Dead by Morning (Rituals of the Night Book One)

  “But you killed three people! If you get caught you’re going to jail for sure,” Luna said, a hint of determination in her voice, “and I’m a witness to it all.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, you’re so naïve. I’ve killed more than three people,” he bragged. The candlelight flickered, and his eyes flashed.

  “But…how?” she asked. “And why?”

  “I’ve been sacrificing people for years. Violet, Max, and Susan are just another number. Kate Red is on that list, and my parents are too.”

  “I knew you were responsible for Kate! I knew it was you! You monster…” she said, and her voice trailed off as it caught in her throat.

  “Don’t act like it was a terrible thing. You hated her.”

  She grunted in pain again as another wave overtook her. “Doesn’t mean I agree with what you did. She was a nasty person, but she didn’t deserve what you did to her. No one does.”

  “And here I was thinking you’d be overjoyed. Women are so hard to please.”

  “How could you kill your own parents?” she asked, her bottom lip trembling. “Emancipated. I’m such an idiot.”

  He shrugged again. “You say tomato, I say tomahto.”

  “How many?” she demanded, slumping against the wall as she craned her neck to watch him. Her voice was weaker than she hoped.

  “How many what?”

  “How many people have you killed?” Luna asked, her voice rough with fear, pain, and disbelief.

  “Enough for me to know there’s no turning back,” he admitted.

  “What was the point of taking all those lives?”

  “For the power,” he said, scuffing his boot on the floor as he broke eye contact.

  “…what power?” she asked, licking her lips as she struggled to stay conscious. Her eyes threatened to roll back in her head, and she had to force them to stay in place as a wave of dizziness filled her. She couldn’t die yet, not this close to getting answers.

  “The power I need to stop anyone who stands in my way.”

  “Stop anyone opposed to you? The world will be against you once they find out what you’re up to!”

  “I’m not worried. With the power, I can manage it,” he replied.

  “Then why do you need me?” she asked him again.

  “Your ability made me invincible to guns, knives, and anything else that could harm me. Now, I truly can accomplish my goal,” he explained, pride shining in his voice.

  “So what, you’re gonna leave and let me bleed to death here?” She extended a bloody hand toward him.

  “I wasn’t considering that possibility,” he said, looking at her with all the strength in his pale green eyes.

  “Then what are you gonna do with me?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.”

  She could sense his agitation with her. “I just want to know,” she said in a small voice. “I deserve to know!”

  He blinked and turned his back to her again. “You’ll find out everything in time. Now, make yourself nice and comfortable. I’m going for a walk.” He moved over to the door and rested his hand on the knob. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  “Wait! You can’t leave me here!” she cried, desperately tugging against her chains as her blood dripped to the floor.

  The laceration he had given her was bad. If she didn’t bleed to death, she would die from infection. If somehow she managed to survive the cruel mark he had given her, she still had too many fears to count. What if one of the many candles dotting the cabin caught the wood on fire? Or maybe the old, rotted roof could finally give out. There’d be no way she could get out with the shackles holding her.

  Chance pulled the door open, tossing a glance at her over his shoulder. “I can do whatever I want.” A wide smile spread across his features, like the idea brought him nothing but pure joy.

  He crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him, submerging her in a wave of eerie darkness.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  LUNA FROWNED AND pulled her wrists against the binds. If she hadn’t been strong enough to break them in her dreams, there was no way she’d break them in real life. She dug frantically in her pockets, searching for her phone, but it was gone. She guessed Chance had taken it while she had been unconscious. She rested her head against the wall and groaned. She was stuck. She sunk to the floor as all hope left her.

  He had won the war.

  I’m gonna die here.

  She wondered how many more lives he would take on his rise to power. Would he wipe out towns worth of people in order to make the world fear him? Or was Max right about the universe collapsing? Kate and Susan had been friends of his, and he had had no trouble murdering them in cold blood.

