Chapter 16

ChapterSixteen

Ophelia

One Hell of a Team - AmaLee

“We make one Hell of a team, Soul Raiser,” Blake whispered into my ear as he wrapped an arm around me and kept us concealed within the shadows. My breathing was heavy and sensual. A small tendril of the mood moments ago still twirled around me in a gentle caress that had my heart dipping and my skin pebbled. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“I’m an author, Blake. Every single one of my heroines is deadly and lethal. They know how to fight, so naturally, I do too. I am my work. Why do you think I was in the graveyard tonight? I become my characters so I can write them to justice.” I breathlessly replied, my throat a little raspy.

“Huh,” he uttered and I smirked at having had a way to befuddle him.

It was endearing, actually. Watching him all flustered. I reached behind me and palmed his cock, which shriveled more than a shrimp trying to keep its shell.

“Aw, baby. You were right. I do love your cock.”

He jittered away from me and I chuckled so hard that he had to clamp a hand over my mouth.

All I needed now was the other around my throat. Just as I thought it, he obliged and I shuddered in stimulation. “Don’t play with me, sweetheart,” he growled with a dangerous lilt to his tone and I purred into his palm. When he pulled away, I looked up at him over my shoulder and whispered back, “Why? When I so enjoy your punishments.”

His eyes narrowed and widened at the same time, thick lips puckered as he nodded his head in amusement. “Careful, love. The wicked in you is starting to show.”

“Oh, but isn’t that how you want me?” I teased. The sexual tension between us burned hotter than a volcano. I struggled to keep my hands to myself, the need to run them over every dip and curve of his defined muscles a compulsion. He awoke something inside of me that was hard to explain. Something primal and raw that was pure desire and absolutely nothing else. When he surrounded me, quietness fell and my mind finally calmed. My fuel was his energy, and everything he led me into I went into willingly, sedated by his intoxication.

The fact we were now stalking a dude that ate flesh, was a distant ick in the back of my mind. The night was at its darkest, right before the creeping hours of dawn that would soon encroach on us. Murky fog snaked along the ground, coiling higher and higher. When I peeked back out from the cave of our darkness, I saw a tall figure stalking down the street. He was humming, dressed in a long black trench coat that dragged along the ground behind him, and a top hat that honestly made him look like he belonged in a different era. The sound of his warped tune rang through the air and sent a shiver down my spine. Because who the fuck hums before they eat somebody’s ass?

Blake.

That was who.

“Do you know what he’s going to do next?” I whispered, unable to tear my eyes away from the shadow that moved closer toward us.

“Yes,” he whispered back. “Do you trust me?” he asked for the hundredth time tonight and each time I answered yes, he threw me into even deeper waters. There was a lilt of humor to his tone and it had me craning my neck back to glare at him in suspicion.

“No, not when you say it like that,” I retorted. The sound of his voice was mockingly sinister. Like he had some twisted game up his leather sleeve and I had this daunting feeling that I’d be the butt of that joke.

“Remember, love. Make it believable.” He chuckled before he let me go abruptly and shoved me, sending me staggering into the street.

Shit.

I spun in a circle, needing to see how far this creepy bastard was from where I stood, only to squeal and jump back when his nose was practically touching mine. The lanky six-foot-seven sicko was hunched over, bent lower to my height, and just as I was about to scream the freak sniffed me and all I could do in response to that was draw my head back onto my shoulders in disbelief. He groaned and rotated his head like it was on a swivel stick. Then he licked the air, did a little happy dance and spun in a maniacal circle of his own, waving his hands in the air like a demented clown doing a party trick.

“Ooo, trick, trick because I just found myself a delicious treat!”

Fuck no.

“Listen freak!”

“No, no! Meals do not speak. Hush now, we’ll have you in the pot soon enough,” he chastised and my brows hit my hairline at the balls of this human-flesh-eating dick face.

Had he ever…

Nope. No. Not tonight, Satan.

“We?” I questioned as I took a tentative step backward and scanned the street around me expecting to see somebody else jumping from the dead of night. Trust Blake not to give me the heads up that I’d be fighting a cackle of freaks.

“The cheek!” he exclaimed in heated protest.

“The nose!”he squealed in sour retort.

“The lips!”

“The tit!”

Then the Jekyll and Hyde bit stopped and he stood there eerily still staring at nothing as he seemed to think over whatever the fuck he was just arguing with himself about. “Hmm, the tit. I could eat a tit tonight.”

My head snapped toward the corner I was standing five seconds ago with Blake and saw him leaning up against the brick so casually, leg hiked up like he was moments before he spun me into a dance that still had my mind hazy and kicked the ass of a pervert. The demented fucker was laughing at me. I narrowed my eyes, ready to just knock this freaky dude out so we could get on with the killing part of my wild All Hallows’ Eve adventures, but when I turned back to him, the dude lurched a hand into my hair and began dragging me along the street kicking and screaming.

“Get the fuck off me!” I bellowed, digging in my heels and scratching at the hidden wrists of his flesh that was lost behind the fabric of his trench coat. “Let me go!” Through everything that had happened tonight, through all of the sick things that I had watched happen, this was the thing that terrified me the most.

Being powerless.

Nothing I did gave me purchase. None of my fancy self-defense moves could work when I was a long, lone, and limp spaghetti noodle flailing in the wind. He dragged me with unnatural ease, and my heart beat a frantic rhythm into my ribcage. My entire chest ached brutally, the pain feathering down into my ribs and taking root in my stomach.

Bile burned in the back of my throat and each time it rose higher, ready to spew from me, I feared that I would drop dead when the next breath came so belatedly because of it.

Just when I found my footing, I managed to twist in his hold and pull back, he yanked a fistful of my hair and held it in his unwavered grip.

Fuck it.

I could live with being bald. I couldn’t live with being dead.

When I worked my way to standing in front of him and righted myself, batting the downfall of my hair from my face and tried to catch a breath, he laughed and shoved me in the chest. Confusion had my eyes wide, then I went flying backward, it wasn’t pavement that greeted me though. It was a covering of darkness and a metal thud as I hit my head on something that echoed back at me with a ding.

As I blinked open my dazed eyes, I noticed I’d been tossed into the back of a van, and the engine that purred to life, vibrating underneath me, instilled fear into my horrified heart.

I kicked my feet and scurried to my knees. The jerk in the vehicle had me flying forward and as I landed with my chest flat against the ground, I turned my head at the last second to prevent myself from busting my nose. I stilled when a glass door in a small refrigerator hummed beside me.

A decapitated head with a missing eye stared back at me.

I gasped and rolled to my back immediately. I froze as I stared at the ceiling almost as if I could pretend that I never saw such a thing and that that thing sure as fuck never saw me, “Blake!” I shrilled wildly. “I’m going to kill you!”

“I’m already dead, sweetheart!” his voice whispered around me with a taunt that had me slamming my fists against the side of the van and screaming bloody murder.