Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 277(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
It’d better not be one of those damned heads.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Turned out that the pilot was an actual person with a body and head, though the head didn’t speak English. That or he’d been told not to talk to me and was faking a language barrier. I went with the former, however; from what I gathered, the pilot, who looked to be in his sixties, seemed as equally messed up over his boss’s resurrection. He kept waving his hands and yelling something that sounded like Necrose! Necrose vasiyas!
According to Google translate, I thought it meant “dead king” in Greek. Nekrós vasiliás. So the pilot was Greek. And he hadn’t been expecting King to come knocking. His dead king.
This was insane.
After I confirmed we were heading to Tallahassee, I went back to one of the ten seats and kicked off a giant emotional stress dump. I cried and I cried some more. When I was done, I got out my phone and started making notes—every tiny detail King had given me from the moment we’d met. With that, maybe I could do a little digging for answers. Who was he really? Was he telling the truth about Ten Club, or was I being manipulated for his benefit?
I stared at the skeletal list of facts on my tiny screen and grunted out a few curses.
I had nothing.
I knew King could die and come back. I knew he used to live in a house that didn’t legally exist. He owned a giant warehouse of expensive horror movie props that weren’t props, and he was, hands down, the scariest motherfucker on the planet. Oh, and also the most beautiful.
Goosebumps erupted on my neck and arms. I’d been avoiding thinking about last night—those searing hot kisses, his lean hard body moving over mine, the way he made me feel like I was his. It was an experience that went beyond sex and left my body pining for more. The taste of his lips, his heat, and the scent of his fresh sweat would forever be etched in my brain. Even now, I felt a carnal ache deep inside. Yes, Jack was gone, but he’d been replaced by something far more addictive.
No. You can’t do this. I couldn’t let my twisted sexual needs sway my decision about helping him. I had to stick to the facts, or at least try to think this through logically.
He was a powerful man hell-bent on revenge. He’d lost his wife and children. How? By whose hand exactly? And why had they been murdered? I didn’t know, but he believed this Ten Club was to blame. If the organization protected the man who murdered my mother, I wanted justice, too. But to find out that King was part of it? That he led this group of evil, depraved fucks? It was a lot to swallow.
Fucking hell, King. I slid my hand over the K on my wrist. I knew I should walk away, but I couldn’t. I’d felt the pull from the first moment we met, just like he said.
As I sat there, thinking about it—the path that led him to me—the tattoo started to tingle against my palm, and my mind began drifting. No, not drifting. Falling. Like a bird shot down from the sky.
In the space of a heartbeat, I was somewhere else. All around me were tiers of stone benches under the glaring hot sun. The smell of salt, ocean, and coppery blood filled my nostrils. I was surrounded by hundreds of cheering people dressed in burlap—some red, some blue, some brown—belted at the waist or adorned with scraps of leather or seashells.
Ohmygod. What’s happening? My gaze fell to the dirt of the arena’s floor beneath my feet. In my hand, I held a bloody head. In the other, I held a sword.
I blinked and found myself staring aimlessly at the seat back in front of me, the sound of jet engines whirring in my head.
Panting, I stood in the aisle and doubled over, planting my palms above my knees. That wasn’t real. That wasn’t real. But the ache in my head and the itching in my skull told me I had just been inside King’s head.
I stood upright and placed my palm over the K again. The skin tingled, and I felt the falling sensation once more.
What the hell? Whatever this tattoo was made of, it appeared to connect us. So if that gruesome scene had come from him, did it mean what I thought? He’d said something about needing a few thousand years to explain how he’d become the founder of Ten Club. I thought he’d meant it metaphorically.
I took my seat and combed my fingers through my hair. Not a metaphor, Jeni. Real. King was possibly thousands of years old, which meant he might actually be a real king.