  She could hear the sounds of dogs barking close by. They were so loud, she knew the beasts patrolled just outside the door. The same beasts who had put Max in the hospital. The door popped open and light flooded through the darkness. Chance stood in the doorway, his figure an eerie silhouette on the dusty floor.

  For a moment, he didn’t move. “I knew you’d still be alive,” he commented.

  Luna swallowed despite her dry throat and pressed the bloody shirt to her wound, barely clinging to consciousness.

  “I got something I want to show you.”

  She remained silent.

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re supposed to be working with me.”

  She didn’t respond to that either. Why did he think she was supposed to be helping him with anything? She was in no state mentally or physically. He turned around to look at a shapeless mass that sat on the ground behind him before he stepped into the cabin. He walked inside, and a heavy scraping sound accompanied him as he moved. Luna realized in horror that he dragged the body of Susan Cross. She thrust her body as close to the wall as she could, fingers digging into the dirty ground as she stared slack-jawed at the scene before her.

  Chance dropped it next to her, and she stared at it, speechless. The tangled mess of Susan’s hair covered part of her face and hid one of her eyes from sight. Her flesh had turned gray and flaky; obviously, she had been dead for a while. A blood-shot eye peered out sightlessly from her face. Her bloody, mangled, and twisted body was covered in a ripped and dirty white dress, spotted with large brown bloodstains in the places Luna guessed he had cut the satanic markings into the skin.

  The smell of death rose strong and unstinted. Though soil covered parts of her, Luna couldn’t smell any of it; the smell of death overpowered everything. She clamped her hand to her mouth to try to block out the scent, smearing some of her own blood on her face in the process. She looked up at Chance as tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. The sight brought her back to life, and for another moment, she managed to forget about her agony.

  How in the world could Chance do such horrible things to people who had trusted him? At the restaurant, his food had been as bloody as his victims. How could he eat that without remembering all the things he had done?

  She pulled her hand away before she spoke. “How could you do this to your own friends?”

  “As easily as I did to yours. Now, if you look close enough you can still see the markings.”

  She stared up at him with hatred in her eyes as her hands balled into fists. She couldn’t take much more before she fell apart. “Why?”

  “Because it’ll come in handy,” he growled, drawing his eyebrows together with barely concealed frustration. “Now look.”

  She frowned and forced her eyes to study Susan’s twisted body again. Faintly, in the withered flesh, she noticed tiny satanic markings like carved tattoos in her skin. Those must have been the same markings which had been reported on Kate’s body. Chance grew bored and stepped over her like Susan was nothing but a pile of dirty laundry. He came closer to Luna. She flinched and slid as close to the wall as possible. She didn’t like the look on his face.

  He was plotting something again, Luna could tell that. She wondered if he considered where else to stab her, and for
a moment, she prayed it would be the killing blow. She couldn’t imagine living through a second stabbing. He turned away just before he reached her, and she watched him, desperate to figure out what was going through his mind. He walked away, out of the room, leaving Luna alone with Susan’s mangled corpse. She swallowed hard as she looked at it, wondering if it would be her future. A flash of pain in her stomach reminded her that she wasn’t too far away from it.

  Luna shut her eyes. Stop it, she thought.

  When she opened her eyes again, Chance stood at the table on the other side of the room. She wondered what he was looking at. He set his hands underneath something and picked it up before he faced her. In his hand, he held the bone entwined with a rose that she had seen in the dream. He walked over to her and crouched down beside her. She stared hard at the item in his hand, wondering what he wanted her to do with it.

  “This,” he said finally, “is a very important object.”

  Luna didn’t speak. Like everything else around him, she didn’t understand. She almost wished she would go unconscious already.

  “I call it the Rosebone,” he noted, looking down at it carefully as if it were precious gems. “I bet you recognize the rose.”

  Luna squinted her eyes at the delicate design of the flower. She did recognize it. “That—that’s the rose you gave me the night of the dance.”

