Page 22 of Slaughter
My head pounded like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my skull, and my mouth tasted like I had been chewing on leather. The sun was already high, too high, and the light stabbed through my eyelids like knives. I groaned and rolled onto my side, my hand brushing against something cold and smooth.
Glass.
I cracked one eye open and found myself staring at an empty bottle of Hell’s Inferno whiskey lying in the grass beside me. The label was peeling. The glass was smudged with dirt and fingerprints. My fingerprints. I sat up slowly, every muscle in my body protesting the movement. My clothes were damp with dew, my jeans stiff and uncomfortable. I was shirtless and barefoot.
Where the hell am I?I blinked, trying to focus through the fog in my head. Trees. Open field. A pond—still and glassy in the morning light, reflecting the sky like a mirror.
The Owens-Miller Farm. Shadow’s place. I’d been staying here for... how long? Two weeks? Three? Time had blurred into a haze of sleepless nights and whiskey-soaked days, the walls of that guest room closing in tighter and tighter until I couldn’t breathe.
But how the hell did I end up out here?
I pushed myself to my feet, swaying slightly as the world tilted and spun. My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat, and I had to close my eyes for a moment to keep from throwingup. Then I smelled it. Jasmine. Sweet and floral and achingly familiar.
Julie.
My eyes snapped open as I turned in a slow circle and scanned the field, the trees, the pond. My heart was pounding now, a frantic rhythm that had nothing to do with the hangover and everything to do with the scent that clung to the air around me. She had been here.
I knew it. I couldfeelit.
“Julie?” My voice came out rough and broken, barely more than a whisper. “Julie, baby, where are you?”
Nothing. Just the wind rustling through the grass and the distant call of a crow. But she had been here. I knew she had. I could smell her everywhere. On my skin, in my hair, in the air I was breathing. It was her shampoo, her lotion, the perfume she used to wear on special occasions. I stumbled forward, my bare feet sinking into the soft earth as I moved toward the pond. Maybe she was there. Maybe she was waiting for me, just out of sight, just beyond the trees.
“Julie!” I called louder this time, desperation creeping into my voice. “Julie, please. I know you’re here. I can smell you. I canfeelyou.” But the pond was empty. The field was empty. There was nothing but grass and sky and the mocking silence of a world that had taken her from me.
I stood there for a long moment, my chest heaving, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. My mind was racing, trying to piece together fragments of memory that didn’t quite fit. I remembered leaving the house. I remembered the whiskey burning down my throat, the stars overhead, the way the moonlight had turned the pond into liquid silver. And I rememberedher.
Julie.
She had come to me. I was sure of it. She had appeared out of the darkness like an angel, her hair loose around her shoulders, her skin glowing in the moonlight. She had let me hold her, touch her, kiss her. She had given herself to me the way she always had—willingly, completely, without reservation.
It had been real. Ithadto be real.
But now she was gone, and I was standing here alone with nothing but an empty whiskey bottle and the lingering scent of jasmine to prove she had ever been here at all. I turned and started walking, my feet carrying me back toward the house without conscious thought. I needed to find her. I needed to understand what had happened, why she had left, and where she had gone.
I stumbled past the greenhouse, barely registering the rows of plants visible through the glass walls. My focus was singular, desperate.
“Julie!” I called again, my voice cracking. “Julie, please!”
“Slaughter.”
I spun around, my heart leaping into my throat. Shadow stood a few feet away, his expression carefully neutral. He was dressed in jeans and a plain black T-shirt, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked like he had been up for hours. Calm, collected, completely at ease.
“Where is she?” I demanded, taking a step toward him. “Where’s Julie? I know she was here. I can smell her. I can—”
“Brother.” Shadow’s voice was gentle but firm. “Julie’s not here.”
“Bullshit.” The word came out harsh and angry. “I know what I felt. I know what I smelled. She washere, Shadow. She came to me last night. She—”
“You were drunk,” Shadow said quietly. “You’ve been drinking every night since you got here. Last night you took abottle of Hell’s Inferno and walked out to the pond. I found you passed out this morning and left you to sleep it off.”
I shook my head, refusing to accept it. “No. No, she was real. I held her. I touched her. I—”
I stopped, the words dying in my throat. I had made love to her. The memory was hazy, fragmented, but it was there. The feel of her skin beneath my hands, the taste of her lips, the way she’d gasped my name as I moved inside her. It had been real. It had to be real. “The jasmine,” I said desperately, grasping at anything that might prove I wasn’t losing my mind. “I can smell jasmine everywhere. That was Julie’s scent. She always smelled of jasmine.”
Shadow sighed, and for the first time, I saw something like pity in his eyes.
“My sisters run a homeopathic business,” he said gently. “They make soaps, lotions, oils—all natural stuff. Jasmine’s one of their most popular scents. It’s all over this farm, brother. In the greenhouse, in the house, in the fields. You’re smelling their products, not Julie.”
