Ravenswood (Ravenswood Series Book 1)

by Christine Zolendz

  Quickly, I scanned the first page. The letters were faded and worn like they were written thousands of years before.

  A shiver crawled down my spine like claws pleading to be acknowledged. My heart drummed wildly in my chest as I ignored the intense feeling.

  “Go away,” I hissed at whatever was at my back.

  “Primeval man was round, his back and sides forming a circle; and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways, set on a round neck and precisely alike…he could walk upright as men now do, backwards or forwards as he pleased, and he could also roll over and over at a great pace, turning on his four hands and four feet, eight in all, like tumblers going over and over with their legs in the air; this was when he wanted to run fast.”

  What was I reading? It sounded like some Greek mythology I learned back in middle school. Did they even teach this stuff anymore? Shrugging, I continued reading, noting the scribbled markings along the edges. Had someone been taking notes?

  “These weird, fused humans had three sexes, not the two we have today. Some were male in both halves, some were female in both haves, and others had one male half and another female half. According to this tale, they were more powerful than today’s frail human creatures. Aristophanes says, 'Terrible was their might and strength, and the thoughts of their hearts were great, and they made an attack upon the gods'.”

  As I read, the pages yellowed more as if a great amount of time was passing and the corners browned, rotting off.

  I sped up my reading.

  “The gods met to discuss how they would deal with these circular attackers. Several suggested all-out slaughter. But Zeus said that humanity simply needed to be humbled, not destroyed. The gods decided to sever the humans in two. 'And if they continue to be insolent and will not be quiet,' said Zeus, 'I will split them again and they shall hop about on a single leg'.

  “After the division, the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces, longing to grow into one.

  "Man's original body having been cut in two, each half yearned for the half that had been severed. Love is simply the name of for the desire and pursuit of the whole.”

  It was a bunch of mythological bullshit. The same drivel my grandmother spit out.

  By the last word I read, the book was a nothing more than a pile of soft flakes I picked up in the palms of my hands. I dropped them back to the desk immediately, hating the feel of them, and oddly, a drawing slipped out from underneath the heaping mess.

  It was a drawing of me.

  A drawing of me in my bedroom, sitting on my bed, a stack of books next to me and a half-empty bottle of wine on the nightstand. My shirt hung off my shoulder, and I was squeezing a book to my chest, my chin pressed to the hard edges of it.

  It was sobering and dark, etched out in swirling, intricate lines, capturing the feeling of longing and sadness. Muted grays and dark thick black lines became my form, washed brush strokes and delicate crosshatched lines detailed my hair and features.

  It was an exquisite sketch of one simple moment of my life, but it was an intimate portrait of me reacting to something I’d read. A moment that should have been private. I backed away from the illustration, struggling for air, heart pounding fast.

  Whoever drew this captured my essence perfectly. It was lonely and human, and voyeuristic and dark. Tears stung the corners of my eyes, and a heated weight lay heavy in my chest.

  A soft breeze tingled against my neck, and I closed my eyes, letting the sensation wash over my skin like a lover’s lips.

  I left the room without looking back. I needed air and sun and life. I needed to leave this place and find warmth somewhere.

  I wandered until I came back upon the piano room. It was the only place in this forsaken city I could use that actually worked.

  My feet involuntarily walked to the instrument, my fingers tingling at the keys, my mind open to the hopelessness of the place, and I played. I played music lamenting the sorrow for myself—for my grandmother—for this strange, cold world. I needed to fill it with sounds and hope. I thought of the sketch, me etched on paper, and I allowed the rhythms and notes to fall over my body, filling my mind with the humane warmth and depth of what I felt it was like to be alive.

  And as I lavished the dead city with my symphony, I pretended I was a beautiful girl with a soul mate searching for me to call home.

  Chapter 17

  I woke with my cheek against the piano keys, back stiff and eyes blurred with sleep. My body felt strangely heavy, and for a few moments I couldn’t focus on anything. Hushed voices murmured somewhere, and the sounds of muted words, rushed and excited, filled my ears. Who was there with me?