  He nodded, the corner of his lip turning up a bit. “Correct.”

  “So, what are doing with that?”

  “This is how I’ll give you some of my power,” he said. “My plan won’t work if something happens to you, so before anything, I need to give you this.”

  He held the Rosebone out to her, but she didn’t take it. She pursed her lips as her hand reached for it and paused midway. If she took it from him, what would it do to her? Would it make her want to kill? Would it make her accept helping him?

  “Well? Go on. Take it.” He extended it even farther to her.

  “I-I can’t,” she said, dropping her hand back to the floor as she struggled to sit up.

  “Why not?” His gentle tone had vanished.

  “Because I don’t know what will happen,” she admitted, pausing to take in a ragged breath of air. “And I can’t take much more.”

  Chance rolled his eyes. “Just take it.”

  Luna stared at it, feeling the sudden desire to smack it out of his hand. He wasn’t giving her a choice. Even though his weapons were hidden, it was still implied that he could use them.

  She took a deep breath in preparation before she held out her hands. Chance smiled and gently set the Rosebone down into her palms. He jerked his hands away and a feeling like an electric shock soaked into her skin. It pained the flesh on her hands and sent shockwaves all the way up to her wrists. She tried to throw the bone to the floor but found it wouldn’t come off of her fingers. Luna grew more panicked, thrusting her hands as thoughts of her wound were temporarily abandoned. She squirmed in place, trying to pry it off her fingers, but it stuck as if it had been crazy glued to her skin. She felt a tight pressure in her chest which changed to a sharp, piercing pain. It hurt almost as much as the gash in her stomach.

  Chance watched her, his green eyes narrowed slightly in his pale face, but he said nothing.

  In her head, Luna panicked. I’m having a heart attack, she thought. I’m having a heart attack, and he’s not going to help me.

  The pain in her chest radiated down to her legs and up to her head. The electric shock felt stronger, leaving scorching pains in its wake like her blood was on fire. Luna closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, desperate not to scream. Desperate not to let Chance have the satisfaction of knowing how much pain she was in.

  Her head slammed against the wall as she stared up at the ceiling through narrowed eyes. The electric pain rang in her feet and the top of her head. The agony was immense, and she didn’t know how much longer she could take it before she cracked. Then, as suddenly as the pain had begun, it vanished in eerie respite.

  Luna’s tensed body went limp. The Rosebone fell from her open hands and clanked against the floor. Her blood soaked the white on the bone where she had held it, but she was too weak to look at it as she slumped against the wall, panting.

  Chance stared at her, trying to catch her eyes. “Are you okay?”

  She didn’t answer him. Her weak neck tingled, and she stared straight ahead at the wall, unable to turn her head to look at him. Chance picked up one of her chained wrists and set his fingers to the skin, searching for a pulse. He must have found it because he let go of her, staring at her helplessly.

  “What…did…you…do…to…me?” Luna finally managed to rasp.

  “You experienced a small part of what I’ve gone through,” he replied gently.

  She wheezed with each breath, and her stomach seemed to have doubled in pain. Chance sighed and pulled the keys out of his pocket to un-do the locks on her wrists. Some slight awareness in the back of her mind, beneath the pain, told her she was free, but she was too weak to even flex her wrists. She was in far too much pain to make logical sense of her situation.

  He left the Rosebone on the floor as he scooped her up in his arms. He lifted her with ease. Her head lolled, and he popped it up on his shoulder so she had no choice but to look at him. He carried her out of that room. He was being gentler than she had anticipated. Did this mean he knew how much pain she was in?

  Monsters had feelings after all, it seemed.

  Weak as she was, Luna was still aware of being in a part of the cabin she hadn’t been in before. They passed a closet, and she wondered if that had been the one in which Chance had kept Max a prisoner. He carried her past the closet. Was he going to end up feeding her to his dogs like a human steak? She wanted to protest but was still too weak.

