by Mila Young
“Sephy, sit down.” Her voice streamed across the room, but her earlier revelation wasn’t sinking in.
Me possessed. I eliminated the monsters with the fire in my veins—I always believed none could take me, but I’d been wrong this whole time.
Fuck! I rubbed my chest with my fist, trying to coax my constricted lungs to open. “Are you sure it was a demon, not just a ghost?”
Roseline raised one brow and the corner of her mouth pinched. “Girl, I ain’t short of hearing. Now put ya bum down and listen.”
Ryder reached over the back of the couch and placed his hand over mine. “Sephy, we’ll get through this. Let’s not panic just yet.”
“Too late for that. And easy for you to say.” Okay, I didn’t mean sound snarky, but the jitters were surging through me as if at any moment now I might scream.
“Hell, I’m at risk. I spent all day with you, and you had plenty of chances to kill me. And, I slept in your apartment last night.”
I patted my hair down over my shoulder, curling strands over my fingers. I thought back to the scratchy voice in Ryder’s house, the murmurs in my head since yesterday, and me even touching myself without my control.
Bet it was that goddamn demon girl who’d bit me. She’d whispered about claiming me, but if her demon had transferred from me to her, why had she still run away? Had it created the blood circle in Leafside to summon more of its kind? But why?
“Ya have a spirit in ya,” Roseline said, her fingers laced across her stomach. “But yar magic is suppressing the Loa.”
“Like in a huge powerful Haitian Loa—a deity?” I squeaked. Hell, you’d think after dealing with spirits my whole life, I’d have taken this better. But never had I worried about getting possessed, assuming it was an impossible. And yes, add that to my growing list of stupid mistakes.
“Loas are not necessarily deities. They’re intermediaries for Bondye and serve him. Some call him a good god. Anyway, whispers talked about how another powerful Loa that laid claim to yar soul and no one was to get in his way.”
I gasped and sat in a corner of the couch and hugged my stomach. “Why me?”
“Just like your mom warned,” Ryder added.
“So is that who’s inside me?” I asked. “What does it want?”
She shook her head. “Girl, one of his strong followers has attached itself to ya. It’s a temporary placeholder so no one else can take ya…”
“Until he returns.” The words tasted sour on my tongue and the earlier gumbo now churned, promising to come hurling out.
“Okay,” Ryder piped in. “So we have time to eradicate it.”
I cringed and lowered my head. Processing everything seemed impossible, and I swore this was happening to someone else, not me.
With a curt nod, I gave them a summary of what I’d experienced so far.
“Don’t worry. I’ll do what I can.” Ryder shuffled closer, gliding an arm around my shoulders and pulling me against him, and I appreciated his comfort more than he realized.
His attention honed in on Roseline. “So can you a do a cleansing or exorcism?”
“No, boy. Not only was she possessed, but the demon who took her came with a hook spell, meaning it’s connected to her soul. We get rid of it, she dies.”
“Holy fuck!” Ryder’s words exploded.
I rocked on the spot, loathing how everything was getting worse by the second. “So what now? I live with this thing as it tries to control my body until the bigger spirit arrives to claim me? Hell, no! I’m not becoming any beast’s bitch. I’d rather die first.”
Ryder’s arm tightened around me. “Don’t say that. Ever! We’ll find a solution.”
“That’s not all.” Her voice shook and her eyes lowered.
My blood turned to ice at her words.
“Whoever this powerful Loa is coming for ya, he has followers, not just the one inside ya. There are others marked who will stay close to ya and ensure ya don’t evict the spirit.”
Invisible hands squeezed my chest, and I didn’t need to listen to the next words. My throat thickened remembering the demon girl drinking blood from all of us yesterday morning. It hadn’t a feeding frenzy, but a damn ritual. It must have been marking the men with its bite?
I turned to Ryder, whose face paled to the color of snow because he must have put two and two together. We both stared down at his bandaged forearm.
“Oh, for hell’s sake, don’t say what I’m thinking.” He was shaking his head and his expression switched to pure terror. Pale cheeks, downturned lips, curled posture.
