House of Dolls 3 Read online

  House

  of

  Dolls III

  By Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 by Harmon Cooper

  Copyright © 2019 Boycott Books

  Edited by Allison Erin Wright

  Audiobook by Tantor Media, Narrated by Neil Hellegers

  www.harmoncooper.com

  [email protected]

  Twitter: @_HarmonCooper

  All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Recap

  Prologue: New Companions

  Chapter One: Back in the Swing of Things

  Chapter Two: Questions for a Telepath

  Chapter Three: Why is Everyone Going Crazy?

  Chapter Four: Future House Call

  Chapter Five: The Best Day and the Worst Day

  Chapter Six: No Head Room

  Chapter Eight: Paris

  Chapter Nine: The Shock of a Lifetime

  Chapter Ten: Stopping By

  Chapter Eleven: Fair Warning

  Chapter Twelve: Confession Compression

  Chapter Thirteen: Needles and Clone Wars

  Chapter Fourteen: Creating a Monster

  Chapter Fifteen: Getting Hitched

  Chapter Sixteen: A Safe and Quiet House

  Chapter Seventeen: Becoming

  Chapter Eighteen: Demo

  Chapter Nineteen: Mutual Informants

  Chapter Twenty: A Light at the End of the Turmoil

  Chapter Twenty-One: Against the Grain

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Guardian Angels

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Hot for Teacher

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Dinner with Coma

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Forces at Play

  Chapter Twenty-Six: You’ve Got A Friend in Me

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Healing Long Shot

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Tension Buildup and Release

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Orange

  Chapter Thirty: Strange Request

  Chapter Thirty-One: Checking on a Friend

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Fighting in the Park

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Temporary

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Nightmare to Come

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Reunion

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Stone Serpent

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Woman in the Emerald-Green Mask

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Burial Ultimatum

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Manifest Destiny

  Chapter Forty: Blink and You Die

  Chapter Forty-One: Now or Never

  Chapter Forty-Two: The End of the Road

  Epilogue: Old Friends

  Back of the Book Content

  Recap

  This is the third book in the bestselling House of Dolls series, so if you’ve missed the first, you can find the link here:

  Book One: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls

  Book Two: https://geni.us/HouseofDolls2

  Continue for a recap of the second book.

  (Contains spoilers!)

  The world is known as Centralia, which is also the name of its largest country. Centralia is a heavily populated country, the center of all civilization, with buildings and development as far as the eye can see.

  To the west is the aptly named Western Province, a once-popular but currently battle-torn country where proxy wars are fought. To the east is the Eastern Province, which is the poorest country in the world and the producer of the best technologies.

  To the north is the Northern Alliance, a country located in the hottest region of the world and whose people are isolationists. To the south is the Southern Alliance, the coldest country in the world, rich in history but very exclusive and backwards in many of their views.

  Exemplars and non-exemplars make up the world of Centralia. Exemplars are people with known superpowers that have been classified, and each country has its own classification system. Non-exemplars have a propensity for superpowers, but they are half-powered at best. Non-exemplars are treated differently in some of the countries, most notably the Southern Alliance.

  In the second book of the series, Roman Martin continues to hone his ability to animate inanimate objects. He doesn’t get the new doll he is hoping to get, and instead gets a tiny replica in its place. Roman animates this tiny doll and names her Casper, who he plans to keep around until Emelia, the sex-doll shop’s employee and empath, delivers this larger doll.

  While this is taking place, his wife’s dead body is kidnapped from the morgue by a rogue Western Province exemplar named Margo, who also has the ability to animate inanimate objects.

  Margo animates Roman’s wife’s body, and she also animates Ian Turlock, the man with protrusions jutting out of his body that Roman killed in his fight with Paris. She also breaks Hazrat, the Southern Alliance shadow user Roman was (partially) responsible for sending to jail, out of prison.

  Kevin Blackbook is causing trouble in his own right, killing his wife and her lover and later killing Paris. As it turns out, Margo is Paris’s handler and also her lover, which puts Kevin on Margo’s radar.

  Still on his path to revenge, Kevin attacks the immigration office he worked at with Roman. Roman just happens to be there at the time, and he ends up hurting Turquoise, one of the cat girls. However, Kevin and Roman still don’t meet at this time, nor does either know anything about their separate lives.

  After obtaining knowledge that there is another healer being held in a Centralian jail, Kevin forms a team to bust the healer out, with the hopes of healing the cat girl Roman injured. Joining him are Scarlett the teleporter, James Tew the telepath, Ray the strongman, and Zelda, a power replicator.

  They are attacked by Margo and her crew during the prison break, resulting in the deaths of Ray and Zelda. Kevin gets away with the healer, but not without realizing he is out of his league.

  Still working with Nadine on the healer situation and now wanting to help Lisa Painstake, the Soul Speed exemplar whose spectral form was stripped from her body, Roman heads to the Eastern Province with Nadine to investigate why his country is searching for healers in the Brattle Region.

