Page 3 of Devil’s Snare

Maybe I was in shock because what happened next didn’t make any sense. I heard panting. Not a human breathing. No, this belonged to an animal. Like a large dog.

My eyes widened. The pressure remained.

What the hell was happening!?

A rough, sticky, wet kiss landed on my cheek. Wait. Was it a lick?

I must be dreaming. I’d come here, cried over Becka’s grave, and, exhausted, fell asleep. That was the only explanation. This couldn’t be real.

It wasn’t real. No way.

“He likes you.”

I turned my head to the right, snapping it so fast I almost got whiplash, and noticed the guy leaning against the trunk of a nearby tree. Where the hell did he come from? And when?

The panting increased, and I heard a whimper. It sounded, unbelievably, like an invisible creature pinning me to the top of Becka’s grave.

“You’re not dreaming,” the guy dressed in all black answered like he could read my thoughts. “Not quite sure how, but you charmed a grim.”

I pinched my arm and winced. Shit.

This was fucking real.

Chapter 2 Cinerator

It was quiet tonight. The type of night that seemed to sit with anticipation, almost vibrating with an electric hum that few seemed to notice. But I did. The feeling buzzed across the bare skin of my arms, and I swore that I could almost see the tattoos on my skin bouncing from the excess energy.

A lit cigarette rested between my lips. I wasn’t inhaling, too distracted by the need to leave the clubhouse and walk the nearby cemetery. Something in my bones seemed restless. When that happened, I usually went for a ride on my bike. But tonight? I felt a pull to the graveyard and the ghostly remains of the souls buried there.

“You feel it too,” Fiend observed as he lit a smoke beside me, leaning against the exterior wall outside, taking up the space to my left. “Makes me fuckin’ antsy.” He tilted his head, staring at me as he ticked his chin. “You look ready to jump outta your skin.”

“Yeah,” I agreed with a crack of my neck. I didn’t say that it had anything to do with the cemetery. Or the forest that lay beyond it. Just let him think whatever the fuck he wanted. But if he felt the same tug I did, he didn’t clarify. “I’m gonna clear my head.”

Fiend nodded, blowing out a thick ring of smoke that slowly rose and circled his head before fading away in the cool wind. He’d probably end up taking a ride through the barren streets as soon as he finished his smoke.

Neither of us enjoyed being idle.

I pinched the cigarette dangling from my mouth and tossed it to the ground, using my boot to snuff out the cinders before I headed away from the clubhouse, toward the mortuary. The building connected to Revered Grove Memorial Home on the property. While the club owned the land surrounding Deathrock Cemetery, including the lumber mill and our lucrative carpentry business, we didn’t have any rights to the acres within the black iron gates.

We did create the one item nearly everyone inside needed.

Coffins.

At least, that was the legit business on the books. Didn’t really matter as long as the club didn’t have to deal with the law. Gravedigger handled the logistics since he was president. I didn’t have the fucking patience for it. To be honest, not many of us did, except for Reaver. He was good with numbers, which was why Gravedigger, or G.D., as most of us knew him, made Reaver the treasurer.

A crisp, cool wind blew around me as I walked toward the wood shop, looking for a distraction when I found one I didn’t expect. But I sure as hell recognized the same insistent and nearly annoying pull on my body. My feet carried me forward as if they had a mind of their own. At nearly one in the morning, no one should have been inside the cemetery, especially mourners.

But I felt her presence long before I saw the woman kneeling beside a fresh grave. Her grief hung around her shoulders and weighed her down with an invisible blanket. It sent fresh waves of sorrow through her slender body, nearly stealing her breath more than once. Tears shimmered in her dark blue eyes, glistening in the moonlight.

She didn’t see me.

I inhaled, taking in the layers of regret, pain, and sadness that radiated from her. They created a unique and irresistible cocktail that I grew nearly intoxicated on. My eyes closed, and I concentrated on the emotions, drawing in more as I sensed she was close to letting those tears fall. Grief had a chokehold on her, and I eagerly gobbled up the emotional dam as it burst, leaving her sobbing as her hand rested on the mound of dirt.

It wasn’t that I was some asshole looking to get off on her suffering. I literally could not help it.

Sorrow was my drug of choice, although any strong emotion would suffice. I fed from her grief and sorrow and devoured the thick, cloying essence, suddenly ravenous. The more she wept, the more I sucked it in until I nearly stumbled against the nearest tree. My body swayed. A shudder raced through me as she dried her eyes, resting back against the grass. Right beside the grave.

I’d bet the last dime that I owned she buried a relative today. Someone she loved. But to come here at midnight? And lie in the graveyard among the dead?