by Brea Viragh
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
Pike
Brea Viragh
Lavinia Cutler can see the future. Sometimes. Not well. It was a charm-gone-wrong from a spell book, and the only thing she could see with startling clarity was the man she’d find to love. The man who would break her heart.
There is more than meets the eye to Pike Radclyffe. It’s not just his dashing English accent. Or his super hearing, magnetic sex appeal, and inherent magic. There are secrets he is unwilling to share. Lavinia is in over her head even though she knows she can’t leave him alone.
In order to deal with her budding gift, the ghouls stalking her, and make sure her visions of the future do not come true, she must find a way to understand Pike and his dark, hedonistic world. Before she’s drawn in beyond hope of redemption.
Copyright © Brea Viragh, 2018
All rights reserved. The moral right of the author has been asserted. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than the work in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction.
For all those who understand dark things and how to love them.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Afterword
About the Author
Eight years ago…
The magic shop was an oddity in town, specializing in the occult, the paranormal, and various magical phenomena. It took up residence in the shabbiest building at the end of the worst block just off Main Street.
The shutters had been painted orange at some point. The paint flaked and the front door squeaked when yanked.
It became a dare among high school kids. They had to go into the store and last—survive—at least five minutes. Touch something. Anything. Then get the hell out of there.
Lavinia Cutler was determined to make it to ten.
With her best friend Ben at her side and a world’s worth of reservations mixed with excitement, she reached out to take hold of the knob. She tried to pull and her fingers froze on the brass.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Ben spared a glance over his shoulder. His tension reached across the two feet separating them and tried to strangle her. “It’s getting late.”
“Sure, I want to.” Only Lavinia wasn’t sure. Not really.
It was easy to feel cool and levelheaded during daylight, in the middle of science class, with her friends around her and everyone boasting about their own bravery. Ashley said she made three laps around the store and had her hand on a psychedelic oil painting before someone called out to her. Tim had done even better and lasted a full eight minutes.
Lavinia listened to their stories, hiding her embarrassment. She was the only one who hadn’t stepped over the threshold yet. It was pitiful. She had a good month and a half of merciless teasing to look forward to if she didn’t go inside.
It had already started. The stiff backs and sly over-the-shoulder looks when she walked by. There were whispers following her down the halls of the high school and she heard laughter on the bus.
Peer pressure was the worst. She was normally decent at fighting her way through the mire. Smoking? She’d tried it once and had the worst coughing fit of her life. Never tried that again. Drinking? Sure, it was cool to have a beer after school sometimes, although it wasn’t really something she’d write home about.
Yes, Lavinia did relatively well with peer pressure.
The magic shop was another matter entirely. Peer pressure could not be ignored. Almost everyone in her graduating class had done it, had accepted the challenge. She remembered just last week, Ricki Grazioso had come in to touch a sculpted statue of a Medusa head. Then she got an A on her history final without even studying. Once word got out of her good luck, those few stragglers who hadn’t yet made their way past the threshold were inside.
She was on her own.
A flock of birds took flight from a nearby tree and Lavinia lifted her gaze to the sky, concentrating on the flapping of their wings. They split the sky, heading over the tree line and toward the setting sun.
Ben fidgeted with the straps of his backpack. “I need to be home for dinner at seven.”
“Jesus Christ, man, grow a spine.” With a last inhale, Lavinia pushed open the door.
Burnt sage singed her nostrils and smoke drifted lazily toward the ceiling. She peered through the deep shade, trying to make out the inside of the store while her eyes adjusted to the difference in light. A static electric tingle traveled along her arms.
There were no welcomes coming from a clerk and no sign of life other than her and Ben. Lavinia felt a warning sting start at the base of her spine and work up to the top of her head. Then she remembered the look on her friends’ faces when she’d held up her hand. She was the only one who hadn’t gone through the initiation. The only one who didn’t have the guts, the balls, to go into the shop. It was only a shop. You only had to touch one thing. In and out.
Seemed like a simple idea.
In and out, sure. With Ben trembling beside her, Lavinia forced one foot in front of the other. The scent was going to her head. She felt it spiraling toward the ceiling even though her body was earthbound. Her sneakers skidded along the cracking brown laminate flooring.
“We need to leave,” Ben whispered. “I have a bad feeling.”
“You always have a bad feeling.”
“For good reason!”
Lavinia inhaled sharply, a small sound, but her frustration was clear. Hands clenched at her sides, she forced herself to be calm and not to take her emotions out on Ben. He was the only one who’d agreed to come with her for moral support. It counted for something.
“We can’t leave until I find something good,” she said. “Be patient.”
“Then touch this shelf right here and get it over with. I’ll tell everyone you made it ten minutes. I promise.”
