Torment: Dark Paranormal Romance (Eclipse Warlocks Book 1)

by Ellie Cassidy

  Lex was talented, that much was obvious. A fanged serpent crept in from the bottom right-hand corner, a small, lightly drawn scratching, really, as if it were slithering in unnoticed.

  “It’s stunning,” I said truthfully. Beautiful and captivating and faintly disturbing. “What is the scene?”

  “You tell me.”

  The artwork conjured a single, dominant theme that stuck, making my answer easy. “Eve in the Garden of Eden.”

  “Eve?” he said, sounding amused.

  “Angel, sin and serpent,” I said with a laugh, my gaze lifting to his. “Sorry, I’m not very original.”

  “Never apologize, not for that. Your interpretation belongs to you and no one else.” A grin slid over his square, clean-shaven jaw. “Although, you should probably know that serpent is my signature.”

  “Huh.” I looked again, but nothing much had changed. I still saw an angelic woman bruised and defeated by the sin of the world creeping up, trying to claw its way into her soul.

  Lex flipped the pad away, resting it on the slope of his bent thigh again. His eyes fell from me to the page as he picked up a charcoal stick.

  I sipped on my cappuccino, watching his mouth soften as he worked. “So what’s it really meant to be?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he murmured, distracted. “It is whatever you see it as, that’s the thing about art.” He tossed the charcoal aside and ripped the page from the pad, leaning forward to drop it in my lap. “That’s for you.”

  I glanced down to see he’d added a title in flowing strokes. Eve in the Garden of Innocence. He hadn’t just given me the drawing, he’d made it mine.

  “Don’t worry,” he drawled, his tone lit with amusement again. “You don’t have to treasure it or anything. I was just doodling. Feel free to trash it when I’m not looking.”

  I was too touched by the gesture to make a joke of it.

  Setting my cup down on the grass to free my hands, I rolled the page into a tight scroll and carefully propped it into the purse strapped across my chest. As I did so, I felt the weight of his stare, felt it all the way into my bones as I slowly raised my eyes to him. My breath caught, the fringe of noise and activity around us fading out, time trapped and frozen by the heat burnt into the tawny depths of his gaze.

  My heartbeat slowed.

  I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

  I was mesmerized, irrevocably drawn to everything about him.

  He looked about twenty, twenty-one, not a hell of a lot older than me, but there was something sober and mature about him, as if he’d seen far more than his years should have allowed. A brooding quality I could totally relate to.

  I tried to not dwell on all the crap this world had thrown at me, but some days it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one deluged by the shit storm.

  My backside buzzed, cutting into the moment. Sucking in a deep breath to jumpstart my sanity, I dug my phone from the back pocket of my jeans.

  A message from Haley to meet them at the lake.

  I stared at the text, considering… I’d planned on an early night, but now the thought of a long, hot bath and smashing my eyes closed on this day wasn’t nearly as enticing as spending a little more time with this boy I’d just met.

  “I’m supposed to meet some friends at the lake,” I said, tucking my phone away. “Would you like to join us?”

  He glanced over his shoulder into the press of woodland. “Isn’t that a two hour hike?”

  “Or a ten minute walk to my house to get my car,” I said with a smile. “Then a short drive to the other lake on the other end of town. But you’ve done the hike to Lake Otto?”

  “A couple of times,” he said. “It’s a peaceful walk.” His jaw pumped, his eyes searching mine, the seconds stringing out as he wrestled with his own decision and reached a conclusion that lit a slow burning fire inside me. “My truck’s parked on the road, if you’re willing to risk climbing into a car with a stranger.”

  He didn’t feel like much of a stranger. I patted my purse. “I have pepper spray and Krav Maga.”

  “I’m sufficiently warned,” he said, impressed. “What belt?”

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “A girl can’t give away all her secrets.”

  He chuckled, a husky rumble pulled from his chest that was entirely too attractive for my own good.

  Slow down, Sage. But my pulse was already racing with anticipation as I drained the last of my coffee and stood.

  @hawk

  I met a boy today.

