Nightmare Hunt, page 1
Nightmare Hunt
A Nightmare in Elmridge, Volume 2
Ileen Martin
Published by E.L.I. Publishing & Literary Services, 2024.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
NIGHTMARE HUNT
First edition. January 19, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 Ileen Martin.
ISBN: 979-8224871018
Written by Ileen Martin.
Also by Ileen Martin
A Nightmare in Elmridge
Nightmare Beauty
Nightmare Hunt
Watch for more at Ileen Martin’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By Ileen Martin
Dedication
Preface
Chapter 1: Beastly Nightmare
Chapter 2: Ghosted
Chapter 3: Dangerous Encounters
Chapter 4: Bus Buddies
Chapter 5: Maple Tree Trail
Chapter 6: Party Your Body
Chapter 7: Viper Pit
Chapter 8: Killing Me Softly
Chapter 9: The Eye of the Beast
Chapter 10: What Are Friends For?
Chapter 11: Annie’s Antiques
Chapter 12: Misery Loves Company
Chapter 13: Venus Flytraps
Chapter 14: Team Belle
Chapter 15: A Jäger Thing
Chapter 16: Wrecking Ball
Chapter 17: The One With the Shadow Man
Chapter 18: Crouching Beast, Hidden Jäger
Chapter 19: Schoolyard Brawl
Chapter 20: That Juju Feeling
Chapter 21: One, Two, Freddy’s Coming for You
Chapter 22: 3 A.M.
Chapter 23: Chemical Romance
Chapter 24: Tinker Soldier Spy
Chapter 25: Legends of Evil
Chapter 26: Operation Homecoming
Chapter 27: Secrets in the Night
Chapter 28: Shadowzord
Chapter 29: Two Truths and A Dare
Chapter 30: Nom de Guerre
Chapter 31: Hellcat
Chapter 32: Beauty and the Beast
Chapter 33: The Jäger Temple
Nightmare Kiss Book 3 Sneak Peek - Chapter 1: Life After Death
Acknowledgements
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About the Author
To my husband, Leo. I love you more.
Preface
Belle slowly backed away, heart rending in two at the anguished cries of her dear friend—her first boyfriend—and the mounting terror at facing the primal beast again. What could she even do? She’d barely shocked Liam, and she’d almost killed him. No, actually killed him, until she restarted his heart. If she had to defend herself again, she was terrified she’d lose total control this time and really end him in a no-second-chances way.
Her back stopped against a full-length wardrobe. What if, what if she simply hid? His back was still to her, the transformation really taking him over now with the fur and limbs elongating.
It was worth a try. She climbed into the empty wardrobe and shut the doors.
Within seconds, Liam’s cries had ceased. There was a silence, and then a low growl, followed by sniffing.
Belle covered her mouth with her hand, trying to reign in her rattled breathing. She heard the clicks along the floor getting closer, the claws that would try to tear through her again.
She couldn’t believe this was happening again. Why won’t the beast stop coming after her?
A revelation came to her from some tiny part of her brain that hadn’t yet bunkered down in panic mode. Maybe, just maybe, beast-Liam would change back into human-Liam once he completed the command Violet gave him?
That had to be it. She was the mission. Belle was the other Homecoming princess that needed to be put out of commission. And so the beast wouldn’t stop, until she ended up like Lisa and Nieves. The toxin that caused the coma must be in his claws, except Belle had healed quickly and so the numbness hadn’t consumed her.
She could pretend; yes, that’s it. If he clawed her again, she would stay down this time.
There was an eerie quiet outside. And then the doors cracked open.
Belle slammed them back shut, and a great bellow of rage shook the room. The strength in her legs left her and she collapsed, just barely keeping her strong grip on the doors. The wardrobe began to shake violently, and she screamed in terror.
The electricity erupted in her hands. “No.” She didn’t want to kill him. “No powers.” She tried to do what she’d learned, imagine her hands free of the blue energy.
It worked.
One of the doors ripped off. She flattened herself against the back of the wardrobe. “No powers, no powers,” she chanted in a ragged whisper.
But the energy, not finding an outlet in her hands, began building beneath her skin, all over her body.
“No, no, no, no.” It was like the moment before she killed the three Hammerson brothers. If the power exploded out of her now, Liam was a dead man. And Ernesto, too.
The other door ripped off. The terrifying beast framed her view now. She crouched down into the farthest corner, trying to make herself as small as possible.
No powers, no powers.
The beast roared into the closeted space, and the very sound assaulted her every fiber. She squeezed her eyes shut, tears streaming out.
Belle had made up her mind. She’d die before she killed her loved ones.
She heard the click-click of the claws entering the wardrobe, but she also felt the energy roiling beneath her skin, prickling outward, on the verge of bursting out of her. Soon, she would pass out, and then awaken to the carnage.
A rippling growl filled her ears and hot breath fanned her face. She could feel her strength leaving her.
This was it.
