Blood Bath, A Paranormal/Urban Fantasy (The Maurin Kincaide Series Book 4) (6 page)

The images didn't make sense. The town, the people, everything was different. The roads unpaved, the houses further apart. Women passed in long skirts, their shawls wrapped tightly to keep the offending cold at bay. Men with buttoned down coats followed men dressed for work in the field with a sense of purpose I knew had nothing to do with crops.

Either this girl was obsessed with nineteenth century New England or this memory was old. I was betting the latter. I let the past consume me again and silently caught up to the men through the eyes of the original owner of the necklace.

My hand instinctively covered my mouth to stifle a gasp. Shovels upturned the fresh grave. The farmers pil
ed dirt on both sides as they dug deeper into the earth under the watchful eyes of two other men. Finally a box was lifted from the ground and set at the foot of the grave. At the insistence of the two well dressed men, the farmers pried off the lid.

I almost cried out for them to stop but feared the repe
rcussions of being discovered. What form of wickedness had taken hold of these men that they would defile the resting place of the newly dead? I had known them since I was but a child. I would no more think them capable of this than the pastor. Who were those two devils dressed in their finery, come to lead our townsfolk astray?

Leaves crunched underfoot as someone
approached. I stilled my breath and crouched behind the tree, praying whoever it was didn't see me. More devils or misguided neighbors? The sound of my beating heart roared in my ears and I hoped it did not give me away.

I pressed my hands into the cold ground to keep from falling over as I saw who broke through the tree line. The man
I had planned to go to for help! Pastor Wilkes shook hands with the well dressed devils before enthusiastically thanking them for coming. A man of God was responsible for bringing this wickedness to our doors? I wanted to scream to the heavens but instead sent a silent plea to God that the innocent be spared and these men find their way back from this devilry onto the path of righteousness.

The horrors continued to unfold as the men pulled ha
mmers and short stakes from a worn leather bag, like one was accustomed to seeing a doctor carry. The farmers stepped away from the casket holding the corpse of young Henry Wilkes, upon seeing the instruments held by the two strangers.

One man held a stake over Henry's chest as the other drove the hammer down. The stake was pulled free, stained with what remained of the heart. The hammer came down again, this
time slamming into the ribs, breaking bone. I forced my eyes shut at the sound of a saw working through bone and prayed again for an angel to save us.

"Not an angel
, my dear, but I will spare your innocent eyes from witnessing any more of this." The stranger gestured to the grisly scene.

Had I said my prayer aloud? Could this be the delive
rance I asked for? I didn't know this man but what choice did I have. I couldn't trust the people I knew and respected. How could I be in any more danger with this gentle stranger than the crazed men of my community.

He held out a hand to me and I let him pull me up. I knew instantly it was a mistake as his cold hand closed around mine. This was not the cold of the oncoming winter that clasped my hand but the eternal cold of death. I gripped the cross around my neck as if somehow it would save me from the monsters that surrounded me.

His eyes were entirely black. Sharp teeth extended from his gums as he smiled. I opened my mouth to unleash the scream building inside. He had me pressed to the tree before I could make a sound. I was stupid to come here. What did I hope to accomplish by following these men? No one would have believed me anyway and now I was going to die.

I could only hope my body wasn't desecrated the way Henry Wilkes
’s was. Agonizing pain ripped through me as those terrifying sharp teeth pierced my neck. With his hand pressed against my throat and his crushing weight pinning me to the tree, I felt my life draining as he suckled my neck.

Darkness crept into my vision, my limbs felt heavy and my heart slowed. I knew, despite the fog in my mind, there were only a few seconds left of my life. My heart would stop beating and I would die here in the woods. Perhaps my body would be ravaged by wild animals. It seemed a better alte
rnative than having stakes driven into my corpse. So long as my soul was spared.

Just as the darkness was to completely engulf my vision he withdrew. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as I hung limply in his arms. The monster pulled me from the tree and hurled me through the air. I landed in a tangled heap at the bottom of the grave. The last thing I heard before death finally took me were shouts of
vampire
from the men I had followed.

I collapsed
against the table holding the few items. My hip slammed into the steel chair before my knees made contact with the floor. The cross fell from my hand. I clawed the vinyl until I felt the chain and grabbed hold of it before someone else picked it up. I couldn't shake the feeling there was something else I should have seen. I tried to call up the vision again but all I saw was the blackness of her death. It swamped my mind and weighed on my body. My breathing slowed.

I came to
, cradled in Cash's arms on the floor in the interrogation room. Masarelli loomed over us. I knew he was fighting the urge to bark orders and demand answers. Maybe it had something to do with the alpha at my back. He handed Cash one of those paper cones from the cooler filled with ice cold water and waited for me to come all the way around.

Cash passed the cup to me and with slightly shaking hands I took a sip, and then another. Cash brushed the stray hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear. I felt weak and cold, like death himself reached through the veil to claim me like the girl in my vision.

I curled into the warmth of Cash's body and tried to ignore the inaudible sigh, the rise and fall of his chest that told me he was aware of the intimacy of the moment. I should protest the small circles he was rubbing on my back or to the soft whispers he didn't think I heard. If I wasn't so tired. So very tired...

The white walls of the interrogation room faded.
I was back in the woods, but looking through my own eyes instead of a dead child’s. I watched the men at the grave hammer a stake through the heart of the corpse. My heart pounded in time with each strike. I heard leaves rustling. Someone was behind me.

I moved around the tree, pressing my back against it, arms firmly at my sides, willing myself to disappear. I held my breath, made no sound but he knew I was there. He s
ilently stalked around the tree and was on me before I screamed for help.

