1. Rowan
Author’s Note:
Sorry this first chapter took so long! One of my besties and I decided to take a cruise to the Bahamas, and there was a murder on the cruise ship (that stuff happens a lot around my bestie).
We totally took care of it, though, and we still got to enjoy our rented cabana!
(The Bahamas are awesome, by the way, and I highly recommend a visit!)
ROWAN
I fucking hated cults.
Of all the ridiculous things humanity had to come up with, cults were up there as one of the stupidest. And no, they weren’t created in hell or whatever. Mom and Dad had both originated there before hellhounds and furies left for the mortal plane, and they said cults were all human-made.
I sighed, and one of the guys tied up in a chair made some muffled sounds of protest.
“I just don’t understand why you all thought it was a good idea to get involved with a cult.
What has history shown us? Cults always end badly.
And you can’t even pretend you didn’t know you were in a cult.
A secret organization that has select membership and wants to take over the world? Cult!” I lectured.
I was towering over the six people who were gagged, tied up, and sitting in a neat little row in the cabin they’d used for cult stuff.
They looked petrified. Apparently, according to my sister, I gave off serial killer vibes.
Which was not fair at all; I was probably the nicest one out of my siblings.
And yeah, okay, I killed people, but only people who were really evil.
I’d let all the morally grey cult members escape, after all.
Hopefully they’d make better choices in the future.
I shrugged. They weren’t my problem. If they needed any retribution carried out, I’d leave that to my sisters.
I thought about sending them a text, but Raina and Riley probably knew already.
After all, our dad was the one who gave me the heads-up about the cult.
Apparently it was info from another pack.
There was a clattering sound as one of the chairs fell over. One of the cult members had been trying to scooch over and had toppled himself and the chair.
“What did you do that for?” I asked. “You could have knocked yourself unconscious, for goodness’ sake.”
He only whimpered as I lifted him and the chair back upright.
I brushed my hands off, sighing again. “Right. So. I really do hate this part. I’m supposed to enjoy it, because you are all really awful people.
” I looked at the worst one, shuddering in horror at the misdeeds these people were responsible for.
“Still, I keep thinking that maybe somewhere along the line, if you’d made better choices, you wouldn’t be in this position. Were you not hugged enough as kids?”
I stopped, thinking about that. It was a common human saying. Maybe I needed to go around hugging the little humans, and then less of them would turn out to be horrendous people.
My phone started ringing—Riley’s ring tone. Ugh. I wasn’t answering.
“So, anyway, I’m really sorry about this. Usually you’d get tortured and stuff, but I’m not the biggest fan. It’s messy, and there’s screaming, and I always feel sort of awkward keeping someone around for a while. Do I offer them water? Do we make small talk?”
I looked at another cult person who was making muffled sounds behind their gags.
“Yeah, sorry about the gags. I never know what to say when people beg or curse me out, either. Anyway, I’m here to send you off to hell.
Good luck with that. Maybe make better choices if you ever get the opportunity to. ”
With that, I threw out my hellfire in a rush, igniting the people, the chairs, and the walls of the cabin they’d been using.
They were burned to dust pretty fast—no mess and no small talk—and then I let the hellfire fade into regular fire, walking out of the cabin to the sound of the crackles and pops of wood burning.
My phone dinged with a text message, and I was pulling it out of my pocket when I heard someone in the woods.
It sounded like they tripped over every branch and ran into every bush as they walked, and they were heading in this direction.
I didn’t sense any evil in the person—they weren’t hellbound, so it wasn’t a cult member I’d missed.
Unless they were a cult captive who’d escaped?
The cabin was pretty isolated, so I couldn’t see some hiker happening along here, but I supposed it was possible.
I winced when I heard a scuffle and a muffled curse.
Whoever it was didn’t seem to know their way around, and I realized I was going to have to make sure the human was okay.
I looked behind me at the cabin, which was very much on fire by this point.
I wasn’t parked anywhere near here so I didn’t need to worry about my car, but I really hoped I didn’t end up getting stopped by the fire department or police, because that was never a good time.
I set off into the woods, following the crashing sounds. It wasn’t hard to find the human, mainly because he was dragging a suitcase through the forest.
An actual suitcase.
Yes, it was a carry-on, but it had wheels and everything, and the human was pulling it along behind him, barely paying attention to the chaos he was creating by dragging a suitcase through the woods.
He hadn’t noticed me, and I took in everything about him as he muttered and barely watched where he was going.
He was tall and extremely slim, and I had the urge to feed him something.
He had hair that was almost white it was so pale, and he was chewing on his lips.
He smelled like fresh apples, and I wanted to lick him to see if he tasted like apples, too.
Huh. That was an interesting response. It had been quite a long time since I’d had any dalliances. Perhaps I needed to take care of that soon.
He noticed me when he was about five feet away. He stopped, gasped, and grabbed his chest. “Oh my god! You scared me half to death! What are you doing here?”
I tried to hold back the question, but it came out anyway. “Why do you have a suitcase?”