Her eyes peeled open, and she found herself looking into minty green, yellow-flecked eyes devoid of emotion, framed by blonde fur.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
Just like in her nightmare, he opened his razor-teethed mouth wide and latched onto her throat.
Darkness consumed her.
Chapter 1: Beastly Nightmare
Liam Rawlins had been dreaming of Belle Montague again. Finishing that night they’d started three weeks ago, cuddled up in each other’s arms on the living room couch watching a Batman movie.
But they hadn’t really been paying much attention to the television in the dream, what with all the lip-locking and carnal exploration they were absorbed in. Something his gentleman side had promised not to dive into with her so soon.
But dream-Belle had made the first move, so who was he to deny his girl?
He knew the real Belle, or even he himself, would never have let things progress so soon to where they had. Clothing landing on the floor, a shoe tugged off and hitting the TV, and two heated bodies collapsing on the couch together. Impossible, he knew from Belle’s character, but thankfully it had still been his dream.
Only, it’d turned into a nightmare. The same nightmare every dream of Belle always turned into.
He cupped her face as he kissed her neck, his other hand roaming down the soft skin of her back.
“Ow,” she winced. “That hurts.”
He loosened his grip on her and concentrated on keeping his cursed fingernails from sharpening into claws.
But, dammit, he was losing control. Again.
He could feel the hot passion coursing through his blood, morphing into a boiling rage that felt like it was taking hold of his very bones, twisting and pulling at them until the only relief was to allow himself to succumb to the animal within.
“Ow, Liam!” She scuttled away to the far end of the couch and felt her neck. “You bit me.” Her horror-stricken eyes met his, at the warm blood seeping through her fingers.
He opened his mouth to beg for her forgiveness and to try and explain, but the searing rip inside his belly wrenched the words from his mouth. He collapsed to the floor, writhing and clutching his stomach.
“Liam!” She tried holding him as convulsions wracked his body. “What’s wrong? Please, talk to me!”
One strangled word was all he could manage before he lost human speech. “Run.”
“What? No, let me help you!”
He meant to say the word again, but what erupted from his throat was an unnatural snarl that made her recoil.
The transformation happened quickly now, a familiar physiological process his body had memorized. The blonde fur sprouted out of every pore of his skin as his joints snapped, bones lengthened, and jaw stretched.
It was excruciating. Every. Single. Time. Like his body was undergoing every medieval torture at once. Even in these nightmares, his subconscious writhed with the agony.
His human form never remembered what he did as Violet Wickeby’s cursed canine beast. But in these dreams, his mind felt conscious during the whole ordeal, so he knew what would come next.
He was the beast now, and it pinned Belle with a feral stare, growling its warnings.
She clambered to her feet, her face frozen in terror. Palms up as she backtracked slowly.
The sight of such easy prey made the hairs arch on his back and his claws elongate with anticipation, and with a snapping bark, he rushed at her. He sank his sharp canines into her throat, u ntil her screams died off in the night.
Liam pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He waited for the painful white spots to flash, the only thing that worked in clearing the remnants of the nightmare from his thoughts.
He’d dwelled achingly on the first part of the dream, raking in his lower lip at the memory. But the ending—Belle’s bloody and lifeless body—always served to remind him why he’d made the decision to cut her out of his life.
For her own safety. He wasn’t going to give his nightmares a chance to become reality.
He looked down at the feminine hand bedecked in expensive rings and bracelets trailing up his inner thigh. With a grunt of disgust, he snatched the hand and cast it back towards its owner. “Don’t ever touch me, witch.”
Violet Wickeby laughed as she let herself fall back against the limo seat perpendicular to his. “I can’t help myself when it comes to a Rawlins man.” Her eyes trailed over him. “And that suit you’re wearing makes you extra delectable.”
He grimaced. Violet and her twin minions had ambushed him on the balcony outside his bedroom three weeks ago. Her wannabe thugs hadn’t been a problem, but she’d bent him to his knees with her threats to possess Belle. She’d cast a spell on him then: a beast at her beck and call. But he’d never given her his permission, so he’d kept his free will.
Only problem was she used threats to break him, manipulate him into obedience.
When he’d refused to obey her first order—accompany her on a business trip to Europe to intimidate wealthy elites into fattening her bank account—she’d made good on her first threat: she killed Jacques. The family butler who’d been there for him for as long as he could remember.
And now he was dead, cast in the deepest dungeon cell of the castle.
Then, she’d threatened Belle’s family and friends. She would pick them off one by one until she’d gotten what she wanted from him. All he had to do was obey, and no one would get hurt.
Which was why he was currently wearing an Armani business suit, his blonde hair cut short with the sides shaved, top gelled slick back, and sitting in a stretch limo—next to the smug, demon-possessed immortal woman who’d killed his parents and his butler, and separated him from the girl of his dreams—on the way to the next business executive’s office soon to be suckered out of millions of dollars.
