“Paige, don’t fight it. You want this. Listen to your body.”
His melted chocolate voice slid across my brain even though his lips continued to assault mine… he spoke within my mind.
I fought harder. Johnathan’s image firmly planted in my mind. Where moments before I had felt indescribable pleasure from the Incubus’s lips, now I only felt revulsion and fear. I fought to escape the entrapment. Pain flooded my head and flashes of red light assaulted the blindness behind my eyelids.
“Your attempt to battle against what your body wants is making me want you more. I haven’t felt this alive in decades. When I achieve victory with you, it will be a grand occasion—one that neither of us will soon forget. So, battle on Dear Paige… battle on. I won’t take you until you beg for it. And you will beg for it.”
His lips, his tongue, the contour of his body touching mine—his voice in my head, and the revulsion I now felt where only pleasure had been before—it was too much. The pain in my head exploded and with one last flash of red, all went back to black.
It’s funny how the mind plays tricks on you. Every time I awakened from sleep since my eyesight had been taken, I opened my eyes expecting to see. The shock was new every morning. This time was no different. First, I felt someone place a cool, wet cloth on my forehead, and then I heard voices beside me.
“When do you think she’ll wake up?” Halli’s quiet voice broke through.
“Soon, she has to wake up soon.” Johnathan sounded beyond worried; his voice dripped with distress.
I opened my eyes thinking I would be able to see what had distressed him so much. But, of course, the cruelness of reality hit me like a snowball to the face. I saw only nothingness.
“Oh, you’re awake! Thank goodness.” Johnathan grabbed the fingers sticking out the end of the cast and squeezed. “Are you okay, Paige?”
“I… think so,” I remembered my encounter with the Incubus and shivered. “My head feels like someone took an ice pick to it. And, my body aches… everywhere. What happened?”
“You levitated and then your body went into convulsions… like a seizure. I didn’t think you were going to stop. Your lips turned blue and you were making choking noises. It seemed like it went on forever.” Johnathan stroked my arm above the cast.
“It actually lasted about five minutes, but I agree, it seemed like forever,” Joe said. “Paige, have you ever had a seizure before?”
“No, never.” I didn’t want to tell them about the newest attack. I didn’t want Johnathan to know.
“I thought you were going to die,” Johnathan’s voice broke. I reached my good hand up to his face, wet with tears.
“I know the feeling.” I flashed back to Johnathan’s near death experience in Seattle.
I struggled to sit as my muscles groaned in protest. Johnathan slipped his arm under my shoulders and lifted me to a sitting position.
“Can I talk to Joe for a minute, alone, please?” I asked.
“Sure. We’ll be in the other room.” Hearing the hurt in Johnathan’s voice made me glad I couldn’t see that same emotion on his beautiful face. Multiple pairs of feet shuffled from the small room.
“Okay, they’re gone.” Joe touched my arm. “What happened, Paige?”
I rubbed my forehead with my good hand; I couldn’t decide what hurt worse—my throbbing wrist or the ice pick in my head. “He was here… the Incubus…”
“What do you mean, ‘he was here’? Johnathan never left you, not for a second.”
“He came in a dream… only it was more than a dream. I was aware of John’s hand on my foot. He… the Incubus… was levitating over me. I couldn’t move, except my head, just a little bit.”
“What happened? What did he do to you?” His voice was rough.
I fought back tears as I explained to him in a shamed whisper what happened. How he’d clouded my mind again, made me want him, and finally, how I’d fought to escape the paralysis. “I don’t understand Joe, it was so real. How could it have been so real if he wasn’t really here?”
Joe took a deep breath and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “It’s called a waking dream, Paige. He’s a man with Demon blood. He can do things that are beyond human explanation. He was definitely here; but only for you. He attached himself to your… essence, I guess. That’s why he so easily incapacitated you.
