Shades of Human (Faerie-Tail Awakening Book 1) Read online

  I jerked back and my mouth fell open. “You said you would never leave. That you could never go back.”

  Adamaris smiled, the look both dangerous and sexy at the same time. “And I meant every word. I can never go back to who I was before I met you. I won’t pander to the rules of my people when it comes to what I feel for you. You are mine and only you.” Hot hand back on my face, he kissed my lips sweetly and passionately. Those dimples appeared as he leaned back, licking his lower lip. “And I will never leave you, but…we cannot stay here. Come to The Deep with me. Leave the danger…” His lips brushed over mine again, lingering with his hot breath that sent shivers down my spine. “And start your life with me.”

  “I’ll drown,” I said it like I was half asleep, my voice breathy from the lingering tingles that made my lips throb.

  “Do you trust me?”

  Eyes opening as my hand was snatched up from the sheets I’d been clawing into, Adamaris pressed my palm over his chest, over his heart. My fingers brushed across the small scab that remained after he’d pointed his dagger at his own chest, an act to prove that his heart, and his life, was in my hands.

  I crawled up onto my knees, sweeping all the circling questions in my mind aside. The mattress creaked from the movement and a spring dug into my knee. But I didn’t care. Straddling Adamaris on the edge of the bed, I hooked my arms around his neck, laying a kiss on him that returned the taste of him to my mouth and had my toes curling. A delicious need pooled in my core, but I controlled the rampant desire that could so easily turn me to putty in his hands. Instead, I arched back to look deep into his eyes. “With my heart and with my life.”

  Adamaris’s smile almost shot a hole in my heart, beaming so bright I was amazed I hadn’t noticed how perfect his teeth were beneath his kissable lips. With a frown at his tattoo, he tapped my backside, giving it a final squeeze before lifting me up and placing me back down on the bed.

  A small noise of protest left my mouth as he snatched his jeans off the floor and hurriedly stabbed his legs into the holes rather than pinning me down on the bed and having his wicked way with me. Rising up to his towering height, he strode to the door without a word.

  “Where are you going?”

  Adamaris glanced back at me, his smile sexy and his head cocked sideways as if imagining how much he’d like to rip his V-neck off of my body. At least I wasn’t alone in the sexual desires that had taken control of me and turned me into an addict for his flesh and touch. Though behind that look was one of urgency. “Get ready to leave. I’m going to fill the bath.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I completed at least twenty small laps around my loft, not knowing what to do or where to start. After Adamaris’s announcement on filling the bath downstairs, he’d left me with one and only one task. “Grab what you need and what you can carry. When the water’s ready, we’re leaving.”

  The old me had wanted to argue and point out that he wasn’t calling all the shots, that we were a team and anything we did was a mutual decision. The return of that whispered voice in my head killed my moxie and shut my big mouth up tight. You can’t escape. You’ll never make it alive. I’m coming to get you, little girl…tick tock, the hourglass is empty and the hunt is on.

  My eyes darted even though the threats had vanished as fast as they had come. There was nothing reflective in my loft, nothing that I hadn’t scratched the metal or shiny surface of enough to make a reflection impossible. The windows stayed dirty not only on the outside but also on the inside for a reason. I wasn’t simply lazy with an aversion to cleaning; I was protecting myself.

  Now I was frantic, grabbing one thing after the next and then returning it to its rightful place—because what the hell was I meant to take underwater? My canvases were like windows to all my hopes, dreams, and fears. They were parts of me that I had created with slashes of color of places and beings I could only dream about. Beings I was now a part of. “A Fae?” I had always thought faeries were tiny little Tinkerbell people with gossamer wings that farted glitter as they flew about. Okay, maybe not farted, but it did make me smile in light of how upside down my life had become. And an Unseelie Queen? What the hell did that mean?

