CHAPTER SEVEN
My limbs are jelly the entire way down the stairs several minutes later, freshly showered and thoroughly destroyed by the man holding my fingers.
I have not been this relaxed or sated ... ever. Even done on my own, sex began and ended with a short spike and fizzle.
But Roan made sure we didn’t leave the bedroom until I begged him to stop. Until I was so sensitive the thought of him touching me again broke me to tears.
And I fucking loved every second.
Until we hit the bottom landing and I remember his brothers. The other two in the house. The house with the thin walls and echo chamber corridors.
Sure, we’re all adults and everything I let Roan do to me was consensual, but I was not quiet. He made sure I screamed every chance. Almost like he wanted them to hear us even while telling me, mocking me to be quiet.
As we pass, I glance at the clock. I expect hours to have gone by. I even crane my neck to be sure I hadn’t seen wrong when the gold hands linger at seven.
“What?” Roan asks when I stop and turn fully to face it.
“I could have sworn it was already seven, and the hands were silver. I think.”
Because I also think they were gold. Maybe it’s the light and I just keep catching it at random times, but I’m almost certain it was seven before I...
Had I gone to bed?
The last thing I remember is going up to change my clothes. I must have lain down and fallen asleep, but it can’t have been long. I’m also not sure if was seven. Maybe it was six?
I rub the tips of three fingers into my brow like that might help me remember.
“Hey,” Roan captures my wrist and turns me physically away from the thing.
“Don’t worry about that.” His free hand tucks beneath my chin and my focus is lifted to his face, his wild tangle of hair disheveled by my fingers.
“Come back with us, Rina. The time we spent without you was the hardest I’ve ever had to endure and I don’t think I’m strong enough to do it again. ”
I force a chuckle I feel no humor in, trying to ease the gut-wrenching pain in his eyes.
“What are you talking about? We’re only a few hours by plane.” I reach up and touch the hard knot flexing at his cheek. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
His answer is to grab my fingers and bring my palm to his lips. His sigh burns with a frustration that cuts at my heart. His dark eyes bear down into mine with a plea I’m restless to fix.
“I need you home with us, baby. I need you with me. I need to know you’ll be there when I wake up.
” His free hand slips around my middle and I’m drawn into the solid weight of his chest. Pulled in for his brow to rest over mine.
“Don’t make me live without you, Rina. I will follow you into hell if I have to. ”
The absolute seriousness of his words anchors into my heart and drags it down into my stomach where it settles like a rock.
“What are you talking about?” I say again, desperate.
Scared.
Even as my arms bind around his shoulders like that might keep him from vanishing, I know it’s not enough.
He kisses me softly but with such aching need, I nearly cry.
“I’m sorry.” He lifts his head enough to bump my nose with his. “I told them not to let me go first.” The corner of his mouth tilts and it’s almost like his usual grin, without the light in his eyes. “I’m weak without you.”
He gives a faint chuckle that I can’t bring myself to return.
Even when he pulls back and brightens his smile, I don’t feel its warmth.
But I let him take my hands and lead me the rest of the way into the living room where Kellen and Lukan have dragged the armchairs next to the roaring fire snapping in the hearth.
A stack of Aunt Laura’s books sit at their feet and each have one in hand. Flipped open in their laps.
“No!” I gasp, rushing forward. “Don’t touch those.”
The words have barely left my tongue when Lukan fists several pages and tears them from the spine. The intricate swirl of ink is tossed into the inferno where they’re caught by fingers of flame and devoured.
Charred remains litter the stone grate. They dance in the air, tiny embers that shrivel and dissolve into the scorched log.
“Hey, sweetheart.” Lukan glances up as I edge a step closer. Not too close. “Sleep okay?”
I give a faint nod, but my attention is fixed on the ruined remains of Aunt Laura’s collection.
“What are you doing? Those were Aunt Laura’s. I cataloged them. Jenna will kill me—”
Roan slips up behind me and eases his arms across my center. I’m drawn back into his chest.
“They had to go, baby,” he murmurs into my ear. “They’re not safe.”
“But...”
Kellen chucks a scrunched fistful of pages in after Lukan, slaps his book shut and pushes to his feet.
Roan immediately releases me and steps aside as Kellen moves to tower before me.
“They’re evil,” he says quietly. “You know they are.”
I do know, but that doesn’t mean we can just come in and destroy things, and I tell him as much.
“Do you think Jenna would keep them or sell them?” he counters, cutting me off mid rant.
I blink. “I don’t...”
His long fingers capture my face, cradle my cheeks. “She’d sell them. There are people in the world who would pay a lot of money for even one of these.”
I swallow and peek past him to where Roan has claimed the seat Kellen evacuated. He picks up the same book and continues shredding the pages.
“That isn’t for us to decide.” I lift my gaze to his face. “Those are her mother’s things. It’s her choice —”
“These are not fairytales, little one. They are a collection of evil bound together by idiots who thought they could control things beyond their comprehension. Nothing good will ever come from them.”
I want to argue that that isn’t our call to make, but the fire screams. Or something in the fire does. It wails as the edges of the paper curl and blacken. As thick smoke coils into the room like a claw.
Kellen grabs my arm and pulls me behind him as Lukan chucks the entire book in after the pages. The leather-bound tome smacks into the logs and falls open.
And the thing howls.
The spine snaps in half, bowing backwards as if in agony. It flutters and thrashes, reminding me of a bird caught in an open flame. The beautiful loops of ink darken as the fire falls across it. As it bites and gnaws the edges.
And the book screams the most unholy sound. A desperate howl of pain that cuts straight through me.
“Save it!” I cry, heart frantic as the book rolls and burns. “Get it out.”
Kellen turns and grabs me before I can sprint forward and do it myself.
