Dead by Morning (Rituals of the Night Book One)

  “It’s the bullet wound I got from the dreams. You’re not the only one with marks.”

  “That could’ve killed you!” She gasped, raising a hand to cover her mouth.

  Max nodded as he let go of his shirt. “Yeah, it could’ve. Today, I want to talk to Violet about these dreams too. She was in them, after all. It’s possible she could’ve had one of the dreams but refuses to tell us about it for some reason.”

  She stared at him, full of doubt as she remembered Violet’s prickly attitude on the subject. “But she doesn’t think they’re something that needs to be taken seriously,” Luna pointed out, wishing they could proceed without her. “She listened to me the other day, but that might only be because Chance was with me, and she didn’t wanna leave me alone.”

  “Wait. Chance was with you?” Max asked, scrunching up his face in disbelief. “Why?”

  “He followed me, like usual,” she said, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “Violet will not be happy if we bring these dreams up to her again…especially at her own house.”

  “Too bad for her, I need to talk to her. Somehow, she’s as tied into this whole thing as we are. Even if she doesn’t believe so.”

  “What do you want me to do about it? I’ve tried, and she won’t listen.”

  “True, but you know where she lives,” Max reminded her as he propped his chin on his hand, leaning against the table.

  Luna frowned again. “What if she doesn’t want to talk to us?”

  “We have to try.”

  Max was so confident, so full of knowledge about something many people would call ridiculous. She wondered how he had gotten to the point where he knew so much.

  Had something like this happened to him before?

  ***

  CHANCE PULLED THE ribbon out of Susan’s hair. The blood-stained white lace had held her hair out of the way as he worked, but now it flowed everywhere. He tucked the ribbon away into his pocket and laid Susan’s head down gently into the dirt. About an hour ago, after he finished carving the symbols into her skin—and properly completed his ritual, as he hadn’t done with Kate—he had cut her throat and let her die. He had picked through his truck for an idea of what to do with her body, but he couldn’t seem to find anything.

  He sighed as he stared at her, ruffling his curtained blond hair with his hand. Halfway through, he had slipped out of that mind, which made things hard on him. He had still been carving her skin, and Susan had cried herself hoarse when he felt himself returning to his usual mind. Not long after that, he had decided to kill her so he wouldn’t have to listen to her pained cries anymore.

  Moving her would only end up drenching him in her blood. In that mind, he always knew what do, and it required little thought. He frowned and got up to go to his truck again, trying to find anything that could help.

  He rummaged through his back seat and found an old duffle bag. He pulled it out and dusted it off. Opening it up, he tried to gauge its size. It wouldn’t be a permanent solution, but it was all he could find. With the sun up, successfully getting rid of a body proved much more difficult. He’d have to wait until nightfall, and until then, he’d keep her well-hidden.

  With the bag tucked in his hand, he went back over to Susan. He picked up her tiny body as carefully as he could manage. He bent her arms and small torso and dropped her into the bag—a tight squeeze, but when he pulled the zipper, it closed. He picked it up by the handle, the bag heavier than he thought.

  He lugged it over to his truck and set it in the back seat, confident that since he had waited for the blood to dry, it wouldn’t leak through the bag. He wiped his hands off on his shirt and climbed into the front seat of his Honda Ridgeline. With Susan taken care of, he’d fix the Violet problem next.

  He drove the twenty minutes to her house and parked a few doors down. He looked in the back seat to make sure the duffle bag remained out of sight from anyone walking by and climbed out. He walked over to Violet’s house and pounded on the door roughly with the side of his fist. Violet opened it, and he could see her surprise. She made a move to close the door in his face, but Chance put his boot in the way.

  She gulped but watched as he came inside her house.

  “What are you doing here?” she questioned, her lip turning into a snarl as she spat clipped words at him. “You aren’t welcome.”

  “That’s too bad, because I got a little message to pass on.”

  She shut the door behind him and glanced into the other room.