  I frantically rubbed my eyes.

  A sharp intake of breath close to me that wasn’t mine.

  My vision was still too bleary to see. Fear clawed at my chest instantly, making it hard to breathe. Someone was in the room with me. I was no longer alone.

  I blinked until my eyes became clearer, my heart a hummingbird’s wings.

  Liam sat next to me, peeking down the front of my shirt.

  A small, surprised gasp escaped my lips right before I smacked his hand away from the low collar of my neckline. What a perv.

  “Hands off,” I said, slapping at his chest to create more space between us. “Why am I still here?”

  His smile was arrogant and broad. “Why do you want to leave? What is there for you in life?”

  “So much, there’s—” But I couldn’t finish. When I thought of my life, all I missed from back home were my books and the feelings I had when I read them.

  His eyes turned a bluish-black, his smile a little wider.

  There were things in my life I needed to finish. Things I dreamt about, but the longer I stayed down here, the duller the thoughts became. “I want to play for the New York Philharmonic. I want to play in front of thousands of people and—”

  “You could do that here,” he interrupted with a smirk, wrapping his knuckles against the piano top.

  “No, no.” I shook my head, sliding back on the piano stool. “I…I want to see the stars again. Hear music. Dance. Feel warm skin. Drink a caramel latte and eat a piece of apple pie. Listen to a child laugh. Fall in love.”

  Liam shrugged. “Those things are overrated.”

  “Liam. I need to leave here.”

  “But I thought you wanted to find out about Addy? I thought you cared?”

  “Addy was some sort of crazy old lady who lived in a dead city, and in her off time she pretended to be my grandmother. Someone killed her, and now she’s dead, and she didn’t want me to know any of this, so I’m just going to go and obey her last dying wishes.” Or after dying wishes. Whatever or whenever. I needed out of this place.

  “Come with me,” Liam said, jumping up. He tugged at the sleeve of my shirt and bit at the bottom of his lip.

  I leaned my head away, appalled. Who bites at the bottom of their lips like that? Ew.

  “Come on, I want to show you something.” He held out his hand and winked. “It might just get you out of here.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in. What else could I do?

  “Look. Just look at what I have,” he purred.

  My eyes opened to a rusted key dangling from his gloved hands by a leather cord.

  “A key?” Was it to a door—an exit out of here?

  He nodded his head, and his grin full of mischief slashed deviously across his features.

  Everything in me told me not to follow him.

  My head screamed out words of caution. My heart slammed through my chest, pounding faster and faster through my body. My feet cemented themselves in place.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “There’s a feast about to begin,” he cooed, still reaching out for me. “Come and let me play with you for a moment before we attend.”

  I shook my head and slid off the b
ench slowly, backing away from his outstretched palms. Then I watched in terror as he slipped his gloves slowly off his hands.

  “Not much into feasts. I think I’ll…” I backed up quickly to the door, my insides turning nervous and jumpy. Something felt intensely wrong—it bubbled up through my chest—I wanted to scream for help, but who would have come? “I think I’ll go read in the library.”

  “I'd rather you allow me to read your body. I’m sure it has a few scandalous stories to tell me.”

  Highly doubtful.

  “Put your gloves back on,” I demanded, reaching for the handle on the door. I prayed it wasn’t locked.

  “That would be very little fun for me,” he said, advancing closer to me.

  “Liam, I swear if you touch me, I will gut you like a pig.”

  “If I touch you, you’d beg me never to take my hands off you.” He smiled, taking another step.

  My hands, shaky and numb, fumbled with the lever of the door. “Damn it,” I cried out as the stupid handle slipped between my fingers three times before I could yank it open and lunge out into the hallway full of people.

  His face looked ashen as I slid between bodies, putting as much distance as I could between us.

  By the time I cut across the crowded walkway and looked back at him, Liam was joined by two beautiful women. He stood in the doorway, bare arms up over his head, holding on to the stone archway with laughter in his eyes.

