by A. J. Locke
Table of Contents
Acclaim for A.J. Locke
Look for these titles from A. J. Locke
Copyright Warning
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
EPILOGUE
~ About the Author ~
~ Coming Soon ~
~ Also by A. J. Locke ~
More Fantasy from Etopia Press
Acclaim for A.J. Locke
For Affairs of the Dead
“The best thing about a well paced book is that feeling that you can't put the book down, and I definitely got that feeling from reading this book. Anyone looking for something new in the urban fantasy genre should definitely check this book out…”
—Urban Fantasy Reviews
“This story is hysterical. I laughed out loud, and I don’t do that very often. I loved the sarcastic, rule bending-to-the-point-of-breaking, tough talking, softie Selene. She is my kind of heroine.”
—Books, Books, and More Books
“This was a really fun read, I love books about ghosts and the paranormal… A.J. has a great writing style that kept me glued from beginning to end.”
—Stitch, Read, Cook
“From the first page this story grips you. Selene, Micah, and Ethan are great characters. An on-the-edge-of-your-seat read that will have you impatiently waiting for book two!”
—Faerie Tale Books
“This urban fantasy is a fast-paced, fun and sexy read. There were many twists and turns that kept me hooked from beginning to end in this laugh-out-loud page turner. I look forward to reading more from A. J. Locke.”
—Who’s Reviews
“The humor and sarcasm that runs rampant throughout this novel is fantastic. Our heroine is a very likable character… The world-building was done well; not too much or too little, and it all makes sense in the end. I can’t wait for the next book in the series.”
—Sapphyria’s Book Blog
“This book really put me through the wringer. But in a good way. Locke's world building is amazing. This woman is a great storyteller.”
—Offbeat Vagabond
Look for these titles from A. J. Locke
Now Available
The Reanimation Files
Affairs of the Dead (Book One)
Requiem for the Living (Book Two)
The Ravaging In Between (Book Three)
Black Widow Witch
The Ravaging In Between
The Reanimation Files Book Three
A. J. Locke
Copyright Warning
EBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/).
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Published By
Etopia Press
1643 Warwick Ave., #124
Warwick, RI 02889
http://www.etopiapress.com
The Ravaging In Between
Copyright © 2015 by A. J. Locke
ISBN: 978-1-944138-30-1
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First Etopia Press electronic publication: December 2015
CHAPTER ONE
The Afterlife sucked.
Granted, I had just gotten here, but I would have expected some sort of fanfare to be waiting to greet me. There should be angels throwing confetti, and ghosts cheering as they welcomed me into eternity after my long, hard life. I thought there’d be some clouds, lots of light, maybe a rainbow or two arching above my head. But no, there was none of that. So far the Afterlife was gray and dull.
How disappointing.
And I mean it was literally gray. I did a slow turn so I could take in every direction. All I could see was gray beneath my feet, gray above my head, and gray on every horizon. I put my hands on my hips and blew my unruly ghost hair out of my face. This was what I got after sacrificing myself to save humanity from a madman who wanted to slaughter people so he could feed their ghosts to his creepily resurrected family? Seriously?
I wasn’t sure exactly how the Afterlife worked, despite being a necromancer. Hard to know what death was like until you were dead. But this couldn’t be all there was. I was at a loss here.
Then I thought about Micah and intense sadness washed over me. I don’t know how much time had passed; was it only minutes? Was Micah holding my dead body in his arms on the Brooklyn Bridge? Had days passed? Weeks? Was my funeral already over? My incorporeal heart ached. I missed Micah. I wished the whole mess with Renton didn’t have to culminate with my death.
I threw my hands up. Great, now I had eternity to miss Micah and lament that I had to die because of a psycho. Why couldn’t death erase all the bad stuff?
All right, time to put a positive spin on this. I couldn’t start my Afterlife in a funk. Maybe this was just the starting point and I had to get to where the good stuff was. They made it this dismal at the beginning to show you that it couldn’t get any worse. That way you’d really appreciate your slice of paradise, or maybe the Afterlife was more like communal, eternal fun. I’d take anything over this. I started walking and hoped my theory would be correct.
