Table of Contents
Fraud
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Fraud
Copyright © 2016 by Casey L. Bond. All rights reserved.
First Edition.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior express permission of the author except as provided by USA Copyright Law. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.
This book is a work of fiction and does not represent any individual, living or dead. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Book cover designed by Marisa Shor of Cover Me, Darling.
Cover Model: Ashley Caruso
Cover Photography by Vellum and Wing / Nadége Richards
Professionally Edited by Stacy Sanford, Girl with the Red Pen
Paperback and E-book formatted by Allyson Gottlieb and Marisa Shor of Cover Me, Darling.
Published in the United States of America.
ISBN-13: 978-1539141402
ISBN-10: 1539141403
This book is for the readers! I had no idea when I sat down to write Frenzy that you would fall in love with these characters. Thank you for that, from the bottom of my heart. Now, that being said, please don’t freak out until you read the last word.
*insert winky face here*
I watched the crumbling house for signs of life. There were none. Creeping closer, I eased the front door open. No candle’s light flickered. Not even a mouse stirred in the leaf piles that littered the corners of the floor. The hinges let out a long, shrill whine. Porschia was still panicked and Saul wasn’t here. No one was. Glancing slowly across the sparse furnishings, it looked just as we’d left it. Apparently, Mercedes was on the loose and Saul couldn’t contain her.
Pulling the door closed, my boot almost sank through the rotten, slippery porch plank. Something cold bit into my side. Making my breath shallow, I turned my head to see what or whom I was dealing with.
“Were you hoping to find me, or perhaps my sister?” Mercedes asked, her teeth gritted against my ear.
“Honestly? I was looking for you.”
“You know about Pierce, then.”
“I do.” She shoved the knife in further, piercing my flesh ever so slowly.
“You’ve been a night-walker for how many years and you still don’t get it, do you?” she hissed.
“Get what?” I said carefully.
“Not to take on a bigger opponent than you can handle. And you can’t handle me, Roman.”
“I came to—” I started, but she shoved the blade in another half inch. It felt like a mile, making me cry out. My eyes watered. We might be nearly indestructible, but we could still feel pain.
“You came,” she began to finish my words, “to avenge your brother.” Mercedes laughed. “And how do you intend to do that?”
She eased the knife from between my ribs and stepped away, dropping it off the side of the porch. “I don’t need this to stop you from attacking Porschia.”
I did have one thing she didn’t. Information.
When she launched herself at me a moment later, I used it to my advantage. She knocked me onto the porch, both of us crashing through it, my back taking the brunt of both of our weight. “Porschia is in trouble, not that you care at this point.” Dirt and dust flew up in plumes around us, mixing with the scents of mold and decay.
She straddled me, sitting up straight, her fangs bared. They were so much longer than her sister’s, and Mercedes’ silken blonde hair hung over her shoulders in a golden waterfall—a waterfall I needed to see turn crimson. “What’s wrong with my sister?” she hissed out.
“Something’s wrong with Saul. She felt a spike of anxiety from him and then ran away from me and Tage to find him.”
Narrowing her eyes, Mercedes watched me, trying to see if I was bluffing. Thank God I wasn’t, because the she-devil was going to eat me and enjoy every second of it, otherwise. “She left Tage?”
“She did, but he ran after her. I don’t know if he’ll be able to catch her before something else does.”
She shook her head. “That makes no sense. She wouldn’t leave Tage to run to Saul. That wouldn’t happen. Ever. So the question is…why are you lying, Roman? Have you already hurt her?”
“It does make sense if you’re bonded,” I argued. “And Porschia is bonded with Saul.”
“She was bonded to Tage before Saul, and you’re bonded to her too, so why aren’t you chasing after her? Keeping her safe?”
I paused a moment to consider my words before throwing caution to the wind. If Mercedes was planning to eat me, she’d already made her mind up. “Because I’d give anything to break the bond I have with her. I’d give anything if...”
“She were dead,” she finished.
“She killed my brother, Mercedes. Think of how you would feel if someone killed Porschia or Ford. Would you ever stop trying to seek vengeance?”
Mercedes swallowed, looking out at the forest that swallowed us whole. “No, I don’t guess I would. But I also can’t let you kill me or my siblings. I’m sure you understand the predicament I’m in.”
I let my head thump back onto the broken, jagged planks beneath it as she jumped up and away from me. Mercedes pinched her bottom lip and began to pace. It was strange. She was pretty and light-haired, but calculating and shrewd, a natural born hunter. Porschia had hair dark as the night around us, and until she killed Pierce, I thought she had a heart of gold.
Pierce and I were both born to be monsters, inside and out. I just didn’t expect that Porschia would turn out to be a bigger one.
