Ghost (The Halloween Boys #1) (15)

I should have gone home. My knuckles were chapped, my back scabbing over, and I was in desperate need of a shower. My shirt was dirty and unbuttoned, revealing reddened abs. But fuck did I feel alive. The beatings were part training and part self-harm. We liked it: the pain, the struggle, the promise of death by the hands of a friend. It was a difficult need to explain to a non-psychopath. Our human bodies needed the beatings. The lashings were like cool breezes on our true forms. But where was the fun in that? We understood each other. We’d all killed hundreds of times and we’d kill hundreds more. I imagined we’d still be doing our monster shit well into the end of the world. When we didn’t have the luxury of roaming the earth like Judas, The Devil, kills were harder to come by. But I found this one, this target that fluttered straight into my web, so it was my time to take the lead. Whoever brought in our prey got the killing blow; the others played assist. They typically got their blood lusts fulfilled as well, but the operation was in my charge this time. I was already mulling over how and where. There were unknown variables to consider with this mark. The Devil’s warning over Simon Glen’s underestimated skill level didn’t concern me. He wasn’t better than me. A mortal was too easy as it was. That was why we dragged it out. It was why I usually killed them as a man and not a monster, unless I felt like shifting at the very end just to scare the fuckers. This deadbeat sure as fuck wasn’t better than the four of us. But I didn’t have a current location on him, and neither did the boys. That was unusual but not unheard of. We’d handled targets like him before. The letters intrigued me. It was poetic, cryptic, artistic, even, to send a blank letter to every address she landed. It seemed too creative for him. But Devil was right, this man liked the chase. Just like I did. I got off on the kill. That darling girl’s fear had my cock straining against my pants the day she stumbled into my office. It danced and tingled on my forked tongue. I imagined the taste of her fear if she knew what I was. What if I showed her a glimpse, forced her to look . . .

But I didn’t hurt women. The thought was unfathomable and sent pulses of rage through my blood. My mortal prey were capable, overgrown bullies, abusers, fellow psychopaths. They deserved to be haunted by me. My paranormal opponents were a different story, and I supposed I’d be seeing a few of them at Hallows Fest soon.

What interested me personally, what dragged me into fixation right now, however, was her. That wasn’t supposed to be. She’s wasn’t a part of the plan, not really. I didn’t change the oil for Florence Jenkins before I slaughtered her old teacher who molested her. I didn’t invite Jordan Kerr to a support group before I buried his ex-boyfriend for beating him. When the security footage plastered across every news station showed a man in a hat abducting a teenager from outside a car wash four towns over, I didn’t check in on the parents after I let Onyx feast on his blood while I cut the sicko to pieces and dumped several bags of his worthless body into Lake Ash. That asshole fled right into Ash Grove; we didn’t even get to hunt him.

So why was I talking to Blythe?

Why couldn’t I leave her street and go home? I told myself I’d track her because following her meant finding her stepfather. If he were watching her, I’d be fucking watching him. But hell if I could drive away. She was just a mark. A means to an end to get my need to kill fulfilled. I was bored, restless. My abilities were waning from dormancy so badly I couldn’t even sense her without the help of technology. This was my pathway to offering the monster inside me his blood sacrifice so he didn’t strangle me in my sleep. This was purely selfish. A desire born of blood and violence and chaos. I cared for nothing and no one, least of all some human woman I’d just met.

But the thoughts shook their chains and rattled in my mind.

Why’d I stay up all night staring at the purple glow?





CHAPTER 7





Blythe





HORROR MOVIE WALK OF SHAME





I enjoy tremendously every single moment of my life because death, all the time, is very close watching me and death might catch me. And every five minutes death don’t catch me, I enjoy tremendously.

Salvador Dali





I dreamt of Ames all night. The way he wiped the engine grease from his thick fingers . . . That stupid tuft of hair I wanted to push back to see his face. I wondered how I’d fit in his lap, straddling him in his office chair . . . I awoke wet.

Literally.

Sitting up, I rubbed my eyes and pawed at my drenched comforter. I wondered if I’d slept with my water bottle open, as half of my queen-sized bed were soda cans and makeup. I peeled off my blanket, my bare feet hitting the ground with a squish. Murky cold water puddled around my toes. I swore, dropping to my knees and pulling my box out from under the bed. Water had crept through the holes in my container. Any opened foods were ruined: a lidless, half-eaten jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a bag of chips. I pulled out a dripping envelope stack: the letters. I’d saved each blank letter I’d received from my abuser. There was no reason to save them, but I did, if only to remind myself it was all real should I get too complacent and forget. I can’t settle down. I can’t stop hiding. Ames made me promise to tell him if I got another letter here. He said he knew people who could help. No offense to him, but I didn’t think Old Man Winston down of Ash Grove’s Sheriff’s Department would be able to do anything about my rageful and vindictive stalker. Sheriff Winston picked up takeout last week atop his lawnmower because the police cruiser’s battery died. Was he going to mow my stepdad to death?