Read Online Immortals After Dark 05 - Dark Needs at Nights Edge by Kresley Cole - Free Book Online

and mud, his hair stiff with it. Dément. Is that all she sees him as? A madman to be ignored? Or worse—pitied? That is how she sees him.
    A filthy, sexually inexperienced lunatic.
    She’s seen him spit blood. Did she witness him mindlessly banging his head against the wall? Damn it, he’s beginning to dislike this clarity! Again, he craves the oblivion of memories. It’s easier to be awash in them, to hate, to hurt... .
    Yet the female beside him moors his mind to the present like an anchor.
    “They should give you a bath,” she says in her whispery voice, just as Sebastian intones, “Rest easy, Conrad. The hallucinations will disappear before you know—”
    “Leave me!” he snaps. He almost said, “Leave us.”
    The ghost drifts away, readying her loot to depart. No, not you! When she and the items vanish, all that’s left of her is the petal on the sheet. He inches over, wanting to touch it. But it begins to fade. Then gone.
    He shifts in the bed, restless and chafing in his bonds. Want her here.
    Sebastian rises. “Very well, we’ll go. Call out if you need anything—or if you feel like drinking.”
    They leave him in the darkened room. “Have you seen my cell phone?” Nikolai asks on the way out.
    Before he has time to analyze why her absence could possibly disappoint him to this degree, others’ memories bubble up in his mind as though from a wellspring.
    Over the years, he hasn’t killed honorable men, actually has taken out some who were even more monstrous than himself. And their memories, now his memories, chill him to his bones.
    He sees scenes of torture he hasn’t inflicted, harrowing murders of women and children he never committed. Glassy, sightless eyes stare up at him—but not him.
    These memories demand to be acknowledged, to be experienced. Before they’ll be allayed, each must be relived, eking away his sanity.
    And he has none left to lose.
    8

    Néomi was fairly much an open book—open about her sexuality, her body, her opinions. But she had two dirty little secrets.
    One of which was her penchant for relocating an odd item here and there that didn’t belong to her.
    Inside her hidden chamber, behind the concealed Gothic entrance, she placed her new acquisitions on the display table. Here lay all of her trinkets and treasures picked up from tenants over the years.
    The table was nearly filled. Soon she’d have to employ the coffee table. Not a bad take, considering Elancourt had been occupied for only about a third of her afterlife.
    So I tend to steal a lot.
    She didn’t necessarily appropriate things of value, more items that intrigued her. Among the contraband: a battery-operated TV with the batteries long dead, a fairly modern bra, a gramophone, and a box of condoms she would’ve paid thousands for in the twenties.
    She had matchbooks and Mardi Gras doubloons, candy she’d never eat, and about a dozen spray-paint cans confiscated from myriad teenage vandals.
    With slammed doors, flying sheets, and tempests of leaves, she’d scared les artistes graffiti past the point of spontaneous urination, at which time they always dropped their paint and ran. This was Néomi’s home, her entire world. She refused to read poorly crafted “art” for the rest of her days.
    Like a bird feathering her nest, she’d collected things from outside and brought them within her hidden enclave. This room used to be her dance studio—with ballet barres, a wood parquet floor, and wall-to-wall mirrors. The studio itself was largely untouched, though newspapers were stacked everywhere, and the mirrors had been modified to fit her current appearance. In other words, she’d broken them.
    In the days after her death, when movers had brought in boxes for all her belongings, she’d yearned so passionately to smuggle them back to this room, they’d actually moved. That was how she’d first recognized she had the ability to transport things with her mind.
    In a mad dash, she’d levitated all the