The darkness of night drifted into the morning, and I hadn’t slept at all. I’d been too wrapped up in my thoughts and in Selene by my side. I wanted to soak her in, imprint her in my very DNA, so even in death she would be with me.
Part of me wished that I would have met her years ago, that I could have been basking in her light before now. Only I knew that it was strange circumstances that led our fates to join as one.
“I’ll be back in an hour.” I kissed Selene’s cheek, then rolled out of bed. She mumbled, “OK,” but didn’t open her eyes to see me leave her room. I would be back before she awoke, but just in case, I found spare paper among all of her notes and scribbled my message. Once the note was secure in a place she’d see, I noticed the research she’d been doing on the curse. Three tarot cards sat by Madam Tully’s information. I’d seen those cards before . . . many times before.
I knew what those cards meant, and for the first moment in my life I had hope.
Chapter Twenty- Nine
Selene
The bed appeared to be cold on the side where Jude had laid when I woke up. My fingers grasped onto the pillow and pulled it close to my nose. His scent, our mingled scents from last night, lingered in the fabric. Every muscle in my body felt languid and warm. My heart radiated so much happiness I thought it would glow.
I’d had suspicions Jude loved me, but I didn’t think he’d say it. Not with the fate of his death looming over our heads. His fears of leaving someone behind drove him into isolation for so long, it must have been hard for him to admit his feelings to me. The fluttering in my stomach pick up the pace. I basked in the morning light, thinking of Jude’s eyes, his tan skin, and brown hair. I dreamed of a future that seemed so far out of reach but not impossible.
When the need to pee became too much to bear, I rolled out of bed and practically danced to the bathroom. After my morning routine, I settled into a pair of sweatpants and a large T-shirt. My automatic coffee pot had already began brewing, thanks to the timer ten minutes ago. I’d slept in a little later than normal, but it was welcomed after the night I’d had. Emotions had run rampant over my mind and I struggled to push them back into the depths of my head. I knew they were justified, but thanked my depression for feeling like shit for those emotions, a never-ending cycle of sadness and anger.
Just as I sat down to go over my notes and do more research on the performers, I jumped from a knock on the door. My heart raced, and my hands shook so much, my coffee spilled onto the table.
“Selene, it’s Jude. Don’t freak out!” Jude’s voice echoed through the door and I leaped to my feet to peer through the window to make sure it was him. He stood there, bundled up in a jacket with two bags in his hands. A lightness settled in my gut, and my knees wobbled from the sight. Instantly, I unlocked the door and ushered him in.
“Shit! Your notes.” Jude saw the mess from jumping up and dropped the bags on the counter. He grabbed a rag from the stove handle and rushed to the table. His actions were cute and my bright smile from earlier came back.
“Thank you.” My knees were weak from the elation running through my body without abandon. He carefully wiped up the mess and set the wet papers off to the side so they wouldn’t get stuck to one another as they dried. He set the rag in the sink and then stood in front of me, his hands caressing my jaw.
“Those cards. Did Madam Tully give them to you?” He sounded curious.
“Yes. Why?”
“I’ve had my fair share of readings with those cards. She’s never let those cards leave that room as far as I know. So they must mean something big if she gave them to you.” He leaned closer, his warm breath teasing my lips with the promise of a kiss.
“Yeah, she said they held the answer to breaking the curse, but I’m missing something important.” I closed the distance between us, unable to take the overwhelming desire that demanded his mouth connect with mine. Our kiss heated in seconds, then as quickly as it started, Jude pulled away.
“She said the answer was in the cards?” His words had a desperate edge laced within voice.
“Yeah. Do you know something?”
His hands dropped, and he moved swiftly toward the table with me following behind him. His fingers grasped onto the first card, the hanged man.
“This card represents sacrifice, that you must release control and your fears and move forward. Kind of like ‘stop resisting and go for it’ card.” His hand jerked as he showed me the second card.
“This card rarely means actual death. It’s more a symbol of endings and transformation. Something is coming to an end to make room for better things.” He quickly grabbed the next one, holding it up so I could see.
“Temperance signifies soul mates and balance. These cards prove that what we have is something that a curse can’t break. I stayed up through the night with you in my arms thinking about how I wished I had more time with you. How I feared losing you and how your broken heart would shatter with my last breath. I don’t feel that anymore. I feel hope.” He dropped the cards back on the table and pushed my wild hair behind my ear.
“I think we need to have sex right now.” I needed him inside me, claiming me, sealing those words with the hope of the love we share when we’re together as one.
He smirked and grabbed my hand, bringing it down to where his growing cock pushed against his jeans.
“I wouldn’t have thought this moment would warrant that, but I guess he agrees with you.” I laughed and palmed his hardness through the denim.
“Claim me, mark me, and be mine forever.”
His kissable lips parted. My words were those of a siren coaxing her lover into the arms of death. Death pulled down my sweatpants and pulled up my shirt before lifting me onto the kitchen counter.
“What about your bags?”
He pushed them off the counter, and they landed on the floor with a crinkly thud.
“November first. We’ll worry about the bags then.”