  I swiped the journal app up to clear my screen and rested the phone on my thigh, my eyes going out the window to the velvet pines ticking past. “That’s the turn, coming up on your right,” I pointed out the unmarked road.

  Lex slowed into the turn, then pumped the gas again. His truck was a double cab Ranger, all midnight black and shiny chrome with the kind of suspension that caressed the two miles of dirt track to Chesnock Creek.

  We pulled up in the clearing beside Grant’s jeep, a battered Grand Cherokee with faded red paint. There were plenty of other cars parked around and the festive sounds hit me as soon as I opened the passenger door and hopped down.

  “So when you said you’re meeting some friends,” Lex said as he joined me, blipping the lock with his key fob. “What you meant was a bonfire party.”

  The way he said it, I could tell this wasn’t his scene. My eyes scanned the faces swaying around the bonfire on the south beach, grateful to not see my friends in the crowd. I seriously wasn’t up to this scene right now either, not after last night.

  “No, we’re through here,” I said, sending him a grin as I led us through an overgrown path around the lake, away from the music and laughter.

  The lake was small, but the heavy woodland pressed around it slowly drowned out all but the faded bass tempo of the music as we walked to our preferred beach, a scruffy patch of sand that banked the cattails where the water started.

  “It’s not as pretty as,” I explained, flashing Lex a smile over my shoulder, “but hardly anyone bothers to go much farther than the south beach, which makes this…” my feet stalled beneath a pine, waiting for him to catch up “…all ours.”

  Kenzie noticed us first, jerking upright from her sprawled position on the picnic blanket when she saw I wasn’t alone. “Hey, we weren’t sure you’d come.”

  My eyes danced over Grant, who was scratching in the ice box, to Haley, who gave me a look-what-the-cat-dragged-in creamed over look which was totally meant for Lex. I scowled at her—play nice—and dragged Lex over (not literally, that would mean touching and we hadn’t gotten that far…yet) and made the introductions as we dropped down onto the blanket with them.

  “Hey, man.” Grant leant over, offering a hand to Lex. They did that slap-shake thing that seemed to be genetically coded into every guy I’d ever known. “Beer?” he asked, turning back to the ice box.

  Lex took a bottle of beer while I asked, “Any soda?”

  “Feeling a little tender there?” Kenzie laughed lightly, her gaze sliding from me to Lex. “Our girl had a rough night. The big eighteen, you know.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, thinking maybe bringing Lex here hadn’t been my brightest idea.

  “It was your birthday yesterday?” Lex said, drawing my eyes to him. “Happy birthday,” he added softly, a smile shaping his gorgeous mouth.

  My pulse stuttered. I was sinking, sinking into his eyes, sinking into everything about him.

  “So, where did Sage find you?” Haley said, abruptly pulling me back up for air. “You’re not from around here.”

  I cleared my throat. “We met at the brackens,” I told her, accepting a soda can from Grant. “I went for a walk after my shift.”

  Kenzie’s mouth quirked, her gaze lingering playfully on Lex. “I go walking at the brackens all the time and I’ve never caught anything.”

  Fire blazed my cheeks and it wasn’t all mortification. What was she doing? And right in front of Grant?

  “Cut it
out, Kenzie,” Grant said in a low voice.

  She rolled her eyes off Lex and onto Grant. “I’m just having a bit of fun.” She flapped out a hand to him. “I’ll take another beer, thank you.”

  My heart sank a foot. Trouble in paradise already. I knew this was coming, but seriously? It’d only been one freaking day.

  I wasn’t alone in my rising anger. Haley’s mouth hardened into a grimace. She was blessed with milky coffee skin that didn’t redden, but the fire was still there, lighting up her eyes.

  Kenzie’s gaze swept across us, taking in our unimpressed expressions. “Okay, okay, I’m just…” She grabbed the beer from Grant and drew in a deep breath, blew it out with a winning smile on Lex. “Sorry, I’m in a mood.”

  “No problem.” Lex took a swig of beer, watching her with an unaffected look. “No problem at all.”

