Periculum: Unus (Devil's Playground Book 1)

by Natalie Bennett

  COPYRIGHT

  PERICULUM by Natalie Bennett

  © 2020 by Natalie Bennett. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where the publisher or author specifically grant permission.

  Cover Design: OPULENT DESIGNS

  Editing by: Pinpoint Editing

  BLURB

  Tragic and Twisted fell in love…

  Ave Satanas, something wicked this way comes. It’s time for the reckoning to begin.

  Enter the Devil’s Playground wary where you tread, for demons are lurking with trickery up their sleeves. Here good and bad cease to exist, and not all will make it to the end.

  The price of freedom will be revealed only after bloodshed and rapture. A claiming of one and purging of others.

  That audio recording played exactly three minutes before the crash.

  It was a riddle, a warning, and a promise. But they didn’t know that until it was too late.

  Now stranded with two friends and a group of apprehensive strangers, Liliana Serpine must decide who and who not to trust as she navigates her way through Hell in the form of an opulent city.

  There’s one person who stands out among the others.

  He has a gorgeous face and a darkly enigmatic aura. Being drawn to him is inevitable, but staying by his side becomes a necessity for survival.

  **Warning**

  Devil's Playground is a dark new adult (not high school) series. There are graphic situations and content some readers may find objective. If you need fluff and sweet romance, this is not the series for you. Periculum is a precursor for Maleficium and reveals the lead-up to the events in that book. The remaining books in the series are standalones.

  CONTENT

  COPYRIGHT

  BLURB

  PLAYLIST

  PRELUDE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  EPILOGUE

  MALEFICIUM

  Other Books

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  PLAYLIST

  (Spotify)

  Ozzy Osbourne—Straight To Hell

  DeathbyRomy—Time

  Imagine Dragons—Dream

  Halsey—Gasoline

  Asking Alexandria—Vultures

  Halsey—Strange Love

  The Lumineers—Nightshade

  Halsey—Devil

  Hayley Kiyoko—Demons

  Hollywood Undead—City

  Sam Tinnesz—Far From Home

  Phantogram—Black Out Days

  Lacey Strum—Rot

  93PUNX—It’s a Bad Dream

  Banks—Contaminated

  DeathbyRomy—Shadow

  Lil Wayne—Trust Nobody

  Anya—How Far Does The Dark Go?

  The Rigs—Devil’s Playground

  I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

  --Sylvia Plath--

  PRELUDE

  It’s a penitentiary full of rhymes and riddles. A place where dark and light are one and the same.

  Carnal passions await within.

  Your screams won’t save you; they’ll only excite them.

  Safety is but an illusion.

  Trust no one. Question everything.

  He’s been watching. He’s been waiting.

  It’ll be your turn soon.

  Servatis Periculum.

  Something wicked this way comes.

  Take a journey to the Devil’s Playground.

  CHAPTER ONE

  They say that some of the best memories can come from a bad idea.

  I can personally vouch for the truth in that. But you know what else is true? The consequences that will be waiting to remind you of all your dumbass decisions.

  You’d have thought I’d learned this lesson eons ago, yet here I was, reaping everything I’d sown.

  Painfully.

  Too many shots of Tequila combined with too few hours of recovery made for a deadly combination.

  I knew better than to drink the way I had the night before, even if I did have a laundry list of valid excuses to do so.

  Unfortunately for me, this never worked out well. I had never been the kind of person who could drown their sorrows at the bottom of a bottle, though I envied those that did. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to remedy the mess that I was. Not to mention I had shit tolerance and wasn’t remotely attractive when I got drunk.

  Some girls had the ability to be cute while intoxicated. I became the equivalent of a dying fish searching for water… with a hint of newborn calf. Ugh. The thought of consuming even a single drop more of treacherous ethanol made me disgustingly nauseated.

  I’d brushed my teeth—twice—and could still taste it.

  While getting drunk off my ass may not have been the healthiest way to go about dealing with my mental and emotional turmoil, it’d kept my sanity intact. That had to count for something.

  Although, it would be comical if liquor were the spark of me completely losing the plot, all things considered. My odds of making it through life entirely sane had the same probability of a coin toss. Heads, I’d be like my father’s side of the family. Tails, I would take after my mother’s. I had yet to determine which was worse when it came to those crazy fuckers.

  I weaved around a couple walking through the lobby of the resort, readjusting my shades and tightening my grip on my suitcase.

  “I think I’m dying. Hangovers are so underrated,” Melantha grumbled from beside me, tugging her beanie down further.

  “I haven’t felt this shitty since that party we attended the day we graduated high-school,” Gracelyn agreed.

  Both of those statements resonated with me. Deeply. I hadn’t wanted to get out of bed unless it was to sit around butt naked and stuff my face with a fry up and chug gallons of Powerade. That sounded like pure heaven right about now, but we had a flight to catch.