“Girl, they keep ya safe for now.”
Ryder shot to his feet, his chest heaving. “Fuck, fuck, and son of a bitch. I only asked for help with my house trying to kill me, and now I’m marked! What does that even mean? Oh, screw this.” His brow glistened with sweat.
“Lion, ya can’t outrun this, but work together. Girl, ya must determine who the other who are marked are because on their own, they could turn dangerous and kill people. In ya company, they shouldn’t be able to do damage. Yar magic tames them. Then—”
“Then what?” I asked, dropping my feet off the couch.
“Well, that’s where my vision darkened. No one would tell me which Loa has claimed ya. They’re scared, so he’s someone dangerous. Knowing the spirit might give ya power to deal with him when he comes for ya.”
Ryder was grumbling, and a snarl rolled through his chest. “I can’t fucking do this. I just want the curse removed off my house, not to deal with this shit.” He stormed out the front door and vanished somewhere in the yard. Ryder didn’t do well with losing control. I stood to go after him, but Roseline grabbed my wrist, stopping me.
“Girl, ya magic is keeping the spirit at bay. But there’s something ya need to know. Once the powerful Loa spirit comes for ya, those marked will be killed as sacrifices.”
She sighed, and I collapsed back into my seat. My brain shut down, numbness taking me.
“I’m sorry. That’s all I could find out. Ya in mortal danger, girl. So more than anything, ya need to discover who’s coming for ya, why, and how to stop him.”
My words didn’t come at first. They jammed in my chest along with my confidence and ability to move. “S-So how do I do that?”
She placed a hand above her heart and her voice wavered. “Girl, I wish I knew how to help ya.”
11
“Ryder.” I marched toward him as he stood with his back to me in Roseline’s front yard. He clasped the gate, standing there as if undecided whether he should leave or not.
Each step felt like a dead weight. After Roseline’s revelation, I struggled to breathe, let alone move, and I craved to crawl under a rock. I’d barely dealt with Dana’s passing, but now to face a possession was a knife in my soul, twisting. Facing death was one thing, but to discover that other lives were in harm’s way gutted me. Not just any lives either, but two who meant the world to me: Ryder and Knox. There was also Dean, so how the hell did I explain this to a detective, and then the girl’s brother? All of us had been bitten.
Could Ryder’s strange gambling behavior be influenced by his mark? What about Dean’s sniffing things back in the woods? Ryder had insisted he was a shifter, but I’d had my doubts. The police force ran stringent testing for staff. And what about Knox? Had he experienced any strangeness? Hell, I had to see him. Fuck!
My stomach hurt, and I remained unsure where to turn to next for help.
Since when did I become the sucker targeted by a powerful Loa spirit at the top of the food chain? The scum belonged in the underworld, not stalking me.
Ryder was at my side, taking my hand into his, our fingers interlaced. “This is fucking bullshit.” His voice darkened and I couldn’t blame him. None of us had ever asked to be in this situation.
“It’s my fault.” The words fell from my mouth like acid rain, marring whatever it touched. “The Loa is targeting me and you got caught in the crossfire. Shit, I’m so sorry, Ryder.”
“Screw that. This isn’t your fault.” He lifted my chin with a bent finger. “I’ll tear the spine out of the fucking ass muncher. If he has no spine, I’ll be ripping apart whatever the fuck has. No one’s touching you.”
I gave a small nod, unable to find my words because having Ryder by my side offered me hope.
“It’s gotta go through me first,” he continued. “Just please don’t cry anymore. It breaks my heart.”
My next inhale skipped into my lungs, and Ryder’s eyes softened. He leaned down and before I made sense of my tangled emotions, his lips grazed mine. Not innocently, but fiery and demanding.
