Embracing the Night (Playhouse of Horrors Book 3)

1. Dahlia

A seagull letout an obnoxious awk-awk-awk bleat, and I flinched awake. For a single instant, before the fuzziness of sleep slipped away, I thought I was back in the playhouse. The seagull’s cry, a guttural scream of pain from a victim. One second, I was ready to fight for my life, the next I was staring out across white sand beaches at the Ionian Sea.

“Holy shit,” I muttered under my breath.

It wasn’t as though I’d been dreaming of the house either. In fact, my dream had been pleasant and calm. Fading now, but a few vestiges of the fantasy still played across my mind. I’d been flying, like Peter Pan, across the ocean. Freedom. So much freedom that it had been intoxicating. Honestly, I wanted to shove a pen into the eye socket of that damned bird for waking me up and ruining it.

I adjusted my sunglasses and went about smearing myself down with another layer of sunscreen. The fall weather in Greece was much different from back home. Less humidity but still pleasantly warm during the day. For me, the water was a little too cool, but the beach was my favorite place to relax. Drake usually waited back at the house while I came here to unwind.

None of this felt real. As I rubbed lotion down my legs, I had to keep reminding myself, as I did a hundred times each day, that we were running for our lives. We’d gone into hiding, not a vacation, but in doing so, we had to fit in as though we were on a holiday. And we were doing a fucking good job of acting.

My life had been one long fucking nightmare, and the thought of doing anything but working, trying to survive, and keeping my sanity had always seemed beyond my ability. I’d never even taken a weekend away at some shitty campground, much less gone on Disney trips, cruises, or overseas vacations. Now, here I was on a Greek beach, sunbathing and greased up with suntan lotion. All around me, people strolled up and down the beach, oblivious to the things that really happened in the darker elements of life. They had no clue how harsh, painful, and bloody life could really be. Lucky fucks.

A crawling sensation traveled up my spine as I sat there. Fear shot through me, and I turned, glancing behind me. I knew that feeling. It had plagued me all my time in the playhouse. I was being watched. Someone somewhere was looking at me. Eyes roving my body, measuring, planning. My hand reflexively clamped down on the lotion bottle, sending a steam of white liquid across my legs like I’d just jerked off some gargantuan man and he’d finished on me.

“Fuck.” I hissed and wiped at it, but I continued to scan the surrounding beach, hunting for whomever was watching me.

“Hello,” a masculine and heavily accented voice said from beside me.

I spun back around, ready to fight, but finding only a gorgeously tanned and shirtless young man smiling at me. His smile was disarming and so white I might have had to squint if I hadn’t been wearing sunglasses.

“Yes?” The way the word came out was harsher and more panicked than I’d intended.

The young man, maybe in his early twenties like me, only grinned wider, and knelt down. His swim trunks were dripping water, and his black hair was wet and tossed back. He looked like a movie star.

“I see you read the book. Is it good?”

His broken English, accented in Greek, was charming. I glanced down at my chair and saw the book I’d been reading before slipping off into my nap. A gloriously smutty little paperback I’d picked up at a local bookstore that carried English as well as Greek titles.

“Oh,” I said and flipped the book over quickly, hiding the muscular and shirtless man on the front. “Yeah, it’s good. Thanks. Uh, can I help you?”

“I wonder if you would like to swim. Is hot. After? I keep you company? Have fun time?”

A hungry look darkened his eyes, not scary, but a flirtatiousness that probably worked with lots of nubile young American ladies looking to fuck a hot young Greek guy while on vacation. He was good. Very good at this. For a single moment, I imagined this man grunting and sweating as he screwed my brains out. But this young man was no Drake. Not even close.

In response I gave him a polite smile and gestured back to the beach house. “My, uh, boyfriend probably wouldn’t like that too much.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “He maybe likes to share? I share. Same time?”

Holy fuck, seriously? What a god damned horn dog.

“No thank you,” I said firmly.

He nodded and that same bright smile returned. “Is okay. See you later.”

He strolled along down the beach, and before he’d gone even fifty yards, he stopped at another umbrella to speak with two young college age girls. From the way the two women laughed and flirted it sounded like, if he played his cards right, he might be the one getting shared later.

The temptation to leave Drake had ebbed and surged over the last few months we’d been running. The lies and deceit had been so all-encompassing that I’d struggled with staying with him. The man had molded me into what basically amounted to a serial killer. He’d played a game with me, like a boy with an ant farm. Those arguments always faded away when I imagined being with anyone else though.

My life upuntil the day he brought me into the playhouse had been one where strength and power were things other people had. Drake had used his little house to torment me, yes, but it had also given me the one thing I’d always craved. Power. He’d brought me all the people who’d wronged me, all the ones who’d devastated me. Not only had he brought them to me, but he’d allowed me to destroy them in the most visceral way possible, and in giving me that opportunity, had made me love it. Even recalling the way they’d screamed and the feel of their blood on my fingers made me wet.