  Fleeing my paintings, I fell to my knees before my mother’s wooden trunk. Already open, her corduroy jacket hung over the edge along with a few other pieces of clothing…and The Little Mermaid hoodie I’d worn as a child. I pulled it out gently as if it could fall to threads if I were too careless. It was fifteen years old and the ruddy stains were all still there, never washed. My mother’s blood—from the day she’d vanished. It broke my heart, but I knew I couldn’t take it with me. In the ocean—how the hell was I meant to live in the ocean? I mean seriously, was I delusional or could this really work as Adamaris promised? My mom had been a sea witch. But did that mean I could breathe underwater? Soon enough I would find out, but I couldn’t take this long ago memory with me. The seawater would break it down and steal not only the stains but the faded mermaid printed on the front…the one I’d dreamed of being when I was a little girl.

  God, I’d love that movie, even though it wasn’t new when I found out about it. The sea had once called to me, a place my mother had somehow lived? And if she had been a witch, did that make me one too?

  Seeing the wooden box I’d found in the storage locker, I pulled it out and sat it on my folded knees, opening the lid. The photo with a worn bend through the middle stared up at me, revealing the smiling faces of my mom and the man that had been my father. There was only one thing I needed to take with me, and I leaped up and raced to the kitchen. I pulled a drawer open from the bank of drawers beside the kitchenette cupboard. The tracks caught, old and rusted, the chipped front panel flaking just from being opened. But with a shift left to right, it came out. I grabbed a zip-lock plastic bag and slid the photo inside, running my thumb and finger over the double locking seams to make the flat bag airtight. “There…”

  “Calliope. Help me. Calli, please! There’s not much time.”

  I spun like I was on a turntable. My frantic eyes scoured over the messy folding table and hot plate, past the canvases on easels and then the discarded wet boots on the ground. No one was there. I was alone, the faintest sounds of splashing water reaching my ears as I strained to hear through the open door.

  “Calliope!”

  Horror stabbed into my heart. That voice, the fear. “Mamma?”

  A split-second image flashed in my mind—of a car barreling off a pier. A car with a red-headed woman driving. What if my mom survived—

  A chink-chink sounded and then one of my windows cracked and dirty shards of glass fell with a clatter. At first, I expected to see a poor lost bird among the debris, but then I noticed the growth of water that dripped from the sharp fragments—from melting ice.

  “What the hell?”

  Yeah, it was winter, but it was too early for snow, and this wasn’t that. It was ice that had frosted a pane of glass, one out of all twenty to be exact.

  “Help…help…me.”

  The fading sound of that frightened voice drew my sight to my tousled bed—and the beam of light through the broken window that highlighted an object that couldn’t be confused. I sucked in my breath. Beside where Adamaris had been sitting with me straddling his lap, the place he’d tugged his jeans on from, was…the clamshell compact.

  The item my mother had given him.

  Heart suddenly pounding, I crept forward. I’d seen inside the shell, seen the photo of his mother. But what else was hidden or trapped inside? Had I finally learned to trust only to choose the wrong person to put my total faith in?

  Fear of finding out, of blowing all that I thought I now knew out of the water, kept my movements slow, my arm reaching and shaking with uncontrollable tremors as I neared. And then there was no escaping it. I had to know—had I been deceived? Was my mother still alive? My fingers grazed the rough clamshell exterior, and as I lifted the compact to my face, the lid popped open.

  T
he photo inside moved, a tap-tap coming from behind it as if someone was knocking on a door. I could barely catch my breath. My head spun like a whirlpool. And then I pinched the edge of the photo and ripped it away like a Band-Aid. A shiny surface lay behind the covering that was now gone. A mirror. “Mamma?”

  That cackling laughter erupted, punching into my racing heart like a gunshot. Darkness appeared in the mirror and then I saw the monster’s face. I snapped the compact closed, but the latch never clicked. A boney hand shot out, black fingers stabbing through the mirror and nails catching around the shell’s edge to pop the lid back open. I screamed and threw the compact onto the bed. Swiping the bat out from under the mattress, I backed away, my mouth open in horror as my breaths rushed.

