Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 105803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“You’re not meant to be here. What are you going to tell them at the meetings?” He attends Gambler’s Anonymous every Thursday and then an AA meeting on Friday. “You know, you’ll have to be honest with them.”
He looks crestfallen and starts to get upset with himself, and I feel bad for getting angry at him.
I look around the room with its gaudy lights and flashing slot machines and hate every inch of it. It’s noisy and garish, and it stinks of stale alcohol and body odor. Dreams are lost here. Hours stolen and lives changed. Maurice can’t help it. He’s an addict, and unfortunately his addiction is winning. He’s not weak. He’s sick.
“Come on,” I say gently. “Let’s go home. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. How about I fix us some of that chicken noodle soup you like so much?”
My uncle’s face lights up. “That sounds nice, Belle. Real nice.”
“Okay then, grab your coat and let’s go home.”
When I get back to the apartment, I’ll ring his sponsor and we’ll work out a new strategy to help him.
As we walk away from the ringing bells and dazzling lights of the slot machines, a strange shiver crawls across my skin. It tickles the hairs on the back of my neck and slides down my spine. We’re being watched. I do a quick scan of the room but nothing seems out of place.
I try to shake it off, telling myself I’m anxious from being fired and from finding out how deep my uncle’s gambling addiction has gotten its claws into him.
But as we step outside, the sense that someone is watching us grows stronger, and my gut tells me it’s not anxiety.
It’s instinct.
Something is coming.
CHAPTER 2
BEAST
The man has no idea I’m following him.
I stalk him from the shadows, my heavy motorcycle boots drowned out by the noise of the night around us. The cars in the distance. The rattle of trains. The noise seeping onto the street from the taverns along Main Street.
He walks through the cobblestone streets unaware I’m close. Unaware he is about to die.
It’s easy for me to remain undetected.
Because I am a part of the darkness and disappear in the night.
I am the heartbeat of this city.
The shadows.
The karma.
Undetected, I follow him into the town square. He pulls up his coat collar and flicks his dead cigarette at the memorial statue as he passes it by. Twenty-five years ago, this town almost burned to the ground and the statue is a memorial to those who fought to save this town, and those who died trying.
He keeps moving into the night, out of the town square and past the casino.
That’s when I see her. Stepping out from the Uber and disappearing into the casino foyer, her long blonde hair tumbling down to her tiny waist in a thick braid.
I stop walking.
If I were still human, I would say the feeling twisting in my chest is love. But love ceased to exist long ago when I became this beast. When I turned into the monster my club needed me to be.
As if she can sense me, she stops and glances nervously over her shoulder, those big blue eyes scanning the darkness for something.
I take a step back and morph into the shadows so I can watch her undetected.
Her long braid shimmers in the golden glow of the casino lights. Thoughts of wrapping it around my wrist and yanking her head back so I can ruin her mouth with mine make me hard.
My black heart kicks in my chest.
A beat.
A thump.
A need.
She hurries into the casino and disappears from view, and I push the beauty to the back of my mind as I move swiftly through the darkness to find my prey once again. He’s heading down one of the stairwells that twist beneath the street to the abandoned subway tunnels running under the town.
He knows I’m following him. He can feel me. Sense me. He keeps looking over his shoulder as he increases his pace. Closing in on him, I watch his panic set in, hear it in his labored breath as he trips and stumbles on the ballast stone of the railway tracks.
I reach him before he can get up, wrap my hands around his neck and snap it like it is no more than a twig before he can let out a cry.
He’s dead but I’m not done.
I remove my knife from my hip and carve the words NOT IN SB into the flabby skin of his belly, my blade cutting deep. His blood pools in a deep shade of red beneath him.
Let them see that we know.
Let this be their one and only warning.
I wipe the blade on his dirty jeans and straighten.
That’s when I think about the girl with the face like an angel again, and my dark heart thumps wildly in protest. A warning to stay away. Angels like her have the power to destroy demons like me.