Dire (Reaper's Redemption Book 2)

by Thea Atkinson

  Pain lanced through my earlobe and I woke with a start. That was too real. Way too real.

  I sat up in bed. The sound of buzzing started in the back of my eardrum and rang clear. A soft pair of lips touched down on my pulse.

  I wasn't alone.

  I scrambled from the bed, and ended up with my palms on the floor, my fingers gripping for the carpet as they clawed out from beneath my blankets. I fell to the floor with a loud thump in my haste to escape the sheets and was crawling toward the other wall. Somehow, my hand found my cell phone as I fell from the bed and I rolled over onto my back, fumbling for the light. I kept telling myself nothing was there even as I panned the flashlight over my bed.

  No such luck. It was still there. Blinking at me with pupil-less eyes. A naked and ghostly looking thing, it had no skin color or pallor. There wasn't a stitch of hair anywhere on its body. Rather than looking like a man, it had a rather androgynous appearance. Lithe and sinewy and creepy all at the same time.

  And yet I could barely make a protest for the thick clump of longing in my throat. Just laying my eyes on it made me want to return to the bed, pull the sheets back and climb in. Somehow I knew that wasn't normal, and yet I didn't question it. I kept seeing Callum in my mind, no matter what this creature looked like. It could've been a theatre screen, letting images flit across it for all I knew. Maybe that's what it did to lure its prey, and yet I knew it wasn't a glamour. It was clear that thought of Callum was coming from within my mind and not from something this creature was broadcasting over its skin.

  Now that I could make out the difference, my pulse slowed from a jackrabbit tearing through the woods at full, terrified throttle to a cornered jackrabbit about to be leapt upon. It was an infinitesimal difference, but it was enough to allow me to catch my breath.

  I screamed. You bet I screamed. I let loose a holler that made the buzzing in my ears disappear.

  Hearing Gramp and Sarah thudding their ways across their bedrooms and out into the hall, I felt brave, knowing my peeps were coming.

  I faced it, fists clenched at my sides. "What do you want?"

  The thing cocked its head at me. I thought it was trying to speak. Although it had no eyebrows, its forehead crinkled in bewilderment. It looked like it was trying to work something out.

  "Tell me," I demanded. "What?"

  Its mouth yawned open and I had the horrible thought that a long tongue might sneak out of it, but instead it simply made a sound kind of like a sigh.

  Then my bedroom door opened.

  The creature shivered as though something had run through its space and then it disappeared with a pop that left my ears feeling as though I had suddenly dropped from a large height. I fell back against the floor with my arms splayed out beside me. The flashlight on my cell phone shone a yellow spot on the ceiling.

  Gone. Whatever had been in the room with me was gone.

  It wasn't until Gramp grabbed me by the shoulders and propped me up that I realized I was shaking.

  "What's wrong?" Gramp said, trying to lift me to my feet. "What are you looking for?"

  He wasn't strong enough, not yet, and I felt bad sagging against him for support until Sarah came around the other side and gripped me by the other arm. Together, they helped me to the bed.

  I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't safe. That something was hiding just behind the periphery of my vision, lurking in the shadows, and no matter how hard I stared into the blackness of the corners, I would only see it when it jumped out at me.

  "Something was here," I said. How could I explain what I'd seen? There were no words for it.

  "I knew it," Sarah said. "It's that damned jar. I knew we disturbed something awful."

  I swung my gaze to her. In the shadows of the room, I could see that she had braided her hair and it hung over one shoulder. Gramp flicked on the light on the bedside lamp. Illumination swam across the room and I felt for the first time in all those long moments that the thing truly was gone.

  A shuddering sigh left me.

  "I have no idea what it was," I said. "But it was awful."

  Gramp ran his palm up and down my back, making soothing sounds.

  "It was a dream," he said. "That's all. Just a dream."