As current owner of his late father’s multinational corporation, Rawlins Enterprises, his business proposals would attempt to persuade the targeted CEO first, and when that wouldn’t work, Violet made sure the Beast came out to intimidate.
“Mr. Rawlins,” Violet cooed in a way that churned his stomach. “You’re so sensitive.”
He glared at her with every ounce of hatred he could muster.
She didn’t look like Belle’s mother, Abigail, anymore, the body that the demon witch had possessed. Violet had taken to wearing stage make-up and facial prosthetics to change her appearance and cover up the scars Abigail had torn into her own face.
She dressed like a powerhouse businesswoman and wore a convincing brown wig, blue eye contacts, and a nose piece that hid her identity from Ernesto Panzinski, Belle’s uncle, who they knew was using all of his police force’s resources to search for Violet.
Liam had once left Ernesto a clue in the last hotel they’d stayed at, hoping the Elmridge sheriff would eventually catch up to them, but Violet had caught the note and punished him by making him watch as she broke the maid’s leg in three places.
He never tried something like that again.
Many times, he felt himself close to snapping and outright strangling her. But he knew Violet could simply call a lightning bolt down from the sky or zap him with one from her own hand. It would be suicide to physically attack her.
“Oh, don’t look so melancholy,” she purred, scooting a little closer. He looked sharply at her in warning. She smirked. “How about I make you a promise? You know I always keep my promises.”
True. But it was always the kind that felt like making a deal with the devil.
She still had his attention, which signaled her to continue. “This is the second-to-last deal we’re going to tie up together.”
“What’s the last deal?”
“And then a favor after the last deal.”
He ground his teeth at her stalling to answer his question. He didn’t like to waste words, breath, or even attention on her.
Knowing this, Violet sighed and leaned back in her seat again, analyzing her long, blood-red nails. Stalling. “I do need to take care of these again.”
Liam launched a champagne glass at her. The instant it smashed by her head, an electrified bolt shot from her hand, stopping just a hairsbreadth away from his chest.
If he breathed, the bolt would kill him.
“Temper, temper,” she sneered. With her free hand, she dabbed a napkin at the champagne that sprayed her face and blouse, and shook the glass shards loose from her hair. “And you’ll pay for that starting now.”
He stared down at the end of the bright white bolt, fizzing and crackling. Just one deep breath, one sigh, and he could end it all now.
As if reading his thoughts, Violet curled her hand in, and the bolt lazily retreated into her palm and vanished. She smiled, a delightfully wicked idea just occurring to her. “You will pay...by listening to the information I am going to give you. How is it they say these days? Good news and bad news.”
Liam merely shifted in his seat away from her and gazed out the window. He could see in the window’s reflection the dead look in his green eyes. It was the only way to stay sane: mentally disconnect himself in her presence.
“Good news first. After this particular job, you will help me get my hands on the next gem I need in Elmridge, and then you will transfer all of your wealth to me.”
He couldn’t help it; he snorted.
“Oh dear, you’re right. I guess it was good news for me.”
He let one corner of his mouth curl into a half-smile as he continued staring out the window, the front façades of the Amsterdam business buildings rolling by.
The witch didn’t know it yet, but as soon as she started using him to blackmail and intimidate other wealthy people into handing her a hefty slice of their fortune, he immediately transferred all of his wealth in secret to Mr. Gregory Ellerson in Elmridge, his father’s former business partner and a trusted family friend while he was growing up. In fact, Mr. Ellerson and his daughter, Cindy, were supposed to be moving into the castle by now.
At least Liam had one-upped the witch on one score.
“When you’ve finished both tasks, I will release you from my spell.”
His breath stilled.
“See, there is a bright spot for you.”
“What’s the bad news?” he asked, his voice monotone. Bright spot or not, he didn’t trust her.
When she didn’t answer right away and he heard rustling, he looked over at her just as she pulled out a large, thick book from her Hermès Birkin bag. She tossed it onto the seat next to him.
The Elmridge Book of Fairy Tales by A.E.P. He’d seen a copy in Belle’s museum collection, but this copy looked very old with its moth-bitten corners and yellowed pages sticking out unevenly.
“I swiped it on my last visit to the Prynn home from Abigail’s secret drawer,” Violet said, all smug. “It’s the original. It has stories that the widely circulated edition doesn’t have. Did you know these legends and fairy tales that the Prynn sisters recorded in this book are all true?”
Liam’s lips twitched with doubt.
She murmured a strange word as she flicked her index finger toward the book.
He flinched as it snapped opened. He watched, transfixed, as the pages flew past on their own, finally settling on a large, colorful illustration of a grassy field under a blue sky dotted with white, puffy clouds.
Two characters occupied the hazy Monet-styled picture: a shadowy figure with gem-like eyes and a glowing blade in its hand, stalked a beautiful, unsuspecting young woman holding a bundle of wildflowers to her chest. Tiny, fat Valentine cherubs watched the two from their perch on the clouds.
But it was the girl’s hands that drew Liam’s focus: they were covered in blood.
