Race the Darkness (Fatal Dreams, #1)(100)

The girl extended her arm, hiding something in her fist. “You must take this.” The girl’s petulant tone raised goose bumps over Evanee’s skin.

“What do you have?” Evanee’s voice quivered.

One by one, the little fingers opened to reveal the child’s treasure.

Round. Puckered. Ashen white. Misty blue circle in the middle.

An eye.

Evanee’s legs wobbled. She stumbled back, opened her mouth to cry out, maybe to scream, but something invisible, immovable, immense grabbed her throat, choked off the sound, and stopped her. She was locked inside the husk of herself, unable to move or breathe or fight.

The girl turned. One side of her face was sweet child perfection, the other an abomination. Blood and flesh congealed in her empty eye socket. Rusty brown smears mixed with scarlet trailing down her cheek, some slithering into her mouth.

Gray spots speckled Evanee’s vision. She was going to pass out; maybe she was going to die. She’d never feared death, used to wish Junior would just kill her instead of playing with her. And disappearing right now from the mess she’d made of her life would be easier than working her way out.

But she didn’t want to die. She wanted to live.

She had an absurd desire to hold Lathan’s hand again. Even though the tattoo on his face made him look more intimidating than anyone she’d ever met, he’d protected her from Junior and that vaulted him way past stranger-danger status to good-guy-hero level.

“You.” The girl’s voice was a command. “Take this.”

The gray spots spread, turned blinding yellow, then black, blotting out the girl. Unable to struggle, unable to breathe, unable to utter a sound, Evanee mouthed the word she wanted to say. No.

“Don’t say no to me.” The girl’s tone deepened beyond its natural level, dipping into the range of the demonic.

The Thing holding Evanee released her. Her knees folded neat as a shirt on the display table at Gap, bringing her down to eye level with the girl. Air sucked into her oxygen-starved lungs. The girl opened her mouth, hurling blood over Evanee in a vindictive arc. The warm slickness of it touched her tongue. Before she could spit it out, its heat snuck down her throat and burned in her belly.

Her arm rose to take the eye. She screamed—she didn’t raise her arm. The Thing did.

The girl dropped the still-warm eye in Evanee’s palm. Across the girl’s face spread the smirky smile of a spoiled child who’d just gotten her way.

*

Lathan strode down the lonely road. Shimmering stars pierced the charcoal sky, casting silver light on the pavement meandering among the low hills. A chill breeze carried the feral scents of coyote and possum. Predator and prey.

He stepped into his driveway and headed for his back door. The brisk walk to find the shoes she’d lost out on the road had been exactly what he’d needed to unscramble his thoughts and figure some things out. Some things he couldn’t allow himself to forget.

Not getting any SMs from her was intriguing, but it had to be just a random, happenstance occurrence. She was nothing more than a woman he was helping for the night, and he couldn’t let himself forget that. No matter how miraculous it felt to touch her.

He trudged up the porch steps and through the door. The stench hit him before he made it across the threshold. Garlic. And something rotting, decomposing, dead.

Damn that dog and his fetish for decaying carcasses.

Honey lay on the couch, her gaze locked on Little Man—his two-hundred-pound mastiff. An unfortunate underbite left Little Man’s bottom teeth protruding and made him look like Satan’s best beast rather than man’s best friend.

“That’s Little Man. He’s harmless.” He set her shoes in the middle of the kitchen table so Little Man wouldn’t turn them into tail-wagger toys and looked around for the dead animal. “He won’t hurt you. He’s really just an overgrown puppy.”

She sprang off the couch, hurdled the coffee table, crashing into him with full-body impact. He caught her tightly to him, smelling her fear, feeling it in the butterfly tremors shaking her body.

“I should’ve warned you that he might come in.” He inhaled the scent of her hair—cooking oil, nectarines, and sunshine. “He comes and goes through a dog door in the laundry room.”

Her arms slid around him, holding him so tight she could’ve been his second skin.

His heart crashed against his chest wall. His breath tangled up in his lungs. His gut stung with warmth. She settled her head over his heart. Could she feel it pounding? He squeezed his eyes shut, letting the pleasure of holding her entwine with the regret of knowing this was the first time, the last time, the only time he’d ever be able to hold another human being.

Her lips moved against his chest. He heard the stammering sounds of her speaking.

“…dream…”

Dream. He’d caught only one word of what she’d said. Did she think Little Man was a bad dream?

He half dragged, half carried her to the couch and sat. She didn’t let go of him and ended up across his lap, her buttocks pressing into his dick. Blood drained downward and swelled into his groin. Lava-hot sweat erupted from his pores. Shame formed a molten lump in his gut—knowing what she’d been through, he shouldn’t be reacting to her this way. He shifted, moved her down his legs so she couldn’t feel his arousal, and then started blabbing to distract her.