by Brea Viragh
Beneath
My Skin
Brea Viragh
Copyright © Brea Viragh 2018
All rights reserved. The moral right of the author has been asserted. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction.
Strong-willed Mariella Revely has been involved in the supernatural world since she was six years old, when the strange demon script first appeared on her skin after the car crash that killed her mother. Nevertheless, she’s managed to live a relatively normal life among other humans. It wasn’t until she knocked—literally—into the handsome djinn Dax Parker that her life finally began to fall apart.
Sometimes it takes accidentally interfering with the wrong hit job, a little faith, and a guardian demon to come out on the right side of treachery. Can Mariella trust the roguish, captivating djinn? Or is she better off sticking with the demon she knows?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Afterword
About the Author
CHAPTER 1
Go buy presents. Now.
I jumped when the words appeared, pressing against the inside of my skin and looking a little like varicose veins until they exploded through to the surface. All accompanied by a sweet burn and hiss like a hot iron on flesh.
I was used to the agony. It hardly bothered me anymore.
My toothbrush clattered into the sink and I scratched my forearm once the burning stopped. “You don’t have to curse me whenever I forget to do something! I get it. I’m going shopping. Just make it stop.”
Please make the pain go away. It was a silent plea. She never listened.
The words disappeared with the hint of a chuckle in the air, the sound like a ghost’s whisper over a grave. Great. I’d feel the effects of this distinct pleasure for hours. What goes well with Christmas shopping? Demon curses? Scar tissue? I could take my pick.
The toothbrush lay forgotten while I scratched.
She could have used a better method for communication, my guardian demon. Instead, she chose one of the most painful ways possible if only to torture me. Except I wasn’t sure if she really did it to torture me. I’d asked before, but she didn’t care to answer.
My name is Mariella Revely and I wish I had a guardian angel. No matter how much I beg or plead or pray, I never get an answer from on high.
It would be easier to make good decisions if I had one. An angel, that is. Instead, I must have fallen through the cracks when they were being assigned. I was stuck with Cer, which rhymes with bear.
A comical name for a demon, right?
I’d never seen Cer. We’d never had an honest conversation. There were no clear answers. I had no clue what she looked like as I’d only heard her voice inside my head. I could be thankful it wasn’t like the movies. The whole demon possession thing, that is. There was no torture, trying to get me to give up my soul. No head spinning and pea soup puking. The power of Christ compels you!
Cer stayed by my side through good times and bad. More bad than good. At least the scars from her words only stayed for the day. Twenty-four hours later and I looked like a normal twenty-six-year-old woman living with a secret. I lived alone, and that was better for everyone involved. Cer may watch my ass, while alternately being a pain in it, but I didn’t need the rest of my community finding out about my anomalous situation.
Her messages wouldn’t stop until I’d done what she asked. Whatever it was. In this case, go buy presents. I pushed the curtains aside and stared out the tiny bathroom window at the December sky. It would be a rush job, getting to the store and back before the snow came. The thought made a wave of nausea rise.
I continued to scrape at my arm with stubby nails while searching through my closet for clothes. I’d have to pile on the layers unless I wanted everyone in the tri-state area to see the words on my skin. If I didn’t leave right away—jump up and do her bidding, I liked to say—she’d hound me until my body was littered with her words and I was half-mad from the agony.
And if I didn’t respond quickly enough? Not just a curse. There would be major ramifications, or so she liked to tell me. So far I had not tested the truth of that.
I spared a glance in the hallway mirror, tugging a fire-engine-red cap over my mop of dirty-blond hair. Then stared at myself for one second. Two. Thinking about my life and its lack of direction.
I was attractive enough in an average sort of way, falling short of hot while not academically-inclined enough to look scholarly sexy. Frowning a bit, I turned to give my reflection a better perusal and think how lucky I was my demon never decided to send any messages on my face. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and tried a smile. It came out dutiful, like I was at a birthday party I wanted desperately to leave and a photographer demanded I “say cheese!”
As in, the smile didn’t reach my eyes.
My face tapered down to a narrow chin, which would have been described as elfin if I did something to my face other than wash it. I had blue eyes and a heart-shaped face that made me look innocent. Too bad I was about as far from the adjective as one could get.
I stuck my tongue out at myself until a residual sting on my forearm reminded me to get my rear in the car.
The cold stung my cheeks and brought blood to the surface once I stepped outside. It was a bitter cold, the wet kind, known for sneaking beneath the skin until everything froze. Nothing wanted to work in those near-zero temperatures, and the car engine struggled to turn over.
“Come on, come on. I need to get going.”
I sat in the seat watching my breath form billowing clouds of condensation in front of my eyes. Hands rubbed together inside cotton and wool gloves while I tried to regain a bit of the warmth I’d lost. I didn’t even know what I needed to get in terms of presents. Not that I had an extensive list of people to buy for. There were only two names: my aunt and her son.
