by Abbie Roads
And he did need her. Had needed her from the moment he first saw her alongside the road.
Tears swelled in Honey’s eyes.
“I’ll be the one you reach for…” Emotion weighed his voice down.
“I’ll be the one you reach for…” Honey’s voice shook and melded with his, reciting the rest of the words to him at the same time he spoke them to her.
To stop the world crashing in,
To place my hand in yours.
Your friend, your lover.
Your soul mate.
I need you until the skies turn dark,
I need you until the days are done,
I need you until everything’s gone,
And then I’ll still need you.
“I’ll still need you.” He finished the repeat of the final verse by himself, but he didn’t look away from her. Their gazes were fused together.
“Guess what I was going to use for my vows?” Her voice wobbled with happiness. Tears slipped in silent streamers down her cheeks, but not sad tears. These were happy tears, the kind that smelled like their happily ever after.
For more Abbie Roads
check out the Fatal Truth series
Saving Mercy
On sale April 2017
Author’s Note
In case you were curious about Fearless and Bear, here’s their entire story:
A man, different than all others, used to roam this land. A man who was more than man. He carried a bit of spirit inside him. But even that bit of spirit was too great to contain within. Some of it showed on his skin.
The People, suspicious of all things unknown, believed a Bad Spirit had marked him—cursed him—for all to see. For all to avoid. For all to fear. The People believed the Bad Spirit wanted their souls.
So the man lived a solitary, nomadic life, nearly driven mad by isolation. One day a desperate loneliness overtook him. He tried to fight it, but was drawn to a field of women harvesting corn.
The women ran from him screaming.
A maiden stayed behind. Unlike the others, she did not fear him, but walked directly to him. Her face and arms bore the remains of a hundred healing wounds. He held out his hand to her.
She didn’t hesitate, but settled her palm in his. A jolt of fire passed between them, but neither withdrew.
The maiden closed her eyes. “Take my life, and you may have my soul.”
He stared at her, mesmerized by her fearlessness. Why would she want to die?
When death did not claim her, she opened her eyes and pulled her hand from his.
He saw a pain inside her greater than what her body had endured. “Why do you wish to die?” he asked her.
“I possess dream sight. I’ve seen my fate and would rather die than submit. Death would be freedom.”
“Do you not fear me?”
“I fear this life more than you.”
The sounds of many feet running through the forest came to man and maiden.
“Kill me now. I do not wish to survive another sunrise in the village.”
“I do not take souls.”
The maiden’s face twisted as if in great pain.
“Come with me.” The man held out his hand.
Men burst through the far side of the field.
The maiden hesitated only a moment before she placed her hand in his. As one, they turned and ran—together somehow swifter than the fastest of warriors. They ran until the dark of night covered the earth and the man no longer sensed anyone following them.
At a stream, they stopped. He lowered himself to the ground and the maiden collapsed atop him, knocking him back against the earth. Fearing his curse had claimed her, he grasped her shoulders and lifted her to see her face.
Her eyes made great pools of water that rained down her cheeks and fell upon his lips.
“Do not fear me.” He tried to move away from her. “I will not kill you. I will not take your soul.”
She clung to him, pressing her wet face against his neck. “I am not afraid. My eyes wash away the memories of the Bad Ones so I may live in peace.”
Her lack of fear, her willing touch, astonished him.
He named her Fearless, and she called him Bear for his great size and ferocity in protecting her. She soothed his loneliness by her presence. And she found joy for the first time. No longer under the control of the Bad Ones, she smiled and laughed when she never had before.
Bear suspected the Bad Ones were trying to reclaim Fearless and moved them constantly. Sometimes his senses tingled, and in those moments, they would do as they had done at the first. Run hand in hand through the forest.
Bear and Fearless grew closer and closer until Bear began to worry over his feelings for her.
His fear came to life when Fearless was struck with a deep affliction. She needed the medicine of a powerful healer to save her. For weeks Bear traveled, carrying her to the wisest medicine woman.
He was not permitted in villages or near dwellings. It was feared the Bad Spirit would claim a soul in each dwelling he passed, unless he himself offered his life. And he would, for he valued Fearless’s life above his own.
He carried her to the village center, the location of the tribe’s power. The tribe’s men surrounded him, brandishing their knives and hatchets, waiting for the wise woman’s command.
In the light of the fading sun, the wise woman cried a keening wail that hushed the people. She examined Fearless’s wrist, spit on the star-shaped mark, and rubbed her tunic over the spot. Then she raised Fearless’s wrist up for the tribe to witness. The people whooped and yelled, welcoming Fearless to the tribe.
The wise woman would care for her now. Bear laid Fearless down gently and tucked the heavy robes around her.
“You.” The wise woman pointed her gnarled finger at him.
He stepped back from his only love, his head held high, and waited for death.
“You are the answer to my prayers. My enemies had sought to destroy my power by stealing my babe. Every day I have chanted a spell of protection for her and prayed for her return. You are marked, yet nothing can destroy your bond. You are my prayers come to life. You are her protector.”