Sparks lit me from the inside out, and a tingle spread through my entire body. He drew me closer by my arms, his tongue pressing against the seam of my mouth. I parted my lips and moaned as he tasted me. Ryder always kissed with the hunger of a lion, fast and sensual, and I lost myself beneath him as if I were a leaf floating on a breeze. Lost and completely aroused. I slid my hands around the back of his neck, tracing the corded muscles and loving the fire across his skin. His musky scent had me sliding my tongue to meet his. He sucked my offering and growled in his chest. The primal sound drove me insane. I burned for more, and when he broke our kiss, I gasped, not ready to come up for air.
“Fuck, you’re so hot,” he whispered.
“I want you to promise me something.” I laid my head against his chest as he curled his arms around me.
“Sephy, I swear on my life. I’ll never betray you again.”
“It’s not that. If we don’t get rid of the spirit inside me and shit goes south, don’t be stupid and confront danger head on. Please. I couldn’t bear to see you hurt.” I looked up at his serious face.
“You have my heart. We’re in this together ’til the end.”
Silence fell over us, and his words chilled me. I believed he would throw himself into a fire if he thought it would save me. Stubborn ass.
“We need to get everyone in one place so I can tell them they might be marked by a Loa spirit and to keep an eye out for any strange behavior they have or anything weird happening around them.”
“Someone dodged a bullet,” Ryder said. “Lucky bastard.”
“Yep. Okay, well then,” I began. “Let’s all meet at my place. Deal? Maybe we’ll get an update from Dean on the possessed girl too.”
“I’m ready to do this. But Roseline told me after you left that you need to work out which witch you pissed off so we can remove the curse. And before they up their ante. Because we don’t need an angry sorcerer on your tail while we sort out how to survive the Loa spirit possessions.”
I knocked on the door of the studio apartment in downtown Evangel. Not the richest part of the city, but a notch better than the one I lived in. “Knox, you home?”
After contacting Asher and discovering he was working the afternoon shift at the Howling Wolf, we changed our meeting to his bar at eight tonight. Too early for the usual patronage to attend, so that meant Asher could join us. And just thinking how I’d explain everything had me banging on Knox’s door again. We couldn’t get a hold of Dean or Knox when we’d called their phones, so Ryder and I had split up to track them down.
“Damn, Knox.” I’d checked the community center and one of the guys had said he hadn’t turned up today. Even strode past the church but found no sign of his black Mustang. I figured he was home, but as I walked away, the door behind me creaked open.
Wearing only jeans, he slouched on one leg on the doorway. His Mohawk sat ruffled and sleep pulled at his eyes.
“Had a late night?” I asked as I marched closer, worried he’d hurt someone if he was indeed one of the marked.
“Something like that.” He stepped aside and let me into his studio apartment. A bed lay under an enormous window with no curtains. From my angle, only afternoon blue skies appeared outside. To my right, beanbags squatted in front of a TV, then there was the bathroom door and metal railing racks lined with clothes on hangers. I swung left to the kitchen behind Knox, who leaned inside his fridge and came out with two bottles of water in hand.
He tossed me one, and I caught it midair.
“So what’s going on?” He drank half his bottle in no time. “You rarely come to visit during the day.”
“Why are you sleeping instead of working? You okay?” I scanned him head to toe, remembering if he was marked, he might show signs just as it had with Ryder. Perhaps being marked means they take on elements of the spirit taking me over?
The hems of Knox’s jeans grazed the floor at his heels, and his pants sat low on his hips. My gaze lingered on his fluid muscles and the V-shape tapering in at his waist, wondering what lay beneath the jeans. Ink coated his torso and arms with a multitude of artwork. Like the Egyptian scarab across his chest with wings wide, revealing a skull peering out from underneath. He insisted the insect symbolized creation. The wolf head on his forearm was for protection and courage. And the serpent eating its own tail signified self-sufficiency. My favorite was the enso tattoo on his inner wrist. A painted circle, small and imperfect, it meant everything in life had flaws and drawbacks. But it was all worth the effort.
