Dark Side of Dawn: The Nightmare Chronicles Read Free Page A

right.
    Christ. Part of me thought there were all kinds of crazy in this world. The professional part of me wondered what could happen to a person to compel them to such behavior.
    I still didn’t like Amanda, knowing how she had betrayed Noah, but my heart went out to her. I’d had my own control taken away from me before, when a Night Terror who tried to possess Noah forcibly “seduced” me. He’d made my body want him even though I knew it was wrong. He hadn’t hurt me—not then—but the thought of what he’d done made my stomach twist likea French braid. Even using me as a punching bag hadn’t left scars as thick as that violation.
    But that was in the past. I had survived, and so would Amanda. Drawing another deep breath for strength, I eased myself forward, close enough to hear some of what was being said, but not enough to be an intrusion.
    “Do you need anything?” Noah asked. He held one of his ex-wife’s hands in his. Her knuckles were raw and swollen. She had fought back, brave thing.
    “There’s nothing you can do,” Amanda replied in that awful voice. “Having you here is enough.”
    I definitely didn’t want to hear this. I was an outsider. I shouldn’t be here, witnessing this woman’s pain, witnessing the safety she felt now that her husband— ex- husband—was there with her.
    “Dawn is here too.” Noah surprised me by glancing over his shoulder at me. Making sure I was still there, I suppose.
    “Dawn?” Amanda peered past Noah, meeting my gaze with her one good eye.
    No more hiding for me. I was forced to hold that battered gaze as I walked toward the two of them. She looked worse with every step. “Hi, Amanda.” I should apologize for being present, for witnessing her pain, but I couldn’t find the words to express it without sounding like an ass.
    Her expression was a mixture of defiance and wariness that I recognized from having worked with a few victims of violent crime. Granted the last few years I’d dealt mostly with dreams, but some of those dreamers were victims of violence suffering from post-traumatic shock.
    “Thank you for coming.” She was all grace and elegance despite having been beaten and brutalized. This show of strength wasn’t merely for my benefit, or even for Noah’s. It was for herself. Amanda was determined to hold it together no matter what.
    When she held out her poor little battered hand, I came forward and took it. If I had any strength in me worthy of her, she was welcome to it.
    Standing there, holding her delicate fingers, feeling those birdlike bones beneath my own, filled me with a profound sense of protection. I wanted to help her, and keep her from ever being hurt again. She was so much smaller than I, in height and weight. Blond to my dark, brown to my blue, and tanned to my pale. She was like delicate gold filigree and I was sturdy brass; and yet looking at her, I thought she was the strongest woman I had ever met, simply because she held it together when I would have been a sniveling, snot-spewing mess.
    A Bambi-like gaze bore into mine, but that was where the Disney comparison stopped. Bambi never looked so angry or defiant. “Have you ever been raped?”
    Whoa. Hadn’t seen that coming. Anyone else and Iwould have told her it was none of her damn business, but this was something of a “quid pro quo, Clarisse” moment. I knew what she had been through, and in her mind that put me at some kind of advantage. And she’d had enough power taken away.
    “Yes,” I replied, stomping down the urge to look at Noah. As it was, I could feel the tension in his body as he stood rigid and still beside me.
    Something changed in Amanda’s expression—a softening for lack of better term. She looked at me like a sister of sorts, one of the other two women who helped form the “three out of four” women who were supposedly raped or victim to some kind of sexual assault in the course of their lifetime.
    Three. Out of fucking four.
    Noah cleared