Crypt keeper, p.14
Crypt Keeper, page 14
“What?!” I was outraged. “Are you effing kidding me?”
Laughing he tried to kiss me again; this time I tried to deck him. He laughed harder. “Damn, no wonder I’ve been smitten since day one. You’re so fucking irresistible.” He slammed me against the wall, forcing his tongue into my mouth as his fingers worked my flesh in a way that turned my mind to mush and had me clawing at his back. Pleasure exploded within me and I screamed; his mouth swallowed my cries of ecstasy. “Until later,” he whispered in my ear, then vanished.
Standing against the wall in the bathroom I was a bit more relaxed but certainly not satisfied. “Hey!” I called out. “This is a joke, right?” When there was no response I shouted, “That was just foreplay! Get back here!” His fading chuckles were the only response.
Chapter 13
“Death never comes at the right time, despite what mortals believe.
Death always comes like a thief.” ~ Christopher Pike
Just like Levi had said, Damon healed and rather quickly, I must say. His body regenerated new flesh and he was good as new. It was really crazy to watch and my fear that he would have died early felt in vain. There was so much about this new world that I needed to learn.
Four hours later we were both downstairs. I was finishing up scrubbing the floors and the walls while Damon was nailing up boards over the broken windows. The house had looked like a crime scene; thankfully now the evidence was mostly no longer visible. Neither one of us knew where all the blood had come from, although we did know that whoever it was from had resided in this dimension and that scared the hell out of me. Damon was just walking through the door looking like a model human with my dad’s old tool belt fastened around his waist when a police car pulled into the driveway. Damn. Spinning a tale in my head was something I was incredibly good at by necessity. Growing up with my abilities you learn how to protect yourself really early on. I stood and fixed a look of annoyance on my face and marched past Damon whispering, “Follow my lead.”
Hands on my hips I shouted, “Well, it’s about damn time. I called the station hours ago.”
“Ma’am,” the officer called out. “Please keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Sure thing.” I dropped the can of Ajax that had been in my hand onto the porch and held my hands up. “And don’t call me ma’am, Ricky Albert—we’ve known each for years. You kissed me on the playground in elementary school, remember?” He’d also taken me to prom and I’d saved his life from Levi after he tried to go to third base in the parking lot.
“Molly Maddison, is that you?” A smile creased his face and most of the alarm had left.
Dropping my hands I inconspicuously tugged my V-neck t-shirt a little lower on my chest. Cleavage was a weapon that should never be underestimated; I plastered a giant smile on my face and held my arms out to him as he bounded up the porch. “Of course it is, you sexy stud, you!” Wrapping my arms around his neck I shoved my boobs into his chest. Damon cleared his throat from behind me. Laughing, I stepped from Ricky and made the introductions. “Ricky, this is one of my professors at the university who drove all the way here from Atlanta to pay his respects to Daddy. I’m just so grateful he was still here when the house was vandalized this morning.”
“Vandalized? We got several calls about a disturbance throughout the day.” Ricky was studying our reactions like a hawk. Damn, he was more intelligent than I remembered. Good thing Damon and I were both accustomed to evading unwanted attention. “You are?” Ricky asked Damon as he took out his pad and pen.
Damon held out his hand. “Professor Damon Night.” Ricky said uh huh and scribbled his name down. Damon appeared aggravated and I saw the wheels turning, and I feared he was considering Ricky to be more trouble than he was worth.
“Please come in Ricky, and see what they’ve done to the place. I spent all day trying to clean up the mess.”
“You really shouldn’t have done that Molly, you contaminated the crime scene. The evidence that could have been gathered here is now compromised,” he said as he waited for Damon and I to walk inside first.
Damon leaned down and whispered, “Want me to handle this?” I shot him a look of horror then vehemently shook my head. He grinned, showing me those razor sharp teeth. “You have five minutes.”
“What?!” I nearly shouted and covered it with a fake sob. “What type of people would do this, Ricky? I just buried Daddy and am trying to get it together so I can go back to school and finish my degree. I just want to be left in peace.” Ricky patted my shoulder but I couldn’t make any headway with him because Damon’s stupid ass was standing there with his arms crossed, grinning at him like a mental patient.
“Time’s up!” Damon said, clapping his hands.
“What?” I instantly dried it up. “That wasn’t five minutes. Hell, that wasn’t even two minutes.”
“Tough.” Damon walked up and wrapped his arm around Ricky’s shoulders, squeezing hard. “Ricky, my man, it is time for you to go now.” He opened the front door, but Ricky protested and kept insisting he had a job to do. A warning growl erupted from Damon’s chest and Ricky went pale, then wet himself as Damon exposed his other persona.
“Damon!” I shouted and slapped him on the arm as we watched poor Ricky fall down the steps before crawling to his patrol car. Damon laughed as poor Ricky stood up and nearly knocked himself out on the side mirror. At least I was courteous enough to stifle my amusement. Ricky floored it out of the driveway, turning around on our lawn and taking out the mailbox before running the car right into the one-hundred-year-old oak tree in my front yard.
All the amusement died as I heard the gurgling sound coming from the front seat of the car. Vaulting off the steps I hurried over to the driver’s side screaming to Damon to dial 911.
He was at my side a second later. “It’s too late.”
“You don’t know that!” Ricky was unconscious and his head was bloody but I couldn’t tell if there were any fatal injuries. Damon wrapped his arms around my midsection and proceeded to drag me back up to the porch as I clawed at his arms, not caring that the neighbors were now witnesses to my tantrum. Damon held me at the doorway of the house. “Yes, I do. Look.” He forced my head to look up to the sky. There was a funnel of darkness headed for the police car and a chill fell over the both of us. I sucked in a breath; I recognized that sensation, knew it all too well, craved it even. “You still don’t know who the entity was that you spent so much of your time with while growing up?”
Swallowing hard I could see Levi descending down from the funnel, his eyes landing on me as the funnel began to grow in strength. All the creatures of the dark that had managed to get out during all the years my father had tried to keep the crypt sealed himself lingered behind him, waiting for their chance to devour the essence of the dying man. There were so many creatures I couldn’t begin to give an account of them all or of their freakish appearances. Levi whispered my name, drawing my attention back to his beautiful face. There he was in all his glory, my dark savior.
Now I understood his proclamation that I would never die, that he would never allow it. I understood how he came to find me that day in the asylum. I’d prayed for him, begged him to come to me, to take me exactly as he said I had. I couldn’t look away; our eyes were locked in a silent embrace as he pulled Ricky’s essence from his body. He wasn’t hiding who he was from me any longer. Here on the front porch of my childhood home I understood something exceedingly important about myself. What this meant for me going forward I couldn’t fathom. I, Molly Maddison, the Crypt Keeper, was in love with Death.
K A Young, Crypt Keeper
