Creed Read online

  Melody, wouldn’t you rather have a smoothie?

  Mom’s words echoed from nowhere. Could ghosts be haunted by other ghosts? Melody would laugh if she could, but no sound resonated in this place. Her mom had given up on her when she’d been alive, she wouldn’t exert the effort of haunting Melody in the afterlife, if that’s what this was.

  The hunger gnawed at her. How could she feel? No matter, it was better than the anger. A smoothie wouldn’t satisfy this hunger anyway. She’d never liked the same food as her mom. Just one more sign that she was inadequate in Mom’s eyes.

  A spark flared in the void. Red. Hot and burning. The fury was returning. How’d she stop it before? Think about food.

  Yes, back to smoothies. If she was sick and couldn’t stomach real food, maybe. Otherwise, why drink a meal when she could relish biting into a medium rare ribeye? The red faded to a dull glow. More thoughts about food!

  That’d been a perk of living with vampires. Plenty of quality meat around her. She no longer had to live on discount steak and hamburger and boxed sides. Meals were as robust as she wanted and there was always dessert stocked in the freezer if there wasn’t a fresh pie on the counter. Even better: No one commented on what she ate. The energy she expended running after the boys made calories an afterthought.

  The boys. Their images rose. Xavier and Ari, the two boys she nannied for. So little, so cute, so mischievous. Would they blame themselves?

  For what?

  She struggled to latch onto the thought. It’d come from her. She knew what happened, she just had to access the memory.

  An image floated by. An angry vampire under her. Her own desperation to stop the female.

  Yes, now she recalled the details. She’d staked that demon-possessed vampire who meant to use the boys as bait, and probably eat them. A dark pit forming with a yawning groan and…

  What? What had happened after that?

  She struggled to summon the events. Surging hopelessness filled the void only to be wiped away by an irate wave.

  There would be no forgetting. Remember that shit!

  Melody gasped into the void. Was that actual sound? The spark of ire fueled her focus to remember what had happened.

  Anchored to the wall by a masochist demoness. The suffocating hold of the conjured roots. That’s right. She hadn’t gotten away fast enough and had tumbled through the portal. She hadn’t run away because she’d been shot.

  So she’d been transported to the underworld. Hypna had imprisoned her to use as bait. Then what?

  The handsome male she adored arriving to rescue her yet again.

  No!

  He’d rejected her. Then he’d failed in his rescue and she…

  Didn’t know what happened after that.

  Confusion swept by.

  “Melody?”

  That voice. Her insides swam joyous circles as soon as it hit her eardrums. He’s here, he’s here.

  Creed.

  She stilled, hunkering down to become an observer, just like her father taught her on one of their many hunting trips. Just be present, Mel. Don’t let your worries scare the wildlife away. Be still.

  Dad had failed her in so many ways, but when they were out in the field, she could let the hurt and resentment fade. And that’s what she did now. Clearing her mind, she listened.

  “Hellfire, Melody I swear I saw you move. Do it again. Come on. You can do it.”

  She could totally do it. Because Creed asked her so nicely.

  No! Then she should do the opposite, not what he wanted. She should be upset with him.

  But he’d asked her to move. Move what? She had no clue where her body was. Her thoughts had only appeared recently, leaving her with a to-do list that only included sorting her tangle of memories.

  She concentrated harder. It was like she hovered above a raging sea of emotions. Large waves of anger crashed against smaller crests of bitterness and jealousy. Where’d jealousy come from? Maybe the steady, clockwise sinkhole formed in the middle. At times, it seemed like the sinkhole changed position and threw out another emotion.

  Why not happiness? Why not contentment? She’d been both of those before this happened. Somewhat. Maybe.