“It’s not enough.”
Two mahogany bookshelves filled with an assortment of crystals and tarot cards stood no more than six feet ahead of them. It wouldn’t be good enough, she knew. They were too close to the front door. It would be easy to bolt in, lay a fingertip across the wood, and bolt out again. No, she needed something better. Something unique. Something to make the others think twice about teasing her.
But she wasn’t easily put off. “I think I see some books in the back. Why don’t you stay by the door and tell me if someone comes by? Keep them off my tail.”
“Tell you if someone comes?” Ben’s eyes looked large enough to explode out of his head. “It’s a retail shop. Of course they’re going to come. They’re going to see us and kick us out. They might even go to the police when they see we aren’t here to buy anything. I’m sure the owners want to crack down on the troublem
akers who keep coming inside for a prank.”
He was always the first one to see the worst-case scenario. Not just see them, but veer off course and take the worst-case detour.
“Just whistle, okay?” she said in an agitated whisper.
Lavinia tapped a finger on her chin and moved quickly toward the back of the store. There were a million other places she would rather be. Her head flew out of control from the mix of temperature and incense. She drew the sides of her sweater together when a sudden chill took her. For all the heat in the store, it was impossible to get warm.
She scanned the items on either side of her and saw nothing of interest. Sure, there were crystal balls. There were boxes of wands, small pieces of twine tied up in intricate knots and circles. Candles in rainbow hues. There were gilded dragons and rune-etched Norse blades and curios of all shapes and sizes.
Then there were the spell books.
Her eyes zeroed in on the leather tomes. Their spines glittered like they were bound in magic itself. No matter how hard she tried to ignore them, they drew her, a magnet turned toward the north. This time she didn’t need to force her feet forward. They moved on their own.
Her fingertips reached out to the second shelf and the scarred book with a long purple bookmark ribbon trailing almost to the floor. She grazed the spine. Fire scorched her skin. Unspoken words burned her throat, and with incense thick in the air and Ben’s frantic whistles falling on deaf ears, Lavinia opened the book to read.
CHAPTER 1
Asheville, North Carolina – Present Day
On a dark city street, against a nighttime backdrop of lit office buildings and tree-lined residential areas, Lavinia Cutler urged her legs to speed the hell up. She kept her head down, a black hoodie hiding her face from any attention she may have attracted. Her hands dug deep into the pockets of her jeans.
Hurry. Hurry!
He needed her help. She was almost positive about the image she’d seen, flashing across the inside of her head like a film reel at the movie theater. Black and white. No sound. Almost positive because sixty-eight percent of the time, the things she saw didn’t come true. Or hadn’t yet happened. She couldn’t quite get the hang of this part-time psychic gig.
There was probably a trick to harnessing her cognitive powers. Some technique she hadn’t yet discovered, some skill she hadn’t yet mastered.
Lavinia wasn’t sure.
She was a store clerk, for God’s sake, alone at night and a little hungry. She’d skipped dinner. Once the vision played behind her eyes, dangling there like a carrot in front of a starving horse, she’d been out the door and gone without grabbing a bite to eat. She really needed to learn to keep a snack in her pocket for the next time she wigged out and lost her mind.
At least she’d remembered her sweater this time. The first vision she’d had about Pike had her running through downtown after him, wearing nothing but a tank top and sleep shorts and hastily donned sandals. In thirty-degree weather. North Carolina winters were no joke. Wind chill alone tended to take it down several degrees below freezing.
This time she was a little better prepared.
Pike Radclyffe was a stranger then, and had laughed at her when she’d finally found him. He’d laughed at her concern when she’d rounded a corner and saw him leaning against the entrance to a pub, with his hands empty and a couple of buddies circling him, all sharing a smoke. It was definitely not the bloody brawl she’d seen in her vision, accompanied by a blinding urge to help. It was pretty much the opposite end of the spectrum.
When she’d first seen Pike in her head movies, he’d been running down a couple of rat shifters. Rat shifters. Something Lavinia never thought she’d say in this geological age. She was just getting off work and walking through the front door when the vision had knocked her on her ass. Her brain spun under a tidal wave of colors and sounds, places she’d never seen and a man she didn’t know. Then a dose of tall, dark, and handsome was staring out at her from amidst his circle of friends. Men, not rats. No blood and no brawl.
He’d sent the crazy stranger on her way and told her to get to bed like a good girl. Oh, the embarrassment. She hadn’t even gotten a proper introduction out of him.
Most of her visions centered on the man. It was infuriating! For reasons she couldn’t fathom, the moment she’d opened the spell book eight years ago and muttered an incantation she should have left alone, Lavinia and Pike were deeply connected. A metaphysical bond neither one understood. It took a grand total of five years before she’d actually met him in person. She felt like she’d known him forever, having seen his smile in her dreams a week after the spell-gone-wrong.