After walking for a while, the silence was broken by a stomping sound in the distance. A low vibration thrummed through the ground. Was this it? Hordes of angels were coming to greet me and they were running because they were late? But the closer the sound got, the more it reminded me of horses’ hooves. When I turned in the direction of the galloping, I saw glowing, red eyes coming at me.
If I had a beating heart, it would have seized up when I saw what looked like a hulking, jet-black horse. The only color was those red fire pits it had for eyes. Its body, which I could tell was equine, was surrounded by roiling waves of darkness. It was as though shadows had wrapped around it and were in constant motion. It looked twice as large as any horse I had ever seen, and even though I was a ghost, I didn’t want to get trampled. I moved out of the way, but the ghost didn’t seem as though i
t saw me. When it had run past me a few feet it stopped, reared up and neighed, which was a beastly and horrifying sound, then dropped down and continued running. I was left staring after it with my mouth hanging open.
What the hell was that? A ghost horse? I’d heard of hellhounds in stories about the Afterlife that were meant to be scary. Were they real? Were there hell-horses too? How about hell-squirrels and hell-narwhals? I almost laughed, but was still a bit shaken by that encounter.
I guess I wasn’t alone. Now I wondered what else might be out there. I continued to walk.
There was no way for me to keep track of how much time passed, but it felt like I’d been walking for at least an hour. The world around me changed as I moved, but not in a good way. I didn’t think it could become any more dismal, but the darkness became darker, the ground below me more uneven, and the temperature went from tolerable to humid and swampy. Was I walking the wrong way? They should really put directional signs in this place. My positive spin was threatening to come to a screeching halt.
Then the ground started to shake and I wondered if a hundred of those creepy ghost horses were running this way now. If so, there would be no way for me to avoid getting trampled. I was already dead, but that didn’t mean I wanted to find out what getting trampled by ghost horses was like.
Smoke started to spew up from the ground, and the rumbling and shaking was joined by shrieks, snarls, and guttural cries. I recognized the sound of ghost monsters. Now I was truly scared. No one knew what happened to ghost monsters after they were vanquished from the human world. My hope had been that they regained their human form and found peace on the other side. However, judging from the sounds that were currently shaking the ghostly bones inside my ghostly body…that was not the case.
Hearing them but not seeing them was nerve-wracking. Amid the quaking and smoke spewing, I realized that there were giant craters in the ground. If I had kept walking, I would have fallen into one. Deep within those craters was where the howls and screeches were coming from.
Black pits full of ghost monsters. I was definitely in hell.
I turned around. If I walked in a straight line back the way I came I’d at least avoid falling into a crater.
The quaking was not making it easy to walk—or stay in a straight line—but I tried my best and prayed I did not fall over the edge of something I would never be able to crawl out of.
Then I imagined that a ghost monster might jump out of one of those craters. A ghost monster popping out and chasing me around forever. Was that really what I got for sacrificing myself to save everyone else from…
Renton. The ghost of Renton Morse stood several feet away. In all my stumbling around, trying to keep my feet under me and avoid those craters, I had not seen him appear. But here he was. With the bleak, smoke spewing world, and ghost monsters shaking the ground below, this entire scenario had all the makings of the worse comprehensible nightmare. But there was no waking up from this.
“I knew I would find you,” Renton said. He had his arms clasped behind his back and his expression did not look any saner than it did when we were alive and I saw his true colors. “You killed us, Selene.” He cocked his head to the side as though he was dissecting that thought. A slow smile curled his lips. “You actually killed us. You took me away from my family. And you left Micah. Now, isn’t that something.”
“You are a psychotic, murderous son of a bitch.” I was not going to cower in fear of Renton. We were on even ground now, both ghosts, both on the other side. There were ghost monsters around, but at least he did not control them.
Renton chuckled. “It is sad how unenlightened you are, Selene. How basic your understanding of the world is. You have robbed the world of me, and now it will suffer. And you robbed my family of me, and you will suffer.”
The smile was gone and his look was all sinister madness now. I held my ground.
“I hate you more than I thought I could hate someone, for all the horrible things you’ve done. The mindless killings just to further your own unethical agenda with your poor family were horrifying. But the sad thing is that you did not even start off this way. The war and loss of your family broke you and you could never be wholly fixed. You were a brilliant man, Renton, but you were also a broken man, and that is what led to your downfall.”
