In the Midnight Hour
Page 15
Marcus’s breath was wheezing through the bloody hole torn into his throat.
They kept calling his name.
Remy. Remy. Their voices harsh as the grit of ash. We see you.
He gasped out of the vision. He was still in the RV.
“Remy, what the hell is going on?” Marcus asked as they drove into the car lot.
“Just … get a car. Any car,” Remy said, gripping the door handle until his fingers hurt.
Remy stayed in the RV as Marcus wandered around the lot.
Another vision slapped him. Sarae lay in the forest, and one of the monsters sucking blood from her throat as she fought weakly, already dying.
Hinto sang a single low note, bringing Remy back to himself.
“I can’t do very much,” said the owl, who was now sitting on the back of Remy’s seat. “The infection is inside you. I can only mitigate these visions, not stop them.”
Zoe’s voice hissed from the back of the RV, where the little owl sat on Sarae’s pillow. “He needs to get away from Sarae so he doesn’t get into her dreams and infect her. Now!”
Remy climbed out of the RV without another word.
He had only one thought – to get Marcus and Sarae out of town as quickly as possible. They had to escape, because the net was being drawn tight around him.
Once Remy had his hotel room and accepted his key from the fawning hotel clerk, who went wide-eyed at the owl on his shoulder, he’d opened the door, brought in a few items that he needed, and sent Marcus on his way as quickly as possible.
“No. One last hug,” Marcus insisted, and threw his arms around Remy.
Remy clung to him for a long moment. His closest friend – his only friend. Remy felt himself choking up.
“I’m doing this to save your life,” he said.
“We shouldn’t be leaving you, man,” Marcus said into his shoulder.
“You have to,” Remy said. “I need you and Sarae to be gone until I get this situation fixed, or until I fail.”
“Jesus, Remy,” Marcus said. “Don’t talk like that.”
Remy closed his eyes. “It’s the truth. I’m sure that the dead deer we saw was not the only one out there.”
They finally let each other go.
“You be okay,” Marcus commanded.
“I will.” That was a lie. “Now, get out of town before the sun goes down,” Remy said. “That’s all I ask of you. And keep Sarae safe.”
Remy and Hinto went inside their room at the Swissville hotel. The room at least was clean and cozy, though it smelled faintly of popcorn. Not bad.
He sat at the window, watching Marcus drive away with the RV – and Sarae.
They’d left just in time, too, Remy noted, because the sun was setting. The streetlights had come on, and now the Dead were beginning to gather.
Their dead eyes were glinting red from the shadows outside the hotel window. Not the regular dead.
They had followed him here.
“You see them,” Hinto said, stepping from his perch to the top of nearby TV. Not a question.
“I do,” said Remy. He was almost swaying from exhaustion. He was not sure how he was going to make it through another night without sleep, though he’d done it before.
But he couldn’t sleep. Heather waited for him on the other side, too.
Remy was sickened by the lust that filled him at the thought of her. The excitement. The need to climb on top of her and roughly use her …. He couldn’t help his body’s response. He wanted to enter his dreams immediately.
He wanted her.
Hinto quietly clacked his beak to pull Remy’s attention back to the present.
“That wasn’t Sarae in your dream, you know,” he said quietly in his deep voice.
Remy froze.
On some level, he’d known this. But he hadn’t wanted to believe it was true.
Nausea hit him in his gut.
“So that was … not Sarae.”
“The insects probably gave it away. But yes, that is correct.”
Remy hadn’t felt this alone for many years. Unmoored. Like an astronaut, untethered, drifting into the blackness of space with nothing to hold on to and pull him back.
“I had to put a shield between your minds,” Hinto said. “For obvious reasons. Your infection is getting worse.”
“You couldn’t just break into my dream?” Remy snapped, though he knew the rules of owls. “You couldn’t just break in and ….” He sighed, forced himself to stop, and rubbed his face.
“No. I can’t break into your dreams,” Hinto said patiently. “You’ve known that as long as you’ve known me. I can block evil influences from your mind to some extent. But when those influences are inside you … flowing in your blood ….”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Remy knew the owl could only do so much. It was also up to Remy to control himself. But the thought of the infection in his blood gave him the creeps.
“I did try to wake you out of that dream, though,” Hinto said. “While you were dreaming, I came over to your seat in the RV and hooted at you. But you were deep in the dream and I couldn’t stir you. Zoe and I just shielded Sarae against Heather, since she was sleeping as well, and we didn’t want your dream to leak over into hers. It was the best we could do.”
Remy took a deep breath.
“I’m taking a cold shower while there’s still daylight out,” he told Hinto. “After that, I’m going to need your help to keep the Dead at bay tonight.”
“I will help you,” the owl reminded him in his deep voice. “It’s what we do.”
“I’ll do everything in my power,” Remy said. “It’s going to be a hard night. But I’m not going to go down without a fight. The sooner we quell these spirits, the sooner Sarae can go back home.”
Hinto tipped his head. “If we survive this,” he remarked.
“I’m doing it all for Sarae,” he said, rubbing his knuckles. “I’ve let her down in a big way. So it’s up to me to make it right.”
The last of the sun, which was shining into Remy’s face as he spoke, dipped behind the hill in the west, and its light disappeared.
Remy, they hissed.
Cold hit him in his guts at their voices. But he refused to show his fear.
“So much for that cold shower,” Remy said, pulling out his velvet bag, gearing himself up for a battle for his very life and soul.
“Let’s begin.”
Are you ready to begin? Continue the Owl-Bearer Series in book two, NIGHT IN MY VEINS
Guys!! Just look at that cover! It’s a daisy!
* * *
Remy and I are owl-bearers. With the help of our owls, we’re able to sing down the dead. But Remy was captured, and his magic has been poisoned by a ghost that he … Jesus, I don’t want to talk about it. I hate his guts even though I still want him, body and soul.
I’m trying to rescue him, whether he deserves it or not.
See, the people who captured Remy … they killed his family in a house fire. Burned his loved ones to death. How do you do something like that? They want some magical talisman of his mother’s that escaped the fire. So I’m trying to find the thing before they do.
Before he kicked me to the curb, Remy said he didn’t want those people to find me. Remy’s owl says they have a purpose in mind for me.
But I can’t hide. Their plans are going to be catastrophic. Have you seen those dementors in Harry Potter? It’s on that level. Apparently only an owlbearer has the specific powers needed to stop these bastards dead. That’s me.
I just hope I don’t end up captured by them to be used as a sacrifice to set that catastrophe in motion.
*** NIGHT IN MY VEINS is a steamy paranormal romance for mature audiences 18 and up. Don’t tell my mama I wrote this. ***
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melinda R. Cordell, aka Katrina VanBuskirk, is building her publishing empire. She’s written a truckload of YA fantasy novels, including the Dragonriders of Skala series, Butterfly Chaos, and Those Black Wings. A former horticulturist and current chicken wrangler, Melinda has also written ten books in the Easy-Growing Gardening series with more to come.
And now Melinda, writing as Katrina, is publishing paranormal romances with sexytimes, beginning with the Owl-Bearer series. A link to the next installment, Black Night is Falling, can be found on Melinda’s website. Melinda lives in northwest Missouri with her husband and two kids, the best little family to walk the earth, and is writing 12 books at once, fueled by passion but also caffeine. Visit her website at melindacordell.com if you want to subscribe to her newsletter, check out her 27 books, or drop her a note.
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