  “Would you like to see what you’re missing?” His voice was whispery sweet, tickling at the back of my neck.

  Chills broke out all across my skin. Somehow, the air around me suddenly shifted—thickening and warming—such a change in temperature that my body shivered visibly. My reaction made him smile darkly.

  It was coming from the women who stood with him. How I knew this, I didn’t know, but I was positive they were both the cause of the heat radiating through me.

  “Shall we have a bit of fun, my lovelies?” Liam asked, trailing his eyes slowly up and down his newfound friends.

  I turned my head away, my cheeks flaming with heat.

  From the corner of my eyes, I saw one of the women whisper something in Liam’s ear. The other belted out a sexy laugh while dragging her hands up and down the front of his shirt.

  I was morbidly curious to see what would happen to them when they touched his skin.

  He reached for the woman on his left first, slowly sliding his hands into the collar of her buttoned up shirt and skimming his fingers up over her neck. Goose bumps broke out across her skin, and she sighed out a small, desperate moan. It made my stomach flutter lightly. My eyes followed his hand as it gently caressed her chin and slipped up to her parted lips. They were pink and plump and perfect. Just as his thumb rubbed over her bottom lip, she darted her tongue out, tasting him. He hummed out an approval that vibrated along my skin as if I were the one he was touching.

  My eyes flew up to his, instantly. He stared back at me with a dark, sinister smile. I opened my mouth, stunned, but said no words. There was nothing I could say.

  Between us, the air in the hallway continued to change. There was a growing sense of claustrophobia, a sensation of losing oxygen, of heavy suffocation. An intense electric heat that seemed to rise from the dead around me, charging the air and sucking the fight right out of me. My thoughts screamed for me to run, but my body refused, demanding me to focus on only them.

  Liam reached for the other woman, carefully unbuttoning her shirt, peeling it away from her body without touching her skin. Her expression was full of anticipation, the rise and fall of her chest quickened. I could feel her breaths from where I stood. I could feel them in my own chest, my own lungs struggling to breathe.

  Her shirt dropped to the floor, pooling around her ankles. I forced myself to stare at the silk material—the deep creases and the contrast of its whiteness against the onyx stone of the floor.

  “Touch me, please,” the woman pleaded in low murmurs. And I couldn’t keep my eyes away.

  “Oh, Rainey,” Liam whispered hoarsely. “You like watching?”

  My face became warmer.

  The woman’s breasts were completely bare. They were tear-shaped and plump with long, dark nipples that quivered in rhythm with her heavy breathing.

  Then suddenly Liam’s lips covered one, his tongue tracing circles around the stiffened nub. The woman arched her back, pushing her breast against his mouth, and I became instantly dizzy. My breasts tingled where his mouth was on her, and my heart banged against my chest so hard, it hurt.

  I needed to look away, I knew I did, so I tore my eyes off his mouth on her breast and dragged them to the other woman.

  Huge mistake.

  Her pants were gone, and Liam’s fingers were between her legs, making quick movements inside her. I felt that deep ache in between my own thighs and doubled over and cursed out his name. Pure sexual anticipation rolled over me in dark, ravenous waves. It hung heavy in the air. We were breathing it in, inhaling the primal scent of sex and life and heat.

  The dead around us even noticed. Their eyes tore off one another’s and locked on the two women, pleasing themselves with Liam’s hands. They seemed to close in around us in the narrow hall, shifting and mumbling soft, breathy words.

  My knees weakened, and fiery heat flushed through my veins. I felt humiliated, wanting so much to join. I swallowed hard. Need blossomed deep inside me, and I looked away, ashamed. Never had I seen or felt anything so outwardly sexual in all my life. It made me sick that my body was responding, demanding relief.

  I wanted to be wanted, to be touched like those women who were being touched. I wanted hands grasping my skin, I wanted tongues and teeth on my flesh, in the dark places that pulsed and throbbed. I desired freedom, liberation of my body, my soul. My body awakened with need and passion, all the things I’ve ever wanted and never knew.

