To Crave Darkly
Bailey Grayson
To Crave Darkly
A handsome guy walks into a bar…
Sounds like the start of a joke but it’s not. Well, not a good one. The moment the vampire with the killer jaw line stepped into my bar my life changed forever.
A dark prophecy and a destroyer of worlds.
After being attacked, kidnapped and hidden in the Conclave, a safe haven for supernatural creatures, I must find out whether I’m the destroyer in a prophecy that predicts the apocolypse or if this whole thing is just the worst case of mistaken identity ever. I’d like to think it’s the latter, but after discovering the demon hidden in my proverbial closet I’m not so sure I’m the person I thought I was.
I need to control my new powers. And Fast.
If I am going to survive long enough to discover the truth I’m going to have to learn to control the demon buried deep within me. It’s not going to be easy, but with the help of a grumpy vampire, an almost always shirtless Hell Hound, a powerful mage and even the dragon shifter who hates my guts I might just survive long enough to figure out what in Hell's name is going on.
So, bring it on Lucifer. I’m ready. I think…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bailey Grayson lives in Cheshire, England with her little boy and wonderfully supportive husband. Coffee and cake are usually found nearby to help fuel the writing (lemon cake is her favourite) and when she is not dreaming up new characters and fantastical worlds you can find her baking (usually lemon cake), playing the piano or tucked up on the sofa with a really good book.
Bailey likes to write paranormal fantasy, urban fantasy and also books that are a little darker with villains you wouldn't mind meeting.
To Crave Darkly
Trials of a Morta: Book One
by
Bailey Grayson
1. Edition, 2020
© 2020 Bailey Grayson. All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, duplicated, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed in the subsequent purchaser.
Cover design by The Cover Collection
This book is dedicated to my wonderful boys. Thank you for giving me some quiet days to write this. Love you x
To all my friends and family who read this, all I can say is sorry in advance for all the awkward conversations that will probably follow after you’ve read this.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 6
Chapter 2 17
Chapter 3 23
Chapter 4 30
Chapter 5 38
Chapter 6 47
Chapter 7 55
Chapter 8 62
Chapter 9 72
Chapter 10 82
Chapter 11 90
Chapter 12 103
Chapter 13 118
Chapter 14 134
Chapter 15 144
Chapter 16 157
Chapter 17 169
Chapter 18 181
Chapter 19 201
Chapter 20 209
Chapter 21 218
Chapter 22 232
Chapter 23 244
Chapter 24 258
Chapter 25 268
Chapter 26 280
Chapter 27 290
Chapter 28 294
Chapter 29 302
Chapter 30 312
Prophetic Revelations of Damnation
A Warning for the Curious
Beware thine eyes for they may see the lies
That lay, side by side, to portray a mask
Of deceit and deception; a veneer
Of beauty, a visage of temptation.
Beware thine ears for they may hear the lies
A tongue, with wicked intent, will caress
Forbidden desires and dark hidden thoughts
In shadowed corners of your secret soul.
Conceal thine heart from his gaze so wicked,
For he knows not love, but only to hate.
His own heart, so cold, so black, will only
Lie with sweet nothings and whispered deceits.
He will tempt you toward a sinful death,
wrapp’d in pleasure ‘til your last ever breath.
- By Mistress Millicent Blackwood
Chapter 1
LORI
Chaos captured the Saturday night in its hedonistic embrace. All around me pure pandemonium pulsed through the air and I loved it. I stopped for a moment and soaked it in. The noise, the heat, the strobe lights; they all collided to create an explosion of hedonism that made my body hum with energy. It flowed over my skin like electricity and my heart pounded with the thud of the music. Every nerve ending felt alive as I basked in the chaos rioting around me. This was what I lived for; this was where I thrived.
I worked in the hottest nightclub in the city, Poison. It was always busy but tonight we had a guest DJ playing so it was absolutely packed to the rafters. There were bodies everywhere, swaying and writhing to the rhythm, locked in a primal ritual of pleasure. You could see it in the way they moved; heads thrown back, eyes closed, arms in the air. They surrendered to the music, letting go of their control and relishing in the moment of being free.
I made my way back to the circular bar at the far side of the club. It was split into two halves with the dance floor on one side and the cocktail area with tables and booths on the other. Dominating the middle of the room was a giant, twisted black tree which was surrounded by the bar. This feature was where the club had earned its name. It was a mass of gnarly limbs that were warped into seemingly unnatural shapes and it was a deep black in hue. It looked like it had been ravaged by poison until nothing was left but its dead husk. The trunk was surrounded by shelves which were laden with various bottles of alcohol and strands of twinkling lights decorated the branches of the tree. It was an imposing sight, but it was memorable and had people coming from all over to see it. That and our fantastic collection of cocktails, most of which were designed by me. I had a knack for mixing flavours, and I loved it when we did a themed night. I would spend weeks planning new cocktails just for that event. The most popular ones would end up on our Signature Collection, and I was proud to say that three quarters of that collection were all my beauties.
