Page 42 of Grave Devil
Oh, fuck. No. I shake my head, desperate to get away from him. “This is another one of your tricks. No. I don’t believe you.”
He caresses my lips with his, hot and tingling. “No tricks. Ask him about the river… Ask him about… la hombre del agua.”
My stomach drops into my ass.How the fuck am I going to explain this to Bones? To Lettie?
They won’t believe me. How could anyone? Becausethis… is not their brother. Not anymore. No. It can’t be.
The vines retract, and I fall to the ground. When I look up, he’s gone. And I’m alone with soaked panties in the middle of the forest. What the actual fuck?
Sonny Crane is alive. And he’s the Skelker.My Skelker.
Fuck.
If I thought walking home was going to be a challenge before, I failed to consider what it would be like trying to do it with wet panties, a pounding headache, and a gash in my neck. In fact, if it weren’t for those three things, I’d question if any of tonight actually happened. Luckily for me, Aries’s house is closer than Harker Mansion. So I quickly cross the path by the pines and beeline it straight for his place.
The porch light is on, but the house is dark. I trot up the cobblestone path to his front door and punch in the security code as fast as I can. The shadows lurk on the edges of his property like bad omens. Every hair on my body is raised. There isn’t much that scares me, buthedoes. And all the ways I’m bound to him. Sonny fucking Crane. Fuck.
I fumble with the code in my exhaustion. “Come the fuck on,” I grumble.
When the door finally unlocks for me, I rush in and lock it back up faster than I can take my next breath.Which I realize is pointless because the Skelker can’t be stopped with doors or walls.He can get to me whenever he wants.
I push another sequence of buttons on Aries’s control pad and breathe a sigh of relief when all the lights in the house come on. It’s a comfort, despite the fact that it’s just an illusion of safety. I stomp over to his bar and pour myself a double shot of top-shelf whiskey.
My hands tremble around the crystal glass as I down it in one sip. At this point, the tequila buzz is completely gone, and now I just need something to make my teeth stop chattering.
I wipe a dribble of it off my lips with the back of my hand and wince. The movement tweaks my shoulder in just the right way that it pulls at my torn flesh, reminding me that he fucking bit me.And I liked it. Ugh. What is wrong with me?
“For fuck’s sake, get your shit together, Mia,” I mutter to myself.
I pour another double shot of the peppery liquor and head upstairs.
It’s late, and I’m exhausted. I’d love a hot shower, but I can’t be on my feet any longer. I should probably have my bite marks looked at too. But all I want is to crawl into Aries’s king-size bed and fall asleep inside his six-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
Before I drift off, I type out a text message to Bones.I’m sorry. Come find me, first thing in the morning.But I don’t send it. Nothing sounds right. How do I tell the man I love that his dead brother is not dead but actually a fucking monster?
I erase the text and reach inside Aries’s top drawer. Relief floods me when I find what I’m looking for. I sit up and eye the bright-lavender vial. Nightshade. I know I told them that I’d take it easy on the poison, but this is the only way I’m going to get any sleep tonight. It’s the only way to keep Sonny Crane out of my fucking head.
I down the whole vial for good measure and sink back against the thick pillows. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission anyway. My eyelids flutter as the toxin races through my bloodstream. “Sorry,Bones,” I murmur before my world goes black.
ARIES
“Everything okay?”
Bones furrows his brow before setting his phone down. “Yeah, just Lettie texting me. She’s hanging out with Mia at Duff’s. Girls’ night or something.”
“I’ll send a text to Duff and let him know to keep an eye on them.”
“Already done,” he grumbles.
“So what’s your fucking problem, then?” He’s been giving me the stank eye ever since I got to the garage.
He glares back at me. “You kept it from me. Mia and the poison. We don’t have secrets between us, Ries. Not since we were kids. And you remember how that ended up.”
I shift against the leather cushions, annoyed by his tone. “Like you tell me everything that happens between you and Mia?”
He stalks toward me, towering over me in a white muscle tank that shows off every ripple of his chiseled physique. “I do if it affects her safety. For fuck’s sake, Ries, she’s built up a stronger immunity to poison than me. And I grew up with it. She’s had access to it for less than a year. You didn’t think for one second that something was going on with her?”
I stand up abruptly, forcing him to take a giant step back. I’m so fucking sick of everyone expecting me to be perfect. I’m not the prodigal son or the hero or the loving boyfriend. No. I’m a fucking asshole with a hankering for corpses. “I have my own shit to deal with, Bones. Mia is a grown woman. It’s not any of our jobs to babysit her.”