“My family…you cost me my family…” Renton edged closer and I readied myself. We could fight, but how would this end? We couldn’t die again.
Run. I’d have to kick his ass and run. Eternal dodge and weave with Renton Morse. Hell just kept throwing the good times at me.
Renton let out a ragged cry and lunged at me. I braced myself, and when he threw himself on me, I used momentum plus his body weight to fall back and send him flying over my head. He had an ungracious landing on the shaking ground, but was soon up. He punched me in the jaw, and what do you know, I could feel pain. I swept his legs out from under him as I fell. I recovered first and jumped on him, slamming his head onto the ground several times before I leaped off and ran.
Running was difficult and I didn’t get far before Renton’s nails were digging into my back and he body-slammed me back down. This time my head took a hit and I lay there stunned. Renton straddled me, and had his hands around my throat before I could regain myself and move out of the way. His hands were crushing, his face twisted into a maniacal snarl. I felt the sensation of suffocating, and it was horrible. Being suffocated but unable to die was a far worse fate than death.
I couldn’t find the strength to get Renton off me. No matter how much I thrashed his hold did not ease, and the more he choked the non-life out of me, the weaker I started to feel.
“I will make eternity miserable for you,” he snarled. “I will torture you endlessly. You will spend every moment of your Afterlife in agony. Maybe then you will understand the pain I feel because of what you’ve done.”
I was barely coherent enough to feel the terror I should feel at those words. This could not be how things played out for me, but I could not get him off.
But someone else did. I was not aware of a third party, but someone was suddenly there, Renton was flung off me, and I was staring up at a face I had never seen before. He helped me up, then without saying anything, turned around to face Renton.
“She’s mine! She’s mine! She destroyed my life so now I will destroy her!” Renton had eyes only for me, but the newcomer did not give him the opportunity to reach me. He unleashed a furious attack on Renton.
He punched Renton in the gut, which doubled him over, then slammed his head to the ground. He dragged Renton up and was rewarded with a hit across the face from Renton’s wild swings. Renton tried his choke hold again, but the new guy avoided it and slammed his elbow into Renton’s temple. One thing was for sure, this guy was a lot better at fighting than Renton was. Hell, he was better than me.
The pain in my body eased as I stood there watching them fight. I guess pain was only temporary here, which was why no amount of head slams was taking Renton down for good. I wanted to help, but what could I do? Help him keep slamming Renton to the ground for eternity? He’d deserve it, but that’s not exactly how I wanted to spend my Afterlife. So I just stood there watching this stranger take blows that were intended for me as he grappled with an insane ghost.
The new guy seemed as though he’d reached his limit with Renton. Maybe he thought beating him up a bit would cause him to submit, but if we’d had a moment to chat, I would have told him Renton would do no such thing. So after he swept his feet from under him for about the hundredth time, he picked Renton up and held him in a chokehold. Then he started to drag him backward.
The fight with Renton had brought us too close for comfort to one of the craters. The beastly howls from the ghost monsters deep within it were terrifying, and I didn’t even think I could get more scared at this point. I watched with wide eyes as my rescuer dragged Renton to the edge of the crater. I knew what was coming.
“My family…” Renton’s expression was
no longer bloodthirsty and his words were pathetically sad. His eyes were locked on mine, pleading for something I could not give.
Renton released a ragged sob and his eyes never left mine as the stranger lifted him over his head and flung him into the crater.
CHAPTER TWO
I stood there stunned. I knew what had been coming, but actually seeing it left me feeling…I don’t even know. Relief was one, for sure. It was good to know that I would not be spending forever as Renton’s torture victim. His screams as he fell had rung out above the ghost monsters, and when I could no longer hear him, the ghost monsters seemed to have become even more frenzied.
“I hate doing that.” My rescuer was still standing by the crater, and his voice was low. He turned around and faced me. He was maybe a few years older than me, had hair on the long side that was pulled back into a loose ponytail, and a few days’ worth of facial hair that had been his look when he died. I pegged him as Japanese. All in all, he was a good-looking Good Samaritan. His dark eyes were very scrutinizing as he took me in, as were mine as I looked him over. He wore loose pants tucked into boots, and a fitted, tunic-like shirt. I couldn’t quite place what era he was from by his outfit. History was not my strong suit, but if I had to guess I’d say he’d died several decades ago.
