Bloody Kisses (3 page)

S
he thundered up the stairs
, not caring if one broke on her way up. The scream she’d just heard—that wasn’t otherworldly whatsoever. She’d recognize Cammie’s voice anywhere, and she sounded like she was in pain, not scared. What could’ve happened while she was…?

She almost missed the last step when she faltered, but she hurtled onward. Regardless of whatever the hell that had been, she needed to get to Cammie first, then worry about the rest later. She didn’t have to look far. On the first floor, in what had to have been a drawing room or living room of some sort, she found her friends sitting in a half circle around Cammie. Her ankle was twisted and she was posed amid a pile of fresh debris. Looking up, Madeline put the situation together and realized her friend had fallen through the floor on the second story.

“What took you so long?” Drew bitched.

“What happened?” she answered, gesturing to Cammie as Carter tried comfort their friend.

“The obvious. She fell. Sprained ankle.” Drew held his phone for her to see. “Do you have bars? I don’t have bars.”

“Bars?” she asked.

“Signal, so we can call for help,” Drew explained, his tone suggesting she was a moron for asking.

“Oh,” she said before checking her phone. “No, no bars. I’m sure we can stabilize her until morning, right? Who did you set up to check on us this time?”

Their routine was to take turns having a friend be their safe call. If something went wrong, the person knew that they were supposed to check in at five am or sometime near that, and if they didn’t…

That person would call for help. They’d been using the safe call routine for years, and it hadn’t ever come in handy, but a sprained ankle and no service meant their planning was going to pay off.

“I didn’t,” Drew mumbled.

“What?” Carter leapt to his feet. “What the hell do you mean you didn’t set up a safe call?”

“We never need one. It isn’t that big of a deal. Why bother with it when it is never something we use?” Drew might be defending himself, but he looked a bit panicked. Somehow, that knowledge calmed Madeline.

A wind, unearthly and smelling oddly like candles, swept through the room and lifted the ends of her hair. The others crouched, like the breeze itself creeped them out, but she ignored it and addressed Drew. “For shit like this, that’s why we even invented the emergency setup.” Madeline held up a hand, to keep Carter from jumping on the bandwagon. “I’m going to walk through the house and see if I can find signal anywhere inside so we can call for help. If that doesn’t work, we’ll figure something else out—some way to get her to help if we can’t make help come to us. You guys stay with Cammie, keep her safe.”

The boys didn’t complain and she headed out…

She wasn’t sure, though, if she was looking for the mystery hallucination or signal, and part of her felt a bit guilty about that.

* * *

T
his time
, when he appeared, Madeline wasn’t even surprised. It was like she felt drawn to him, desiring him even if it made no sense. She met his mouth with a kiss of her own, up on tiptoes with her pulse thudding in her ears. His skin tasted like sin, warm and delightfully tempting, and she wanted to do nothing more than gulp him down, but she wasn’t willing to be distracted. She broke out of the embrace and fisted her hands to keep them off him.

“I need answers,” she said, proud her voice didn’t betray her need to be near him. “You’re not a ghost.”

She’d spent most of her life hunting for them, but he wasn’t that. He was something else, something Other, and she needed to understand exactly what if she wanted to help her friends.

A little part of her, the part she considered her evil half or the demon on her shoulder, said she didn’t care about the others. She only cared about him, this man, who they recognized on some weird cellular level. But she needed to focus on what was important, so she tried to stuff her down and demand the truth.

“Have you ever read the Bible?” he asked.

His hair was white, his eyes red, and his face enough to tempt a saint into sinning, and yet he wanted to talk about the Bible? “You don’t look like the type,” she finally said.

“What type?” He looked confused again, but their hands tangled, fingers entwining as if he felt the pull, too, and couldn’t resist touching her.

“The religious type.” She pulled his hand closer, looking at their fingers together, because the sight triggered something. Like a distant memory.

The two of them, in a room full of twisted and tangled nightmarish creatures. Him driving into her, over and over again, not caring about their many eyed and twisted audience. The slap of skin against skin and the pulsating throb of passion.

A smell like sulfur.

His eyes, in the twisted fantasy, nearly flaming red against an almost colorless backdrop of horrors.

She blinked away the messed up thought and focused on him. He seemed so real, so solid, yet he wasn’t possible. He didn’t fit with anything she knew of as reality, and she recognized that even if she didn’t know why she felt she recognized
him
.

“I’m pretty far from religious, yet my question wasn’t about me.” His lips curled in an almost smile and he cupped her face. “What if I told you that you were mine? That, once upon a time, you knew me and I knew you?”

“Oh, in the biblical sense, you mean?” Moving closer to him, she dragged her face up his chest, breathing deep the warm cookie scent which seemed to radiate off him. “That I could believe.”

“Being near you is driving me to distraction.” His voice was little more than a growl, and it pleased her—flattered her—that this beautiful man was so interested in her. That he might feel what she was feeling.

Biting his chest, she then backed up enough to meet his red gaze. “Likewise.”

With a groan, he twisted, slamming her into the wall and trapping her hands. She should’ve been scared, but she wasn’t. If anything, his aggressiveness only turned her on more. “Answers. I need answers and I need them fast.”

