Page 72 of The Ghost and the Graveyard (Knight Games 1)
Did he assume I couldn't see his fangs or just believe I'd be too frightened to run? I shuffled away from his hand and turned to bolt. My face smacked into someone.
"Oh, excuse me," I said automatically, then looked at what I'd hit.
Rotting flesh, swimming milky eyeballs, decomposing clothes, and a smell that I only recognized from my time working in the morgue. I was face to face with the walking dead.
I screamed, dodging left. The zombie's sluggish grasp brushed the top of my hair. Laughing, the vampire stepped toward me, slowly, deliberately. The silver animal rushed from the bushes, pursuing me with flashing claws and teeth. At the competition for my flesh, the vamp hissed and swiped the creature aside. I used the distraction to scurry down the pebble pathway, but the gate was too far off. I'd never outrun them. Worse, dark figures rose from the tombstones ahead, turning dead eyes in my direction. My heart fluttered in panic. Ice water filled my veins.
"Rick!" I screamed. "Riiiiick! I believe you. I believe you!"
Above me, an eerie wind blew my hair forward. Wump-wump-wump. The sound of beating wings closed in. I wrestled my hair back from my eyes, while my feet continued their forward pursuit, and turned my face to the sky. A monstrous, leathery wing passed over me.
Shit! Things in here could fly? I waved my hands above my head as if I could shoo the flying beast away and wailed loud enough to wake any dead who weren't already chasing me.
Crack. My right heel snapped off my boot, sending me flying. Ass over teacup, I somersaulted down the pebble path. I landed on my back with a clear view of the source of the flapping. Like nothing I'd ever seen before, the thing had fur and scales, with a barbed tail. The beast descended from above and landed on the path. Dragon-like, the huge creature flapped its leathery wings between Monk's Chapel and me.
The giant, silver opossum-thing pounced, ducking around the dragon-beast in pursuit of my fallen body. I covered my head with my arms. The strike never came. Instead, an eerie shriek filled the night. I lowered my arms to see the dragon scoop the silver beast into its reptilian jaws and swallow it whole. Sobbing, I crab-walked toward the gate. A dead hand landed on my shoulder. Zombie!. Before I could scream, the dragon's jaws clamped around the zombie's body. Black blood sprayed across my torso.
I scrambled to my feet, desperate not to be the dragon's next victim. I wasn't fast enough.
Talons closed around my torso. I pounded on the paws and yanked on the fur to no avail. The monster took to the sky, me screaming beneath it. Where was it taking me? Would I become a meal for some baby dragon creature?
Ugg. I wished more than anything that I could just pass out, that the fear would kill me before this creature or its offspring ripped me apart. But before I could process what was happening, it dropped me on the grass in front of Rick's cottage and landed on the road a few feet away.
When I realized sharp teeth weren't impaling me, I stopped screaming and pushed myself up in the grass. Dots of black blood speckled my arms and the front of my dress, but I was otherwise unharmed.
The monster sniffed me from the road. Close up, the face was more like a dog's than a dragon's, with glossy black eyes, a leathery snout, and tufts of black hair sprouting from the tops of its ears. More hair grew between its scales, which ran from the jowls all the way back to the tip of the beast's barbed tail. It plopped down on the pavement. I scrambled backward toward Rick's porch.
With a flap of its leather wings, the beast's skin started to bubble, its blood boiling under the surface. The thing folded in on itself, the head tucking into the middle and the tail wrapping around the body. Under the skin, bones cracked and organs rearranged. To my amazement, when this process was done, what was left looked exactly like a naked man bent at the waist.
When the man stood up, everything I knew about the world crumbled to dust. From his black, wavy hair to the sickle-shaped scar on his chest, there was no denying who it was.
"Rick, oh my God! Oh my God," I yelled. "What the hell are you?" I struggled to my feet, limping on my broken heel.
"I told you, Grateful. I am your caretaker. If you would step inside, I will explain further. I realize this may come as somewhat of a shock." He positioned himself between my house and me.
"You kissed me. You touched me. We did...things together! You're not human, are you?" I was near panic again. My heart was threatening to explode out of my chest.
"No. I am immortal and you, mi cielo, are eternal."
Rick tried to take a step toward me. I jumped in the opposite direction. "Don't touch me. Don't ever touch me."
He halted his pursuit, but I could see the hurt in his eyes, the absolute pain. I didn't care. He'd led me to believe he was human. Why hadn't he told me this on day one? Why the long talk at my place? The picnic? I thought about his hands on me, his lips, the feel of him in my mouth. I'd done those things with a shape-shifter, a monster.
I limped across the bridge toward my house, moving around him in a wide arc. I wished I could wake up from all of this, to open my eyes and know that I lived in a world without ghosts or zombies. My head hurt. My brain couldn't process everything I'd just learned. One thought kept irking me above all the others; Michelle was right.
Like every other man in my life, Rick had turned out to be a total nightmare.
My Ghost Comforts Me
I stumbled through the front door of my house and locked it behind me. Not that a deadbolt could stop anything I'd seen tonight. Or could it? I didn't know the rules of the game I was playing. Obviously, the unholy couldn't get through the gate, but was that because of the lock or because of Rick's magic?
"They can't come in uninvited," Logan said from the stairs.
I turned toward him, shaking so forcefully it was hard to form words. "Wha-What?"
"Prudence says in your last life you put a spell around this place. Nothing preternatural can come in without an invitation."
I hugged myself. "But what about you?"