“There is one thing I want to make sure you understand, without a doubt. The feelings he stirs up in you… the desire you feel for him… that’s his power. It’s what he is and what he does and he’s likely had centuries to perfect it. You, Paige, are amazingly strong. Out of a million females, you are likely the only one that would have the strength to resist him. I’d be willing to bet you are his first conquest out of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of women who has been able to resist him. As amazing as that is, and as proud as I am of you for your strength… I’m afraid that, by so resisting him, you’ve been marked as a conquest he must defeat. He won’t leave you alone until either you succumb, or he’s destroyed.”
“Then let’s destroy him.”
he regular tourist season in Moab had ended, but they were used to seeing large groups of people from all around the world. No one seemed to pay much attention to the six of us as we purposefully strode down the main street of the small town. The exhaustion I’d felt as we trudged across the rocks and sand on the way in to town had now been replaced by the adrenaline of the hunt.
“Paige’s connection to the Incubus will be the easiest way to find him,” Joe explained. Even though he talked in a hushed voice, I worried someone nearby would overhear him and think we were all crazy. “Let us know if you feel his presence, Paige.”
“Okay, I guess. If I feel anything unusual, I’ll let you know.”
The breeze wafted a wonderful smell in our direction.
“Mmm. Italian food,” Alec said. I swear I could hear his mouth watering. “Uhh, Joe? Do you think we could maybe eat there? Maybe that beautiful waitress with the short dress and long legs could tell us where we might find Paige’s friend.”
“How do you know what the waitress looks like? We’re outside. And, if you call that Demon my friend again I’ll make your lips swell to the size of a basketball.”
“Sorry, sorry! The waitress is standing outside by the entrance. They have an outside seating area. So, Joe, whadya say? Italian?”
Joe inhaled slowly. “It does smell delicious, doesn’t it? And, it isn’t a bad idea to question some beautiful women about our enemy. If anyone has encountered him, it would be one of them.”
“So… is that a ‘yes’?” Seth asked hopefully.
“Yes. We’ll eat at…” he paused, “Pasta Jays. It does smell delicious.”
Johnathan held my hand as the hostess led us to our table out on the patio. The breeze had a little bite to it, but the sun shone just enough to keep the edge off. It felt like a beautiful day.
Johnathan pulled my chair out for me and helped me sit. He sat on one side of me and Halli on the other. I oriented myself to the layout of the table. My fingers found the linen napkin folded in front of me. I placed it on my lap and felt for the silverware on my right. Johnathan leaned over and whispered, “There’s an empty water glass just back and to the left of your silverware.”
Our waitress arrived and introduced herself. “I’m Mariah. I’ll be your waitress today. Can I start you off with some drinks?”
We all opted for water and she quickly returned to fill our glasses. “Our special today is pasta with white clam sauce. Do you need a few more minutes to decide?”
“Yes, please,” Joe answered.
Jonathan read the lunch menu to me. I really wanted spaghetti and meatballs, but I worried it would be too hard to eat. I tried to choose something that would require as little assistance as possible from Johnathan. I wanted him to be able to enjoy this rare treat without having to babysit the blind girl. I settled for the rigatoni, hoping I could spoon it up easily, without making a mess or a foo
l of myself.
I forgot about the melted cheese aspect. I was having an annoyingly difficult time. I kept getting strings of cheese down my chin, neck, and probably all over my shirt. Finally, I dropped my spoon and pushed the bowl away in frustration. “Italian. Great idea Alec.”
“What? We all have cheese and sauce all over us. Not as much as you… your shirt looks like a cheese and spaghetti sauce tie-dye experiment gone terribly wrong. But you wear it well, Paige.” Alec’s teasing didn’t help with my already darkening mood.
I grabbed the first thing my hand touched, which happened to be a fork, and threw it in the direction of his voice.
“Nice catch, Alec,” Seth said.
It’s a good thing I had my sonar spell turned on. Something roughly the size of a large meatball spun toward my face. Instinct kicked in and I deflected the flying object with a spell. If it had been a hard object, it would have flown back at Alec. But it was, indeed, a meatball. It basically exploded on impact with my spell and instead of just Alec getting blasted with a food bomb, all of us got blasted with bits of meat shrapnel. All of us—including the hot waitress who had apparently just stopped by to refill our water.