  No, she’d been happy. Depressed at what she’d heard Creed say, but content at least. She’d had a good life. Well, it could’ve been worse. Her parents may be gone, her friends lacking, but she’d been making new ones among the vampires. As much as a human could be befriended by vampires. The boys adored her, their parents fond of her. She’d had a nicer roof overhead than any she’d had in life prior to Rourke’s brother stealing her from her pathetic life. No, it hadn’t been pathetic, she reminded herself firmly. “Never feel sorry for yourself” should’ve been her motto, should be what they carved on her gravestone. But she couldn’t deny that with the vampires, she ate better, and while she had to become a night owl, she was content, and at times, happy-ish.

  Right?

  She imagined stretching out until she filled every nook and cranny of the void. No body, no limits. Ooh, she liked that idea. No limits, after a life filled with them.

  There. She sensed her corporeal form, weighed down like heaps of lead sat on her chest. So, wait. She wasn’t dead?

  Creed wanted her to move and she hated disappointing him, though she couldn’t do much about the ultimate disappointment of being human. The red glowed deeper, her rage growing.

  To escape the emotion, she threw all her attention into following the outline of her body. She located her hand. She really was alive!

  Imagining her fingers curling, then flexing, she was attuned to her body enough to feel the move.

  “Look—she twitched.” The excitement in Creed’s voice tinted her black world with a faint blush. Her cesspool tossed out a bead of pleasure. She’d pleased him, and she’d wanted to please him so badly.

  Fury blanked her mind. The negative emotions threatened to take over. That wasn’t her. She didn’t fester in hurt feelings and it was costing her hold on her body. Think, think.

  Her eyelids. If she could open her eyes, maybe she could stay in this world, maybe she could leave the darkness.

  Flowing through the husk that was her, she reoriented herself and found her eyes. Her thoughts and emotions expanded and coalesced into her form, until she was Melody again. Disappointingly human.

  Or was she? Because she was different. Fundamentally altered.

  Her eyes flew open with that thought. Her chest expanded to a painful maximum capacity with a gasp.

  Something else was inside her body that hadn’t been there before.

  Chapter Three

  Melody’s gaze darted around. She blinked, the dull illumination from a nearby torch too much for her sensitive eyes.

  “Melody?”

  Creed’s voice boomed in her ears. She winced.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry.”

  Was he apologizing for damn near shouting? Or was it wishful thinking on her part that it might have a deeper meaning?

  Dirt walls greeted her no matter where she looked. She did her best to avoid Creed. Her very being was burdened with extra…just, extra. Like she was strapped down with a backpack full of dumbbells. That bag of dumbbells was the something else inside of her.

  “Wh—” Her throat croaked and her well of emotion mushroomed. What would spill out, she had no clue.

  “Water. Quution, dammit. We need water. Fresh stuff, not the demon spit you have down here.”

  Creed’s voice stoked a churning in her gut, like the emptiness inside of her needed to feed the extra part of her she couldn’t identify. Water wouldn’t slake her thirst.

  As a dark form rushed out muttering, “I’m coming back to check on her, vampire.” She jerked her gaze toward the movement. A hulking, lopsided form shuffled over. She struggled to recall who that might be.

  “Melody.”

  Her gaze reluctantly landed on Creed. His ocean-blue eyes brimmed with concern and exh
ilaration.

  He was excited she was alive.

  How. Nice.

  The sarcastic, caustic inner voice shocked her. Where had that come from?

  Her eyes narrowed, and not because she couldn’t see him just fine. Rage simmered just under the surface. She feared it’d reach a full boil, and how odd that was the only thing she feared when she should be quaking about the situation she found herself in, one she knew little about.

  A lock of wheat-blond hair hung over his brow. Her hand twitched to brush it away. Then her hand curled into a fist because she wanted to smash it into his chiseled face. The opposing motivations behind each thought shocked her. Shouldn’t she be grateful to be alive? Exhilarated to wake up to Creed? Anything but the surge of anger laser-focused on him.

  His gaze flicked to the movement and back to her. “You’ve been out for a couple of weeks, so I don’t know how you’re going to feel physically.” His eyes darkened with an emotion she couldn’t interpret. “How do you feel?”

  Her mouth tipped, like she was about to snarl. How did she feel? How the fuck did he think she felt?