  In the East, Roman, Nadine, and his dolls go searching for a healer while Lisa’s issue is handled. They find the boy named Eli, a healer who has accidently killed his entire village. While Eli can heal, he also retains all the damage he has healed and releases it in one go.

  As they travel back to the city, Nadine has Roman stay back and goes to get Lisa alone. Nadine is taken by her own government for disobeying a direct order. She was supposed to bring Roman to her government for analysis but instead has tried to stop her people from examining him. Realizing something is wrong, Roman comes to the city with Eli and his three dolls and rescues Nadine and Lisa from a military base.

  His trade-off? To secure Lisa’s release, he has to let the East examine his power and the manner by which the Centralians gave it to him. Their group heads back to Centralia via train, and while they’re on the train, Roman gets a mental message from Harper inviting him over for dinner, not knowing that Hazrat, the shadow user who was broken out of prison by Margo, is planning to ambush him.

  Prologue: New Companions

  So many corpses.

  Margo had seen so many corpses, bodies stacked on bodies, the vampiric infection renewing itself nightly as the plague spread through the Western Province, exemplars and non-exemplars alike all turning to rabid beasts, monsters, killers.

  The Western Plague.

  Those wretched memories were still with her, stitched into her psyche. Gasping faces every time Margo closed her eyes, preventing her from sleeping.
/>   And now Margo had surrounded herself with corpses: Celia, Ian, the woman named Zelda who had been part of Kevin’s assault team. Zelda had been an absorber when she was alive, a useful skill to have around. And while Zelda wouldn’t be as strong in her zombie form, she still possessed her exemplar power, as Ian still possessed his power to turn his bones into sharp spikes.

  Gruesome but useful, all of them useful—including Celia, who sat next to Margo with her head in her lap, Margo’s hand on the dead woman’s skull running her fingers through her hair.

  Margo and her team had been blindsided at the prison by the man made of light. Whoever he was, he was a god-class exemplar, and Margo knew better than to go back for revenge.

  There were some battles not worth fighting.

  She had learned this in the West with the infection all around her, people she knew and cared about, turning. Nothing she could do at that point but slay and get away.

  Better to move on, especially when there were other obstacles in her way.

  Even though there were other factors involved, Margo had convinced herself all this was because of one person. Even Kevin Blackbook’s transformation could be linked back to the man named Roman Martin.

  Now was a time to focus, to prepare for the inevitable.

  It would be a day or so now, but Margo would confront Roman, with Celia at her side, and offer a rather quick end to Roman’s life.

  Once he was dead, she would add him to her collection.

  “Hazrat, lower the light some,” she told the dangerous shadow user from the Southern Alliance.

  He sat across from her, brooding as well. The man made of light had handed Hazrat his ass, and it was only through Margo’s power to transform the landscape that they had escaped.

  Both of them were licking their wounds, albeit for different reasons.

  “Let’s get some rest,” she said, running her fingers through Celia’s hair again. “It has been a long day.”

  Chapter One: Back in the Swing of Things

  Roman Martin had assumed the pressure would be lifted off his shoulders when he got home. He was sadly mistaken, the ghost of Celia ever present as he unlocked his front door. Her presence was heavy in the air even though she hadn’t been in the space for a long time.

  Suddenly, Roman’s trip to the East didn’t mean the same thing. He was right back where he’d started. The same home with the same empty feeling that seemed to permeate the space.

  His eyes narrowed in on the coffin in the center of his living room, as Coma and Celia immediately moved over to it to undo the binding.

  “So I really get to be bigger now, huh?” Casper asked. As usual, the tiny doll was in Roman’s shirt pocket. He had just activated her, having been afraid she would comment on people on the trolley ride over.

  “That’s the plan.” Roman lifted his hand to his chest, giving her a perch.

  The tiny woman with a cat-ear headband climbed out, holding on to his finger as he lowered his hand to the table and allowed her to step off.

  “But I kind of like being small…”

  “Like I said, there will be two versions of you, which will give us some options if we ever need them.”

  “Glad I can be of service,” Casper said with a hint of sarcasm to her voice.

  Masked Coma got the front of the coffin open and moved it to the side, revealing an absolutely gorgeous life-sized doll that was the spitting image of Casper. The doll had Casper’s dirty-blond hair and her angular face, a hint of mischievousness behind her eyes.

  She was in a similar outfit as Casper had come in, a black jumpsuit and a headband with matching cat ears.

  “She’s gorgeous,” said Celia, lifting a hand to her mouth. “It’s wonderful, Roman.”

  “I’m fucking beautiful!” Casper said.

  “Yes, you really are,” Celia said. She stepped to Roman’s side, just close enough to him that he could sense her presence.

  “So let’s do this,” Roman said, rubbing his hands together.

  He took one glance at his power dial to make sure he had enough juice. He was hardly at halfway with the red, and while the green bar was up, Roman had plenty of wiggle room.

  Once he was ready, Roman mentally imagined himself stripping the life from Casper and pushing it into the new doll.

