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

More importantly, not having a phone meant he wouldn’t be able to call his cousin—or anyone else. He was stuck in the middle of whatever the hell was going on.

Ben sighed and turned toward the woman whom he’d still hoped was a figment of his imagination…or whatever drug some asshole had slipped into his drink last night.

“Your summoning stone is broken?” Melody asked, and she almost seemed regretful that she’d broken it, like she’d thrown it with more strength than she’d wanted.

He wasn’t even going to try and figure out how a hallucination had managed to break his cell.

“Did—” he hesitated. “Did you just call the phone a summoning stone?”

Melody looked at him blankly. Technically she wasn’t wrong, he supposed. You call someone, they show up—it’s kind of like summoning, in a way. This hallucinatory experience had probably brought that one up from the depths of his mind. And it seemed like he was getting a taste of his subconsciousness’s twisted sense of humor.

Ben shook his head, still unable to believe what was going on. And he’d been thinking he was so damn lucky to have found this beautiful woman last night. Now she was spouting a bunch of nonsense about magic and children and quests. And it almost seemed like she might be threatening him too, judging by the way she destroyed his phone. Would his cell still be broken when he snapped out of this hallucination?

Or maybe it wasn’t a hallucination—maybe it was some kind of fucking prank. Those assholes who recorded themselves pranking innocent people could have cooked up this little scheme. But that didn’t explain how he’d seen that weird vision of a giant lynx when he’d touched the egg thing. There was already a lot of weird going on, so he put that kind of speculation aside for the time being.

“What’s going on here? What’s the point of all this?” Ben asked, frustration creeping into his voice. “To humiliate me?” He ran his eyes over the walls and furniture in the room, looking for hidden cameras. But deep down he knew he wouldn’t find any—concealed cameras can be made so small these days.

His suspicions about it being a prank weren’t unfounded. That kind of thing wasn’t uncommon. Some shithead chasing social media clout could film you in an embarrassing situation—in his case being conned into believing some bullshit story about a dinosaur egg while sitting naked on a hotel bed with some foreign spy. They’d wait until he bought the lie, then jump out of the closet or whatever and tell me he was going to be YouTube famous.

“The point is to bring about the return of the Forgotten Ruler,” Melody explained once more. There was exasperation to her voice, as if she were mildly annoyed that wasn’t accepting this very simple scenario.

Ben closed his eyes and took in a calming breath through his nose. Back in college he’d had to take these goofy self-care courses where they taught you meditation and other tricks on how to calm yourself down when needed—tricks that were coming in handy in this majorly weird situation.

His pulse slowed, and he began to get the sense that whatever the hell was going on, he should see it through. Maybe I’m not the crazy one. Maybe Melody had escaped the mad house, fucked some stranger, then planted some weird-ass egg-looking thing in the bed afterward. It didn’t make a damn bit of sense, but it wasn’t like the insane had rational explanations for their behavior—that’s what made them crazy, after all.

The hottest girls being the most nuts was a fact of nature, and Ben was pretty damn sure he was getting a glimpse of it in action.

If that were the case, then there was no idea what exactly she was capable of. Benjamin’s shrink cousin had said on multiple occasions that telling crazy people they were crazy was the fastest way to get them to freak out on you.

For now, Benjamin would pretend to be interested in and believe whatever crackpot bullshit she wanted to chat about. In the meantime, he’d try to think of some way to escape before she did whatever insane people did to the sane.

He took a seat on the foot of the bed, giving himself a little distance from Melody in case she tried to grab him or something. But he came close enough so that she wouldn’t think he was giving her too much space. The egg still lay there, a giant question mark in a whole series of unanswered questions.

Ben nodded at Melody to continue. “I’m interested,” he said, trying his hardest to sound believable. “Tell me more about you.”

She smiled and nodded, pleased as punch to fill him in.

“I come from a land filled with magic.” Melody waved her arm expansively, causing her well-endowed bosom to heave in a very distracting manner. Once again, Ben had to remind himself that she was probably missing morning bingo at the local center for the loopy. “Not like the magic in this world.” She pointed at the lights above their heads, then gestured toward the bathroom. “Like the chamber pot that you empty by touching the magical metal on the bowl, or the amazing device that creates cold air with the press of a button, or the heat-maker in the privy chamber.” She made a blowing noise, and Ben realized she was talking about the hotel’s complimentary hairdryer.

He had to give it to her, if this whole fantasy cover story was the invention of an addled mind, she was definitely thorough. She still managed to convincingly pretend she had never seen electric lighting before or a hairdryer or even a toilet.

“My homeland is a place of monsters, the likes of which have not been seen in your world for a very long time. And it is home to opulence beyond comparison.” Melody wore a look of bliss, her eyes half closed and a smile on her lips as she imagined this place. “These