Excerpt: Circle of Troubles

"I'm sorry, baby." She murmured. "I didn't mean to wake you."
"You going to be okay?"
"I think so. I'm going to go take a bath though. It's so cold in here."
Her mate chuckled. "It wouldn't be if you would quit kicking the covers
off'n you." She opened her mouth to retort and he put his hand up in a
placating gesture. "I'll warm up the bed, Busty. You take your bath."

In moments he was snoring again, and all she could do was smile. Her
funny, funny man. The bedroom floor, thankfully, was carpeted as she took mincing steps towards the hallway, but the cold of the bathroom tile woke her the rest of the way up. With a small grumble, she set about preparing for a bath anyway. Maybe if she got a book, her brain would settle down and stop showing her these strange images. Must have scared herself into a charlie horse, her leg hurt so. Leaving the water running, she wandered into the living room and picked up one of the books that had come with the house's rental. It was a romance, not one of her favorite genres, but she was willing to read through it merely for the brain – numbing qualities. There was only so many tiny – waisted women and men with broad and rippling chests that she could take in a sitting after all.

The water in the cast iron tub seemed a little orange, and she drained the first fill, attributing it to rust in unused pipes. Until she saw the large orange blob that was
sitting in the center of the tub. It was slippery looking and rather like what an organ looked like in those crime scene dramas Nathan enjoyed so much. A liver, maybe. Yes, a liver was a fairly apt description. She was pretty sure it hadn't been there when they first entered the house. One of them would have noticed, surely, when they'd gone to the bathroom at least. It made a 'glop' sort of sound and sat up to reveal a creature straight out of nightmares. Or her nightmares anyway. Generally something like this crawled out of the faucet proper, so a part of her mind appreciated the change – up.

The thing had piggish eyes and rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth like a shark. A liver shark. Seren was so startled, she dropped her towel on it. Watching in horror,
she saw the fibers dissolve as they touched the thing's skin, and she began to panic in earnest. It ate what landed near its mouth with the sound of sound of a wet tennis shoe being dropped in pancake batter repeatedly. That logical part of her mind asked how she knew what that sounded like, and why, but it wasn't important right now. She needed her partner. She called out for Napoli, but nothing came out. Nothing at all. She wasn't safe. She was still dreaming, and something was trying to get her. Frantically, she tried every technique she knew to wake herself up. But it was to no avail. The harder she tried, the faster the orange thing was moving until it was wrapped around her leg and burning where its mouth attached to her. It was going to kill her in her dream, and she would never wake again. Terrified, she realized that there was nothing she could do about it.

It was at this point cold air flowed past her backside and she landed with a thump and a curse on the bedroom floor. She was sprawled in a most ungraceful manner with one leg pointing towards the puppy bed where Nap's familiars were growling at her and the other towards the bed. Thankfully, she wasn't loud as the bedroom floor of this new place was indeed carpeted, and Napoli was still snoring on his side of the bed. The puppies, who rarely saw her on their level chose this time to jump all over and lick her. They were also jumping every time her leg got close to them. It was the same leg the thing had attached to, and it hurt like hell. Looking down, she saw a darkly burning tattoo of a spiral etched upon her calf, where nothing had been before, and this time she did scream for Nathan.