“She is afflicted and needs strong medicine,” Bear said.
“I do not have the power. She is with the ancestors.”
Bear dropped to his knees beside Fearless. The light had faded from her, and he witnessed the truth of the woman’s words. He lifted his head and howled. The sound roared through the village, startling all who heard.
When he quieted, the medicine woman placed his hand over Fearless’s forehead. “I do not possess the power to call her soul back, but you are her destined one. You alone have the power to heal her.”
“I do not know the way.”
“The Spirit inside will guide you.”
Bear stilled, but the Spirit did not speak. The only thing in his mind was Fearless. He closed his eyes and chanted her name, remembered her laugh, her face, the soft sounds of her breathing as he lay with her.
Bear did not stop chanting until Fearless touched his hand. He opened his eyes. The light had returned to Fearless, the affliction gone.
The wise woman knelt next to them. “Daughter, you are returned to me a woman, but I love you as I loved the babe inside me.” She grasped both their hands. “Together you create a shield stronger than the oak. No harm will come to either of you while touching the other. As long as light shines in one of you, the other will live.”
At the wise woman’s welcome, the tribe accepted Fearless and Bear. The wise woman taught Fearless her healing skills. Fearless’s night sight—seeing in her dreams that which she couldn’t see during the day—grew until she became the wisest woman of the region.
A time of great peace and prosperity settled over the land. From many moons away, people sough
t Fearless’s healing and counsel.
The Bad Ones tried three times to kill Fearless, but they did not succeed. Nothing ever harmed Fearless and Bear, for they remained always together. Their bond, stronger than the hills, kept them from harm.
As they approached the end of their earthly lives, Bear carved a totem on the crest of the highest hill to remind all in the region that good always triumphed over evil, for he would protect Fearless into eternity.
They went to the ancestors together. The tribe built a great funeral pyre in honor of them and anointed their bodies in bear grease before setting the blaze. Every village in the region witnessed the black smoke burning in the sky.
A week later, after the fire cooled, the tribe gathered the ash and rubbed it over Bear’s totem to seal their power together inside the carving for eternity.
Keep reading for an excerpt from
SAVING MERCY
Book 1 in Abbie Roads’s new Fatal Truth series
Chapter 1
It’s a sad testament to the state of humanity that we elevate serial killers to the level of mega-celebrity.
—Ellsworth Garyington, MD, Journal of Human and Philosophical Studies
The air reeked of dirty pennies and death. The bodies had been removed days ago, but Cain Killion could still feel the desperate energy of the dying and almost—almost—hear the echoes of their screams imprinted on the bones of the house. He abhorred the sight of blood, and yet here he was, standing in another murder house in front of another wall smeared, splattered, and sprayed with gore.
His heart banged against the cage of his ribs, trying to bust out and make a break for it. A bead of sweat slid in agonizing slowness down the center of his spine.
“You don’t look so good.” MacNeil Anderson stepped into Cain’s line of sight, diverting his attention from the blood. The furrows around Mac’s eyes cut deeper than normal, and three days’ worth of old-man stubble fuzzed his cheeks, giving him a haggard and homeless appearance. Not exactly the look the FBI was going for when they promoted Mac to senior special agent.
Cain almost smiled at his own thoughts, but laughter no longer existed in this place. Only horror could thrive here now.
“Do I ever look good when I’m about to…?” Yeah. There wasn’t a name for what he did. To the bureaucrats with their thumbs jammed up their asses, Mac called it profiling—had to call it something. But it wasn’t profiling. Not at all. What Cain had to do with the blood was something worse than profiling. So much worse.
“This is different.” Mac reached up and put his dry palm on Cain’s forehead. “You sick? Have a fever?”
Cain might be thirty years old and had lived on his own since he was eighteen, but Mac had never outgrown the role of his adopted dad.
“You can always walk away.” Mac made this offer at every kill scene.
And every time, Cain’s legs twitched with the urge to run. Only determination, masochism, and the promise of sick satisfaction kept him locked in place. “I’m staying. I always stay.”
“I’d stop calling you out for these cases, but I know you’d just find someone else who would.” Mac’s words were slow and glossed with sadness.
“No one else has the history I have. No one else can do what I do. No one else can give you the information I can.” Yeah. His profiles were more accurate, more detailed than anything a traditional profiler could come up with. In the majority of cases, his work guided law enforcement directly to their perpetrator. “It’d be stupid not to call me.” Not to mention he needed to be around that dynamic duo—blood and death. They stripped away his mask of normalcy, leaving him naked to the one truth about himself he could never forget.
He was Killer Killion’s Kid—Triple K, the media called him. The spawn of a killer with the genetic predisposition to be a murdering machine. One of the only ways Cain had found to curb the ugly urges was to force himself to attend these murder scenes. Force himself to witness the destruction.
His deepest, darkest, dirtiest secret—the thing he would never utter out loud because it terrified him: Sometimes he enjoyed himself.
“Son, you don’t have anything to prove. Not to me.” Mac used a caring tone, but that word—son—threatened to transport Cain back to his childhood. Back to his biological father using that word like a curse.