  I noticed that he wouldn't look at Sarah. Maybe he wanted to believe he was right. Sarah's lips were pressed tightly together. I realized she was wearing a lightweight purple giraffe onesie complete with ears. No doubt being on the run for years, she'd found it useful to have pyjamas like that. I mentally stored it away, fully planning to let her raid my bureau.

  "I'd like to think it was a dream, Gramp," I said, trying to remember if I was really awake when I caught sight of the thing or if I was still lying in bed asleep. "But it was so real."

  I was struggling to work my way through the residual longing I'd felt during the dream and the absolute terror of waking up to something in my bed. The ringing in my ears had left, but I still felt as though I was pushing my way through to calm. I felt drugged and drunk and exhausted all at once.

  I told myself to pull in slow breaths, count to ten for each one. I let my eyes play over the walls, focusing little by little. I was in my mother's room. It was almost disconcerting to realize that. A Stone Temple pilots poster peered blandly down at me from the opposite wall. Alice in Chains posters sat on either side of it. Blind melon. Prince. It didn't escape my notice that there were a lot of dead artists represented on my mother's wall. Of course, in her time, they would have been alive and thriving.

  I could hear Sarah yawn as she sat next to me. I watched as she put a delicate hand to her mouth to stifle it. Light from the bedside lamp play over her and left a shadow on the carpet.

  Gramp's finger went beneath my chin and he twisted my face to his. "What happened?"

  "I was dreaming," I said, pulling from the depths of memory the images that had soaked through my mind one by one. I realized with a start they weren't anything I wanted to describe to him. I squirmed on the bed, and noticed Sarah's eyebrow quirked almost playfully.

  "I was dreaming and then that thing appeared next to me." I could hear the point at which my voice wanted to break, and I cleared my throat. "It was real. Whatever it was, it was real."

  My body was tingling and part of me wanted to catch sight of the thing again, even though I had been repulsed by it. It was like waking to find a bug crawling on you deep in the safe confines of your bed. The panic hits. You freak out. Then you want to look closer at it to make sure that what you saw was actually as terrifying as you imagined. I looked at my bed and shuddered. I didn't want to get back in there.

  "It was awful," I murmured.

  Sarah slapped her leg. "Well, that's it. I can't stay here."

  In that moment, I felt the same way.

  Gramp sighed. "There's no reason to believe that jar and Ayla's dreams have anything to do with each other."

  He said it with a note of firmness, but I knew him well enough to realize the way he was swinging his right foot back and forth meant he didn't really believe it. I watched that bare foot with its blue veins reverse direction and then go in circles. I caught his eye from beneath my bangs.

  Sarah pushed herself to her feet and crossed her arms over her chest.

  "What if they are connected?" she said.

  He sighed. "Why would they be? I know you're spooked after your encounter with the supernatural, but that's all it was. One event. It's over."

  I looked at Sarah over his head. I wondered if she would reveal to him the true reason she was running from her family the way she had for me earlier. I thought he deserved to know, but it was her secret to tell. If she was happy letting him know she was afraid of her family, surely she would be comfortable enough to say why. After all, she had trusted him with her life when she had faced a demon of her own creation. He hadn't questioned it then, and I knew he wouldn't question now. Even so, she clamped her lips closed tight.

  Gramp stood up and looked down at me. "There's already plenty
of things on this property that make natural wardings. You're both perfectly safe here. Oak tree, yew shrubs, sacred herbs..."

  "Well obviously those aren't working," Sarah said a little too sharply. The fact that she spoke to Gramp so harshly was an indication of how normal she had felt compared to the danger she now imagined she was in.

  While I was grateful she was taking it seriously, I agreed with Gramp that the things were totally separate. After all, sheer logic ruled out any connection.

  "First of all," I said. "We don't know that your family knows you're here. We don't know that they even care."

  "Oh, they care."

  "But it's only been a few hours since we found that container," I said, protesting. "I have no idea how your family's magic works, but even if the jar and your family are connected, they can't possibly have figured out where you are already. Even if they have, they'd have to be living pretty close by to do any damage to you."