From the ground one step below, Mercedes stopped abruptly, looking at me and the pile of rubble I laid in. “I think you should come with me.”
“Come with you where?”
“To help Porschia.”
I groaned, covering my eyes with one forearm. “I thought we covered this. I have no desire to help your sister. To be perfectly clear, I don’t want to help any of you Grants.” I wanted their blood.
“Well,” she said, “since I’m pretty sure you won’t stop this nonsense anytime soon, I’ll just have to drain you. I can’t have you getting in the way or hurting my brother. Porschia could handle you, but Ford cou
ldn’t. And you know that.” Her eyes darkened. “Is that your plan now that you couldn’t best me? To hurt my brother?”
I sat up, draped my arms on my knees, and shook my head at her. “I honestly hadn’t thought of Ford at all.” That would kill Porschia. Her and Mercedes rubbed each other wrong, but Ford was golden. Ford was also a good kid. Could I do it?
“Don’t hurt him,” she said in a low growl. “No matter what happens. Not Ford, okay?”
“I thought you were just going to drain me and end this.”
She shook her head. I could see the glistening red trails on her cheeks. If she was going to be as emotional as Porschia, I’d beg her to end me.
When I stepped out of the hole and onto the ground, she moved fast, embedding her fangs in my neck. I struggled against her in a futile effort as she drank. “Not going down like this,” I gritted.
She pulled away fast. “I wasn’t killing you; I was bonding to you. Now I’ll know your feelings, where to find you...everything.”
I stumbled over to a tree, bracing myself against the coarse bark and leathery lichens. “Great.” Now I had a half-insane, over-emotional chick following my every move. Well, I’d dealt with Dara, I could deal with Mercedes.
“Let’s go,” she said, clapping her hands. “We need to find my siblings, get them out of whatever trouble they’re in, and then find an Infected to reverse this mess altogether,” she said, motioning to her mouth. “I hate being a vampire. I don’t know how you can stand it. We need to fix all of this. Quick.”
“There is no ‘we’, Mercedes.”
She grinned. “Oh, but there is. Whether you remember it or not, we became friends. I helped you when you were at your weakest once, and I’ll do it again.”
“I’m not at my weakest.”
“Matter of opinion, Roman. Matter. Of. Opinion. Let’s go,” she said haughtily.
Silly night-walker. He thought he was going to sneak up on me and drain me dry; though, I’d prefer that end to becoming a rotting husk again. Roman was delusional. But when he spoke of Porschia being in trouble, there was conviction in his voice. Roman’s bond to her was as strong as Tage’s, though his loyalty was questionable at the moment. That meant she truly was in trouble, and if he wasn’t going to help, I wouldn’t let him stop me from getting to her.
I tapped my foot and crossed my arms.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“It means, hurry up. Work your magic. Lead me to my sister and this trouble you speak of.”
He huffed petulantly. “You Grant women are more trouble than you’re worth, you know that?”
“Tell me about it, bud. Now, chop chop.”
He walked down the path that led away from Saul’s wretched house. I wasn’t snobbish. I’d lived in a shit house my whole life, but there were animals living in that one. Live ones who didn’t want a human squatter, much less a night-walking one. And I didn’t want to eat them. Rats and opossums were disgusting, and my guess was that worse than those lived somewhere inside the rest of that mess.
I bounced on my feet as I walked behind him.
“Why are you jumping?” he grouched.
“I have all of this pent-up energy and I need to move. Can’t we run?”
“I don’t know if you can keep up,” he teased, quirking a brow. Suddenly the playfulness faded and all that was left was pure dare. He was going to try to get away. No way in hell.
“Try me, Roman.”
He didn’t waste any time doing exactly that. Blurring through the trees, I followed his scent, the leather jacket on his back, the spice that was intoxicatingly Roman. He tried to lose me, to throw me off his track, but I was fast. I was fast just like my sister, and like her, I’d be just as deadly to those who crossed my family.
Part of me hoped Roman wouldn’t learn that lesson first, despite his being hell bent on the same. Part of me hoped he tested me.
I couldn’t find him. Searching through the forest, increasingly frustrated, I knew he was near. I could feel him, but I couldn’t hear, smell, or see him. “Saul?” I called out, hoping desperately that he and Mercedes were okay, hoping I wasn’t too late.
No answer came.
I was in the middle of the forest in a clearing, and through the circular hole in the foliage, I could see the stars had shifted in the sky. I heard the sounds of small night animals and insects. Crickets. Frogs from the creek just beyond us. Water trickling over stones and mud in that same sliver of water.
My heart thundered. Where was he? A bright flash came from the center of the clearing. I shielded my eyes with my arm and stepped back to the trees for cover.
“It’s about time, Porschia. I thought you were faster.”