“Hey Rae,” I called over to the tall redhead behind the bar. “Have I missed anything?”
She turned toward me with a mischievous grin plastered across her face. “We’ve got a hottie over in the far booth, table twelve.” She indicated the table in the corner behind her whilst waggling her eyebrows at me.
I laughed; I couldn’t help myself. That girl had one hell of a sex drive. She was endowed with bright green eyes, fiery red hair and legs that went on for days. She towered over me by a good few inches, which served as a daily reminder to curse my petite genes. I’d known her for four years and in that time, I had never seen her in a committed relationship. She changed her men as often as I changed my underwear. I guess a club was a perfect spot for picking up a hook-up for the night. With all those high-class businessmen looking for some down time and all the party goers searching for their next dose of fun, Rae certainly had a lot of options when it came to the patrons of Poison.
I turned
my sights to the man who had attracted her attention, expecting to see some glorious hunk of a man but all I could make out was the lights from the strobes reflecting off his sunglasses.
Wait. Sunglasses?
“Rae, I don’t care if he’s the hottest guy on earth; that man over there is a weirdo.” I didn’t even bother to hide the censure from my voice.
“Lori!” Rae protested. “How can you even say that?” She waltzed over to me with hands on her hips and I could tell by the way her lips pursed she was annoyed I was ruining her chances.
“Rae, he’s wearing sunglasses,” I stated. She responded by shrugging her shoulders and giving me a blank look. “We’re in a night club,” I continued. She still gave me no response. “It’s pretty much pitch black in here and he’s wearing sunglasses ergo the ‘he’s a weirdo’ comment.”
“Oh, come on Lori, there’s probably a hundred reasons he’s wearing sunglasses. Maybe his eyes are sensitive to the flashing lights or perhaps he has an eye infection and doesn’t want to ruin the effect of that seriously fine jaw line. The only thing weird here is your use of the word ‘ergo’. I mean who says that?”
I raised an eyebrow. She must have it bad for this guy if she was overlooking the sunglasses. I looked over at the guy in the corner and though I couldn’t see his eyes I knew he was staring straight at me. My spine shivered and my skin tingled with the awareness of being watched. I was looking at a threat. I don’t know how I knew. Maybe it was instinctual like the way a gazelle knows it has been singled out by the lion, but I could feel my fight or flight response clawing at my insides, daring me to make a move. I continued to stare straight back at him. The adrenaline increased in potency the longer I looked but then a strange sensation began to mingle with the fear. Starting at my core it spread through me, hot but strangely soothing, like being enveloped in a hug by a long-lost friend. I could sense the two feelings churning together in my stomach and, like ink in water, they didn’t mix, but kept wrapping themselves around each other as the insatiable need to stare at the stranger grew within me.
Electricity trickled across my skin making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on edge. I could feel it buzzing through me and my body hummed. My feet were glued to the floor. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t look away. I needed to know what would happen. It was like that feeling when they say, “don’t push the big red button” and all you want to do is push it. That niggle of curiosity just itching to get free until you finally surrender, and the world explodes because you couldn’t resist.
Suddenly, as if succumbing to a trance, my feet started to move of their own accord. One foot went in front of the other as I started towards him. I was curious to discover more about him, but any doubt I had of him staring at me vanished the moment the corner of his mouth lifted into a wicked smirk. Rae was right; he did have one hell of a jaw line and that smile was deadly. It stopped me in my tracks as I drank in the sight of it.
“Lori!” someone shouted, but I was too enraptured by him, and it terrified me that I didn’t know why. Someone yanked on my arm and I jumped as an electric shock ripped me out of the connection to him. Rae pulled me around to face her and, as the connection to the stranger vanished, I was plunged back into the night club and my senses ran into overload. How had I forgotten how loud it was in here?
“Lori,” Rae shouted at me, “what the hell?”
I looked at her in confusion. I was still trying to get my body to return to normal, but I didn’t fail to notice the edge of panic that laced her voice. She shook her hand and clenched her fist as if trying to dispel an uncomfortable sensation.
“What do you mean?”
“I was shouting your name for like three minutes. You’d completely zoned out. And then you gave me one hell of an electric shock.” Rae scanned me from head to toe, checking me over to make sure I was ok but when her eyes came back to mine, they were concerned.