“To carry stuff, of course. Duh.” He brushed his hair off his face, looking at me closely.
I just stood there. I wasn’t sure what to do now. Did I offer to help him? Would that be creepy since I was a stranger in the woods? I didn’t want to make the guy nervous.
“Do you live in the cabin near here?” he asked.
“Oh, no. I don’t know anything about a cabin,” I answered. “I’m just taking a walk through the woods.”
“Okay then. Enjoy!” he stated, and then he walked toward the cabin, brushing into me and rolling over my toes with his suitcase as he passed by.
He smelled even more delicious up close, even if my toes hurt now.
He was ten feet away when I decided to follow him.
I didn’t think he was a cultist, but he obviously knew about the cabin.
I hadn’t thought to check who actually owned it, and I supposed the cult could have been squatting.
Maybe it belonged to this guy, although that didn’t explain why he hadn’t used the narrow dirt road that led to it.
I caught up to him easily, and he just looked over at me while continuing to bumble along through the woods. I was still trying to figure out what to say when he stopped short.
“Do you smell smoke?” he asked, sniffing the air.
“Oh, yeah. I think there’s a cabin on fire up ahead,” I answered.
He looked at me, raising his eyebrows. Shit. Regular humans would probably call the fire department or something.
“I don’t have a cell phone,” I blurted out, like that was a reasonable explanation for knowing about the fire and not doing anything.
He huffed then started roll-dragging his suitcase along again. I stood and watched him, unsure what I was supposed to do now. He wasn’t a cultist, and he didn’t seem lost or in distress.
He turned around, raising his eyebrows again. “Are you coming? This suitcase isn’t going to drag itself.”
And that was how I found myself carrying a heavy as fuck suitcase through the forest toward the cabin I had just set on fire. What did the guy have in here, anyway? Bricks?
We stopped in the clearing and both stared at the burning building. A piece of the roof fell in as we watched.
“Huh. Well, that’s definitely on fire,” he said.
I set the suitcase down, rocking back on my heels a bit. “Yup.”
He looked at me. “No cell phone, huh?”
“Nope,” I answered.
“Hmm. Well, I guess we better watch to make sure the nearby woods don’t catch on fire.” With that, the guy plopped down onto the grass next to his suitcase, then he looked up at me, waiting for me to sit down, too.
So I did. “I’m Rowan.”
He turned and smiled at me, and it lit up his entire face. He had the prettiest gray-colored eyes I’d even seen.
“Milo,” he said, then he opened a front zipper pocket of his suitcase. An apple fell out and rolled toward the trees. “Want an apple?” he asked.
“Umm, no thanks.”
“Ok. Suit yourself. I have brownies, too. Homebaked and still warm.” He pulled a baggy out of the same zippered pocket, and I could see from the condensation in the clear bag that the brownies were indeed fresh. They might even still be warm.
Milo saw me eyeing the bag, and he opened it and put it down next to me. He then took another apple out of the suitcase and bit into it. I eyed the brownies, which really did look good. I had just taken out a whole cult of people. That was hungry work.
I looked up to ask Milo if he was sure, but I stopped when I saw him.
He was happily gazing at the burning cabin, eating his apple as if nothing whatsoever was wrong.
The freaky thing was how he was eating it.
He’d apparently started at the bottom, and he was working his way up the apple.
I watched as he ate the core and the seeds, and by the time he got to the stem, I figured he’d eat that, too, only he tucked it into the pocket of his suitcase.
He had to be a chaos demon. That was the only explanation. I sniffed again, but all I got was the smell of human.
Milo heard me sniffing and turned to face me.
He picked the brownie bag up again, smiled at me, and waved it in front of my face.
The brownies really did smell chocolatey and rich.
I took one from the bag and bit into it while Milo watched.
I waited for the chocolatey goodness to explode in my taste buds, only what I got was neither chocolatey nor good.
I sputtered and coughed, the horror show in my mouth making it impossible for me to chew or swallow.
It was both burnt and raw at the same time, and I wasn’t even sure how that was possible. It also did not taste like a brownie. I wasn’t sure what it did taste like. Pain and suffering, maybe?
By the time I cleared the tears from my eyes, Milo was frowning at me. “No good?” he asked. “Dammit. I followed the recipe Ethel gave me exactly, and I didn’t even mix up the salt and the sugar this time.”
He looked at the offensive brownies as if this was somehow their fault, then he stuffed them back into the suitcase. He stood up, brushing off his pants, and I stood up, too.
Milo looked toward the cabin. “Did you see anyone come out?” he asked.
“Uhh… no?”
Right then my cell phone went off again, the sound of “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett filling the clearing.
He stared at me while I studiously ignored the ringing phone. “You going to get that?” he asked.
I just shook my head.
“Okay, then. Call someone if the woods catch on fire.” And with that, Milo took his suitcase, turned around, and headed back into the woods.
I listened to him crash through the undergrowth until it was a faint whisper. I wasn’t sure when I made the decision to follow him, but my feet seemed to have a mind of their own.
I was just looking out for the human, after all.