  “Uh, Brian. Can you go to your room for a while?” she called to her brother.

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Brian! You’ll do as you’re told!” Violet scolded, raising her voice. Chance could hear the sound of retreating footsteps as her brother decided to listen to her.

  Smart kid.

  “What do you have to tell me?” Violet grumbled, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Not tell you, but show you,” he said, pulling out his trusty dagger. He ran his finger along the blade gently.

  Violet stood her ground. “I’m not scared of you.”

  He turned the point to her and held it to her throat. “You should be, because I’m your worst nightmare.”

  “More like Luna’s worst nightmare. I saw what you did to her in the school’s bathroom.”

  Chance growled, instinctively pulling back his arm to stab her when he stopped himself; it wasn’t going the way he had hoped, but he couldn’t resort to that…yet. “Do you know how much it hurts to die?”

  Violet’s confidence visibly died down a bit. “No.”

  “Let me give you a taste,” he said and grasped her chunky arm. In a flash, he pulled the blade across the skin, opening a deep gash which instantly began to bleed.

  “Ow!” Violet exclaimed, pulling her arm back. She clutched her hand over the wound, but her blood seeped around it.

  “Imagine that on your throat,” Chance threatened, holding the sharpened end of the knife to her again.

  “Okay, I’ll listen,” Violet whispered. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to back away from Luna.”

  “But she’s my best friend.”

  “I don’t care. This means that when she comes to you, be as distant as possible. Remember that next time or I won’t be cutting your arm.”

  It would be selfish of her to abandon Luna when she needed a friend more than ever, but her life was at stake if she didn’t listen.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” she muttered, able to keep emotions off her face and out of her voice.

  “Good,” he said, smiling at her.

  ***

  LUNA AND MAX approached Violet’s house.

  “There it is,” Luna said as she and Max stood on the lawn outside of the simple brick house.

  He took a deep breath and glanced at her. “Okay, now comes the difficult part.”

  Luna nodded and felt a tear drop from her eye. Max scrunched his face as he looked at her, but he didn’t say anything; he turned back toward Violet’s house and led the way up the steps.

  ***

  CHANCE’S EYES WIDENED as a knock came at the door. He crept over to the window beside it and parted the curtain a bit to peek outside. Luna stood beside a large boy on the porch.

  “Who is it?” Violet asked, peering over his shoulder.

  “Luna and some kid,” he said. “Go out there and see what they want.”

  Violet swallowed nervously but didn’t move for a minute.

  “I’ll stay out of sight behind the door. If you slip, I’ll hear you. Stay distant”—he pulled a white cloth out of his pocket—“and wipe up your wound.”

  Violet’s heart fluttered as she grabbed the cloth. She patted away the blood before she passed him to answer the door. She tossed the cloth back to him and stepped out of the house, closing the door behind her.

  “Luna and Max, this is a surprise,” she greeted, looking at them through wide eyes.

  She could feel Chance’s eyes burning two holes in the
back of her head.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “WE NEED TO talk to you,” Luna said, unsure of what to say. How in the world could they possibly get her to listen?

  “Another prophetic dream?” Violet retorted and looked away from them, crossing her arms to cover the ugly wound on her arm.

  “That’s only part of the story,” Max added.

  “Yeah,” Luna piped up. “Max has a lot to say. We really need to talk to you about DreamWorld.”

  “DreamWorld?” Violet echoed, her face tightening. “Sounds like someone’s invested too much time watching Nightmare on Elm Street. Hope you didn’t stay up too late to come up with that.”

  Max glanced at her, and Luna caught the agitated gleam in his eyes. He hated Violet’s attitude as much as she did. “Would you shut up for one minute so that I can explain?”

  Violet glared at him but for once said nothing.

  “DreamWorld is in another dimension, parallel to ours. When we sleep, our spirits leave our bodies and go there and act out fantasies—whatever isn’t possible for them to do in reality. Sometimes, the spirit never returns from that realm…and that person dies in their sleep,” Max explained.