He growled against the skin of my thighs, then began kissing, and biting his way down to my core. He wasted no time in claiming my pleasure with his tongue. One second I felt his breath against my clit, and the next he was devouring me with a savaged passion. My back arched, while his fingers joined his lips’ assault on my sex, entering me with one finger pumping in and out, then stretching me with two, over and over, harder and faster as my legs began to quiver.
“Jude!” I moaned. His snarl ripped through me as I came, clenching against his fingers while his mouth sucked on that sensitive bundle of nerves above his thrusting fingers.
“You’re mine forever.”
His fingers were gone, only to be replaced with something bigger, much bigger.
“Yes! Yes!”
His teeth claimed my left breast as his hips pumped into my sex relentlessly. His power leaked from him like smoke, wrapping around my hands, holding me back in a way only death could. My eyes rolled back. The sensations racking my body were almost too much to bear. His lips kissed my skin gently after having given me pain, then he lifted his torso off of me. My legs were tossed over his shoulders and his hands went to my breasts, gripping toward his body with every thrust.
“Selene,” he growled. My world ended and began with him. Life as I knew it shattered before my hooded eyes and cries of release bouncing off the walls.
His upper half collapsed against mine, his cock throbbing inside me as his orgasm shook him to the core.
“You make me want to live, Selene. Not just exist. Live.” He kissed my neck and jaw between pants, then finally settled on my eager lips.
Chapter Thirty
Selene
“Reports show that this strange occurrence has happened at three of Seahill’s cemeteries. If anyone has any information on who has been digging up graves and taking the corpses, please come forward.”
I stared at the radio in Jude’s car like it grew three heads. Someone broke into coffins last night and took the dead bodies?
“That doesn’t sound
right. Something must be going on,” Jude murmured and pressed the gas pedal a little harder with his boot. We’d already driven halfway to the mansion when the breaking news drifted through the speaker. I needed to talk with some of the performers and decipher if my life and my friends’ lives were truly in danger. Jude’s anger grew as we neared the driveway. We were getting closer to the ghosts he grew up knowing and caring for who were now plotting behind his back.
The hitchhikers were gone as we turned onto the property. The house looked as eerie as ever, but once we stepped outside the car, we heard loud screams coming from inside. We raced toward the doors, and Jude threw them open with a loud bang. Rudy held Lucy back from one of the other performers who was mouthing off about how Lucy was a major whore. Trouble in ghostly paradise it seemed. At least Rudy found his way back to the mansion without causing chaos.
“What’s going on here?” Jude bellowed, and every ghost stopped what they were doing to look at him, their mouths gaping.
“Oh, Jude, I’m so glad you’re here.” Lucy broke from her friend’s grasp and ran to Jude with her arms wide, expecting him to embrace her when she closed the distance. Instead his hand shot out and stopped her a foot away.
“Yeah, go run to your master to get what you want. It’s not enough you flirt and cause problems wherever you go but now you’re trying to ruin our last chance to move on for him. You’re pathetic,” the ghostly woman in a tutu scoffed before disappearing.
“All right, everyone. Go find something better to do with your time right now.” Jude’s command left no room for rebellion and if by the looks of the performers, there were other places they would rather be than part of this mess.
“Lucy didn’t start it this time. Hannah did.” Rudy strutted up to Lucy’s side and held his arms open for her, but she just leaned closer to Jude, completely oblivious to my presence beside him.
“I don’t give a fuck. You guys have a few days until you get out of this house. You can’t manage to keep your shit together until then? And you.” His focus shifted to his friend with a tense jaw twitching as he glared.
“What the hell were you thinking? Why didn’t you come to me?” His death power flowed out of him like ink in water. Lucy and Rudy’s eyes widened at the sight, their expressions evidence that they’d never seen him truly lose the mask and hold of his gift from Hades.
“I just thought I could help. You never let me help you, so I took matters into my own hands.”
“What did you do?” Lucy leveled her friend with an unnaturally beautiful scowl. He flinched as if she’d smacked him.
“I warned her that her life was in danger at her house.”
“I told you that you should have stayed away.” Lucy shrugged at me like the offense was no longer a big issue since it had to do with my life instead of Jude’s.
“So you threaten my life? My friends’ lives?” My hands balled into fists, rage seeping into my muscles, tensing to lash out on her ghostly ass.
“I’ve got better things to do than waste my time on plots. If I wanted you dead, I would have killed you before. I’m not one to hold grudges, unlike some people. Plus with you gone, Jude would have been in a worse mood. I wanted to sleep with him, but I like seeing him smile much more.” Lucy’s voice did not waver, and I felt the truth in her words. I really had thought that if anyone would have been the person to kill out of jealousy, it would have been Lucy.
“I like seeing him smile more.” Rudy did a mocking impression of Lucy and all the blood in my system froze. That voice. I’d heard it before, but the face had been concealed by a hood at Jude’s show.
His eyes shifted toward me, and the smile, the creepy tilting of his lips toward his cheekbones hit me like a brick to the face.
“You.”
I should have seen it, should have known but I had been too caught up in the rest of the drama to miss the obvious. His talent was impersonations, and he did a very good job at them. He could have easily changed his voice to sound female, even like Lucy.