“What the… how… what just happened?” she sputtered.
Silence ensued.
Alec spoke first, unfortunately. “Spontaneous combustion. Because of your nuclear hotness. To prevent further unfortunate incidents such as this one, might I suggest that you stay away from meatballs while you’re wearing that dress?” He was such a player.
Seth and Johnathan both groaned. Halli laughed. I sat there, wishing I could see the expression on the waitress’s face.
A chair across the table from me scraped against the cement of the patio as it was scooted out. Alec opened his mouth again. “Mariah, let me help you get some of that mess wiped off your dress.”
In unison, Joe, Johnathan and Seth said, “No, Alec!”
Halli’s increased laughter was contagious. I started laughing and then the waitress, Mariah, joined in. “Thanks, but I think I’d better just go change,” she said.
“Well, okay. I can help with that, too, if you want,” Alec yelled after her as her footsteps disappeared into the restaurant.
I felt Johnathan start to stand, but he sat again as Seth said, “Don’t get up Johnathan, let me do it.”
I heard a smack as Seth hit Alec upside the head. “Ow! What’d I do? Don’t be haters just because you guys don’t know how to talk to the ladies.”
“Um, yeah. You’re lucky she didn’t slap you,” Joe said. “And I can’t believe you threw a meatball at Paige.”
“What? She threw a fork at me. She could have taken my eye out!”
Johnathan stood, scooting his chair back quite a ways from the sound of it. “You aren’t very funny, Alec.”
I reached for him and caught the edge of his shirt. “Johnathan, its fine. Just sit down and finish eating. I think we’ve made enough of a spectacle of ourselves already, don’t you?” I pulled on his shirt.
“What’d I do?” Alec questioned. “Oh, wait. I didn’t mean anything by it Paige. It’s just an expression, you know? I wasn’t even thinking about… you know… your eyes, or anything. By the way, nice shot with the deflection. You were wicked fast with that.”
Johnathan sat back down and laced his fingers with mine, resting our hands on his bouncing leg.
“Let me help you with your lunch. I’m finished with mine,” Johnathan said quietly.
I shook my head. “I’m not hungry. You can have the rest of it.”
“You hardly ate anything. Just let me help you.”
“No. I’m really not hungry. If I get hungry later I’ll just lick the left-overs off my shirt.”
Alec was the only one to laugh at my lame joke.
The waitress returned to our table and teasingly said, “I hope you were planning on leaving a big tip, because my boss told me I can’t work in my jeans and T-shirt, so she’s sending me home. I still had three hours left of my shift.”
“I’m really sorry,” Alec said. “Let me make it up to you. Is there anything fun going on tonight? I could show you a good time, take your mind off your lost wages.”
“Hmm. There really isn’t a lot to do around here this time of year. There’s a Family Fun Center close by. They have mini-golf and laser tag and stuff. If you’re serious, I would like to hear a little more about the meatball explosion. Of course, the rest of you should come, too. I don’t know if I dare to be alone with your friend here.”
“Of course I’m serious,” Alec said. “And, why wouldn’t you want to be alone with me? I’m as harmless as a kitten.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“No, really. Harmless. Unless you throw a fork at me or something.”
“Well, I’ll go get your bill and you can tell me what you decide when I get back. Do you need any to-go boxes?”
“No, thank you,” Joe answered.
As her footsteps faded away from our table, Johnathan whispered, “Alec, did you forget why we came into town? It wasn’t so you could weasel a date out of an unsuspecting girl. We have work to do.”
“I know. I figured we could ask her about Paige’s fr… uh… attacker. It’s just an added bonus that she’s gorgeous and obviously finds me irresistible. Besides, we could all use a little fun.”
Joe sighed. “I guess we could go play one game of mini golf or something. Get some of your energy and aggression out.”
