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“Getbackinside. Don’t you dare come out until sunrise.” Leon pushed off the tree, his golden eyes bright even in the dark. “Cinnamon, rosemary, and sage if you have it. Burn it outside your door. Keep your windows covered and your lights on – they hate the light. Don’t make yourself an easy target.”
I nodded rapidly. With my cat clutched tightly in one arm and my bat in the other hand, I sprinted back for the house. I rummaged through my spice cabinet, tossing jars of herbs across my countertop until I managed to find rosemary and powdered cinnamon. With shaking hands, I poured them both into a stone mortar, and used my lighter to burn them. They smoldered, but wouldn’t hold a flame. It would have to be enough. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
I put the jar of burnt herbs outside my front door. I covered every window, I turned on every light. I took the largest knife from the block in the kitchen and sat on the couch, heart pounding, trying to catch my breath as Cheesecake stared nervously at the door.
Eventually, I heard the crickets start up their song again. The tightness seemed to go out of the air, whatever pressure had been squeezing my lungs was gone. Cheesecake curled up on the couch beside me and began to groom, pulling twigs from his fur.I was light-headed with exhaustion and sick with worry, but if Cheesecake didn’t sense danger anymore, then I assumed Leon must have chased the monsters off at last.
This was all too dangerously real. All these years of seeking the paranormal, and suddenly I was in the thick of it. Suddenly there were demons, monsters, and magical books, andIwas witnessing it.
Not just witnessing it, I was getting intimate with it.
Closing my eyes, I could feel Leon’s tongue on me again. It was so wrong that it felt right. I’d fucked an inhuman being, amonster. I’d looked at him with his claws and sharp teeth, I’d seen the blood smeared across his body, and I’d wanted him. I’dbeggedhim for it.
As I curled up on the couch, my knife close at hand, I kept hoping I’d hear Leon call my name outside. He was an asshole, but I felt safer with him near me. Even though he’d told me protection came at a price, he’d already protected me, for nothing.He’d even protected my pet. I had a hard time believing someone willing to risk injury to save an animal could be evil.
But I couldn’t accept his bargain. Stories throughout history warned of the dangers of giving in to a demon’s temptation, and selling my soul for protection would surely come with a catastrophic price. I may have fucked up my integrity as a paranormal investigator, but at least I knew better than to sell my soul.
How much of what Leon had told me was I supposed to believe? He claimed there were Gods, he claimed Kent Hadleigh was a magician leading some kind of human sacrifice cult. Magic, murder, and monsters – all this, hidden in quiet, charming Abelaum?
The Abelaum of my childhood had felt like a fairy kingdom. But the Abelaum I’d returned to felt like the fairy kingdom had been taken over by Maleficent, filling it with thorns and darkness.
I lay down on the couch, hugging a pillow for comfort. I doubted I would get much sleep, but my eyes were aching and my body felt heavy. I had to try to rest. Whatever nightmares I had couldn’t get any weirder than reality.
I woke up late.
I jolted up from the couch, my heart pounding as memories of the previous night returned. Leon, the monsters, Cheesecake, the grimoire—I rubbed a hand over my face, dreading that I had to try to make it through classes that day.
I had to get a shower; my legs were sticky, my panties abandoned somewhere back in the cemetery. I realized how achingly sore I was as I washed. I had hickeys across my throat and shoulders, even my thighs. Then there were the scratches, the little cuts from his claws. They were tender under my fingers, but I couldn’t stop touching them. The memories of his cock throbbing inside me as he came got me so distracted that by the time I got out of the shower, there was no way I wasn’t going to be late to my first class.
Luckily, Cheesecake seemed no worse off from his ordeal. He rubbed around my feet, mewling hungrily until I put some kibble in his bowl.
“No crisis of reality for you, huh?” I said, pouring my coffee into a to-go mug. “No surprise to you at all that the woods are infested with monsters?”
I finally took Leon’s advice that day and drove to campus. Finding and then paying for parking made me even later, and I got a glare and shake of the head from my professor when I crept into my first class. I set my laptop to record the lecture, because there was no way I was going to absorb any of the information. I was too distracted trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the woods were swarming with monsters, I’d been offered a bargain with a demon, and supposedly that old legend about the God in the mine was real.
Itwasn’treal, of course. Leon was obviously lying to try to scare me into giving him my soul. The Hadleighs weren’t some creepy cult family, there was no underground God. But the monsters were real, I couldn’t deny that. I had to figure out a way to deal with them.
I’d brought my camera’s memory card with all the footage from St. Thaddeus. Instead of joining up with Inaya and Victoria for lunch, I grabbed a sandwich from the cafeteria and headed to the library. The murmur of students speaking in hushed voices, the soft sounds of turning pages and scratching pens eased a little of my anxiety. Libraries somehow always managed to feel safe.
Long wooden tables were set up between the rows of bookshelves on the first floor, but I needed somewhere more private. The study rooms on the third floor would be perfect, so I took the elevator up.I found a space in a far corner, with some plush chairs and a table set up between two large windows looking out on the quad. I put on my headphones, waiting as my footage loaded in. I had several hours from the whole adventure, plenty for a two-part video series.
No one would believe what I’d recorded. It would be entertaining, sure, and the ad revenue might be nice, but things had gotten a hell of a lot more serious. I wasn’t very interested in making the latest viral video anymore.
I was going to upload the footage, but it would be a cry for help. Monsters were stalking me and my best defense was a baseball bat. Surely, someone out there knew more about this than I did. Maybe, if I could get this footage in front of enough eyes, someone would reach out.
Watching it back, even having been there to witness it in person, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The smoke around the summoning circle, the congealing blood—then everything cut off in static once Leon appeared. But I had the footage of him on my phone, which I could use to fill in the blanks. I’d have to try to get a recording of one of the monster, the Eld; if I set up some cameras on the porch, I could record them if they came in the yard again.
I began to edit, lost in my music, until I noticed a subtle pressure on the back of my neck growing harder...thentighter…
I whipped off my headphones, resisting the urge to leap up from my seat as I looked over my shoulder. Leon was there, leaning against the back of my chair, his head bobbing slightly to the beat of the music playing from his earbuds. It seemed way too casually human for a demon to be listening to music on Bluetooth, and he wasn’t even bothering to hide his monstrous looks. His sharp claws tapped on my chair, and his golden eyes met mine as he gave me a wicked grin.
“Trying to make us go viral, doll? I’d advise against that.”
I snapped my laptop shut. “Why? Scared of your secret getting out? Afraid the church will come after you?”
He chuckled, tugging out an earbud and shoving it into the pocket of his gray sweatpants. Wearing those was justmean: his dick-print in them was obscene. He flopped down in the chair across from me, legs spread, his smile widening as I did my best to maintain direct eye contact.
Don’t look down, Rae. Don’t you dare look at that thick hunk of meat thatstillhas your pussy throbbing.