  Chance carried her through a doorframe and into a bedroom. In the middle of the room sat a queen-sized bed with a thick, red comforter. He carried her past more wooden walls and a window painted over in black like the others. Balancing her in one hand, he lifted the sheets and cover with the other and set her down gently.

  He straightened out her arms and legs, and she stared up at him, amazed and baffled by his kind behavior. It was a brand new side of Chance. He stroked a lock of hair out of her eyes and pulled the blanket onto her. She blinked at him gratefully then stopped herself. Her blood still covered his face. He was the reason she was battered at all. She was on the verge of death because of him.

  He helped her out of guilt.

  He ran his eyes over her carefully a moment longer before he turned and left the room. Luna heard a click as he locked the door behind him. She didn’t fully understand what had happened, but she did understand that she was still too weak to move. She coughed feebly and the hitch in her breathing kept her wheezing. She would be here for a while.

  Silently, she prayed she wouldn’t die.

  LUNA’S EYES FLUTTERED open. The room around her seemed a bit darker, and she guessed it was nighttime outside. She breathed in, glad to find it easier to do so. Movement beyond inhaling was still difficult and she found herself thankful Chance had tucked her under the blanket; violent shivering racked her body.

  She wondered where he had gone. Maybe in the time she had been asleep he had unlocked the door. Maybe she could force her joints to work then she could get out. She struggled but only managed to turn her head. She realized the blanket beside her was rounded in a lump. She recognized Chance’s golden hair on the pillow before her gaze drifted to his face. His eyes were closed and his arm draped across her stomach, leaving her to wonder if he was truly asleep or not.

  “Chance…” Luna whispered.

  Instantly, his eyes opened to their extent. “You’re awake.”

  Luna swallowed, unable and unwilling to answer him.

  Chance smirked at her before he crawled out of bed, stood up, and stretched. He looked down at her carefully. He wore the same black clothes he had on yesterday. His golden hair, which was usually so carefully slicked
back, was a mess. The only thing she was grateful for was that her blood had been cleaned from his cheeks.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, letting his fingers sink into the covers on the edge of the bed beside her.

  “Better,” she forced herself to say.

  He nodded once as he smoothed the front of his shirt and turned to go toward the door. He opened it and tossed a single glance her direction. “Be back soon.” He disappeared down the hall, leaving the door open.

  Luna stared at the open door longingly. She closed her eyes for a minute to concentrate. She could move her neck; she kicked once to test her legs and they worked as well. Then, she tried reaching out to pull the blanket off, but her wrists wouldn’t move. She butted the blanket off of her with her hands anyway and realized her wrists were handcuffed together. She pulled at them, frustrated. Of course he wouldn’t let her be capable of leaving.

  He reappeared in the doorway as if her thoughts had summoned him. She winced at the sight. After everything he had put her through, she loathed him more than ever.

  In the back of her mind, a voice reminded her that she was still in danger.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  CHANCE APPROACHED THE bed. His hair was carefully fixed and his black sleeves rolled up. Luna growled at his approach though glad she had full control of her body again. She jerked her wrists against the handcuffs.

  “What did you do this for?” she asked him, scrunching up her face as she wriggled her hands together, thrusting them in face.

  “You’re back to yourself,” he said, ignoring her question as he watched her struggle with his eyebrows raised.

  She pulled her wrists again. “Why?”

  He ignored her as he pushed her wrists aside. He pulled up the bottom of her clothes to reveal her stomach, and Luna realized in that moment she was dressed in a thin white gown. She felt uncomfortably exposed when it occurred to her all she wore underneath was her underwear.

  Even more uncomfortable when she thought about the fact that he had changed her.

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t speak as he ran his fingers over her stomach where his knife had sunk into her skin. Confused, she sat up to see it. A swathe of white fabric was taped over the laceration and all the blood had been mopped off of her skin. Chance’s fingertips skirted lightly over the bandage.