“I’m ok; I was just away with the fairies. It was no big deal.” She stared at me like she knew I was talking horseshit, but she didn’t say anything. I looked back to where the stranger was sat, but he was gone. I searched the club for a sign of him, but he seemed to have vanished without a trace. Rae followed my gaze and a look of disappointment crossed her angular features.
“Oh great, now you’ve scared him off. Thanks, Lori,” she said petulantly, but I knew it wouldn’t last long. Someone else would catch her eye, and she would be flirting all over again.
I was glad he had gone. The hairs on my arms were still standing on end and my stomach still felt uneasy. Who was he? And why did he conjure up that strange feeling within me? I’d felt it a couple of times before, once when I was mugged about a year ago, and another when I thought I had been followed home. They had all been moments where I had been faced with the option to either run or stand my ground, but I had always had the impulsive to need to go one step further and encourage my attackers into doing something. It was like I had to poke the bear and see whether he’d attack me or run for the hills.
Ever since I was a child, I had perpetually been impulsive. My mum, God rest her soul, used to say it would always get me into a world of trouble. I can picture her now, standing in the kitchen with her hands on her hips as she berated me for doing something stupid. I couldn’t help myself; it was like I couldn’t control my response to certain situations and I just had to go and make everything worse. Yet somehow, I had always managed to come out of those scrapes unscathed. My mum called it “the Devil’s own luck” and I counted my blessings that at least some higher being was looking out for me, even if it was the Devil.
My chest ached as I thought about my Mum. She wasn’t my birth mother, but she had raised me since I was six. Before that I had been in and out of foster homes, unable to settle in one place. The families couldn’t deal with me; I was too damaged for them. I was four when my birth mother died in a house fire. It still haunted my dreams sometimes. It had almost claimed me, and it was only by some sort of miracle that I had survived. I knew someone had saved me from that fire, but people all thought I was mad. It wasn’t possible, they’d said. There was no one else in the building, no remains found in the fire apart from my mothers. They had put it down as a freak accident but there had always been something at the back of my mind that hinted at the whole thing being a little bit sinister.
After the fire, I bounced around the system. I had no other family. My mother was an only child and my father, whoever he was, had never tried to claim me. I was alone, unwanted and unloved.
Until Martha.
She took me in, and even though I was horrible and difficult, she showered me with all the love she had to give. It was a long and tough journey for the both of us, but Martha became my Mum and we became a family until she died in a car accident two years ago. A drunk driver took out her car when he ran a red light. I was angry for a long time thinking her death was a fucking waste. How could someone with so much life die all because some guy decided that after several beers he was fine to drive a car? I was a mess for months and if it hadn’t been for Rae, I would still be stuck in the bottom of a whisky bottle. She dragged my sorry ass back into the real world. I may have been kicking and screaming but she had stuck by me, and now I was pretty much running this club with the hopes of buying into it and owning it one day.
Life was good.
“Hey, sweet cheeks,” somebody shouted accompanied by a click of fingers.
I sighed. Or life was full of ups and downs.
I turned to the asshat who thought that clicking his fingers at me was a suitable form of behaviour. He must have been about forty-five, a bit overweight, and completely and utterly drunk. The bar was clearly propping him up and his eyes were glazed over, unable to focus on anything properly.
I squared my shoulders and plastered a grin on my face.
“What can I get you, sir?”
“I’ll have a whisky,” he slurred, “and a night with you.” He grinned at me. In his head I bet he thought he was being c
harming instead of a sleazeball.
“One whisky coming right up, sir, but I’ll have to give a hard pass on the second request.”
“Aww come on baby. I’ll make it worth your while,” he whined.
“Sorry, that isn’t going to change my mind.” I placed the whisky in front of him and he grabbed my hand. “Sir, please let go of my hand.”
“Baby, don’t be so mean.” He let out a huge burp right in my face. Oh god, I was gonna hurl. I tried to pull my hand away, but his grip was surprisingly tight. Anger surged up in my chest and again my skin hummed and vibrated with electricity. It was unsettling and I didn’t understand where it was coming from.
“Sir, I won’t ask again. Let go of my hand. Now.” I glanced towards the exit and my eyes found Stevie, our head of security. He understood the look in my eyes and started to walk over towards me.
The drunk used the moment my eyes were off him to pull me forwards over the bar. Glasses crashed to the floor, spilling their contents everywhere. I felt sticky cocktails seep into my shirt as I fell on the bar top, the impact jarring my ribs painfully. Luckily, Stevie made it to the bar before the drunk could do anything else.
“I think you’ve had enough, don’t you?” Stevie growled. The drunk looked up at him and blanched. I could understand why. Stevie was intimidating as fuck. He was well over six foot, covered in muscle with two full sleeves of tattoos.
To Crave Darkly: Trials Of A Morta: Book One Page 1