  I had never even reached an orgasm with a guy. Any orgasm I had ever had was my own doing. Not one person I had ever been with took the time to make me enjoy it. Not even Eric, who knew I never had that kind of an experience with anyone before. I felt my thoughts shattering, slipping away from me.

  I’m made of pure skin, and I need touch to survive.

  “No. No, I won’t let this happen,” I hissed, pressing myself against the cool stone wall. My heart filled with shame—wanting to feel the pleasure humming through the air—but I stood my ground. I stood my ground because right beside that intense, desperate need was another. A sick, dark feeling in the pit of my stomach that if he laid his hands on me, I would die. “I will gut you like a pig.”

  Liam offered me a sexy smirk and a wink. “I seem to have found a few toys that want to take your spot.” He laughed loudly and dragged both women through the doorway into the room behind him. “Until next time, my sweet.” He then closed the door.

  I ran. As soon as I could move my feet, I ran.

  The cobbled stones of the floors were slippery, making me stumble and slip through the dark walkways. I staggered through the crowd, unwilling to stop or look behind me. There was a feeling of darkness and filth chasing me. Like one small touch of Liam’s hands would leave me with stains I would never wash clean from. Fear was a heavy weight pressing terror against my back, pushing me to run faster and faster. What would happen if one of these creatures touched me?

  My lungs burned hot, my heart hammering in my ears. Fleeting, blurred glimpses of the dead citizens rushed past me. My back tingled from the touch of unseen hands. Had he come out of that room? Was he right behind me? My legs moved faster. The hallway closed in around me, darker and darker until I slammed full force, whole body into a sheet of hard ice.

  I fell back hard and fast, landing flat on my bottom. I struggled to catch my breath as I tilted my head up to find what I had hit.

  Mathias loomed over me. Where the hell did he come from?

  His back was facing me, bare and horribly scarred. He looked over his shoulder at me quizzically and then spun on his heels to face m
e.

  “What did you do?”

  Now he was facing me bare-chested, a book cradled in his arms. I looked away quickly, down around his knees and past them, trying to focus on the dark corners. Sharp pains stabbed at my chest, my lungs pricked with millions of tiny needles, and I could no more say words than stand.

  I blinked back whatever was stinging the corners of my eyes.

  He quickly squatted down in front of me, eyes level with mine, and gently laid the book he was holding down on the floor beside him. “Are you hurt?”

  Fuck you, dead boy. I swallowed what felt like a thousand razor blades, and still I had no breath to speak.

  He stared hard at me. His eyes flitted back and forth between mine.

  I sucked at my cheeks, collecting enough saliva in my mouth to coat my throat. Knots twisted in my gut, stitches clawed in my sides and shins. I waited for a few beats, one…two…three…four…inhaling slowly, exhaling slower.

  Then I lunged at him, slamming my fists into his chest. Electric anger and rage ripped through me, explosive screams blasted out of my mouth. Incomprehensible words and curses, screeches of pure, white hot fury. He toppled over, shocked. The pages of the book next to him flew open and flipped over.

  Breathing heavily, my stomach twisted into knots. “Do you do what your brother does? Do you feed off people and make them feel things?” I screamed.

  “No,” he growled, leaning forward, coming back toward me.

  Liar. “You’re lying.”

  “We can’t make people feel things.” His voice was curt and low.

  I pointed my index finger in his face accusingly.

  Then his features changed—darkened somehow—coloring his face crimson. “You let him touch you?”

  I suddenly felt small, shamed. “I…would never…”

  “Let me guess,” he spat darkly. “He looked at you with his lovely dark eyes and made your heart beat faster.” His tone turned condescending and cruel. “You felt the need to touch him and wanted his hands all over you, begged him like a whore, right? And you really think he wanted you.” He climbed to his feet, grabbing at the fallen pages of his book, and stuffed them quickly back between the covers.