Not going there.
Cain stepped around Mac and moved to look out the window. The Victorian home sat on a miniature peninsula of land that jutted out into a large pond. Such an odd place for a house. A beautiful place—breathtaking and yet eerie in its loneliness and total isolation. Just the kind of place Cain loved.
Had location been a consideration for the killer? Had he finished with his bloody work, then stood in this very spot staring out the window at the water?
Cain sucked in a breath, held it for as long as his lungs would allow, then blew it out slowly. “I know I don’t have anything to prove to you. I do this for me.” He tried to make his tone firm, but it came out a little shaky. Mac the-FBI-guy would hear it, but Mac his-adopted-dad wouldn’t press. Time for a change of subject. “You notice anything odd about this place?”
“It’s not the typical.” Mac’s words were spoken on a sigh. “Not that there is a typical. This just isn’t like any other location I’ve been called to investigate.”
“Yeah. Victorian house. In the woods. On a pond. I get why our guy would like the isolation of this place. But there’s something more. It has to do with…” He had trouble finding to words to describe the gut-level truth inside him. “…all of it. The house. The woods. The pond. The family. It’s like this guy wanted the complete package.”
Mac nodded, his expression serious as a gravedigger. “You get that from the blood?”
“Just a feeling I have.” It was the kind of place he’d choose if he were going to plan a murder. Kind of like how salt and sweet tasted so good together, this was violence and peace in one location.
Enough stalling. Cain turned away from the window and faced the room.
Three walls were covered in Victorian-era wallpaper—rich gold background, red blossoms on a vine, and fancy peacocks. Ostentatious was the word that came to mind. One wall—the longest, largest wall—had been painted the same color as the paper’s background. Yeah. Four walls of peacocks and posies might’ve caused bleeding eyeballs.
Finally, Cain forced himself to look at the blood on the wall. Rosettes of red seeped into the wallpaper, the fat watercolor splotches almost blending in with the flowers.
Mac cleared his throat as if gearing up for a formal speech. “The techs released the scene this morning. They worked ’round the clock to get everything cataloged and bagged so we could get you on this ASAP. The blood is, of course, clean. I wouldn’t have called you in otherwise.” He pointed to the three distinct blood pools. “The family—Dad, Mom, girl—was found here. Killed here too. Forensics places their time of death at—”
“Mac.” Cain spoke the name loud enough to smother whatever the guy had been about to say. “Quiet.” He needed the absence of sound to see what happened. And he needed to do it now before he pussied out.
Mac clamped his lips closed, nodded, and moved across the room—out of the way.
Just fucking get it over with.
Cain knelt at the altar of blood. The sweet scent of rotting biological material was an abomination to his nose, and yet foul anticipation crawled underneath his skin. His mind slid sideways like it always did around the red stuff. Back to his childhood. Back to a time when he was very much his father’s son. Back to when blood covered his skin—the slick, silky warmness of it so wrong and yet so horribly soothing at the same time.
He slapped his hands down into the congealed sludge. The coldness sent pleasant shock waves up his arms. He didn’t want to feel pleasure, didn’t want to enjoy this, but that other part of him had terrible intentions. Helpless to stop him
self, he smeared his hands around in the red like a kid playing with finger paints. Only when his fingers and palms were coated with the family’s blood did he raise them to his face.
A miniscule part of him rebelled against what he was about to do, but the rebellion was quashed before it began. He spread the blood over his forehead, his cheeks, coating his skin in the thick, sweet goo. He painted his neck, his bare arms, then lifted his T-shirt and wiped his hands on his chest.
His head fell back on his shoulders. His breath came in shallow, hyperventilating gulps. From a distance, he heard himself moan—only it wasn’t a moan; it was more like the yowling of a feral cat fighting for its life. Or getting ready to mate.
Blood did that to him, was a pleasure and a pain. A gift and a curse.
He had a complicated relationship with blood. He hated it. He loved it. Blood was a conduit, a link, a connection between him and those who slayed souls. Blood opened a doorway, allowing him to step into the minds and bodies of those who found bliss in ending life. He became the killer. He saw what the killer saw. Did what the killer did. Felt what the killer felt.
An incandescent light flashed behind his eyelids. Cain was gone. He was now the killer.
He stood on a ladder, rolling simple white primer on the wall.
A song had been locked inside his head for months, and only now was it time to give voice to the words.
Lift your feet when you
Dance around the old well,
Be careful or you’ll tumble pell-mell.
Look into the dark, dark, waters
For the blood of your fathers.
Show some courage, young man,
Find your calling, young man.
He loved the song. He hated the song. But that was life, wasn’t it? It was all one big paradox.
A breathy sound intruded. He turned on the ladder to see the ones on the floor.
They were laid out in a neat row in the middle of the room. Each of them on their stomachs, hands bound behind their backs and tied to the shackles on their feet, mouths obliterated by duct tape. The male’s wrists were hamburger, dripping blood from fighting against the metal cuffs. But none of them struggled now.