  Like a scene from my worst nightmares, that hand grew into a long spindly arm followed by another. Two palms patted the rumpled sheets as I hit the folding table and knocked clutter and a mug to the floor. It smashed and something else clanged, but I didn’t look down to see the mess I’d created. I couldn’t look away from the grotesque sight as a pointed nose emerged and then a long, dark face, being pulled up out of the mirror by the clawing hands that punctured my bed. Its body slid out next, appearing quickly as the monster’s large black eyes settled on me. “Hello, little girl. I’ve waited so long for this day. To finally take what you stole from me all those years ago.”

  “I...I…” The words refused to come as the monster clambered off my bed, talons tapping the scratched wooden floors like that dinosaur had on one of those Jurassic movies. But in this case, I would have taken my chances with a velociraptor over this thing any day. The deadly intent in its eyes and the gleam of its yellow teeth through its curved smiled promised my death would not be quick. I swung the bat—and the monster caught it. Its deadly smile turned gleeful as ice spread out from its clawed hold on the bat, climbing the wooden length at speed. “Surrender, little girl. Give in.”

  I yanked at the bat, my hand beginning to freeze. “Never.” The need to recoil increased as I got a better look at the monster. Humanoid in many areas, but with blackish wrinkly skin and body parts that didn’t reveal a clear gender. What was this thing? “And what’s with the nudity? Seriously, you’re not rocking a pretty sight here.”

  The monster snarled and refused to let go, hand squeezing tighter until the wood creaked and groaned, turning brittle in our hands. I gave a defiant tug—and the bat shattered into a million pieces.

  The monster snatched for me through the exploding splinters, and I darted sideways to get around the table. It swooped down just as fast, picking up—oh my God—Adamaris’s dagger. That was the item that fell with the mug. And now it was in the monster’s hands, pointed at me as it stalked forward.

  I skirted around the table, crying out as broken porcelain cut into my foot and almost tripping on the leg of one of my easels. “What do you want from me?”

  The monster didn’t miss a beat, walking over the shattered mug as if nothing could penetrate its skin. It stabbed for my gut, and I snatched up the hot plate, using it as a shield. My pulse pounded in my ears, and the smile it flashed chilled me to the bone. And then the monster was right in front of me, shoving me through canvases that toppled as I tripped backward. The hotplate fell and shattered, but I never hit the floor. The monster’s hard boney arm that was covered in paper-thin skin caught under my neck and shoved me into the wall between two canvases, pinning me in place. I gagged, my throat being crushed under the gangly monster’s unbelievable strength. “Sing for your life. Surrender now and I will spare him.”

  “Calli?” Adamaris called from downstairs, but the monster pressed harder on my neck, stopping any sound from escaping my open mouth. He was coming to my rescue, coming to face this thing unprepared and weaponless.

  “Knock him out so he won’t stop you and I’ll let him live. Make your choice.” The monster’s grip loosened.

  “Go…back…” I grated, head swimming as I forced my arms that felt suddenly heavy to reach up so I could shove the monster off of me, “to…Hell.”

  “Wrong choice.” Searing warmth bloomed across my ribs, the dagger breaking my skin and sinking in slowly. “Now his blood will be on your hands.”

  “Get away from her!” Adamaris appeared in the doorway, a hazy figure as I blinked to clear my blurry vision. His cheeks were flushed and sweat sprouted over his face and bare chest. If I weren’t one stab away from being a total seekh kebab, I would have taken a moment to admire the damn sexy view.

  And then I was falling as Adamaris rushed into the room with a roar of malice.

  The monster hissed and its elbow cracked into my cheek, knocking me senseless as I slid to the ground. Dizzy and battling unconsciousness, things went flying and smashing sounds filled my small loft. There was movement in front of me, Adamaris fighting with his fists against the monster that slashed his dagger out at him. Each slicing sweep was so close to cutting flesh and spilling blood.

  And I was of no help, fighting to get the feeling back to my legs while my body dipped in and out of unconsciousness.

  One second they were right in front of me, the table flipping sideways. The next second, Adamaris was on my bed, leaping back barely in time to keep his guts safely stowed in his abdomen. The monster jumped for him and flattened him to the bed. They rolled back and forth, fists flying and Adamaris’s arm coming up over and over just in time to stop the dagger from taking his heart.