  She snorted and turned away from me like she didn't want to agree.

  Gramp pushed himself from the bed with a heavy sigh. I watched him pace back and forth across the room. He looked frail as he did so, and I realized that no matter how robust he seemed, he was still recovering from the effects of his illness.

  "I've never been visited by demons in all my years here. And I didn't bury that jar," he said. He paused long enough to cross his arms over his chest and look at me.

  "Maybe that jar was keeping them away," I suggested and he frowned at me.

  "No," he said, shaking his head stubbornly. "My house, my home is safe. It's been safe for decades."

  "Well, something was here, Gramp," I said. I dug my toe into the carpet.

  "What did it look like?" Sarah said.

  I closed my eyes as I tried to remember the thing as it hovered above me. I remembered its eyes most of all. Piercing black things that had a sort of yearning in them. Almost a compassion, but a desire as well. They were soft looking and pleading. I knew it wanted something, but I wasn't sure what.

  I blew hair out of my mouth as I tried to bring it back to my mind. "Odd. Solid, but naked. Kind of androgynous. Slim and sinewy."

  "But you were dreaming?" she said. "At some point?"

  I pushed my hands beneath my legs because they felt cold and clammy as I tried to recall it.

  "Are you telling me you don't dream?" I didn't want to have to tell her, not in front of Gramp, exactly what the nature of those dreams was. I stole a look at her as she pulled at the ear of her giraffe onesie.

  "An incubus," Sarah said, but her voice came to me from a long way off.

  I opened my eyes to see them both staring at me.

  "An incubus?" I said.

  Sarah nodded. "I've heard of them. Not pleasant. They aren't bound by the normal magics. They're pulled in via your subconscious by weaknesses, stresses and desires that are strong but abnormally suppressed. Or they are invited." She shrugged and gave me a pointed look.

  Gramp wouldn't look me in the eye. Obviously he'd heard of them as well and the prospect of it being in his house made him uncomfortable.

  "Well," I said, growing impatient. "What do they do? Are you sure that's what it is?"

  Sarah chewed at the bottom of her lip for a long moment before she answered. "Sex demon," she said shortly. "That's what they are. They drain you of your energy little by little until you're nothing but a weakened husk."

  I thought she was deliberately trying to downplay the threat by just dropping it there as though it were no more dangerous than a spilled bit of milk. She might as well have hired an orchestra to play overly dramatic music and painted a gothic backdrop. The effect was the same.

  I was dumbfounded.

  All of a sudden, it all made sense. All of those dreams. Having to fight exhaustion. It explained exactly why I hadn't seen the guy I had struck with my scooter. I was being drained. Probably night after night. Sweet heaven, I could only imagine how long it had been going on. Things were swirling into place and I didn't like where they were going.

  She must've seen the look of sheer panic on my face as I tried to work out exactly how long I've been feeling spent and tired.

  "Look on the bright side," she piped up almost too cheerily. "At least it means that pot we dug up has nothing to do with it."

  I stared at her for a long moment. I knew she was relieved that unearthing that vessel hadn't broken any seals of protection and put her at risk, and it at least explained why I was so tired, but come on. I was being visited by a lusty demon. That wasn't exactly an everyday occurrence.

  I was already running down the path of how I felt about Callum and trying to shore up the breaks in the hedges of my mind. I thought of the afternoon in the backyard and how delicious it felt to have him so close to me. I immediately pushed the thought to the back of my mind and then worried that shoving it aside was exactly the reason why I was in this predicament. I worked the sheets with my fingers, trying to labour through what the appropriate response might be that could help shut the whole thing down. I didn't want to accept that my longing for Callum had been the invitation the incubus needed to come into the house, into my room. My bedroom for heaven's sake.

  "You can't be serious," was the best response I could come up with.

  Sarah shrugged. "You're the one who says you've been visited. You tell me."

  "I might be a little stressed," I admitted.

