Empire Builder 1: Breed, Populate, Conquer by Dante King (free e books to read online txt) 📕

his mind, clear as a picture. But this lynx-like creature was unlike any big cat Ben had seen on the Discovery Channel. It was already the size of a large tiger, but its blue fur made it look even bigger. And the sharp horns curling out of its forehead increased its stature still further. The lynx’s eyes gleamed in a way that was menacing and mysterious and otherworldly.

Ben snatched his hand away from the egg, the vision vanishing from his head as quickly as it had appeared.

What was going on? He didn’t like to mess around with drugs—his brain was how he made his living, after all. So some kind of side-effect was no explanation. Had Melody roofied him? He couldn’t think of any other reason for this crazy hallucination.

Ben caught her gaze again. She was staring at him with the kind of affectionate frown you might reserve for a small child in the process of telling you about some make-believe animal he’d come up with.

I’m dreaming—that has to be it. Nightmares had been something he'd dealt with for years, sometimes seeing scenes straight out of a Hellraiser movie, complete with torture and hideous monsters.

Ben’s dreams tended to be worse after drinking, so his brain conjuring up this beautiful purple-haired and purple-eyed woman was a surprising change—one that he wasn’t going to complain about. Maybe this all was the booze trying to work its way out of his system, his body coming up with a new way to tell him he’d had one too many.

As pleasant as this little fantasy might’ve been, however, it was time for him to wake up.

Ben pinched his left arm, just above the elbow. He winced at the sudden jolt of pain, then looked around. Nope, no change. Then he slapped his right cheek, hard. The sharp crack of skin on skin was loud in the relative quiet of the hotel room, unbroken by anything but the rhythmic blowing of the AC.

“Goodness!” Melody cried out. “For what reason are you hitting yourself?” She rushed over to him and began caressing his cheek with the back of her hand.

“I need to wake myself up,” he said, his cheek still throbbing.

Melody looked perplexed. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Well, this is obviously some crazy dream. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fun, and you’re a hell of a lot easier on the eyes than what my brain usually comes up with when I’m sleeping. But I’ve got to get ready for my new job. So…”

Melody nodded. “I completely understand what you are feeling.” She leaned forward and abruptly kissed him on the lips. The sensation of her lips on his was so sudden, so intense, that he very nearly grabbed her by the arms and pulled her into bed for another round.

But she stood up, and he got the impression the kiss was more about comforting him than sex. “I too thought this was a dream when it happened to me. I couldn’t believe I was hearing the truth when Archmage Kamila announced that I, a lowly Elemental Acolyte, would be the one sent on a quest to find the Forgotten Ruler.”

There was wonder in her voice, and she spoke through a broad, dreamy smile. It was like she was recounting something amazing that she still couldn’t believe had happened.

And the weirdest part was that as she said the name “Forgotten Ruler,” she pointed at Ben.

“But it was no dream,” she continued. “I could not have dreamt up a man that would fuck me like you did.”

Hearing a word like that out of a sweet, doe-eyed woman like her was a hell of a shock. But she somehow made it sound sexy all the same. Melody enunciated it with passion and expression, clasping her hands to her chest as if she were an actor on a stage performing for a crowd.

Melody turned her attention back to the egg, the smile still on her lips. “And look, Benjamin of Davies, our union has brought us a child. No dream could account for such a thing.”

“Okay, lady,” Ben swung his legs to the side of the bed. “First of all, nothing but a dream could account for me waking up next to a freaking dinosaur egg in my bed. But since I don’t seem to be waking up, I think maybe what’s going on is that we both need some professional help. If it’s all the same to you, I’m going to call my cousin James. He’s a shrink, so maybe he can tell me why I’m imagining egg babies, or whatever the hell this thing is.”

Ben reached for his cellphone on the bedside table. But before he could even get close, Melody gasped and snatched the phone. Then, with a feminine grunt, she hurled it against the wall. It collided against the wall with a sickening thud-crack, the phone falling onto the carpet.

“What the hell?” he asked, his eyes on the phone. “Why did you do that?”

“Benjamin! You must not use the Summoning Stone! No one can know of what has taken place here today.” Her eyes stayed on the surely-ruined phone as if she expected it to come to life.

Still in a state of shock, Ben rushed over the phone and snatched it up to survey the damage. Sure enough, the screen had shattered into a thousand hair-thin fissures. Bits of glass lay scattered on the carpet. He pressed the power button and found, much to his chagrin, that it wouldn’t even turn on. The wall was indented where Melody had thrown it. She’d whipped the thing like a major-league pitcher—Ben would have been impressed if he weren’t so mad.

Well, shit.

Ben was broke as hell at the moment, so he couldn’t afford to replace the screen or the device itself. He’d get a paycheck in a couple of weeks, but for the time being, he was phone-less. He’d been fantasizing about all the cool stuff he could buy with his first paycheck, and a replacement cellphone wasn’t