  Finally, some of my mobility returned as my vision leveled out. I fought the worst pins and needles of my life, rolling to my knees—right as the weapon went sailing. The hilt clocked me in the face before I could react to block it. My head hit the wall and then the ground rushed up. The wooden floor smacked my face as I landed, and then everything turned black…

  The sounds of grunting and hisses came back all too fast, returning the horror I’d escaped from for who knows how long.

  Clambering through the pain of a migraine that threatened to make my skull explode, I tipped forward, battling gravity and the tilt of the ground to shove myself up. The view twisted like I was on a carousel as my blood pressure plummeted, but what I saw as I rushed to my feet made me scream.

  Somehow Adamaris had gotten the lower half of the monster back into the compact. Now holding the shell open with one hand, he fought to drive it back—right as the monster plunged the dagger up between them.

  Adamaris startled at my scream, head snapping sideways just in time to miss the upward dagger that had been racing for the underside of his jaw. But there was no saving him from what came next. Even as I ran, feet cutting open over broken glass, canvas frames, and everything else, I was too slow.

  In the moment of distraction I caused, the monster stabbed the dagger down into Adamaris’s leg. He stumbled backward, fighting to keep his balance, roaring as he threw a fierce punch to knock the creature further back into the compact. The blow was met with one last returned shove before the monster’s arms flung back into the mirror.

  I’d never make it.

  The dagger was released, clattering as I reached for Adamaris’s outstretched fingers. The compact fell too—as his back plowed into the wall of glass behind him.

  The sound sliced through my ears, deafening me as our fingers grazed—and contact was lost.

  Adamaris flew backward through the raining glass, muscled body clearing the window as gravity took hold and sucked him down. I fell to the ground, shards stabbing into my knees as I snatched up the compact and snapped it shut. The resounding thud as he met the asphalt below brought me back to the moment my mother had fallen and died right in front of me.

  “Not again. God, no.”

  Flat on his back, even from this distance I could see the damage. The bruises, the cuts and scrapes, the blood. It poured from too many places, leaking from his mouth and flooding out from his twisted leg. My heart stopped in my chest, squeezing with grief I didn’t think I could survive again. Grief I didn’t want to battle through if it meant losing the guy who had
found his way into my heart.

  A spluttering cough was met with a wheezing gasp. Adamaris’s eyes flung open, so red with burst blood vessels I couldn’t see the ocean blue of his wide stare. “Ca—Calli—”

  “I’m coming. Hold on. Please hold on. I’m coming!”

  Pocketing the mirror and shoving the dagger into my jacket as I snatched it up, I left the sight of him gasping for breath and fled my loft. I didn’t have a phone, never needed one, but the warehouse manager did. I just hoped the ambulance would get here in time.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  My body shook as I watched them lift the stretcher and slide it up into the back of the ambulance. Its red lights flashed, lighting up the rusted walls of the warehouse and the cops that moved in and out of the main doors, while highlighting the bloodstains that covered Adamaris’s deathly still body.

  Oh God, he was broken. Bruised and bleeding. Unconscious and unresponsive, but breathing…for now. The owner was on his way, but I’d be long gone before he arrived. I refused to leave Adamaris’s side. Getting me to release his floppy hand had been the work of at least three people and akin to trying to wrestle a seal from a shark’s jaws. Inside I was still screaming, begging him to wake up. Begging him not to leave me too. Already the detective knew I was beyond speaking, learning only that an intruder had attacked us and pushed my boyfriend through the shattered window. Interrogation would have to wait—but I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Two murders in a week, and he didn’t even know about the storage manager. Right now I was suspect number one, and my only alibi was a human vegetable waiting to happen. The red marks on my neck worked in my favor, but the tall, middle-aged detective kept looking at me, studying me as if he suspected I was the one that tried to push ‘Adam Harris’ to his death. I sucked in air like I was choking; the same detective who’d questioned me after poor Greg was murdered.