“Now that you know, I’ve got something to show you.” Rudy gestured for us to follow him toward the living room where a modern TV sat before the old couch.
“What are you talking about?” Jude questioned him and I tugged Jude closer to me, his hands letting go of a curious Lucy who glanced back and forth between her friend and us.
Jude’s eyes narrowed on my fear-stricken face, trying to piece together the puzzle I’d connected in my head.
“He’s the killer,” I breathed, my heart racing while I observed the room for any threats Rudy might have set up for us.
“Rudy?” Jude didn’t look convinced that his closest friend would do such a thing.
“Yes, Rudy. Wake the fuck up, man,” Rudy said. “You’re too nice, wasting away all that talent, those looks, your life. For what? To save someone from a broken heart. You get to be alive, while I get to be stuck in the eternal friend zone with a woman you could have fucked twenty times over. You’re not worthy of the life you’ve been given, but no worries, that’ll all change soon.”
And there it was. The motive behind the killings. Rudy envied Jude. Rudy wanted to live again, to be with Lucy, to party, and be free of his ghostly chains.
“You’re a coward,” I said, feeling a tingle in my hands that demanded I take this murderer somewhere toasty. I heard hell was particularly warm this time of year.
“Yeah, I thought about that little gift of yours and came up with a security plan to make sure I don’t get taken to hell now that the curse is finicky. I plan on staying after this mess, and I don’t need you two or those heroes stopping me.” Rudy clicked on the TV and my heart dropped to the floor.
My friends.
Emily, with her kind heart, and the members of the Hero Society sat in a room with two ghosts and five dead corpses guarding them.
“What good is super speed or becoming an animal against a ghost who can kill? Do everything I say, and they go free. Piss me off and they die.”
Oh God.
Chapter Thirty- One
Jude
Rage didn’t cover the emotions flowing through my body as Rudy crowned himself king of the mansion. My pulse pounded in my veins and my fists twitched with the need to beat the shit out of my ex-friend. I wanted to tear his ghostly soul apart with my power, but I didn’t know where he kept his hostages and they were defenseless against the dead.
“This is living,” Rudy moaned as he walked with each of his arms slung over the shoulders of two women. Little did they know they were about to shack up with a dead man. I hated being forced to use my powers like this, for him to shack up with anyone who would spread her legs.
It was two days before Halloween, and my death day. Rudy ordered me to move the last performance to the mansion, where everyone would dress up for a masquerade to see the show and party. At the end, just before midnight, I would walk up to the tower where I had found my father dead.
Rudy had taunted me with the images of a rope around my neck for the past few days, then he’d throw in a threat of Selene dying with me to make me cooperate further. She’d been sent home, all part of the games Rudy wanted to play. He made her sit and think about what was happening to her friends, to me, while she couldn’t do a damn thing. He wanted me to suffer, too, taking away the love I had found.
He had been right about me wasting my life before, so while catching up in my future, I’d stopped focusing on now. While he thought I was wallowing, I was planning a battle strategy.
Two days, one performance, and a hanging lay ahead for me, only I wasn’t going down without a fight. I had something and someone to live for now and she needed me. Everyone needed me.
Screams and moans of pleasure echoed down the hall, and even Lucy who sat on the chair across from me rolled her eyes.
“He’s really taking this whole living thing to the edge, huh. Gross.”
I nodded, then stood to stretch, having sat for hours.
“You’re leaving?” She arched
an eyebrow, and I shook my head. I wasn’t allowed to leave. Instead I thought I’d take a walk down to the cemetery.
“You can come if you want, but you’d have to be quiet about all you hear,” I warned, and she nodded. She was as a prisoner in the house, too. Rudy loved her, and still she refused him. According to her and Joslyn, Rudy had killed before. It was why he ran away to the circus; it’d always been a stain on his soul.
We walked to the cemetery with corpses I’d never seen before guarding us with old weapons from another era. Rudy had found a way around the binding of the gates and had freed ghosts to take over their old bodies again. So the graves that had been broken into had actually been broken out of, then they all came here. I wished I knew Rudy’s grand plan, but by the number of ghosts and corpses that did not belong on his property hanging around, I assumed he craved domination. After I was gone, there would be no one to fight off the dead. I had no offspring, and if Selene was allowed to live, she could only take one soul back at a time. There were at least fifty squatting on the property with a stench that could drop you to the ground, with more on the way.
“Oh, son, thank god you’re OK. What is happening?” My mother floated over to me and wrapped her arms around me tightly. I gave her the power to feel, as I wished to feel her embrace again.
“Rudy’s taken over, running the shots.” I shrugged, while my parents gasped and jaws dropped to the floor . . . literally.
“Can’t you do something about that? I know the power in you is strong enough,” my dad reprimanded, assuming I had let this happen.
“He grabbed me by the heart,” I admitted and a soft female hand touched my shoulder in comfort. Lucy’s sad smile was directed toward me.
“You fell in love. I thought you said you wouldn’t. That this curse of our family would end with you.” My father’s disappointed voice felt like a vice around my chest.
Fall (Hero Society Book 6) Page 12