Then every night since.
It took one smile, a single snarky smile where his pearly teeth flashed brilliantly in the night, and the image in her head melded with the real-life version helping her to her feet after her knees buckled.
She was toast.
Pike was the kind of man who turned heads. A dark fantasy. Or a wild nightmare? Lavinia still wasn’t sure. All she knew was that her body reacted viscerally whenever he stood within two hundred feet of her. Too bad he didn’t feel the same way. He found her meager paranormal gifts cheeky.
Did she mention the British accent? It was hard to resist.
Yeah, no wonder she was scurrying through back alleys trying to find him. To assist him, she amended. Her vision had told her that he was in trouble. Again. Or he would be soon. Or had been already.
She was almost positive this time.
A couple strolled past her, hand in hand. Lavinia kept her head down and sighed. Her stomach clenched from the odd combination of hunger and apprehension. Damn her short legs.
It was a mistake to make a right turn into the small dark space between two buildings. She knew it the second her booted foot stepped in a slick puddle of grime and glittering red eyes from the shadows snapped their full attention to her. A cold wind whipped her hair as she swiveled to the side to press back against the brick wall. Leaves and debris tumbled over the pavement, blown helter-skelter and swirling against her legs. She ignored the sensation. Now was not the time to lose focus.
This wasn’t how she wanted her night to end. Yet it wasn’t a complete surprise, either, since paranormal creatures had been flocking to her since her spell book accident.
And now there were three such creatures separating from the blackness, solidifying into shapes before her eyes. Once upon a time, she would have screamed and panicked. Both were natural reactions.
That night, she merely groaned and stifled a sliver of anxiety. Tried to remember what Pike had told her about balancing her stance. She was going to have to kick a little ass to save her own. Didn’t it figure? They never listened when she said she was a simple clerk.
“What do you punks want?” She asked the question with all the bravado of a bullfighter.
It was another piece of advice from the man of her visions: If you couldn’t feel tough, then act it. Fake it. It was better to sound intimidating than crawl into a little ball and hide, which was her preferred method of dealing with less-than-welcome supernatural stalkers.
The closest ghoul opened his mouth to answer, but Lavinia beat him to it. “Let me guess. You want my blood, my soul, or my liver. Judging from the graveyard dirt on your pants, I’m going to say liver.”
Her nerve endings bristled a warning before the three of them moved into attack mode. Another danger. Another mess-up on her long list of mess-ups. She couldn’t claim to be new at this gig. The accident happened eight years ago and she’d had plenty of time and opportunity to get it right and get her priorities in line. Mainly, her safety.
The three ghouls smelled…off. It wasn’t necessarily a bad smell, just off. These were freshly risen, just out of the ground. She’d guess there was a necromancer on the loose but that wasn’t her problem. His pets, however, were.
This wasn’t her first encounter with ghouls and it probably wouldn’t be her last. The way her life had been going l
ately, every step she took turned out to be wrong. Not just wrong but hazardous. These ghouls were another hurdle she’d have to jump over, before one of those fools bit off a leg.
Though she was now technically immortal—a side effect of the spell book mishap—Lavinia’s body and constitution were weak. She was hopeless at fighting and tried to stay out of the worst scuffles. Most of the time that meant staying at home to avoid a fracas.
“I have a great idea.” Her voice shook even as she tried to maintain an intimidating tone. There was no time to run. Any sudden move and those ghouls would be on her. They may not look like much, but when they had a mark they moved like a pack of lions circling for the kill.
“How about we all just go our separate ways? It’s obvious the person I’m looking for isn’t here. Pike? Pike?” She craned her head then clapped her hands together and took a step back. “Nope, he’s definitely not here. I’ll bid you all a good night—”
The first one charged at her without warning. Lavinia reacted on instinct and kicked him hard enough to send him spinning off into the other two. Her victory was short-lived. Hackles rising and an uneasy feeling flipping in her gut, she watched the ghouls recover with a snap of all three heads in her direction.
“Come on.” Her taunt was half-hearted. “I can…take you.”
Ghoul Number 3 slunk to the right while his two comrades roared and charged. Lavinia sidestepped the first, only to be caught by the second one. He threw her against the side of a garbage bin, leaning over her with frenzied eyes. There was no more humanity there. Ghouls, the risen dead, were nothing more than vessels raised by a warlock or necromancer for one purpose. Mayhem. Bedlam. A thorn in her side when all she wanted was to act normal.
The force of a knee to her abdomen sent her against the wall of the closest building. Her face shoved against the brick before she dropped to the ground.
