Dark Embrace

by Eve Silver

  Rick says something to him as he puts the nozzle in the tank. I’m too far away to hear what it is, but the rider pulls off his helmet, sets it on the seat of his bike, and digs into his pocket, struggling a bit with the wet denim. He passes something to Rick, who hands back a folded bill. It’s an exchange I’ve seen a hundred times before, on street corners or in shadowed nooks.

  The rider replaces the nozzle and saunters to the door, passing close enough that I can make out the details of the tattoo on his left forearm: a dark red stylized skull in a field of bright flowers. The ink runs all the way from his wrist, past his elbow, up his arm until it disappears under the short sleeve of his t-shirt. It’s beautiful.

  “Take a picture.” The words aren’t exactly friendly, but there’s a smile in his voice that tempers them.

  My gaze jerks up, but he’s through the door and all I see is shaggy dark hair, wide shoulders, and a hand reaching back to pull a wallet from a back pocket.

  When he comes out a couple of minutes later, I catch a glimpse of his scowl before he turns away. Guess Easy Mart guy wasn’t too friendly to any friend of Rick’s.

  He rides slowly past me, heading for the road. His visor’s down and I can’t see his eyes, but I can feel him watching me.

  “New girl on display. Take a picture.” I’m pretty sure he doesn’t hear me over the sound of his engine, somewhere between a growl and a visceral rumble. Besides, there isn’t much heat to my words; he already stole my line.

  I toss the still almost full coffee cup in the trash and head for Rick’s truck, our paths crossing as he heads inside to pay for his gas. He changes direction so he’s within inches of me as we pass. I shift at the waist to avoid brushing shoulders with him.

  He stops and leers at me. “Makes the rounds, that boy does,” he says.

  I shrug and keep walking.

  When I get to the truck I find that Rick locked the doors, so I rest my forearms on the roof and watch until the lights on the back of the motorcycle disappear around a curve in the road.

  oOo

  The highway carries us back toward the ocean. Welcome to Carnage—I read the sign as we pass. It actually says, Welcome to Carnage Bay, but the first three words are painted dark blue and the word ‘bay’ is this thin script done in pale blue. Hard to see, unless you’re really looking.

  “Who named this place?”

  Rick squints at me. “Why?”

  “Carnage Bay? Carnage means killing or murder or something. Who’d give a place like this”—I gesture out the window at the pretty little houses with their white picket fences. Seriously. White picket fences. Even under the heavy press of the bleak sky, this place is too pretty to be real—“a name like that?”

  “Dunno. Maybe someone with a sense of humor.” Rick smirks around the cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. “Kind of like someone who’d give their girl a boy’s name.”

  I shoot him a look that conveys my every justifiably denigrating thought, but he’s watching the road instead of me. “You don’t know the history of the name of your town?”

  “Not my town,” he says. “I’ve only been living here for just under a year. Came here around the same time your uncle and aunt did.”

  My aunt has been here a year? That doesn’t make sense. The paper I found in Mom’s drawer, the one with Aunt Pat’s address, was yellowed with age. “But—” I cut myself off. Whatever questions I have will hold until I see my aunt. I don’t exactly think of Rick as a reliable source of information.

  “But what?” He watches me, eyes narrowed.

  “Forget it.” I turn away from his too sharp gaze and stare out the window.

  We pass a red building with a sign that proclaims: Town Hall. Then we pass a newer building with orange brick, green trim, gray roof, and glass block windows—the Carnage Bay Police Station.

  “Carnage is big enough to warrant a police department of its own?” I feel sure the population was on the sign, but I didn’t notice it as we passed.

  Rick grunts. “Got ourselves one Chief, and maybe a dozen officers.” He laughs, a phlegmy sound that makes me inch closer to the door. “You see a car with a light on top coming, you walk the other way, Lucian. Your uncle don’t care much for cops.”

  Reassuring.

  I turn my head and watch the town pass. A snort escapes me. I can’t help it. Between the trees, the picket fences, and the Town Hall, I feel like I’ve landed in a foreign country.

  Up ahead is a low white building with a packed parking lot. The sign above it reads: Grocery. Produce. Liquor. Beer. Wine. Pizza. Deli. Hot food. An all-in-one stop shop.

  There’s a black motorcycle parked out front.

  A few minutes later Rick says, “Downtown Carnage. Blink and you’ll miss it.”

  We pass a bank, a couple of clothing stores, a beautifully maintained old three story building with signs for a doctor, a dentist, an accountant, and a real estate agent out front. The movie theater boasts a marquee that has to be fifty years old, the kind where you place the letters by hand. There’s an ice cream store, a pizza place. A wine bar. Some more shops. The whole of downtown extends maybe three or four blocks. I plan to hit every business here until I find a job.

  Eventually the road dips down a gentle hill, and the buildings frame a narrow V of ocean. Then we round a corner and we’re out of the main town, passing a couple of auto shops, a bowling alley, and some less than inviting squatty concrete buildings. And still we keep going. There are houses, but the distance between them grows wider and wider, the houses themselves set further and further back from the road.

  Up ahead, where the coast juts into the ocean, a mansion sits at the edge of a cliff. We passed more than a few like it on the drive north, but this one feels different, isolated, cold, its lines stark and harsh. My skin tingles. My fingers and toes feel numb. I can’t drag my gaze away from the house.