  Feeling a soft vibration against my thigh, I pulled my cell from my pocket and swiped down to see the text. I was expecting it to be one of my parents or my abuelo. Weirdly, there wasn’t any number displayed.

  Even weirder was the text itself.

  Unknown: Something wicked this way comes…

  I stopped walking, brows furrowing as I read the message two more times before typing out a quick reply.

  L: Who is this?

  Almost immediately, a box popped up. Sender Unknown.

  Message cannot be sent.

  “You okay?” Mel called back to me.

  “Yeah. Sorry.” I fixed my face into a smile and started walking again, slipping my cell back into my pocket.

  “To hell we go,” Mel sighed, shouldering open one of the doors that led outside.

  “Can we at least be on the plane before you start being all negative?”

  “Is there a difference between doing it now or later? You know exactly how things are going to be when we get back.”

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Gracelyn refuted.

  “I know we’re well overdue for our ‘precious’ societal debuts. We’re going to be dragged into the corporate office so our parents can explain exactly how they’ve mapped out our futures. They probably married us off to some deranged arr
ogant assholes already. The ones who organize their drawers and ties by color.”

  That sounded overdramatic, but sadly, she was right. It was the way things worked in our world. However, I couldn’t openly agree. That’d open the door to a conversation I wasn’t ready to have. We’d attempted that already, which was how we’d wound up in our current condition.

  Talking about it led to thinking. Thoughts came with feelings, most of which were bitter, angry, and conflicted—for various reasons. My new plan was to immerse myself in denial until we were back home. “Let’s just wait and see what they have to say, and then we can go from there.”

  She ignored me.

  “Do you think they’ll offer us pamphlets or use a full-blown PowerPoint to really get their message across and explain all the ways they ruined our lives?”

  My lips twitched as I fought a smile. “There’s a deadly disease that causes people to only see the bad side of things. My abuelo likes to refer to this as pessimism.”

  “Your grandfather is the ringleader of this whole ordeal. And I’m not a pessimist.”

  “She’s a realist,” Gracelyn joked, forcing her voice to be deep and masculine.

  I started to laugh, the sound coming from my throat akin to an angry toad’s battle cry. “Shut up.” I playfully swatted her arm.

  “Ow.” She poked out her lip and feigned being hurt, making her hazel eyes go big and round.

  “I can’t take you bitches anywhere,” Mel chastised, laughing quietly. “There’s our shuttle.” She pointed to a sleek white bus idling nearby.

  We approached at the same time two older women did, allowing them to go ahead of us.

  As we waited, the sun continued to sink lower in the sky, slowly draining the light.

  I glanced back at the resort and withheld a sigh. This would be our last time traveling leisurely. Indefinitely. I could count on one hand the number of times trips were taken for luxury versus ‘business.’

  Melantha began climbing onto the shuttle. I followed, and Gracelyn brough up the rear.

  “Sit anywhere you’d like,” the driver instructed in an upbeat tone, his bushy mustache lifting as he smiled.

  I thanked him with a small one in return and then skimmed the interior. The seating was set for two per row, and there were already a few people up front.

  Ignoring the stares aimed at her colorful hair, Mel breezed by all of them, wholly unbothered.

  It was always done in one fun color or another. This time she’d gone with a deep violet, peacock blue, and white ombre bangs. She was one of the few individuals I knew who could rock it.

  Mel could pull off anything, really. She had a classic kind of beauty. She’d always reminded me of those retro pin-up girls, complete with a small diamond Monroe piercing.

  She wound up claiming three seats that were midway from the back. Directly to the right of them were a cluster of four guys that, with a passing glance, appeared to be in their early twenties, so around our age. Behind them, sitting by her lonesome, was a pretty redhead with ear-pods in.

  Not the biggest fan of confined spaces, I placed my suitcase in the baggage cubby and then claimed the seat nearest to the aisle.

  Gracelyn squeezed past me and sat by the window, leaving Mel no choice but to sit behind us.

  “How long does it take to get to the airport?” Grace asked.

  “Thirty minutes?” I guessed, pushing my sunglasses up to rest atop my head.

  “For future reference, I was going to ask if you needed help, but you looked like you had it,” a husky voice snaked across the aisle.

  “Huh?” I glanced over, nearly doing a double take as I got my first real look at who was beside us. If life were a cartoon, my jaw would have dropped through the floor. Somewhere in the back of my mind the Weather Girls began to sing about raining men.

  “Your bag,” the guy closest to me said, nodding his head towards the luggage cubby.

  He was sporting a rather dapper hairstyle—an undercut that was long on top and short on the sides.

  The smooth strands were dark brown with naturally lighter pieces weaved in. It looked good on him—really good.

  “Oh, well. Thanks for considering,” I quipped, cringing internally as soon as the last word fell from my mouth. Thanks for considering? Way to be super awkward, Lana.

  “Anytime,” he replied smoothly, brandishing an amused grin. His teeth were so white, I wondered if they were real.