  Luna bit her lip at the last of Max’s description. He knew as well as she did Violet’s own mother had died in her sleep. Luna glanced at Violet, surprised to see the puzzled, gloomy look that shadowed her face.

  “It…it makes sense,” Violet muttered finally in a voice so quiet she and Max almost hadn’t heard her say it.

  Luna stared at her in disbelief. Did she finally believe?

  “Did you have the dream that we did?” she asked, tapping her foot as she eyed her friend.

  Violet stuck her tongue in her cheek, her gaze focused on something in the distance before she finally replied. “No, I didn’t.”

  “That’s impossible,” Max said, tilting his head to the side as he scratched his eyebrow. “Your dream character is in it. You had to have had it at least once.”

  “I haven’t slept in days,” she insisted, shaking her head. “Trust me, dreaming would’ve been beyond impossible for me.”

  Max frowned as he stared at her.

  “But every night you told me you had the dream, I had a terrible headache,” Violet told Luna.

  “That makes sense assuming you got shot in the head,” she murmured, fearful of another outburst like before.

  “Then it’s like I said,” Max said, ignoring their exchange as he clasped his hands together. “He’s managed to get her dream form into the dream but not her whole spirit.”

  Luna looked at Max, the tension in her shoulders gone; he hadn’t actually said Chance’s name.

  Violet shrugged. “I guess. Who’s this ‘he’ you mentioned?”

  “The guy who’s responsible for the dream,” Luna told her, making sure she didn’t inadvertently mention Chance’s name as well.

  “Ah, your Freddy Krueger.”

  “Call him whatever you will, but there’s more I should explain,” Max informed them.

  “There’s more?” Violet voiced Luna’s unspoken thought.

  “Yes. I haven’t told you about Dimensional Theft. It’s pretty important.”

  “That sounds bad,” Violet said, leaning against the side of her house.

  Luna narrowed her eyes in silent agreement. “What’s Dimensional Theft?”

  “It happens when you grab something in your dream and wake up before you have the chance to let go of it,” Max explained. “You’ll have it in your hands in this world too.”

  “Really?” If only their spirits went to that realm, then Luna wondered how it was possible to bring something back.

  Max nodded.

  “So, you’re telling me that if I dream I grab a vase, I’ll wake up holding it?” Violet asked doubtfully.

  Max nodded again. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Luna glanced at Violet, and her face scrunched up as if she had eaten something sour. The new information had stepped over the line of things she was willing to believe. She glanced back at Max; his face remained sincere.

  “It’s not bad to do Dimensional Theft, is it?” Luna wondered.

  Max shook his head. “As long as it’s just items you’re pulling through, then it doesn’t matter.”

  “Can you pull a person out?” Violet inquired

  “Yes. That’s the worst thing you could possibly do—ever. Especially if the person had already died in reality.”

  “Why?” Luna narrowed her eyes.

  “Well, in a living person, their dream character will take over their body and their identity will be lost forever,” Max said ominously, tilting his head forward and casting shadows over his eyes.

  “What happens if the person already died?” Violet asked.

  “Then you get a vampire or a zombie…you know, a reanimated corpse of some kind.”

  “How do you pull someone out? I don’t want to do that if it’s as bad as you say,” Luna chimed in.

  “Good,” he said. “The way to pull them out is if they’re touching you or you’re touching them when you wake up. It often takes weeks, but when it’s done, it’s bad news because most dream characters are drastically different from their normal selves. Most of the time they’re polar opposites. It’s hard to tell how they’ll end up once they’re in the real person.”

  “So if ‘he’ is touching me, and I accidentally wake up, he’ll be pulled through?” Luna asked Max, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Yes, and then ‘he’ will become much, much more evil since he’ll be working on the dream character’s ambitions.”

  Everyone fell silent as they took in Max’s words. To Luna, the dream obviously affected them each in some way. It could kill all three of them, and she feared it would do exactly that.

