by Eve Langlais
He moaned in response.
She heard voices outside the car, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. “Help! In here, he’s hurt. Please, we need help!”
“Robert, shut ‘er up,” someone yelled. The man had a country accent as if he’d come from Southern Oklahoma. Kansans didn’t generally talk like that.
“What? No. We need help,” Maura called out in confusion.
“Look for her purse,” the man continued, as if she’d not made a sound, “then pop the trunk. Hurry before someone comes by.”
Were they being robbed? Maura moved closer to Jack and searched for some kind of weapon while holding the coat to his head to stop the bleeding.
“Ain’t no one coming by this late at night,” Robert answered. “If they do we’ll put on the hazard lights and say we found them like this. They’ll probably give us a reward or something for being good Samaritans. Besides, it’s not like you can tell we rammed them. This tiny car can’t dent the beast. That grill is meant to plow down anything in its way. Just like me.”
The window smashed behind her and she screamed in fright. Jack blinked, startled and dazed. Someone reached in behind her.
“Don’t touch us,” she yelled. “Just leave us alone!”
“Here. Check her purse,” Robert said, snatching it from the seat and tossing it behind him. He smiled at her with a mouth full of tobacco stained teeth.
“Fuck!” his partner yelled, his voice coming from behind Robert. “Bitch only has twenty bucks.”
“Not only twenty bucks. Just lookie what we have here, Stan.” Robert unlocked the door and threw it open. “A prom queen! All dressed up and ready for the after party.”
Rough hands pulled Maura’s hair, dragging her out of the car and into the snow. Her arms flailed, not doing much damage as she fought to be free.
“I never did get to go to a prom,” Stan said.
When her attacker let go, she tried to crawl away. This seemed to amuse the men greatly. She screamed when Stan grabbed her by the skirt and pulled. “Where do you think you’re going, prom queen?”
“I’m not a prom queen. Please, we’re just on our way home from a party. There’s no reason to let this get out of hand. Just take my purse and go.” Even as she tried to reason with them, she couldn’t keep the shaking out of her voice or the fear off her face.
Robert kicked her stomach to shut her up. Maura rolled onto her back, clutching her abdomen. He kicked her a second time, striking her along the outside of her thigh. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Boots crunched the ground near her head. Legs towered along either side of her face. “Grab that ring.”
Robert yanked her hand, ripping her new engagement ring from her finger. She watched him from the ground as he licked the stone before putting it in his pocket. “You should have brought more cash tonight, sweetheart. Then I could have paid for a lot lizard like I planned. But, since you didn’t, I guess you can just take the whore’s place.”
“Stay away from her,” Jack yelled. He charged their attacker, leaping over her at Stan and knocking him to the ground. “Run, Maura!” Jack punched Stan in the jaw before Robert wrapped Jack’s arms from behind to pin them to his sides. Jack drove his feet into the ground and forced his body to fall back. Robert was slammed into the car. Blood splattered the snow from Jack’s head wound.
“Jack!” She didn’t want to leave him. She looked for a weapon but didn’t find one.
“Get help,” Jack ordered. “Go, Maura!”
Maura obeyed, running as fast as she could over the hard pavement.
“Stop her,” Robert commanded. “Run the bitch down!”
Maura screamed and changed course into the snowy field. The cold stung her feet. She heard Jack shouting to run faster. She didn’t turn around. Fear told her they were right behind her and she didn’t dare look to confirm it.
Someone had to find her. Someone had to help Jack.
She wasn’t sure how far she’d ran, only that she couldn’t stop, even as she crawled through snow drifts with the little protection that wet satin and pantyhose provided. A farmhouse had to be around here somewhere. Someone had to be working these fields.
Maura knew if she stopped moving their attackers might find her. She tried to keep parallel to the road. Whispered prayers came out of her in tiny puffs of air. She begged an unseen force in the universe to let her wake up, to make this a dream. She yearned for her parents, the police, a park ranger–anyone who could get her out of the cold. Tears froze before they could fall. She told herself that she just needed to make it past the next line of trees, then the next, the next…
Coming to a fence, she whimpered, barely able to launch her body over. Maura collapsed on the ground and tried to crawl. Nothing but a field of snow stretched before her. Her calf muscles seized from the low temperatures and she couldn’t feel her feet. Somewhere along the way she’d lost her shoes and hadn’t realized it. Pressure had built under her head wound, swelling her eye shut. Her stomach ached from where she’d been kicked.
She’d gone the wrong way.
Just a small break to catch her breath and then she’d start moving again.
Rolling onto her back, she looked up at the full moon. The pain in her limbs was replaced by numbness. Snowflakes fell down upon her face but she did not feel them land.
“Jack,” she whispered. Every ounce of her soul she had left was sent back to him, willing him to know how much she loved him. She prayed for him to be safe. “Everlastingly.”
Salvation never came.
Chapter Seven
“Jack!” Maura surged to her feet. She didn’t understand fully what was happening, only that she needed to find Jack. Her tattered gown was stained with blood, the gossamer fabric ripped, the satin covered in water spots. It hadn’t been like that before.