  I didn’t want to ogle him. Then again, yes, I did. I mean, damn. Where the hell had he been hiding at these past two weeks? This trip would have been ten times better if I’d had this piece of art to look at every day. Preferably from underneath or on top of him.

  One of his most notable features was his eyes. They were gorgeous.

  I would call them blue, but that was like saying the sun was yellow, such an average adjective and hardly accurate. This was more a myriad. They reminded me of the sea, vibrant and serene, something churning deep within them that wasn’t easily identifiable.

  Our staring contest was short-lived as two more girls got on the shuttle and passed between us, both looking as hungover as I was, only way more put together.

  I shifted my attention off the eye candy across the aisle and did my best to get comfortable, toying with the necklace my abuelo had gifted me just before I left for my trip. He’d given Mel and Grace one too, as was customary for him when buying anything for me.

  They were all different, each affixed with a silver pendant of some kind. I had no idea what any of the symbols meant, but it was my abuelo so that didn’t matter.

  I rarely told him no or turned him down. He was the sweetest old man ever.

  At least, when it came to me, he was.

  Once the last passengers were in their seats, the driver turned his radio on low and we began to move. Me and Gracelyn watched out the window until we could no longer see any part of the massive Royal Palms Resort.

  And that was that.

  We’d be on a plane heading home soon. Vacation was officially over. As was my self-righteous act of denial. I was going to miss staying up all night without needing to wake at the ass crack of dawn to pretend I knew what I was doing with my life. I hadn’t the faintest clue what I wanted to be when I grew up—and I was grown. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be who I had been.

  I don’t know, sometimes I thought it would be better for someone else to map the whole thing out.

  My parents would rejoice if I simply let them do as they wished without argument. Not that arguing would matter much, anyway.

  The Serpines had a reputation to uphold, after all. I couldn’t risk tarnishing their immaculate image, even if it was utter bullshit. I knew first-hand what happened to anyone who did. My sister had paid the price for bringing shame to our family.

  She’d thoroughly humiliated them, and whomever it was she’d been married off to, when she purposely got knocked up by a distant cousin. I hadn’t seen her since the day our mom all but dragged from the house by her hair. Blood or not, the family wouldn’t tolerate anything they saw as disrespect.

  For those not privy to the real story, my parents simply said she’d taken off to some prestigious university. Was it wrong of me to be pissed at her too? She was the reason I became golden child numero dos.

  Our big brother was cemented in at number one. The kiss-ass.

  That was another key factor of our world: smarmy blue bloods and their selfish, never-ending schemes.

  They fooled people into believing they were good while simultaneously doing whatever was necessary to further their personal agendas. Building familial relations was among them.

  We didn’t choose who we wound up with, they chose for us. Just as they did everything else.

  Following a predestined path came with the elite lineage that swam through our veins. It didn’t matter how we felt about our elders’ decisions. I couldn’t hate or resent them for it, though. I loved my family as much as I could, considering our peculiar dyn
amic, but that didn’t make me blind to their sordid ethics.

  Gracelyn nudged me with her elbow, interrupting my inner monologue. As I met her eyes, she did some weird brow movement that had me quirking one of mine.

  “What?”

  “Look,” she mouthed with a subtle nod of her head.

  I glanced at the group of guys.

  None of them were paying us any attention. I looked back at Gracelyn, and she shrugged and waved her hand as if to say, “Never mind.”

  As she and Mel began a debate about one of the newer movies coming out, I adjusted how I was sitting once again. The new position gave me a better view of my mystery guy. He was intently focused on the cellphone in his hand.

  Relaxed, and without a smile lifting strong-lined features, his expression was uninviting.

  I’d go as far as to say intimidating.

  I used his distraction as an opportunity to get a better look at him.

  His toned arms had sleeves running all the way down to his fingers, each tattoo a well-placed piece of art on his sun-kissed skin. Every single one of them added to how damn fine he was. He looked like someone you’d find within the pages of a more sophisticated edition of Inked Magazine.

  The tat on the nape of his neck was a leviathan cross being grasped by claws or something. I wondered if it held any real significance to him, or if he was like every other hipster douchebag that thought they were edgy. I dropped my gaze back down to his right arm, studying all the different pieces that were visible beneath the sleeve of his T.

  There was a cluster of roses like the sole tattoo I had on my upper right shoulder.

  His petals were pure black while mine were both purple and magenta.

  Gracelyn and Melantha had the same one. Grace’s was part of the sleeve she had on her left arm, while Mel’s was on her hip. Their colors were different as well. Each hue held a different meaning to who we were as people.

  A devilish depiction of a weeping Virgin Mary was on his inner forearm. Beneath that was another rose, this one by itself with three numbers weaved into its petals.

  On his hand was the face of a woman with skull-like features. I felt like I’d seen this before. Beside her was a word I couldn’t fully make out unless I leaned way too close for either of our comfort.