  "If you're being pestered by an incubus," Sarah said. "Don't be worried about the stress. Don't wonder what you could've done differently. Just think about how you can kill it."

  CHAPTER 7

  Kill the thing. That was an idea. Except I had no idea how to do that. I couldn't imagine it would be as simple as not thinking about Callum anymore even if I could manage that monumental task. Those things that were running rampant through my mind while I slept weren't normal dreams and something inside of me knew that. They were far too vivid, too lingering. I mentally growled at myself for not listening to the buzzing in my ears and the gut feeling that things weren't right. Azrael had told me there were plenty of supernatural things in the town ready to take advantage of any opportunity. I had known that, and I had told myself I needed to be ready for it, but I certainly hadn't expected to be targeted by a sex demon that could infiltrate my dreams.

  I didn't even know such a thing was possible. And here I had been letting myself enjoy the few hours of connection between Callum that came between the small hours of the night. I'd been stupid. I felt used but something inside of me squirmed as I thought about trying to kill it, and not just because I was afraid of the brand that would burn itself onto my skin if I did.

  I felt sorry for it, and there was something else too. Some kind of connection. A longing I didn't understand. I licked my lips as I looked at the two of them standing there, watching me. They seemed to be expecting me to say something.

  What I did was to get up from the edge of the bed and leave the room. I made it as far at the sixth stair tread before my legs felt too weak to go on. I plopped down in the middle of the stairwell and stared at the pictures of my mom that lined the wall. Something nagged the back of my mind. My mother. Something about my mother.

  Sarah clumped down the steps to sit next to me. She held her hands between her knees and I noticed her fingers tangling one into the other.

  "An incubus doesn't give up once it has bonded with its prey," she said. "It wouldn't be here unless it wanted you. Some of them even fall in love with their humans and keep them healthy for years, but that's rare."

  My throat went tight. Secretly, there was some small part of me that felt validated by the thought that I might be lovable, but a much larger part remembered how that thing looked like it was something that might slither rather than simply move. Everything that rushed in at me as I imagined the creature was so wrapped up in the thoughts of Callum, I couldn't separate the two. It rattled me, those words. More than that, it made me angry.

  "What makes you such an expert?"

  Sarah ga
ve me a baleful stare. "Hello?" she said and pointed to her chest. "Necromancer. I know all sorts of things."

  I wanted to say that she didn't know better than to try and empower her doppelgänger, but I kept my mouth shut. She had been desperate then. And if she had been ignorant, she at least probably felt as though she'd had no choice.

  "We need to get rid of it," she said as though she thought she had to convince me. "They usually want to reproduce."

  My voice sounded small when it squeaked out. "Reproduce?" I said. "You're not saying that that thing wants me to be its baby mama?"

  She just lifted her brow.

  I splayed my legs out in front of me. I didn't like the direction this was going.

  "Things just can't be easy, can they?" I said, staring at my nails.

  "Actually they are easy," Sarah said. "Well, maybe not easy, but simple. The incubus will eventually drain you of everything you have until you're nothing but a shell. You won't eat or sleep. All you will want is that thing again."

  "And how is that simple?" I croaked out as I thought about that thing lying next to me in bed, spinning images of Callum in my mind.

  She gave me a hard look, and I knew she was studying my features and taking in the same thing I had seen in the mirror: black smudges under my eyes and sallow skin.

  "It's simple because it makes your decision easier," she said. "You have to get rid of it no matter how good it makes you feel."

  "I'm not some addict," I mumbled, and even as I uttered the words, I had a series of quick images from the past flash through my mind that might've indicated otherwise to someone looking in from the outside. I mentally pushed them away. That had been months ago. I wasn't just clean now, I was on the straight and narrow. I didn't think about one single drug of any sort even if it was nicotine.

  "And I don't want the thing," I said. "That's revolting."

  Sarah laid her hand on my arm. "Those things are insidious. Even though you are revolted by it, you will feel pulled to it as well. They're very compelling."