Maura limped toward the front door, determined to find him. What if he was on the side of the road waiting for her to come back? She pulled the handle, but it wouldn’t open. Frantically, she jerked at it, kicking and screaming to be let out of the dirty house.
“Jack! Jack!”
Remembering the upstairs window, she made her way, trying to find the doorless room. Her bare feet stomped up the stairs. There was only one door. She jerked it open and ran inside. The room was a mess, as if someone tore it apart while she’d been gone. The mirror was broken into pieces on the floor. The bed had been overturned, revealing a small opened door in the wall.
Seeing the word, “Everlastingly,” carved on it, just as it had been carved on her engagement ring, she knew Jack was somehow showing her the way. Light came from within and she shoved her way through the narrow opening. Maura crawled through the tunnel, not caring where it ended up so long as Jack was on the other side.
She burst from the side of a snowy mound into the forest. “Jack!”
Maura turned in circles. Where should she look first?
“You…” Jack whispered behind her. She whipped around to face him. “You look different.”
“Jack, the men…” She rushed toward him and ran her hands over his face to find the scar over his temple. “What happened? How did you escape? How did you heal so fast?” She looked him over to prove to herself that he was unharmed. Eyeing the tunic shirt and leather pants, she couldn’t help a small laugh. “Where did you get those clothes? Did someone from the Renaissance Faire find you? I don’t understand.”
“You remember me.” He looked too scared to move.
“Of course I remember you, Jack. We’re going to be married. You just asked me earlier tonight. I…” Maura frowned and grabbed hold of his tunic shirt. “Wh–what’s going on? Why are you looking at me like that? You haven’t changed your mind, have you? It hasn’t even been a day. I… Jack?”
“You said my name.”
“Yes. You’re Jack Michael Taylor. On our first date you told me your middle name was Susanna just to make me feel sorry for you. It worked because you made me laugh and I let you do mor
e than kiss me that night after you got me home.”
“It is you, Maura, it is you.” Jack grabbed her tight and his whole body trembled as if he choked back tears. His hand rubbed along her back. “You found your way back to me.”
Maura let him hold her. “How did you get away from those men?”
His caress stopped but he didn’t let her go. “I got lucky. We fought. One of them dropped a gun. I pointed it at them and they got in their truck and drove away. The car wouldn’t start because they’d rammed the front end. It was only four degrees that night. I took your coat and went after you.” Moisture dripped onto her shoulder and she knew he cried. “I had a broken rib so I couldn’t move fast enough. I’m sorry, Maura, I was too late.”
“Too late? Jack, I’m right here. We’re going to be ok.”
“Maura, I’m telling you, you died. You’ve been dead nearly thirty years now. You have been trapped in a loop, reliving that night. I found you in the snow, blue and frozen. I wanted to die, too. And then the man in a black suit came. He told me that he couldn’t change the fact that you were cursed by your circumstance to haunt the Kansas fields, but he could build a house where you had fallen, a house full of your memories that would call you in and lead you to me. Since that night you’ve run the fields, but you find your way here, to me, eventually.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re a residual haunting.”
“Very funny, Jack. Do I look like a ghost to you?” She started to laugh, but stopped. “How hard did you hit your head?”
“Just listen, Maura. This strange man took pity on me because of our pain. He told me I had to sacrifice my life to give him enough power to make it possible. So I did because it meant I had a chance to be with you again. But he didn’t tell me the catch. I couldn’t go into your house or your memories, and you didn’t remember what happened. Most of the time, you didn’t remember me, and if you did, it was brief. I’ve lived for those seconds when you found me. If I try to tell you I love you, or anything else important, you loop back into your residual self and start running again.”
“You’re serious.” Maura pulled away from him. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Regardless.” He nodded meaningfully at her.
Maura felt strange, but a ghost? How was such a thing possible?
“At first, you came back more often,” he continued. “Sometimes you wouldn’t find the way immediately and would choose the wrong path, but you would just loop again and eventually you would come through the door. Sometimes it took days, or weeks. Once it took less than a day and we were not ready for you.”
“We?”
“The butterflies. The best I can tell is that they’re like fairies. I hear them talking but I don’t see their faces.”
“Talking butterflies and ghosts and the grim reaper wearing a black suit.”
He ignored her skepticism. “Over the years I have been able to piece together that you were in a room with a small door, and that’s how you found me. You recognized me more back at the beginning. Your house was clean and the clues visible, so it led you to me easily–there were pictures on the wall, newspaper clippings, and clues to who we were. But as the years wore on, the clues became hidden in dust, the power in the house faltered, the clues of my name and face started to fade. It became harder and harder for you to find your way back, and I’d wait months to see you. The butterflies warned me that once the magic was gone you would no longer see the house and would loop forever unless you found the truth.”
“He’s not lying,” a tiny voice said. Maura gasped turning to a bright yellow insect fluttering beside her. “Look at your feet. You’re standing in snow and you’re not even cold.”
Maura began to shiver at the reminder of the weather.
“Your mind is getting in the way,” Jack said.