  After that great start, the conversation settled around Lex. I didn’t say much, content to steal looks at him while my friends pried some life details from his guarded tongue.

  I learnt his home was Philadelphia, and that even though he’d told me a family friend had bought The Stables a couple of months back, he’d only been living there these last three weeks. He’d put two years toward a Fine Arts degree, then dropped out and now he was here… He looked at me when he said that and for some unearthly reason, something that felt a lot like fate folded around my heart.

  I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  I wasn’t that girl, the one who believed in fate and destinies and love at first sight.

  After another few minutes of grilling, Lex dipped his head to me. “Walk with me?”

  I didn’t need to be asked twice.

  He stood, offering his hand for me to take and I took it, his fingers wrapping warmth around mine as he pulled me to my feet. I felt the loss the moment he released me, felt the warmth seep away as our linked hands gently broke apart.

  I shook my head at myself, biting the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood to ground me.

  “Sorry about that,” I said as we strolled up the bank of the lake, just inside the tree line and out of hearing. “My friends aren’t always that nosy.”

  Lex sent me a sidelong look touched with humor.

  “Okay,” I relented, “but this is a small town. We don’t get a lot of fresh blood. The worst is over, I swear.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “But you needed a break.”

  He didn’t deny it.

  Disappointment stabbed me. He didn’t want to be alone with me. He just wanted to be away from them.

  He stopped walking to lean a shoulder against a tree, his gaze on the sunset pinks bleeding across the sky.

  “It’s beautiful,” I murmured. It was. As much as I’d always yearned to experience life beyond the smallness of Shadow Horn, I loved everything about this town and the yawning nature that surrounded it.

  Lex drew his gaze down from the sky to me. He didn’t say anything cheesy like ‘yes, you are,’ as he looked into my eyes, he didn’t say anything at all, just looked at me with a look that said so much more than words. If I were indeed going crazy, I wasn’t doing so on my own. He felt this thing too, this pull that brought me closer, closer, pushing out the space until there was less than a foot between us.

  His eyes trailed slowly to my mouth with undisguised intention. I wet my lips and the honey in his eyes darkened with want, with desire, with the same waves of heat flushing through me.

  With just a look, he’d drawn me in, close enough that all I had to do was press up onto my toes, lean in a couple of inches and… my breath hiccupped, my pulse flustered with the humming charge in the air.

  I wasn’t going to kiss him of course, no matter how drop dead gorgeous he was.

  And he was.

  He stood about four inches taller than my five-foot-six, broad shouldered, his body carved with lean muscle that was undeniable beneath the black t-shirt and faded jeans he wore. His skin was naturally tanned, Italian or from some other Mediterranean descent, although he didn’t have any accent. The slightest trace of a smile softened his square jaw, pressing shallow dimples either side the firm, wide lips I ached to taste.

  But I figured a girl had to have some form of moral standards and mine bottomed out at getting to know a guy a little longer than an hour before I jumped him.

  So I wasn’t going to kiss him.

  I wasn’t.

  I looked into the depths of his honey burnt eyes, breathing in his musky, male scent while my pulse tap-tap-tapped to a rhythm I was fast losing control of.

  A noise cut the air, sliced through me like an iced blade and raised the hairs at the back of my neck.

  Lex’s hand snapped to my arm, the smoldering look in his eyes sharpening to red alert.

  “What was that?” I whispered. Not a scream. More like a loud, terrified gasp blasted at us from the direction of— I swirled about, my heart racing. Haley. Kenzie. Grant.

  “Stay here,” Lex said, his grasp slipping from my arm as he moved. “I’ll go check it out.”

  Stay here?

  He clearly didn’t know me very well.

  I took off after him in a full-on sprint. We hadn’t gone that far from the picnic spot and within seconds we crossed paths with Grant and Kenzie running for the trees, Grant shouting, “Haley!” No response. “Haley!”

  “She went into the woods for a pee,” Kenzie puffed out as we joined their wild dash into the press of trees.

