Chapter 18
Heresy
Salem was full of shit if she thought all this was just a bunch of coincidences. I knew it the second I laid eyes on that old chest, heard the words written in that goddamn journal. I don't believe in superstitions, but I'm not foolish either. Certain things are impossible to ignore.
And here, in this rotting-ass farmhouse, I wasn’t sure I believed in anything. But I knew one thing for damn sure—this place had a pull. It was like it crawled under your skin, slithered into your bones, and settled there. Whatever shit went down here before, with that scorned woman? It was happening again, like we were living out someone else’s nightmare. I could feel it, and I didn’t need to see any more mirrors crack or hear any more strange-ass noises to know something wasn’t right.
Salem though? She was something else. I couldn’t shake her. She stood there, prepared to combat any darkness. And all it did was make me want her even more. But I knew better. I was a Slayer, for fuck’s sake. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Hell, I wasn’t supposed to want anything, especially not a woman like her. My world was chaos, violence, shadows. Love? That was some fairytale bullshit, a joke. But every time I looked at her, I questioned all that.
When I watched her slam the journal back into the chest, her breathing hard, her hands shaking a little even though she tried to hide it. She was feeling this too. The connection, the danger. It was like we were standing on the edge of a cliff, and neither of us could back down.
“This is a bad fuckin’ idea,” I muttered, more to myself than her.
Salem whipped around, eyes flashing, a mix of anger and something deeper. “What is? Us? Or this place?”
“Both,” I growled. But the truth? I couldn’t walk away from her. Not now, not after everything. This pull between us, it was too damn strong.
She stepped closer, her body vibrating with that fiery defiance I’d come to expect. She was reckless as hell, but I respected it. Hell, I was drawn to it. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it, Heresy,” she challenged. “You can’t tell me this isn’t exactly what that woman was talking about in the journal. This is our curse.”
I gritted my teeth, raking my hand through my hair, pushing it out of my face. “Of course I feel it. But I ain’t the type to go chasin’ after shit like this. I don’t believe in curses.”
She smirked, hugging herself, and damn if it didn’t make her look even hotter. “Maybe you should start.”
That fire in her, it was something else. She was tempting fate, playing with something dangerous, and fuck me if I wasn’t already in too deep. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met. She scared the shit out of me, and I couldn’t get enough.
Without thinking, I grabbed her arm, pulling her closer, her scent hitting me like a drug. “Salem, if we keep going, this shit’s not gonna end well. You know that, right? For either of us.”
She looked up at me, those sharp green eyes of hers softening just enough to show me a glimpse of the fear she’d been hiding. “Maybe that’s the point.”
Her words hung in the air between us, and I couldn’t argue with her. She was right. Whatever was going on here, it felt like it was bigger than us. Like we were caught in something we couldn’t control, and maybe we didn’t even want to.
The silence between us grew thicker, the tension pulling tighter, like a storm that hadn’t quite let up. Outside, the rain had slowed, but inside, the storm was still raging.
And as much as I hated to admit it, I was more than ready to see where it would take us.