I’d recognize that voice anywhere, and my gut feeling about the person it belonged to? It was right. “Delilah,” I answered scornfully.
She laughed and stepped toward me, backlit from behind by some sort of bright white light. “You want to see Saul? Your brother?”
“You have Ford?” I saw red.
“I do, and if you want him to live, you’ll follow me without incident. Try to kill me, and I’ll have to do the same to your baby brother, which would be a pity. He really is a nice boy.” She turned on her heel and sauntered toward the light. I had no choice but to follow.
“How do I know they’re okay?”
She glanced back at me over her shoulder. “You don’t.” She paused for a moment, considering, and added, “But I give you my word.”
As if her word was worth anything.
I followed her, stepping toward the white light, squinting until my eyes dripped blood from the strain. When I stepped into the sliver of white slashing through the forest, my world disappeared and I entered another. Blue skies. Sunshine from directly overhead. I stumbled over something thick, and then my hands found themselves embedded in warm sand. Golden and grainy, stretching as far as the eye could see. Delilah was changed, too. Gone was her pale skin smattered with freckles. Gone was the red of her hair. In this place, her skin was bronzed, her body taut and toned. She was strong. Her hair was long and dark and straight as an arrow, hanging to her lower back and threaded with gold. Her dingy clothes had been transformed into gauzy white fabric that clung to her hips and breasts. Golden bracelets and cuffs wrapped around her upper arms, around her neck, on her ears. She wore a golden crown fashioned to look like a lion or panther; some sort of great cat. And the tattoo on her neck? It writhed as if the serpent were alive. Her eyes matched every piece of jewelry she wore: gold and glittering.
“It is an ankh,” she said simply. “An important symbol in our culture.”
Our? Whose culture? Who cared? Where were Saul and Ford? “Where are they?” I asked impatiently.
She motioned for me to follow her. “This way,” she answered simply.
But for miles, there was only sand. What was this place?
“This is The Sand,” she offered, as if reading my mind.
Yards in front of us a tent appeared, tall as one of the homes in Blackwater and completely made up of black fabric and wooden poles. It was enormous. “Your loved ones are safe.” She stopped and waited for me. “No harm will befall you inside.”
I had no choice but to take her at her word. If Ford and Saul were trapped in this place, I needed to find them and get out. The dry air burned my nose and the sand pelted my arms as the wind kicked up.
Moving aside some of the fabric, I made my way into the tent. The scents of faraway spices mixed with those of Saul and my brother. When the dark shroud fell behind me, I could hear their voices. I could breathe again.
“Porschia?” Ford chirped and ran to me, tackling me in a hug.
I held tightly to him. “I’m so glad you’re okay,” I said, relieved but wary.
“We’re fine, but you shouldn’t have come.” He pulled back and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You were right about Delilah, by the way.” He leaned in close. “Even about her eyes. She can change her face. I
t’s... messed up.”
I’d told him something was weird, right after she first became a camp follower. But it was only after I couldn’t find her scent in Mountainside that I began paying closer attention. One day she was talking with Ford and her eyes, the ones that had always been lichen-green, suddenly became dark brown, as brown as the horse’s mane that she stroked. I told Ford to watch closely in case they changed again but he waved me off, probably thinking I was imagining things. But oh, ho. Here she was in this awful place, with a brand new face, and she didn’t look like the innocent doe I found in the woods. She looked like a woman, a huntress, a warrior.
“It’s okay, Ford. I’m just glad you’re safe.”
Saul stared at us from a few feet away. I let Ford go and threw my arms around Saul. “Thank you.”
He pulled away, surprised. “For what?” he asked.
“For taking care of him.”
“How do you know I did?”
Ford made a groaning sound. “Because she knows you.”
Delilah cleared her throat from behind us and we all snapped to attention, facing her. Always keep your target in your sight. That was true of crossbows and crazy witches.
“Now that you’re here, Porschia, I can send Ford and Saul back to the forest if you’d like.”
“Yes,” I answered at the same time Saul and Ford echoed their dissent.
“No!” Ford yelled. “No way, Porschia.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” Saul said adamantly. “We don’t even know what this place is, or how to get back here.”
Delilah smiled condescendingly. “You couldn’t find it if you wanted to. The only reason you are here now is because I allow you to be. There is only one other who can cross the barrier, and I imagine he will be here very soon.”
I moved nearer to Ford. “You need to leave, Ford. Go to Father.”
“What’s he gonna do?” he protested.
“Just trust me. You need to go while you still can.” I whispered to him, “Please.”
To my right, Saul crossed his arms over his chest, defiant to the last. I pleaded with him, as well. “Please take him home, Saul.”
Fraud (The Frenzy Series Book 5) Page 1