Maura forced her body to stop reacting and the feeling of cold again went away. “I’m really dead. I’m a ghost. So, any second now I’m going to loop and relive that night again?” The cruelty of such an existence was not lost on her. She wanted to cry, but at the same time she wanted to hold Jack and take every second she could with him. “Kiss me.”
Jack pulled her into his arms and held her close. Their lips met. She moaned into him, feeling his love. If she had to choose a moment to stay in forever, this would be it.
“I’m so sorry you’re stuck here alone,” she said. “Knowing what is happening has to be worse than what I’m going through. How much time do we have before I leave again?”
“I think you broke the cycle. You have never remembered the actual attacks before now. I don’t think you’re going anywhere ever again.”
“So now what? We walk into a bright light and disappear?” Maura held him tighter. She didn’t want to let him go.
“I honestly don’t know what we are now. I don’t know what this place is–heaven, the fairy realm, a magic bubble, purgatory–but it’s ours. We can have the life that was robbed from us for an eternity.” Jack sprinkled kisses over her face.
“I can’t believe you’ve been dealing with this for thirty years. How are you not insane? To give up your life for,” she gestured at the trees, “for this.”
“I would wait a thousand years for just one more moment with you, Maura. Besides, you’re a smart woman. I knew you’d find the truth eventually.”
“How do you find something that you don’t know you’re looking for?” She ran her fingertip over the scar.
“By never giving up.” He swept her up into his arms and began to carry her through the snowy trees. “I think the worst part was when you would come back and I couldn’t say everything that was in my heart. How do you tell the woman you love, ‘I love you’, without being able to say it?”
“Everlastingly yours,” she whispered into his neck.
“Yes. Everlastingly,” he answered just as tenderly. “I don’t know what happens now, my love, but we’re together and that’s all that matters.”
The End
Everlastingly © copyright 2014 by Michelle M. Pillow
First Electronic Printing November 2014
Cover art by Ravven, © Copyright 2014
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
All books copyrighted to the author and may not be resold or given away without written permission from the author, Michelle M. Pillow.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any and all characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or events or places is merely coincidence. Novel intended for adults only. Must be 18 years or older to read.
About the Author
Michelle M. Pillow, Author of All Things Romance, is a multi–published, award winning author writing in many romance fiction genres. She is best known for her futuristic dragon–shifting romance series: Dragon Lords.
www.MichellePillow.com
The Hunter’s Moon
Shawntelle Madison
Kaden Windham will do anything to protect his wolf pack, including saving a dying werewolf hunter. Hunter Cynthia McGinnis doesn’t want or need his protection. And despite the fire that ignites between them, she would rather take him down than become his mate.
Chapter One
On most mornings, post–chemo treatment, Cynthia woke up at home with a mouth scratchy like cotton and a hammer–struck headache.
Her eyes shot open, and she sat up. Darkness filled the bedroom’s corners. Only the light coming in from under the single doorway to her left cast a glow along the floor. Post–chemo, her room was usually pitch–black. Light–based migraines were pretty common for her.
The blankets, which should’ve been smooth cotton, were stiff. Instead of refreshing, cool air from a humidifier, the air was dry and warm, with the subtle scent of white pines and fir trees. Almost as if she was in a cabin.
Why wasn’t she in her room? She’d beat the hell outta her brother for letting her recover in some off–the–wall
bed and breakfast where they served sunshine happy face breakfast platters.
“Zach–” Her brother’s name died on her lips as a familiar jolt to be alert for danger folded over her. She moved her hand first. Then a leg. Every limb was stiff as if she’d slept for longer than usual. A search along the sheets only revealed someone had left a warm spot next to her side. She hadn’t slept alone.
She fought the fearful swallow that danced along the back of her throat. If she wasn’t at home, she wouldn’t have any weapons. A hunter always carried something useful.
“I know you’re awake,” a deep male voice said from the corner to her right.
As quickly as she could manage, she shuffled out of the bed toward the door. By the time she had taken a few steps, her body rebelled. Her stomach clenched tight as a wave of nausea coursed through her.
Not now. Not now. Not now.
After each therapy session with a lovely cocktail of drugs, she was one of the lucky ones to have severe nausea. And each and every single time she puked her guts out like a college dorm boy bending over a porcelain altar to worship. Intensification therapy for cancer sucked ass.
The sound of her retching must’ve spurred the stranger into action. In seconds he was at her side, a bucket in his hands. After so many hospital visits, the shame from such a personal act was gone. Nurse after nurse had seen her spew. Another stranger didn’t matter much.
He supported her with a strong arm around her waist and helped her hold the bucket. Even as her knees buckled, he held her. Far too easily.
“I gotcha,” he said softly. “It’ll be over soon.”
When she finished, her head rolled back. Episodes like these always took what little strength she had left.
“You shouldn’t have gotten up.” He picked her up and laid her on the bed. Once she was settled, he briefly left the room with the bucket and returned shortly after. All the while, her heartbeat raced. It wasn’t the smooth lilt to his voice that alarmed her, but the heat radiating from his skin. She had lost a bit of weight, but he’d lifted her as if she were nothing. Had the werewolves captured her while she was so vulnerable and weak?