  The new doll’s eyes blinked, the woman baring her teeth as she looked down at her hands, curling her fingers.

  “Casper?” Celia asked.

  “I’m down here,” said Casper, still on the coffee table, startling Roman.

  He was sure he’d stripped the life from her…

  “Where am I?” the new doll asked as Celia came forward.

  “Hi, I’m Celia, and you’re at Roman’s…”

  The new doll leapt for Celia, hands wrapping around her throat as she brought Celia to the ground. She punched Celia in the face twice just as Coma ran to meet her, tackling the new doll.

  Coma flipped her over and brought the new doll’s hands behind her back, pressing her knee down.

  “Let me go!”

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” Casper cried at Roman, who was too shocked by what had just happened to act.

  It had been a long night; he hadn’t been able to sleep on the train as well as he would have liked, and to see the doll lunge for Celia like that, and hit her…

  Roman nearly crushed the doll with his power, but stopped at the last moment, watching her struggle under Coma’s hold.

  “I will fucking kill you!” the new doll screeched.

  And it was at this point that Roman took her life away, his power dial instantly going back to a more comfortable setting.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, moving to Celia.

  Roman lightly touched her face, making sure there were no indentions. Everything seemed fine, but she was dazed, trembling. Roman brought her over to the couch, where he set her down.

  As this was taking place, Coma flipped the new doll over, the doll’s arms still behind her back as Coma kept her knee on her, just in case she came back to life.

  “Well, if no one is going to say it, I will. That was fucked.” Casper hopped down from the table, performing a superhero landing before moving over to the doll. She proceeded to look closer at the doll’s face, poking her plastic eyes, sticking her head in the doll’s mouth.

  “What are you doing?” Roman asked.

  “I’m doing what you should be doing,” said Casper. “Something’s wrong with this doll; one of us needs to check it out.”

  “And what would that do? I’m not a doll expert.”

  Casper looked from Coma to Celia. “Could have fooled me.”

  “Look, I’m way too exhausted to be dealing with this right now,” Roman said, his heart settling in his chest.

  “Do you want me to prepare a bath?” Celia asked.

  “I’m fine,” he told her. “You’re the one who should relax.”

  “No, you want a bath. Let me help.” Even as Roman protested, Celia moved to the bedroom, letting him know she’d call him when it was ready.

  He had to smile at her for a moment as she walked past, still in the flowing green clothing she’d worn in the Eastern Province. She was the same type of stubborn he had secretly loved about his wife.

  “I don’t quite understand what happened here,” Roman finally said.

  “Do you want me to put her back in the box?” Coma asked, her eyes red as ever.

  Roman nodded. “That works for me. Maybe we can try to animate her later, or maybe…”

  “She’s a killer,” Casper reminded him. “Whatever part of you you’ve put into that doll, it’s your killer instinct side, the side you should probably bury in a coffin akin to the one you should put her twisted ass in. So I say no, hell no, you shouldn’t reactivate her.”

  “I don’t choose which part of myself I put into the doll,” he told her.

  “I will not point out the pun…” Casper said with a chuckle. “I will not point out the pun…”r />
  “What I’m trying to say here is I haven’t really been conscious about what parts of me I’m putting into them. I simply extend life to the object, and it takes a part of me. Like you, my comedic side.”

  “I’m way funnier than you.”

  “A side I grew out of in my teens. Other than that, the object does what it wants to do. Watch.” Roman cast his hand at the coffee table, and the legs began to buck as if it were a miniature pony.

  “As fun of a ride as that would be, I think I’ll stay over here,” Casper said, looking at Coma to see if her joke would elicit a response.

  When it didn’t, Casper threw her hands up in the air.

  “Bath is almost ready,” Celia called out from the bedroom just a few minutes later, after Roman had laid the coffin in the corner of the room and placed the limp doll inside, closing its lid.

  He could deal with that later; then again, maybe it was better just to have the two and a half dolls he currently had.

  Why complicate things any further?

  Taking his shirt off, Roman stepped into his bedroom, and a calm, lavender scent wafted from the bathroom to his nostrils.

  A bath would be nice. And besides, he had training to get to.

  “Well, someone looks tired,” said Ava Montague as Roman entered the gym.

  Roman had Coma with him; he’d left Celia and Casper at home. As usual, he wore the athletic clothing they provided for him in the locker room, as did Coma, who looked out of place in her blue shirt, shorts and silky black mask.

  “I just got home a few hours ago,” he told his teacher.

  Even with the high-performance energy bar he’d purchased from the convenient store, Roman was still feeling a little tired.

  “A mini vacation to the East, huh?” Ava pulled her red hair into a ponytail, her breasts swaying as she did so. “Why do I think there’s more to the story?”

  “There isn’t,” Roman lied. “I was just in Eastern Centralia, like I told you.”

  “I see,” Ava said, raising a skeptical eyebrow in his direction. “Anyway, we have an interesting test for you today, and I believe your opponent needs no further introduction.”