“I guess I’d better get out there before you decide to take more drastic measures, eh?” I waited for a reply from Cer and then shrugged.
Sometimes I forgot she wasn’t inclined to reply when I asked a question. Our conversations were drastically one-sided. She wasn’t a person. Hell, she wasn’t even alive.
I’d never seen her face to face, although I’m sure she would be terrifying in reality.
She’d turned up one night twenty years ago when my mother packed me into a car in a snowstorm and told me we were going far, far away. Starting a new life. Starting over somewhere different, somewhere better.
She’d turned up when the snow fell thick on the ground and visibility was down to nothing and the tires lost traction and skidded.
She’d turned up when the vehicle suddenly spun into a ditch and my mother died.
If Cer hadn’t been there to urge me out of the car and away from the scene, I would have died too when gasoline from a ruptured fuel line came in contact with the hot engine.
I trusted Cer the way I’d trust a chained dog not to bite me. Which is to say, more than I should, given the circumstances.
I took a final look in the rearview mirror before backing down the driveway into traffic.
There was only one reason I was out under those heavy gray skies with snow threatening to fall. As a rule, I didn’t drive in foul weather, pushing against the unrelenting terror that caught me whenever I thought about it. I might be out for a little holiday shopping, but the second those skies opened up my rear end was going home.
“Okay,” I sighed. “Let’s get our presents on.”
No answer.
The first time I showed up at the house after the accident, the demon writing which only I could read burned into my skin, I thought Aunt Lynn would have a heart attack. But Cer had kept me from burning to a crisp, and that was what kept Lynn from shoving me into the nearest foster home.
It made family functions awkward, knowing my aunt hadn’t really wanted to take me in and keep me. Maybe this year I’d get the hug I’d been waiting for since I was seven.
I pulled the Honda around through a crowded superstore parking lot and made my way toward an empty spot near the end. Throwing the car into park, a sharp pain cut through my chest and down my arm. I managed to keep my head from smacking into the steering wheel when I jerked forward in surprise. Doubling over, right arm out and the other wrapped around my torso, my vision dimmed. For several seconds it was all I could do to breathe.
“Okay, Cer, I got it,” I whispered. “Please tell me and get on with it.”
The pain wasn’t always this bad. Sometimes it was worse.
Within seconds, she acknowledged my plea and the agony subsided to a dull roar. Words appeared on my skin in bright-pink lines.
Be careful out there.
I tilted my head and sighed, blinking until the fuzz disappeared. “Are you serious? You try to kill me with the pain and all you can tell me is to be careful?” My voice felt raw. “You’re ridiculous. Do me a favor and don’t talk to me for a while.”
I leaned back in the seat. She did this sometimes. Gave me hardly any information and little to go on, then expected me to jump. Occasionally her words came to something, and I could forget about the agony for a time, knowing she’d done whatever she was meant to do to keep me alive.
Occasionally, she did it just to torture me.
It was one hell of a curse I carried, confined to the shadows because of a guardian demon I hadn’t asked for and couldn’t get rid of, subjected to her whims and flights of fancy until the end of my days, or until she tired of me. I fully intended to break my curse one day. I’d tried—so many times I’d tried—and failed.
Whatever I’d done to deserve Cer, thank you, but I was ready to face life on my own.
I scratched my arm and pushed out of the car into the biting winter wind. This would be a rush job if I’d ever done one. Sparing another glance skyward, I urged my feet to hurry the hell up. The store’s mechanical doors opened in unison and I burst through them like a woman on the edge. I was a woman on the edge.
Under the glaring fluorescent light, the skin visible on my wrist was a sickly, pale shade of yellow. I hastily tugged my shirt down to cover it and hurried down the nearest aisle.
Why would Cer urge me to buy presents for my family, anyway? Christmas was two weeks away. It wasn’t like the three of us cared enough about each other to celebrate for more than an hour on the actual day.
Lynn, my father’s only sister, and her son, my cousin Luke, didn’t care about me much. It wasn’t a drastic kind of loathing, not like the Dursleys felt for Harry Potter. I hadn’t been banished to the tiny space beneath the stairs when I lived with them. But their dislike—their mistrust—was palpable until I turned eighteen and left, after a birthday card with a not-so-gentle reminder to get my stuff packed, along with a wish for the best.
I was never alone, not with the demon nestled inside of me.
Scanning the aisles, I thought about what they might want. Luke was still young enough to appreciate a good video game without thinking it was mundane. I hustled to the entertainment section. What did teenagers find stimulating?
No, I didn’t want to know the answer to that.
I grabbed two games for good measure, one of motorcycle racing and the other a shooter filled with blood and violence. Let my aunt be the judge of which to give him. With those thrown into the cart and another glance out the door—there were too many holiday shoppers to see much of the weather—I flew up the next aisle.