  “Violet, you have to come in now,” her little brother squeaked nervously at her as he peered out from the doorframe. “It’s time for lunch.”

  “All right, you little monster,” Violet called, looking through the doorway as she spoke before she turned to face Max.

  “It was nice to see you again.”

  He bobbed his head in response. “If you want, we’ll find some other time to talk, but in the meantime be sure to think about everything I told you today, okay?”

  “Right,” Violet agreed.

  Luna wondered if she would think about it or not. The look flashing across her face made Luna unsure. She waved goodbye at her anyway, and Violet waved back half-heartedly before she turned and disappeared into the house.

  Max looked at Luna and led the way off of the porch. They walked back to Luna’s house in absolute silence. Luna felt a tear drip loose from her eye again, and she wiped it away as quickly as she could manage. Max stared at her, frowning like something bothered him.

  “Are you crying?” he asked slowly.

  She shook her head. “No, my eye just does that sometimes.”

  “When it happens is it just one tear usually? Or is it more than that?”

  Luna lifted her hand to chew on her fingernail absently. Why did a weird thing her eye did matter to him? “Usually it’s just one.”

  “Hmm.”

  She tilted her head questioningly but saw his face screwed up in thought.

  “What is it?” she wondered aloud. “Is something wrong?”

  He shook his head. “There’s something you should probably know before you go back to DreamWorld.” Max changed the subject without answering her.

  “I thought I already knew everything I needed to know.”

  “Chance has an entire pack of dogs fenced in by the cabin. Rottweilers, German shepherds, pit bulls—you name it, it’s probably there. He must really want to keep you in that cabin…or keep other people out,” Max said.

  “A pack of dogs?” The thought of sharp teeth and flashing eyes flooded her mind. “How do you know about them?”

  “There’s one window in the room he put me in. I saw him feed those dogs a huge slab of s
teak last night. They tore it apart like it was a piece of paper. If I were you, I wouldn’t try to run. Even if you do break those shackles, there’s no way out alive.”

  Luna shuddered at his words. She definitely did not want to end up like that steak. Running away from all the madness would be futile. The fact that she needed to sleep made it worse, since every night she would be returned to that demented forest.

  Deep in her heart, she knew how it would play out. She needed to find a permanent way to escape and until then, she was stuck—stuck until Chance finished with her…or she finished off Chance.

  ***

  CHANCE CAME OUT from behind the door as Violet came back into the house. He moved over to the window to peek out and caught a glimpse of Luna and the big kid—Max?—as they walked down the street together. He had heard the entire conversation; it had been about the dream. Luna seemed worried and confused, but Max knew what he was doing.

  Was he the mystery kid Chance had trapped in the dream? The kid beside Luna and the kid he had somehow managed to capture looked drastically different from one another, but he knew that was always possible in DreamWorld. It made identifying people harder. But it wasn’t so hard when the idiot made it blatantly clear. At least now he had an idea of who to target in reality.

  Violet watched him carefully. “So, did I live up to your expectations?” she asked sarcastically, studying the wound on her arm.

  Chance turned his gaze to her, and it clouded over with disgust as he grimaced like he had forgotten she was there. “Yeah. And don’t believe any of the dream nonsense.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really. I haven’t been sleeping anyway, so dreams are kinda not in my mind.”

  He stared at her for a moment, scratching his jaw as he felt himself blanch. The reason his spell hadn’t worked was because she hadn’t been asleep. He had beaten himself up and doubted his abilities when he had done nothing wrong.

  “Whatever. Stay away from Luna, okay?” He patted his pocket to remind her of his threat.

  She nodded and turned away from him as he opened the door and left.

  Chapter Thirty

  SARAH SAT QUIETLY at the kitchen table, reading her worn-out copy of Macbeth. She loved all of Shakespeare’s work and had a beat-up copy of all his famous plays. She wasn’t like Susan or her friends; Susan was her family—otherwise, she’d probably be an outcast like Luna.