She remembered Cammie, and she hadn’t found signal. She might want to simply forget her friends and explore this mysterious man, but she had a responsibility to them. If they couldn’t call for help, they’d have to rig up a way to get Cammie out of this place. Dawn would break soon, so the clock was ticking.

“The Bible,” he began again. “Tells a story of a woman named Mary who was filled with seven demons. One of the demons was so famous, a whole city was named after her. Magdala, so dark she earned her demonhood from the Big Bad. That demon, she was my mate. My intended. My all.”

She blinked at him. He was so beautiful, it almost made her eyes ache and it certainly made her body throb. Too bad he was bonkers.

“You’re suggesting that I’m her. I’m this demon,” she sputtered. Although being this dude’s mate would be wonderful, it seemed a stretch that she’d be some evil creature from the very bowels of hell itself and not remember it. Not to mention…

“I work at a gas station,” she admitted. “I’m pretty damned ordinary. I admit it, I’ve jaywalked. I’ve speeded in my car. I’ve even been an ass and not called home for the holidays, but I think I’m still a pretty good way from being evil enough to be a demon. And if I was a demon, I’m pretty sure I’d have more interesting things to do with my day than work at, again I mention, a gas station.”

Madeline hadn’t even noticed that he’d cloaked the room in some kind of magic again, changing it from ruins to something more majestic, but she did notice when the illusion seemed to shatter into sparkling glitter to fall around them and vanish.

“You are her. I recognize you.” His fingers tightened on her wrists, but instead of being sexy, it kind of pissed her off.

“Get lost, ghost boy or whatever you are. I need to help my friends.” With that, she shook free of him. Even if he appeared larger and stronger than her, she found it wasn’t hard to break away. Jogging down the hall, she was surprised to find herself almost mourning the loss, which was ridiculous.

She’d just met him. He wasn’t anything, probably nothing more than a hallucination her mind would forget as easily as it did any other dream. There was nothing to be sad about and it wasn’t like she’d actually discarded something real. He was pretend, not real, an idiotic fantasy.

So why was she blinking back tears for rejecting him and what he’d offered?

* * *

G
etting back out
of the mansion proved a much slower and more cumbersome task than hiking the short distance from the car to the building had been on their way in. They managed to carry Cammie out, between the three of them, but the jostling journey wasn’t fun for anyone and doors kept slamming and things being hurled at them as if the ghosts weren’t willing to give up their playthings. Madeline encouraged the others, who were terrified, and they managed to make it, nonetheless, although they were all shaken by the experience.

Madeline more than the others, although they praised her for keeping her cool. The man… there was something about him. No matter how much she tried to convince herself she’d imagined the whole thing, he seemed so real.

Cammie’s ankle was broken, so Madeline stopped in daily to check on her and bring her favorite candy bar and a cup of coffee. She wasn’t sure what her friend was more disappointed about—the broken bone or the fact that all of the film and recording they’d done at the mansion was mysteriously fuzzed out. None of the pictures were good, and the bleeding walls video was just white noise and static. The proof they’d hoped to get was all gone, nothing except their own steadily less reliable memories to even prove any of it ever happened to begin with.

In the case of Madeline, the dreams were almost the worst part. The strange man haunted her dreams—she’d never even asked his name, not that hallucinations usually had names, but still. In the dreams, he’d beg her to forgive him. She’d wake up nearly every morning tangled in her sheets, frustrated and aching for a man who couldn’t possibly exist.

Or could he? More and more, she wanted to go back. To find him.

After almost two weeks of torturing herself by thinking of him all day and dreaming of him each night, she finally decided to go back to the mansion. If nothing else, it would satisfy her imagination. Surely, he wouldn’t appear again and she could lay to rest the temptation of a magical man who knew her and she recognized. Who she couldn’t resist and who claimed she was his soulmate.

Which was dumb, she told herself as she plodded up the steps to the ruined building. Why on earth her imagination even came up with the idea of a monster—a demon—who had a soul mate was beyond her. Upon entering, she realized the house was in even worse disarray than when they’d visited. She chose daytime for her foray, yet the place was no less creepy with light to show each dusty and mildewed crack and crevice. A few walls, which she would’ve sworn were stable the last time she’d visited, were beginning to cave in on themselves.

And the ghosts? She didn’t bother to pull out her phone or a camera since she suspected the evidence would be as failed as it had been on their previous visit. But she could see them, practically a tornado of restless spirits churning in upon themselves as if cut loose from their tethers.

In the upstairs, the room with the bleeding walls practically vibrated with speedy breaths and a virtual flood of crimson dribbled down the now invisible faded wallpaper. “What the hell is going on here?” she asked no one in particular, not expecting any real answer.

But from another room, she could hear a noise that sounded like static. Following it, she found a lump of old rags that seemed to form a makeshift bed. Above it was a small, no bigger than ten inches or so, television with rabbit ears. The small portable device wasn’t plugged into any walls and she could see the cord on the floor next to the set. That didn’t rule out batteries—her skeptic mind attempted—but she’d seen too much at this point to not assume some kind of paranormal interference.

When the fuzz started to speak, she jolted, but she wasn’t afraid, not exactly. Instead, she felt oddly at ease. As if she’d seen more—and worse—and this only confirmed something she thought she knew, or vaguely remembered.