  Whoa. Why was she so mad again? Shouldn’t she be nervously babbling? This was Creed. The vampire of her dreams. The one she’d been lusting over for months. Creed.

  His scent curled into her nose. He’d always smelled clean before, like soap and laundry detergent, but this was deeper. More specific. The tang of gun metal clung to his clothing with gun powder sprinkled over him. Brimstone clogged the entire chamber and the smell had sunk into the fabric of Creed’s black tactical clothing. Underneath all of that was the masculine smell that was Creed, a musk that called to the very basis of her femininity, the fresh aroma of what a forest of cedar must smell like.

  And it pissed her off.

  Her stare turned hard. His brows dropped down as if the action confused him.

  “I’m fine.” She bit each word out. Her gums throbbed, the turmoil in her stomach threatened to tear its way out of her body, and he asked how she was doing? She almost growled.

  Why the hell was she so angry? Summoning all the old sayings, she concentrated on building her wall of “I’m okay just as I am” and “I’m fortunate; it could be worse.”

  It worked, beating back the antagonism. Her roiling stomach took precedence and that part made sense if she’d been out for weeks. Shouldn’t she be dead just from that? Unless she was in a hospital hooked to an IV and feeding tube, she’d waste away. There were no water bottles or cans of soup laying around. What’d she subsisted on?

  She touched her mouth. Lifting her arm was like hefting a fifty-pound bag of dog food. Until her mom said their German shorthair had to find another home, or Melody and her dad could. Resentment threatened her tenuous hold on her temper. Concentrating on her body, she palpated her face. Her mouth felt normal, her lips warm and dry. She kept them closed but worked her jaw around. It ached. She ached. And she was irrationally cranky.

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  Her ire dipped, overtaken by curiosity. “Not really.”

  “When I freed you from the plant cocoon, you toppled onto Hypna during the power transfer. Quution thinks you… He thinks you now have her power.”

  Power? The only superpower she had now was sinking back into the comatose state she’d been in.

  “Who’s Quution?”

  “Stryke’s brother. But his second-tier status is secret and he disguises himself as a purebred to keep a position on the Circle. So keep that part to yourself.”

  Yeah. Totally explained everything.

  She floated her arm back down next to her. Wrestling into a sitting position, she was only able to turn onto her side. Creed had risen, his hands hovering over her, but he hadn’t touched her, just waited on standby.

  Wrath slithered through her so forcefully, she was afraid her skin rippled. Too far above her to put his hands on her, was he?

  She blinked at him. Staring at him didn’t help straighten out her thoughts, or what she was feeling and why. Staring at him amplified everything inside of her, tightened the tangle. To give herself a moment, she clamped her hand over her eyes and exhaled.

  Oh god. She smelled. He’d said she’d been out for two weeks. Fourteen days of no shower after being accosted by a demon. Hopefully, brimstone camouflaged any funky odor wafting off her, but she couldn’t stand herself. She and her dad would be out hunting for days, sometimes a week, and she’d have nothing more than a spit bath after a full day of hiking, but she hadn’t stunk like this.

  “I need to clean up,” she croaked.

  She rolled to push herself up. Creed moved closer, his heat radiating to comfort her, but she was too miserable to accept it. Weak as a newborn lamb, her arms shook. Her stomach rumbled. Thirst should’ve dried her mouth to cotton, but she started salivating. Oddly enough, the throbbing in her gums died down. She swallowed and managed to heave herself up to sit.

  She massaged her temples. Great. Now a headache. Through her slitted eyelids, she could see Creed’s black, dusty boots not far from her battered athletic shoes. Like her, they hadn’t stood up so well in the underworld.

  “Dude, back up a little, will ya?”

  “Uh…” He shuffled back. She should be embarrassed at her outburst, but she only huffed. Better do what I say, pretty boy. A smug tendril curled through her. Bet he wasn’t used to that tone from her.