My heart raced with anxiety, and a numbness crept through my fingers and hands up my arms. The report on the television mentioned afternoon flurries. I didn’t do well with snow. Not since my mom died.
With no time to search for a discerning gift for my aunt, I threw several items, whatever I could immediately get my hands on, in the cart and promised myself if I didn’t get anything good I would come back later, when the weather cooperated. For now, a sense of doom hung heavy over me and even though I knew it was the beginning of a panic attack, it didn’t help me feel like I was in control.
I rushed to join the rest of the horde of shoppers at the checkout counter. You’d think with the holidays approaching a major chain store would have more than two registers open at the same time. At least here I had an unimpeded view of outside. Waiting for the snow to drop at any moment.
The chain store was an orgy of anxiety and frustration, and my heart pounded in my chest as I waited. It took another fifteen minutes of nervous nail-biting and frantic glances out the window before it was my turn.
“Whatcha buying all this for? You got a large family or something?”
I jumped. Shit. It was hard to believe a simple question could make me want to crawl out of my skin. I glanced over at the checkout girl’s long, curly brown hair held against her head in a loose bun with fuzzy pieces sticking out at all angles near her temples. She was nothing but legs and arms. Skinny and tall. “Gawky” was a good descriptive word.
“Yeah, something like that,” I managed to answer. Then scratched my arm.
“Well, your peeps are gonna be happy.” The girl shook her head. “I’ve seen a boat-load of people buying a boat-load of presents, but this is the best cart of the week.”
I reached into my pocket for my credit card. “Glad to hear it. I guess.”
“Any big plans for the holidays?”
“Not really. How about you?” I asked, knowing the small talk would keep the clerk from making eye contact and realize something was going on. My numb fingertips rubbed my cheeks and I wondered if it was possible for her to go slower than she already was.
“Just the same kind of thing we do every year. Wake up early, tear into our gifts, have a big family brunch. The boyfriend promised I’d be getting a ring this year.” The clerk sent me a large grin, her eyes widening in excitement.
I touched my face again and tried to return the grin, but it was as if the effort would hurt me. “I hope you get everything you want.”
What seemed like hours later, I pushed my full cart and maxed credit card out through the mechanical doors and raced across the parking lot. Misty breath heaved out of my lungs and I blinked up at the sky. Those dark, heavy clouds were going to dump any minute now. As if to prove my prediction, a single snowflake sliced through the air, landing on my forehead.
“Shit,” I muttered, trying to push the cart and dig around for my car keys at the same time. “Shit, shit, shit.”
This day was not going the way I’d planned. Whatever nefarious purpose—read: ulterior motive—Cer had for sending me out, it didn’t matter. I had to make it home before the snow. By the time I got to my keys, my fingers had gone from quasi-numb to full-fledged I-can’t-feel-them-anymore territory.
I fumbled for a grip and managed to drop the keys on the ground and run them over with the cart. “Shit!”
Nope, not going well at all. I made it to the car just as the skies opened up, and my heart constricted painfully.
I refused to let this be my do-or-die moment. Popping the trunk, I grabbed as many bags as I could and shoved them into the empty space, successfully ignoring the sound of glass breaking. Soon the cart was bare and I was pushing it th
rough the space next to me. Ready to leave it for the next person to handle.
A man stepped forward in time to collide with the cart, the metal knocking against his hip and veering sharply to the right.
“Oh my God.” I rushed forward. For what, I wasn’t sure. No one would ever say I’m good in a crisis. “I’m so sorry! Are you all right?”
“Stay out of this, sweetheart.” The stranger adjusted his collar, a thin, sandy-haired man who exuded intensity. “Just get in your vehicle and leave me alone. I’m waiting for someone.”
“Sure. I’m happy to.” Holding my hands up in front of me, I backtracked toward the car. No skin off my neck. If the guy didn’t want to accept an honest apology, then fine by me.
“Forget you saw me,” he finished hastily.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he was straight off the boat from the Jersey shore. Mobster accent and all. Which didn’t seem quite right, considering we were in Connecticut.
It didn’t matter. Another glance at the clouds told me it was time to scram.
My car door stuck. It took every bit of strength and my sneaker pressed against the side to get the thing open. Luckily, the motor turned over right away.
“Are you happy now, you jerk?” I muttered. I knew Cer wouldn’t answer me. “If you wanted to make me die of a heart attack, you’re about to get your wish, and it’s over something as simple as a snowflake. Go on, laugh. I’m sure you want to.”
Throwing my arm over the seat, I glanced behind me. Put the car in reverse. Pressed my foot on the gas.
And slammed into a man who had popped out of thin air.
CHAPTER 2
I screamed. The man turned to me with a vaguely annoyed expression as metal crunched around him instead of knocking him down and crushing him the way the bump should have.
I slammed the car into park and scrambled to get out of the seat belt—then changed my mind immediately when I saw the rude mobster guy hurrying toward the second guy.