Red didn’t keep the heat on very high in the lobby, so I pulled my jacket on before sitting down. My hands went into my pockets, and my right one brushed something strange. I frowned, then gaped, as I pulled the something out. It was the feather Anthony had brushed off my shoulder this morning.

How had it gotten there? Had I picked it up and completely forgotten? Just blacked out? I wouldn’t have put it past me, at this point.

I shoved the feather back into my pocket, then slumped forward and buried my face in my hands. What else had I blacked out? Or worse, what else might I have imagined? I wasn’t sure I could tell reality from dreams anymore.

Did crazy people even realize they were crazy? What if I’d dreamt this whole day? What if I was locked up somewhere and this was all a hallucination? Or what if—wait a second.

What was that smell?

My nose twitched, then my stomach plummeted. Smoke. I was smelling smoke. I pulled my hands away from my face, blinking in the sudden darkness. My heart thumped in my chest. Red’s was on fire. Why wasn’t the smoke alarm going off?

I had to get up, had to wake people up and get everyone out of the building. I had to call the fire department. But when I tried to stand, I couldn’t. Something was holding me back.

Wild-eyed, I looked down. I could barely see anything. The only light was a faint red glow pulsing in between billows of shadow and smoke, but I could see enough to realize I was naked. Something dark and soft whispered across my skin, giving me goosebumps, even as the heat around me rose.

Dream. It’s just a dream . The words floated through my mind. None of this is real .

I took a shaky breath, trying to pull free of whatever was holding me, but the harder I pulled, the less I could move. Something wrapped around my ankles, my wrists, my thighs. Claws stroked my back. Teeth grazed my neck. And I heard it again. That growl. Dark and hungry and unmistakably masculine.

The sound sent electricity straight to my cock, which was rock hard and aching. Fuck. I didn’t want this.

Right?

I felt completely exposed, out of control. I was in someone—or some thing —else’s thrall. And I’d never been more turned on in my life.

As if it could read my thoughts, the thing—the monster —laughed, low and gravelly. My thighs began to spread, and something dark and firm wrapped around my cock, already leaking precum. A tentacle? A tail? A swirl of smoke? I couldn’t tell. But as it stroked me up and down, I couldn’t hold back a moan.

The monster laughed again. Somehow, it knew me. Knew what I wanted, even if I couldn’t admit it. My cock was slick now, the head sensitive as it was caressed and teased. A soft whimper escaped me. I was desperate for more.

Reading my thoughts again, the monster shifted behind me, and suddenly I was moving, pushed forward against the reception desk. Smoke billowed around me. A tongue of flame ran down my back, then kept going, down my crack until it reached my hole.

Oh, God. Oh, God . It couldn’t—it wouldn’t—there was no way I could stand it if it kept going. Fear churned in my belly. I couldn’t let this happen—but I wanted it, so badly.

Once more, the monster read my mind. The swirls of smoke that held me, thick and firm as ropes, loosened. I was still leaning against the desk, but nothing kept me there anymore. The monster was giving me a chance to leave if I wanted to.

But I didn’t.

Shame flooded every inch of my body. I’d spent my life telling my dad I wasn’t gay, swearing I wasn’t, begging him to believe me. And here I was, desperate for this… thing …to enter me.

“Who are you?” I asked. I’d meant to demand it, but my words came out as a whisper. “ What are you?”

I could hear the naked desire in my voice.

Again, that low laugh. And then a word, growled in a tone that made my cock twitch. “ Vesperwood .”

Before I could ask what that meant, before I could say anything else, I felt it. Something wet and firm, pushing into my hole, breaching the tight outer ring, and then—

I came with a rush, and the monster laughed, a honeyed rumble in my ear. It knew how badly I’d wanted that. Needed that. I rode a wave of pure pleasure, sparks shooting through the darkness, and closed my eyes in relief.

Slowly, the blackness around me began to lighten, and I could sense that the thing was leaving.

“No, no, wait,” I said, desperate to stop it. I didn’t even know what I wanted to say. Beg it not to go? Beg it never to return?

But when my eyes snapped open, I was staring out at the motel lobby once more. The fluorescent light flickered overhead. The coffee burbled happily in its pot. Nothing else moved.

It was just a dream. Just the dream, except it had gone further this time than it ever had before. And I hadn’t screamed at all this time. I’d fucking moaned . I flushed, grateful no one was there to see how scarlet my cheeks must be.

But it was just a dream. Not real. Not something I had to worry about.

Except there was one thing I had to worry about. I glanced down. I was fully clothed, thank God, but the end of that dream hadn’t been quite as dream-like as I’d thought. I’d actually come—I could feel it in my boxers.

What the hell was wrong with me?

Shame roiled across me like a waterfall. Gay dreams. Gay dreams in public. Gay dreams in public leading to very gay orgasms in public. My dad would be disgusted if he knew.

I bit my lip against the sudden rush of panic in my chest. My breath came hot and fast, just shallow little swallows as the edges of my vision started to go blurry. I felt like I was going to faint.

I pushed my chair back and stumbled out from behind the desk. The front door. I just needed to get outside, to get some fresh air.

I moved across the lobby drunkenly and hurled myself at the sliding doors. They pulled back with a rattle and I pitched forward, catching myself on hands and knees out on the cement sidewalk. I drew in gulp after gulp of freezing air.

I was going to be okay. I was going to be okay. I might be having a crisis of sexual orientation and breakdowns in public and fucked up nightmares, and I might quite possibly be losing my mind, but I was going to be okay. I was.

Until I heard it again—that soft hush of wings.

I looked up to see the raven glide out of the air and land in front of me. It folded its wings gently as it settled onto the asphalt parking lot.

“What do you want ?” I asked, feeling utterly broken.

It cocked its head to one side and croaked.

“ Vesperwood .”