You’d think after knowing Knox for most of my life, we would have hooked up by now. Nope. The sexual tension thumped through me whenever we were in close vicinity, but there was always a reason that pushed us apart. Never the right time. He got involved with a drug gang and almost died, then found God. I had focused on finding out what I was, making everything else secondary. Now he trained to be a priest, so despite the fact that my libido strangled to death around Knox, he’d made it super clear a romantic relationship wasn’t in his future. And that killed me, but I’d rather have him as a friend than nothing at all.
A craving swept behind his eyes as if any minute he’d carry me over his shoulder and to his bed. Yep, that was me fantasizing about what I couldn’t have. And why the hell were we programmed to always desire the undesirable?
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah, been re-contemplating a few things in life.”
“Oh, like what?” I gulped down several mouthfuls of water, then placed the bottle on the counter.
“Boring stuff. Think I had my priorities wrong but need to sort out my thoughts first.” He ran his fingers through his hair, driving the mess from his face, and he tied the strands into a ponytail with the band around his wrist.
“Hence the sleeping?”
He inched forward, arms folded on the counter. “A rested mind does wonders.”
I chuckled. “Is that one of your philosophical mantras?”
“Well, you know me. Full of sayings, like when waking someone, it’s always good to tell them why you interrupted their sleep.” He winked, and I swallowed the rock forming in my throat.
I wasn’t sure how to broach the topic without freaking him out. Besides, I enjoyed the way he studied me when he wasn’t being Mr. Serious Bum. Meant he was still half-asleep.
“I know you’re dying to tell me something.” Knox’s mouth curled upward. “You do that cute thing with your lower lip where it twitches at the corners.”
“No, I don’t.” I touched my lips. What was he talking about? But if he called it cute, sure, I’d accept the compliment.
I climbed onto the stool across from him and crossed my arms in front of me. The inked snake curling up his bicep distracted me, along with his broad chest, and shoulders roped with muscle.
He brushed my hand with his. “Must be serious if it’s taking you this long to speak. Usually, I can’t get you to shut up.” He laughed, and as much as I wanted to join him because he might have a point, my throat dried.
“Ryder and I visited Roseline today. I’ve been feeling strange, and then earlier this morning a detached voice was speaking
in my head.”
Knox’s brow pinched, and he straightened his posture way too fast. “Fuck, don’t tell me you’re possessed.” His tone grew dark and heavy.
I shrugged with my worst attempt at a smile, which most likely came across as a crooked line.
“Shit, Sephy.” He rounded the counter and drew a seat next to mine and plonked down, his legs spread. “I thought you said you can’t be claimed?”
I swiveled toward him in my chair, my knees between his thighs. “Guess I was wrong.”
His face paled, and he reached over, taking my hands in his. The bridge of his nose wrinkled like it did every time he worried. “What happened? I’m thinking the demonic girl from yesterday, but she ran away, most likely controlled by a demon. Plus, she bit all of us and I’ve heard no voices. Are you sure about this?”
“Well…” I licked my lips, trying to keep my words steady. “Roseline did a ritual and spoke to the spirits. I’m possessed, and hell, Knox, some weird shit’s been happening in the last two days.” In abbreviated form, I spilled the beans on everything. The more he knew, the more likely he’d be able to come up with a solution.
When he didn’t respond but lowered his gaze, I continued. “I’m fucked, and I’ve dragged down others with me. Ryder is definitely marked. He’s been freakin’ gambling and drinking my whisky, and he loathes that horseracing shit and its abuse of animals.”
Knox’s palms sweated. “Fuck.”
“I’m sorry I got you into this.”
He shook his head. “Nothing to be sorry about. I think you and I were both targeted. In hindsight, I suspect the spirits had been in the girl for a while. Asher and his sister attended the local community hall where I helped homeless kids. They were dropping off a box of blankets a few weeks ago. Trisha, the young girl, befriended me first, adamant she wanted to help, asking me questions about my life, about you because she said she saw you at the hall with me once. I thought she was curious and didn’t question her. But fuck, we were set up, and I was the bait who collected you. The son of a bitch had to know I’d call you, so it played up in front of her brother so he’d call me.”