No, I couldn’t leave Drake. I could look past the deception. If I truly thought about it, he’d turned me into a wholly different person. A human that I actually liked. After taking lives, tearing screams from rendered bodies, and forcing men and women to beg for their lives, had turned me into the confident and assured woman I’d always wanted to be. When you knew how soft and easily destroyed a human life was, you had a hard time being intimidated by some dick in the grocery store or worrying that you’d piss off a horny Greek surfer dude.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I lay back on my chair again. For a few seconds I’d worried Sam may have found us and been watching me. It had only been mister I-want-to-spit-roast-you-with-your-boyfriend. Our true quarry, Sam, had done a pretty masterful job of hiding from us. Drake had shown an impressive array of research and detective skills during our search for him. It made sense given how he’d been able to find and kidnap all the evil fucks he and Sam had put into the playhouse with us. Yet Sam still eluded us. Drake had found almost nothing to lead us to the other man. After showing us the video he had, he’d as good as vanished. It had turned Sam into, basically, a mythical figure in my mind. A shadowy ghost that could be around any corner.

Down the beach, I watched as the two girls and the young man stood and walked back toward a beach house where the girls must have been staying.

I smirked. “Good for you,” I muttered to myself. “Go and fuck your little brains out.”

The afternoon was growing late, the sun still high, but tilting toward the horizon. With a twinge of regret, I rolled up my towel and closed the umbrella before trudging back to the beach house Drake and I had shared for the last two weeks. The seemingly never-ending money with which Drake had financed our flight from America to Europe still boggled my mind. After living paycheck to three days before paycheck for my entire adult life, it was strange to go globe hopping, eating at fancy restaurants, and simply grabbing what I wanted at the store without bargaining with myself on what to leave behind. Do I get a can of tuna, or toilet paper? With Drake that problem was gone, along with so many others. One more reason that he’d become my true white knight hero, even if he was soaked in blood while saving me.

Despite knowing it had been the beach guy checking me out earlier, I still scanned the beach as I walked back to the house. Every person could be a suspect. I saw no eyes directed toward me. My worries put aside for once, I walked down the stone walkway that led to the house.

The building rose up from the dunes, whitewashed walls that shone so bright that it hurt my eyes to look at in direct sunlight. I’d never seen a house so white. The roof was covered in dark azure blue tiles; the whole place resembled the colors of the Greek flag. It was the nicest place I’d ever stayed in my life. A whirlpool hot tub sat right behind the nearest dune, under the porch, a spot Drake and I had frequented quite a bit the last few days.

No time for hot tub fun today. I was ready for a long hot shower, and dinner. After a long day of doing absolutely nothing, it was surprising how damned hungry I was. What I found inside sent thoughts of food flying from my mind.

Drake stood inside, waiting for me, a grin on his face. That smile sent shivers down my back.

“What?” I asked. “Why are you looking at me that way?”

“I have a surprise for you. Something I’ve been working on,” he answered, the grin turning to a full smile.

“Do I get to know this surprise now, or do I have to wait?”

“Go get dressed. You have to wait. I want to see your face.”

“This isn’t good enough?” I asked, gesturing to the bikini I wore.

He raised an eyebrow. “You’ll need something that’s a little sturdier.”

Interesting. Doing as he asked, I hurried to our room and put on a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt. Drake waited for me at the front door, ready to lead me to the car he’d picked up when we arrived in Greece. A Porsche SUV that he’d bought with cash an hour after landing. I’d been too terrified of Interpol agents or maybe even CIA operatives jumping us to think about anything that first day in France. We’d taken the car through half of Europe the last few months, and honestly I still had a hard time believing this thing belonged to us.

Drake helped me into the car before climbing into the driver’s seat. “Ready?” he asked.

“I guess. This better be good. I was looking forward to some seafood and a roll in the hay.”

“Oh, it is,” he said, pulling the car out onto the road. “And don’t worry. I think we can take care of”—he glanced at me—”all your needs tonight.”

I had to pull in a steadying breath. There was something about Drake that always made my knees weak. Being away from the dangers in the playhouse had only increased that feeling. Without worrying about surviving day in and day out, it made it easier to see exactly what it was about him I enjoyed being around. The cocky confidence, the dark brooding and calm nature, and the way he seemed to always know what to do. He was everything I’d ever fantasized about when thinking of my perfect guy. It was part of what had made it easy for me to look past what went down in the playhouse.

The ritzy beachfront neighborhood gave way to a more commercial district. Boutique shops, restaurants, bars, and clubs. After that we cruised through a more tourist-oriented area. Resorts, more chain style restaurants, shops selling plastic Parthenon models. Drake continued to drive, though, bypassing all of this. At one point as he took an exit that angled even further away from the normal areas, I glanced over and found him grinning to himself.

“This must be really good. You look awfully proud of yourself,” I said.

“I am,” he admitted. “I took care of all the, um, details while you were down at the beach all day. It should be perfect.”

After twenty minutes of driving, Drake had taken us to what looked like an industrial park of some sort. A concrete service, delivery truck hubs, and other gray buildings passed. About the time I was going to ask again where we were going, he turned the car into what looked like an abandoned warehouse district. Most of the large metal buildings sat coated in rust, in various states of disrepair. He pulled up in front of one that looked particularly rough. Still intact, but ancient. The thing gave me a sudden sense of déjà vu. Nostalgia flooded me as I leaned forward to take the whole thing in. It looked a lot like the warehouse that had contained the playhouse. Though about a fifth the size of that massive monstrosity.

Finally, I looked at Drake. “What the fuck are we doing?”

He winked at me and grinned. “Let’s go. You’ll see soon.”