  Holy crap, she was bitchy. Maybe it was the headache…that only started a few seconds ago and she’d been borderline hostile to Creed since she roused. A month ago, she would’ve thought she’d died and gone to heaven to have him doting on her.

  “Quution said there was a soak-hole with some semi-fresh—not really fresh, but not fetid—water a short walk away.”

  “Good enough.” She braced her hands on the bottom of the stone slab that had been her sofa-sleeper for a fortnight and pushed up. Her thighs protested at the sudden demand and she wobbled. A strong hand wrapped around her bicep and lifted her whole arm. He wedged himself next to her and strapped his other arm around her waist. She almost lashed out, but at least her logical brain was functioning. She’d fall on her ass if it wasn’t for him. So, she’d have to tolerate his help and figure out her indignation later.

  She had to swallow again. What was with the drool? Keeping her mouth shut, she prodded her gums with her tongue. A sharp pain lanced her flesh. Her dry-for-too-long mouth was suddenly slippery, and she’d cut herself on her own damn teeth. The irrational anger toward the wall of male holding her up was making her clumsier than usual. He was probably used to sophisticated women who knew their couture from their homemade and their real leather from their shiny pleather. But she knew which state prohibited rifles for deer hunting and had her slugs and shotgun ready for opening weekend of deer season.

  The cavern they’d been in was plain. Dirt wall, dirt ceiling, dirt floor. The only furniture was her stone slab and Creed’s boulder chair. They made slow progress to the cavern with the not-so-fresh water. The passageways were lined with sporadic torches, their flickers a nuisance for her sensitive eyes. She looked around for the source of the scratches and skitters, but couldn’t see anything. If she wasn’t so afraid of realizing she’d gone crazy while unconscious, she’d say they were coming from inside the walls. But her human ears shouldn’t pick that up.

  The bathing cave was much larger than she’d expected. Soothing, tinkling sounds of water greeted them as they inched inside. Her eyes didn’t need time to adjust to the dim room. No torches burned, but the water cast a soft glow. And she was crawling into that? Glowing water. In the underworld. What kind of toxic waste would make the pool light up? She crossed her fingers that it was phosphorescent rocks like she’d seen in the mineral displays in the museum.

  She leaned into Creed way more than she meant to. He was so solid and smelled yummy. Her stomach knotted. The lack of sustenance must be the reason why her insides were going wild. She doubted they’d gotten that much food into her.

  Still,
she’d almost expect the opposite. Coming out of a two-week coma should rob her of an appetite. Was it how the coma had happened? Interfering with Hypna’s power transfer.

  The power. No, she didn’t want to think about it. The force of Hypna’s power might’ve knocked her out, but that was all. The feeling that something was inside of her? Had to be from being unconscious and unused to her own bodily functions. Hypna had been terrifying. Almost seven feet of large, hateful female. She’d had weird, long horns that writhed and moved. She’d commanded plants to do her bidding. Melody couldn’t even stand. And she feared she couldn’t bathe herself. She wasn’t exactly the perfect vessel for that type of power.

  ***

  Creed stared at the softly lit water. Topside, this place would attract tourists and young couples looking to get frisky. It didn’t fit in the putrid dankness of the underworld, but he was glad it was here. Melody was in rough shape, and hopefully a bath would orient her.

  She’d taken the admission that she may possess demonic power well. He doubted she even processed the fact. All he’d said was that Quution suspected it. He was dying to ask her how she felt, what she felt, but she’d been different since she woke. Gone was the googly-eyed gaze of a girl in like. She’d glared at him, bitten his head off, and a couple of times her expression turned fearsome. Like the torchlight flared in her pupils.

  As they drew closer to the water’s edge, he tried to evaluate the depth of the pool. Glancing around the perimeter, he couldn’t find a handy place to position her so she could undress herself without falling in. Would she be able to resurface on her own?

  Her slight form was tucked into his side and he didn’t want to move her, but he couldn’t ignore the next step.

  “Um… I’ll need to help you bathe.”

  She snorted and nudged herself away from him. She took one step on her own and lilted to the side.