I looked into the eyes of my attacker. The longing gaze of a lover
, replaced with the cold, hard stare of the predator I should have known he was all along. I wanted to ask him why. Why was he doing this? Wasn't it enough I had given myself to him? Why would he take by force what I would give freely if he had only asked?

My mouth moved, the questions perched on my lips but no sound came. Locked in his terrifying gaze I stayed when I should have run, my feet unresponsive to my silent screams for them to move.

I was a fool to love him. I saw that now and cursed my stupidity. It never made sense that he would fall in love with me but I was desperate enough to believe the lies. He was the spider and I the fly.

A few sweet words and tender caresses was all it took to ensnare me in his web. How easily I had become the prey. His fangs extended and my traitorous body responded d
espite knowing he didn't love me. I had secretly wanted this, to be his life blood. To give him the last piece of me, what I had never offered another. Something flickered in his eyes and I knew, even pressed against that tree, that he had no intention of drinking from me. He wanted nothing more than to be free of me. Aidan. His name came out in a rushed whisper as his hand pierced my chest and ripped out my heart. The last thing I saw was him squeezing what blood remained in the chambers into his mouth.

Thick, grey fog rolled around me and I sank into the familiar comfort of the between. I wouldn't be rejected here. Through the veil where realities were created, changed or simply left to unfold, I was rejuvenated. This was my seat of power, this world between worlds. I could stay here and build a new reality or I could focus on someone, something until I transported myself to that reality. I was more than the crumpl
ed mass lying at the feet of my - well he obviously wasn't my anything, not anymore.

The heart
ripped from my chest only moments ago beat steadily behind my unbroken sternum. Had my subconscious managed one last hurrah, whisking me away before the last drop of blood left my body? I felt my life slip away when Aidan tore out my heart but here I was - safe and sound in the between.

I focused on my father. I needed to know what the hell was going on. I put all of my energy into picturing him and where he was. I knew I was well and truly fucked when i
nstead of Arawn, dressed in one of those tunics he loves so much, I saw Thomas Kincaide, my adoptive father. And no, he was not painting some whimsical cottage with a water wheel. He was pouring an eighty year old scotch and preparing for one of his famous "Maurin, you need to try harder to be normal" lawyerly speeches.

He was a respected and very well paid corporate atto
rney. The kind who helped big businesses dismantle small businesses. He was not the artist nor did he have an appreciation for the arts.

He looked at me over the rim of his glass, like he had a thousand times in high school. His eyes flicked left before focusing back on me as he slammed a scotch aged for a
ppreciation not frat boy binge drinking. Like a deer sensing the hunter, I knew my adoptive mother was behind me. I looked down at my favorite worn pair of chucks, my Beastie Boys shirt. I fought the urge to squirm under the weight of her disappointment, fidgeting with the hem of my jean shorts.

It was the shirt that finally brought me
out of the dream - out of what was obviously my subconscious mind's version of a horror show, like watching all five Saw movies back to back.

Now, t
hat particular shirt had been washed and worn so many times the cotton was practically see through and shrunk to a size just above obscene given my abundance in cup size. I couldn't be wearing it because it was tucked neatly in my pajama drawer. Of course there was still the chance I was in fact dead. Being a teenager and living at home again could certainly qualify as hell.

I
felt the fog of sleep receding, my heart beating, air filling my lungs. I was definitely alive. And not in my own bed. My hand slid across sheets with a higher thread count than mine to find the other side of the bed thankfully cold and empty. My fingers found the butt of a gun that also wasn't mine under the unoccupied pillow. I palmed the grip as I tried to figure out whose bed I was in and what the last thing I remembered was.

I fe
lt a headache coming. The more I tried to recall where I was before waking in a strange bed, the more my head hurt. At least it wasn't a gaping hole in my chest courtesy of my ex vampire boyfriend. And I didn't need a Freudian analysis to figure out what that dream was really about.

I smell
ed cedar, lime and the earthy scent belonging to Cash. If there was any doubt about my heart actually being ripped out, the hammering in my chest from that realization confirmed its whereabouts. Why was I in Cash's bed? And not wearing my jeans. While I contemplated all the painful ways I would make him tell me what happened, something tingled at the edge of my awareness. I was not alone in the room. It wasn't Cash. His scent was all over the sheets but not the cloying scent of an alpha wolf sitting a few feet away.

I
pretended to be asleep on my side, tightened my grip on the gun under the pillow and tried to sense exactly where the other person in the room was. I had a thirty-three point three three percent chance of getting it right. In front of me--beyond the empty side of the bed, at the foot or behind my back which faced the rest of the room. Instinct and a pretty decent horror movie repertoire had me picking the last one.

Before I could contemplate the fact that the voyeur could have killed me while I slept, I rolled to my knees swinging the gun around in a move that would have been totally bad ass if not for the worst case of bed head in my entire life. I found my target and didn't bother lowering the Walther p99.

"The safety is still on."

"Easily remedied."

"Before I can disarm you?"

"
Wanna find out if vampires are faster than a silver bullet?"

"Given the fact you are sleeping in a werewolf’s bed,"
his eyes dropped to the black lace with strategically placed cotton that made up my boy shorts, "I highly doubt the bullet is silver."

"Funny, that's what makes me think they are. Not that it would have the desired effect on you. What are you doing here
, Aidan?"

"I could ask you the same thing. Given
your state of undress it seems your wolf was entirely truthful." His tone was entirely too accusatory for someone so willing to walk away from me. "Are you going to put the gun down?"

"He's not
my
wolf and I'm still thinking about it." Seeing Aidan sitting across from me was a little unnerving after the dream I just had. I fought the urge to rub my sternum and lowered the gun.