A Touch
Morbid
LEAH CLIFFORD
DEDICATION
To my parents, Noreen and Scot Clifford—I lucked out being your kid
EPIGRAPH
Her feet go down to death;
her steps take hold on hell.
—PROVERBS 5:5
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER 1
When the kitten broke out of the shadows in front of Gabe, he’d thought it was another rat until he heard the pathetic mewling. It darted for his leg, fearlessly sliding against the stained jeans Gabe wore. He reached down without thinking, pinched the black fur of its scruff, and lifted it.
The kitten dangled, a tight casing of fur stretched over bones. It let out another pitiful cry. Gabe cupped his hand and plopped the tiny back end of the kitten into it.
“Helpless little thing, aren’t you?” he said quietly. It twitched its bent whiskers. Gabe squatted, resting on his boot heels. Behind his ribs, the evil took hold, liquid nitrogen spreading frost down his arms. He could feel it, like ice crystals forming under his skin. It crept into his fingers.
A trickle of shame slid between his shoulder blades, but he knew the feeling wouldn’t win. One flick of the wrist. A slight twist and he would feel much better.
“I’ll be so quick.” Gabe slid his hand down the kitten’s neck, the sharp spine below the surface grating against his palm.
Under his fingers, the damaged thing seemed to rumble suddenly to life. He felt it even through the icy numbness.
“Are you purring?” he asked it. It bumped a pink nose into his palm, rattling with pleasure.
He could feed it. The thought popped into his head. A whole new possibility suddenly there. A hollow ache rippled through him, his fingers warming, the coldness receding.
The kitten’s matted tail curled around his wrist.
“You,” he told it, “are making a mistake. You should run. This won’t end well.” Still, he stood with a wince, cradling the kitten.
He carried the thing back home, to the random apartment. The kitten mewed again as he climbed to the security door. “Almost there.”
Inside, the decrepit elevator groaned as it rose, really a gated cage on cords. Gabe kept his fingers clear of the metal until it came to a stop. He juggled the kitten and eased the grate open. The carpet in the hallway was beyond threadbare, stained and cigarette burned. A light flickered dully from down near the stairwell.
The kitten was still and silent in his arm as he unlocked the door. Clicking the light on, he unzipped his coat.
“Mi casa es su casa,” he said, dropping the kitten to the gouged hardwood. It sniffed curiously, then sat looking up at him as if waiting.
Gabe squeezed his hands into fists.
“It’ll pass,” he mumbled, more to himself than to the furry creature below. “I can learn to control this, right? Not so hard.” The last words came out more a question than anything else.
The kitten poked warily around the efficiency.
“I can resist. This time will be different,” Gabe said, wandering to the kitchen. The refrigerator was nearly bare—a few ancient take-out boxes he was afraid to open, and a slew of lunch meat containers close to expiring. He pulled the freshest one out, snapped it open, and dropped a hunk of shaved turkey to the tiles. The kitten pounced, sucking the meat down in airy gulps. Gabe tossed the rest of the package on the floor and licked his fingers.
He let out a slow breath, wishing there was a couch to flop onto, a TV to channel surf for distractions.
The mattress in the corner lay atop a box spring, but the bed had no frame. He slunk onto it, listening to the kitten chomp down the last bits of turkey.
In the beginning, the first days after he’d spoken his sins aloud and become one of the Fallen, his memories were murky. He remembered little of the first week, and something deep inside wasn’t sure he wanted that to change. When he had snapped out of his haze, he’d found a card in his pocket, folded up tight, curled around a key. Scrawled in his own handwriting was a note. You look great in black, it had said, but make sure it’s a temporary trend. Never good for more than a season. Go here. Fight the urges. Remember what Az said. The address to the apartment had been below.
No one had bothered him about rent. There had been a stocked pantry, a few thousand dollars rolled up and tucked into the medicine cabinet. Things had come back to him in the quiet darkness, slowly at first and then more frequently as time passed. A name, out-of-focus faces, best forgotten for their safety. But he still had no idea what the note meant. No idea what Az had said or what he was supposed to be doing.
A week passed. Then another. Nights in Polaroid snapshots. A dark club. Back rooms. Offers. He led the mortals astray, feasted on the hatred in their eyes when he turned them down. Left them wicked and unwanted.
Most times.
Lately, he’d locked himself in. Prayed to wake up alone and in his own bed. He drifted off, hoping this was one of those nights.
Kristen. Gabe slammed against the floor. His eyes darted around the shell of the apartment even as he shielded them from the sunlight slanting in through the blinds, trying to find the person who’d spoken. The room was empty.
“Kristen?” Her name broke on his lips. Dust sparkled through the light.
He curled his legs underneath him on the hard floor.
The apartment was so cold. He forced himself up and to the thermostat. The heat was on, turned up to seventy-eight. He pressed the button, the numbers rising, rising, but his mind caught hold of something else. A flicker of warmth inside himself.