“I will kick your butt at mini golf, Alec.” The enthusiasm in Johnathan’s voice faded as he added, “But, you probably can’t play, Paige. You and I can go do something else if you want.”
I really hated that his excitement was dampened by my blindness. I also hated that I couldn’t join in. I was a killer putt-putt golfer. “No, John. I’ll just go cheer you all on. I would like for you to show Alec a thing or two about mini golf.”
He squeezed my hand. “What about you two? Halli and Seth, are you up for some friendly competition?”
“Heck yeah!” Seth pumped a fist in the air.
“I don’t remember ever mini-golfing before,” Halli said. “But I’m sure I’ll kick all your butts.”
Mariah brought the check, Joe paid and we all followed her to the Fun Center. Johnathan stayed close to my side, holding my hand in his the entire way.
I found a bench to sit on just outside the mini golf course. I smiled as my friends laughed and gave each other a hard time.
After about ten minutes Johnathan returned to my side. “Paige, the next few holes are where we won’t be able to see you for a few minutes. Do you want to come with us?”
“No, thanks. I’ll just stay here.”
“Okay…” he hesitated. “No, I don’t like the idea of you sitting here by yourself.” He sat next to me on the bench.
“John, I’ll be fine. Go finish your game.”
He reached for my hand and held it in his lap. “I’m staying with Paige,” he yelled to the others. “Just mark my score as all hole-in-ones, that’s what I’d get anyway.”
“Yeah, right, Johnny,” Alec chided. “Good idea to bow out now, before I make my comeback and kick your butt.”
Johnathan laughed.
“You should really go with them.” I mostly meant it, but a part of me really wanted him to stay with me. And that part made me feel guilty and selfish. “Or, I’ll just come with you so you can finish your game.”
He raised my hand to his lips. The kiss he pressed to my wrist sent tendrils of warmth up my arm and set the butterflies to fluttering in my stomach. His warm breath brushed against my ear as he leaned over to whisper, “I want to stay here with you.”
I sighed and leaned my head against his shoulder. He released my hand and I rested it on his thigh as he put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer next to him.
The sound of our friends’ chatter and laughter faded a little as they continued around the course, but I could still hear them. I closed my eyes, exhausted, but afraid to
sleep. The exhaustion and the warmth and safety of Johnathan’s arm around me won over and I drifted off. I’m not sure how long I slept before the Incubus found me.
His hot breath blew on my face right before his mouth closed over mine. And, once again, I was lost to his power. My mind was overcome as my body responded to the kiss. His lips moved over mine, gentle and slow. Mmm. His lips are so soft and warm. That thought flooded my mind, pushing all others away. The light touch was torture. I wanted more.
“Come to me, Paige. I’m waiting just outside. Come.”
Heart pounding, I stood, only partially conscious of what I was doing. I hesitated and turned back toward the bench and Johnathan.
“Come to me, Paige.”
His power over my mind won out and I turned away from Johnathan. The Incubus led me, in this dream state, through a door. I was bumped and jostled by the people inside. My mind faintly registered the clanging and noise of video games. I was led through another door, my hands outstretched to push it open even though I couldn’t see that it was there. My hand trailed along the cinderblock wall as the unseen force steered me around a corner of the building. My feet crunched on gravel where the blacktop ended. I instantly knew when the dream state terminated and the real Incubus took my hand. As strong and real as he had felt before, the feelings were a hundred times stronger now. Warmth emanated from him like a bonfire.
“Isn’t this so much better? You’re even more beautiful in the daylight. And, now you can see me better, too.”
That statement brought me back to reality. “I can’t see you. I’m blind.” My heart leapt as my slowly-clearing mind finally realized the danger this encounter bore. I turned to flee, but he held fast to my arm.
He pushed my back up against the wall of the building, his hands firmly gripping my shoulders. He leaned his body against me and placed his hands on the wall above and to either side of my head, close enough that his thumbs brushed against my temples. His lips came down hard, crushing mine. In a wonderful way. All thoughts of fleeing left as my lips responded to his.
Five: Out of the Pit (Five #2) Page 3