  I flew over a fallen log and slapped around a tree, listening hard for more sounds, any sign of Haley or what might be happening above the thundering roar inside my chest. We didn’t have bears here. We didn’t have coyotes or any threatening wildlife. Not that I’d ever heard of. Not this close to town.

  Lex and Grant were just a tick ahead of us and when they slammed to a halt, I barreled straight into Grant’s back. He stumbled forward, caught himself and straightened. Lex started moving again. I tracked him to where Haley stood up against a tree. It looked like she’d backed up until the tree had stopped her, and there she’d stayed, her eyes frozen on something I was too afraid to see.

  Instead, I watched Lex slowly place himself directly in front of her, cutting her off from the view that horrified her. “Haley, it’s okay,” he spoke to her in a calming tone, putting a steadying hand on each shoulder. “You’re okay.”

  She burst into a sob, crumbling against his chest and he wrapped his arms around her.

  The breath I’d been holding swooshed out, deflating some of the tension strung inside me. Haley was safe. We were all safe.

  “Jesus,” Grant eked out on a ragged whisper.

  “What?” Kenzie demanded. “What’s going on?”

  Grant flung an arm around her, blinding her as he pulled her around into his embrace. “Nothing. Don’t look. You don’t have to see this. Come on,” he said, gently trying to edge her back the way we’d come.

  “Grant, no.” She dug in her heels, resisting.

  I swung my gaze wide, searching the shadows for the cause of all this chaos. My heart was still pounding, and I steeled myself to see something terrible, a mauled animal or maggot infested carcass or something. That’s the only reason my reaction was somewhat less hysterical than Haley’s when my eyes landed on the body dangling from the tree.

  Somewhat.

  Bile rose up my throat.

  I pinched my lips, swallowing the sour taste as I stared at the gruesome, lifeless form. A skinny, middle-aged man. Short-cropped dark hair. Dressed in jeans and a checkered button down. Hiking boots. My brain clocked the details while my insides screamed.

  “He could still be alive,” I croaked hoarsely, although I couldn’t seem to get my legs to move, to go and check. “He could be.”

  He wasn’t. I could see that. His head hung at an unnatural angle over the thick rope knotted around his neck.

  “Sage,” Lex said, coaxing me out of my trance. “Look at me.”

  I blinked from the hanging man to him, sa
w he’d brought Haley with him, still wrapped by his arm.

  He tipped his head, squaring a concerned look at me over Haley’s head.

  “I’m…” Another shot of bile spurted up my throat and this time I couldn’t hold it in. I fell sideways to my hands and knees and retched.

  Kenzie whimpered, “Oh God, oh my God.”

  I doubt it was from me spewing out the meagre contents of my stomach. She’d finally seen the body.

  “Hey…” Lex’s soothing voice stroked near my ear. He gathered my hair back, over my shoulder, and held it there until there was nothing left in my stomach to heave out. Then he helped me to my feet, leading me over to where he’d propped Haley against a fallen tree trunk.

  I straddled the trunk, near enough to get a good look at her. “Haley?”

  “I’m okay,” she said in a shaky voice, peering up at me.

  Lex pulled his phone out. “I’ll call 911.”

  “No,” Grant stopped him, easing Kenzie down beside me on the trunk before he pulled his own phone out. “I’m calling my dad.”

  “His dad’s the Sheriff,” I explained to Lex, my gaze travelling back to the hanging man without consent.

  My mouth was so dry, my tongue kept sticking to the roof. I wrapped my arms tightly around my waist as a cold shiver broke out. “Could he still be alive?”

  “We—Maybe we should cut him down?” Kenzie said in a rattled voice.

  Lex started in that direction.

  “We shouldn’t disturb the scene,” Grant called out as he put his phone to his ear.

  “I’m just going to take a look,” Lex assured him. He walked up to the man and reached for a dangling hand. He didn’t bother feeling for a pulse. “His skin is cold. His fingers are stiff.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Kenzie.

  “It means he’s been dead for a couple of hours at least,” I replied dully.

  It didn’t take long for the Sheriff and his deputies to arrive, blue lights from the patrol cars pulsing through the trees but no sirens.