“She’s alone,” he said to the empty room, his eyes focused beyond the cracked paint on the wall, the yellowed stain reaching down from the ceiling. “‘With all the old nocturnal smells that cross and cross across her brain.’”
He could see her, the vision of her strengthening as the words leaked from him. Her alone and sick, two years ago. Dark hair in long tangled waves, desperate eyes. She’d been so damaged before he’d healed her. She’d been the first Sider he’d talked to and had told him what little she knew of her kind. They’d helped each other, their friendship growing strong. He’d been the only person she’d trusted.
And what’s become of you without me? he thought. Her lips moved in mute, his name trembling across them.
“Kristen,” he whispered again, and the spell broke.
Gabe closed his eyes. No. It was best not to think of those who used to consider him a friend. Kristen, Az, Eden. He was too dangerous, someone to keep locked in and hidden away where he couldn’t hurt anyone.
A draft slid over his shoulders. He followed it across the floor to the other side of the room and swore softly. When he sighed, he could see his breath.
Sometime in the night, he’d awoken. The window was open.
The kitten was gone.
CHAPTER 2
Kristen knew the warning signs, knew to call Gabe when the thin whispers started. The static of white noise came next, when the shadows started to follow her instead of staying pinned down in the darkness. She’d called. Ninety-seven times she’d called Gabriel over the past month.
“Please,” she whispered, hope fluttering in her chest as the call connected. The ribbons of her red ballet flats wrapped around her legs, cutting into her calves. She bounced lightly anyway, waiting through the ring-back tone—some club mix that Gabe had set up ages ago.
When his voice mail picked up, she stretched impatiently onto her toes, relishing the tightening pinch before she dropped and the ribbons loosened.
Kristen closed her eyes, exhaustion dragging down her shoulders. At least there, on the recording, she could still hear him, could take comfort from his voice.
Soon his voice wouldn’t be enough.
You have other options.
“None I’d ever consider,” she whispered to her reflection. “Stop overreacting.”
Why are you acting as if Gabriel’s the only one who can help you?
Part of her wondered if he was there, ignoring the calls.
There was silence on the line. Her mind had drifted.
“Hello, Ghost,” she said, wondering how much dead air the recording captured before she spoke, if her earlier words were trapped there for him to hear. Embarrassment washed over her, but if he heard her talking to herself, maybe he’d forgive her and come back. “This is…” She hesitated. “Life.” Sighing, she gave in and let the plea come, all she’d really needed or wanted to say. “Come back to me, Gabriel. I’m not doing well. You promised.”
She hung up, dropping into the chair in front of her vanity, met her own eyes in the mirror. She kept the cell in her hand. If he’d been close and only missed the call…
The phone stayed silent.
You should have apologized. She rubbed a finger underneath her eyes, but the black smudges there had nothing to do with makeup, everything to do with Gabriel’s absence. He’d saved her two years ago when she’d been lost to the world and out of her mind, living in an abandoned shack of a chapel at the back of a cemetery. He’d culled the schizophrenia, brought her back to herself. But he could never get it all, could never stop the roots of what was left from spreading like ivy. And so she and Gabriel had traded—her knowledge of the Suiciders for his skills at stripping the disease from her brain every few weeks. They’d learned to trust each other. Kristen depended on him. He’d promised her he’d be there, never let her get so sick again.
And then came Eden, Kristen thought bitterly.
Below her, across the lacquered surface, bottles of nail polish were lined up according to color. She put them in order from dark to light, then switched tactics, going by the level of polish left. The patterns were wrong. All of them.
He hates you; that’s why he’s gone.
Her fingers shifted the bottles like notes on a musical staff. Was the pattern supposed to be a song? If so, she could find the right cadence and things would be better.
The tics, needing to find order, would only worsen. Usually she fought the urge; today though, she gave in to the indulgence. A few weeks ago, Eden and Gabriel had shown up on her doorstep. Lucifer had stolen Az away, was trying to sway him to Fall. They’d made plans for a rescue—she, Gabe, and Eden—but then Eden had gone early and alone. Kristen had let her go.
Gabe had been sleeping when Eden left before dawn, but Kristen had caught her, could have stopped her. Instead she’d dosed her up with Touch, given her all the strength she’d had and a head start.
And you said nothing. You know what Luke is capable of and you sent Eden to face him alone. Because of you, Gabriel could have lost her and Az to the Fallen. No wonder he won’t speak to you, the voice berated.
When Gabe awoke, she’d expected anger, yelling, but the wrath in him, the fury blazing red in his eyes, had caught her off guard.
She lifted her eyes to the mirror and swore she caught a flash of exposed bone on her jaw. For a moment she almost felt as if her glamour shifted out of place, the dirty hidden side of herself showing. Despite being undead, she looked normal enough as long as the glamour stayed; only the touch of another Sider could drop it. Since she was alone in her room, that left two possibilities. Kristen studied herself. Had the vision been the first flicker of a hallucination or merely a trick of the light?