  ComeComeComeComeComeHomeComeHomeComeHome…

  Lightning flashes, turning the house into a silhouette. A long, low rumble of thunder follows.

  The road curves. The view changes.

  The house is no longer visible from the road.

  I press my thumb and index finger against my closed lids. I feel woozy, lightheaded, like there are weights strapped to my temples and my neck is too weak to hold them. I hadn’t realized I was this tired. It hit me like a kick to the head right after we left the Easy Mart.

  When I open my eyes, it’s to see a sign announcing that we’re leaving Carnage Bay. I swivel to watch it disappear behind us as we keep going. My gut tightens, my nerves humming. “We just passed the sign that says we’re leaving Carnage Bay. I thought my aunt lives in Carnage Bay.”

  Rick smiles at me, if pale lips drawn back to reveal tobacco-stained teeth can be called a smile. “Not exactly.”

  “Then where exactly does she live?” I’d been in Rick’s truck for hours, since we left San Francisco. I’d felt uncomfortable with him since the second I met him, but now that discomfort swells like a sponge dropped in water.

  It’s raining again, water drumming on the roof with a steady beat, a thin stream breaching the faulty seal and snaking down the glass. But despite the weather and my exhaustion, I’m getting the feeling I’d be better off taking my chances out in the downpour than in the truck with Rick.

  “I want to know exactly where we’re going.” My fingers curl around the door handle.

  He makes a sound somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. “Don’t get your panties in a wad, Lucian. It’s just along here.” He cuts a hard left onto what amounts to little more than a dirt path flanked by bushes and trees and unkempt grass as high as the tops of the tires.

  My pulse kicks up and my palms go damp. We aren’t on a main road anymore. We aren’t anywhere near other cars or people.

  I reach into the front pouch of my backpack and grab my key ring. Old keys. Useless keys, now. One is for the front door of the apartment building and one is for the back. One is for the storage lock
er. I don’t know why I even kept them or why I brought them with. But at this moment, I’m glad I did. Keeping my hand down below my right thigh so Rick can’t see, I form a fist with the longest key poking out beyond my curled baby finger. An improvised weapon.

  Daph and I took a class in self-defense last year. They showed us how to go for the knee, the throat, the nose, the eyes, how to use a key ring or even a tightly rolled magazine as a weapon. Before that class, I thought the best way was to push all the keys between your fingers so they stuck out like spiky daggers. But the guy teaching the class said that would only work if you actually know how to throw a punch. I don’t. So if Rick comes for me, I’ll go for him with a hammer fist—the side of my fist and one protruding key—rather than my knuckles.

  I focus on my breathing, trying to keep it slow and steady, trying not to telegraph my growing fear or my intent.

  We round a bend and the trees break to an open lawn and a massive house standing against the backdrop of jagged whitecaps and raging ocean.

  Rick slows to a stop. “This is exactly where your aunt lives,” he says, making fun of my earlier demands that he tell me where we were going. “Ain’t it pretty?”

  Unease uncoils and stretches, coming alive in gradual degrees, climbing through me like a choking vine.

  My gaze slides up the stone stairs, seeing them awash in stinging rain, feeling them hot beneath my bare feet under a blinding sun. Images and memories come at me, like I’ve been here before, lived here before.

  Been afraid here before.

  * * *

  Kiss Me Goodbye—Coming Soon!

  Also by Eve Silver

  Dark Gothic Series

  (Books in this series can be read in any order)

  Dark Desires

  His Dark Kiss

  Dark Prince

  His Wicked Sins

  Seduced by a Stranger

  Dark Embrace

  * * *

  The Sins Series

  Sins of the Heart (Book 1)

  Sin’s Daughter (Book 2, Novella)

  Sins of the Soul (Book 3)

  Sins of the Flesh (Book 4)

  Body of Sin (Book 5)

  * * *

  Northern Waste Series

  (Eve Silver writing as Eve Kenin)

  Driven (Book 1)

  Frozen (Book 1.5)

  Hidden (Book 2)

  * * *

  Compact of Sorcerers Series

  Demon’s Kiss (Book 1)

  Demon’s Hunger (Book 2)

  Trinity Blue (short story)

  * * *

  The Game Series (Young Adult)

  Rush (Book 1)

  Push (Book 2)

  Crash (Book 3)

  * * *

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  About the Author

  (photo credit: Shanon Fujioka)

  National bestselling author Eve Silver has been praised for her “edgy, steamy, action-packed” books, darkly sexy heroes and take-charge heroines. In 2015 she won the OLA Forest of Reading White Pine Award, her work was shortlisted for the Monica Hughes Award for Science Fiction and Fantasy (2014), and was both an American Bookseller’s Association Best Book for Children and a Canadian Children’s Book Centre Best Books for Kids and Teens (2013). She has garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Quill and Quire, two RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards, Library Journal’s Best Genre Fiction Award, and she was nominated for the Romance Writers of America® RITA® Award. Eve lives with her husband, two sons, an energetic Airedale terrier and an exuberant border collie/shepherd. And a snake called Ragnar.

  Join Eve’s Reader Group for the latest info about contests, new releases and more!

  Find Eve online at

  www.evesilver.net