“No, Rina. That thing is not real.”
I stare wide-eyed from him to the twitching book now nearly entirely consumed. “What do you mean? Listen to it. It’s ... it’s in so much pain.”
Kellen’s face softens when my voice breaks and tears well.
“No, little one.” He smooths a stray tear with his thumb. “It wants you to think that so it can pull you in with it. Creatures like that live in fire and darkness. It feels nothing.”
I try to grasp what he means. What he’s trying to tell me, but the words don’t make sense.
None of this does, I realize as the screaming slows to the whistle of a tea kettle. That, too, stops when Roan stabs it with a poker and scatters the book into ashes.
I’m breathing hard and I don’t know why. It’s like I was running up a hill but now I can’t remember why.
“I don’t understand...” I stare at the fire and the charred remains of all the books left behind. “What was that? What just happened?”
Kellen moves me away from the hearth and the single-minded focus of his brother’s destroying the last handful.
“Don’t worry about that.” He turns me to face him. His hold is gentle, but firm on my upper arms. “Are you okay?”
I have to think about that.
Ever since my arrival, nothing has made any sense. I know I keep avoiding them, but I’ve reached a point where I don’t think I can anymore.
“No,” I snap, voice tangled with all the emotions bubbling up in my chest. “I don’t know what’s going on. From the moment I arrived here...”
I break off because I don’t even know where to start. There’s been so much and yet, I feel like maybe I’m overreacting. Everything so far can be explained, and my brain is more than capable of helping me fool myself, except over the book.
“That book screamed ... like a person.”
There.
I said it.
I voiced the crazy thought in my head because everyone know, books don’t scream when you set them on fire. It’s not possible. Yet, I know they heard it because...
“You said, creatures like that live in fire and darkness. It feels nothing.” I take a step away from him to really see him. “What did you mean? What was that thing?”
I’m shaking.
I feel the tension coiling down the length of me in unsteady tremors that have my every breath quivering and my heart racing.
Maybe it’s the house. All the creepy shit everywhere.
Maybe it’s the storm slamming like some raving beast against the side of the house.
Maybe it’s because no matter how I twist it up in my head, I don’t understand why they’re here, but I can’t bring myself to ask the question burning like a lit ember in my throat.
Who are you?
What are you?
Because it sounds crazy.
I know them. I’ve known them for years and even with the time we were apart, I know them. To my soul. To the very foundation that makes me who I am. My core makeup.
It makes no sense and I get that, too. We were close before they left, but this tiny heartbeat puttering next to mine is different.
It flutters with something I can’t explain, a feeling so deep I ache with it.
Looking into Kellen’s face washed in shadows and firelight, I feel like something in me has known him my entire life and . .. I love him.
I love them.
Which makes no sense. And I don’t know how to explain it without the overwhelming surge of emotions I don’t understand choking me, except a part of me feels whole now that they’re here.
“Rina.”
Kellen’s arms enclose me and pull me into the safety of his chest. The promise of absolute protection has me burrowing like a lost creature into his hold and closing my eyes.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I croak into the hard muscles of his shoulder.
His lips brush the top of my head. “I know, my love. I’m sorry.”
I swallow back the knot threatening to pull me under the crashing waves of hysteria and focus on the soft patter of his heart beneath my cheek.
So steady. So perfectly balanced with his infinite calm.
“Am I crazy?” I ask softly, needing to know.
His hand strokes through my hair and down my back. “No.”
I sniffle before I can stop myself and lift my chin to peer up into his beautiful face. “Are you real?”
If he thinks my question is insane, his features never shift. His gaze remains level and gentle peering down into mine as he sweeps the back of his knuckles along my cheek.
“Yes.”
He lets me continue to cling to him until I pull away.
I’m no steadier than I was, but I’m not on the precipice of madness either.
Instead, I teeter somewhere in between. A tenuous line that could tip me either way.
As I hover over my own potential destruction, it becomes painfully clear that my choices are limited.
I can choose to believe that I am safe with them in this house of horrors with the jar of teeth and screaming books. Or I can try and run. I can flee into the storm and endless night and take my chances getting devoured by the thing howling against the windows.
“I need a minute,” I whisper, unable to focus when he’s a looming force holding me together.
I do worry for a second, when I untangle myself from him, if I’m going to be able to carry myself out of the room on legs that no longer feel like my own.
The knees wobble just enough to cause a flicker of concern, but I manage to make it out into the foyer with its cluster of shadows and endless miles of silence.
Away from them.
Away from all the things that should feel wrong, but don’t, I draw in a breath coated with grime and dust. I flatten a palm across my quivering heart and take every inhale slow and exhale even slower.
It’s a technique Mom teaches at the hospital.
I’ve seen her walk people through it enough times to guide myself until the pressure eases.
You’re not crazy, I tell myself firmly.
It’s this house. I never liked it as a child. I hated when Mom would stop here out of obligation to “check on your aunt.” Aunt Laura didn’t care if we checked on her. She didn’t care if we lived or died. Our intrusion into her life was unwanted and unappreciated. But Mom insisted.
“Kindness is free, Rina,” she always says.
Kindness only to people who understand kindness, I think miserably. Kindness to a woman who wouldn’t need her niece to go through her things after death because her own children couldn’t stomach her. I would think they would be thrilled to paw through her things and keep the spoils.
Though, there aren’t many spoils. The entire house is something that belongs on a murder documentary, or something about the occult.
I rub my arms. At the litter of goosebumps rising along my skin from the wisps of winter seeping through the cracks in the front door.
I scan the frame, searching for cracks and seeing none.
Still, I hurry over, push against it and twist the lock.
The tumbler rolls into place with a resounding crack.
Feeling slightly better, I turn.
And scream at the large set of pale blue eyes watching me from the shadows.