“It was the light,” she reassured herself. “Gabriel will come back.”
And if he doesn’t?
“He only needs time.”
You betrayed him. Betrayed the trust of the only person you dared call a friend. You took him for granted and now he’s gone. Guilt dropped her eyes.
The last bottle of nail polish lay on its side. She spun it in a lazy circle, the maroon color a shade too dark to be the C minor she needed to finish the song. Kristen hummed the tune softly.
It was only then that she recognized the melody, the musician who’d written it.
“Luke,” she whispered.
He’d help you. Go to him.
“Never,” she spat at the mirror. “Luke is not an option.”
Yet. The lips of her reflection twisted up in a cruel smile.
“No!” Kristen thrust her hands out, the bottles slamming against the mirror and tumbling to the floor as she dropped her head onto her arms. “Damn it, Gabriel, where are you?”
She concentrated on the dull roar of her blood pounding through her eardrums, using the steady arterial rhythms to calm herself. She waited for voices caught in the white noise, but only heard her heartbeat.
Behind her, a throat cleared. She didn’t need to glance up to know Sebastian stood at the threshold. “Everything—”
“Everything is fine,” she insisted, cutting him off as she lifted her head. Sebastian regarded her, his brown eyes uncertain. Worry creased his forehead. He’d been her Second, at her side before her crew of Siders had grown to the twenty or so the house now held. Sebastian, who she knew would defend her to the death, who’d been her consort when she’d needed comfort. Her most trusted ally aside from Gabriel. Even he knew nothing of her illness. The thing Gabe had tried so hard to fix, but only managed to dull, wasn’t something she would ever speak of aloud to him, no matter what he suspected. She couldn’t bear the thought of him seeing her as weak. “Everything is fine.”
“You’re not.” Sebastian stood, arms crossed, waiting, as if she’d suddenly break and confide in him. “What happened?” he asked, gesturing to the mess. He moved closer, working a fingernail into a chip missing from the corner of the mirror.
“I bumped my knee and nearly tipped the damned thing over. It’s fine. I’ll clean it later.” She tried to work up a smile, but couldn’t.
“You seem rattled.” From the look on Sebastian’s face, he knew the thin line he tread. He’d mastered hovering between asking too much or too little, smart enough not to force explanations for her behavior. “Should I be concerned?”
“Currently? No.” She stood and pushed past him, out of the room and heading down the hall.
Sebastian followed wordlessly until she passed by the staircase and into the left wing. “Maybe it’d be better if you came straight downstairs today?”
Kristen didn’t slow her steps, and Sebastian hesitated. The left wing frightened him. Frightened everyone but her, because of what it held behind its locked doors. From behind her, she heard Sebastian’s hard sigh, his footsteps retreating down the staircase.
Everyone knew the rumor. The punishment for stepping out of line, standing against Kristen in any way.
Siders had to pass Touch to mortals. If they weren’t able to pass it, the Touch built in t
hem until they became overwhelmed, buried under their most terrible thoughts.
Every Sider in her home, as well as most in the other boroughs, gossiped about how she kept misbehavers locked in darkened rooms, forced them to build Touch until they lost their minds, begged to pass it to her. She let them sometimes, loading up on Touch until her tolerance built. Until she could hold more than the other Siders. In the past, when Gabe had been tied up, she’d dumped the excess Touch to clear her mind. Losing a massive amount at once would help her hang on to her sanity for a few more days.
Kristen made her way down the hall. The first rooms were occupied by normal Siders, the doors closed. They no doubt heard her. They hid more and more lately.
Screamers. The name was whispered in dark corners.
A fine line separated “charismatic leader” from “violent psychopath.” Kristen kept herself somewhere in the gray area between the two—cruel when necessary, fair to the Siders under her roof who behaved. If they kept to the rules, a docile little flock, she gave them food and shelter, even the illusion of safety.
Kristen had done what she could to separate the territories, drum up hostilities that had no basis in reality. She’d banded her Siders together—threats kept them vigilant and loyal. Teaching her Siders to fear others made them more dependent on her. They thought the other leaders, Madeline in Queens, or even Eden in Manhattan, were plotting against them. Only the territory leaders knew the true danger was from the angels.
When she reached the last door, Kristen slipped the key from the pocket of her dress. On the bed sat a boy, his eyes glazed. She gave him a once-over. Frailty made him appear childish.
She closed the door behind her. Her insides hummed, eager for the release of the Touch built up inside her. Kristen sat beside him and leaned forward. The Screamer didn’t move.
Her lips tingled when they made contact with his. She felt Touch release from deep inside her, pulled up as if on a string. A sigh slipped out before she cut it off, rocked back, her lips still parted. A split second of confusion drifted across the boy’s face before the look sharpened to terror.
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