Burying Water - K.A Tucker | Excerpt

BURYING WATER Excerpt:

Prologue

Jesse

Now

This can’t be real . . . This can’t be real . . . This can’t be real . . .

The words cycle round and round in my mind like the wheels on my speeding ’Cuda as its ass-end slips and slides over the gravel and ice. This car is hard to handle on the best of days, built front-heavy and overloaded with horsepower. I’m going to put myself into one of these damn trees if I don’t slow down.

I jam my foot against the gas pedal.

I can’t slow down now.

Not until I know that Boone was wrong about what he claims to have overheard. His Russian is mediocre at best. I’ll giveanything for him to be wrong about this.

My gut clenches as my car skids around another turn,the cone shape of Black Butte looming like a monstrous shadow ahead of me in the pre-dawn light. The snowy tire tracks framed by my headlights might not even be the right ones, but they’re wide like Viktor’s Hummer and they’re sure as hell the only ones down this old, deserted logging road. No one comes out here in January.

The line of trees marking the dead end comes up on me before I expect it. I slam on my brakes, sending my car sliding sideways toward the old totem pole. It’s still sliding when I cut the rumbling engine, throw open the door, and jump out, fumbling with my flashlight. It takes three hard presses with my shaking hands to get the light to hold.

I begin searching the ground. The mess of tread marks tells me that someone pulled a U-turn. The footprints tell me that more than one person got out. And when I see the half-finished cigarette butt with that weird alphabet on the filter, I know Boone wasn’t wrong.

“Alex!” My echo answers once . . . twice . . . before the vast wilderness swallows up my desperate cry. With frantic passes of my flashlight, my knuckles white against its body, I search the area until I spot the sets of footprints that lead off the old, narrow road and into the trees.

Frigid fingers curl around my heart.

Darting back to my car, I snatch the old red-and-blue plaid wool blanket that she loves so much from the backseat. Ice-cold snow packs into the sides of my sneakers as I chase the trail past the line of trees and into the barren field ahead, my blood rushing through my ears the only sound I process.

The only sign of life.

Raw fear numbs my senses, the Pacific Northwest winter numbs my body, but I push forward because if . . .

The beam of light passes over a still form lying facedown in the snow. I’d recognize that pink coat and platinum-blond hair of hers anywhere; the sparkly blue dress that she hates so much looks like a heap of sapphires against a white canvas.

My heart freezes.

“Alex.” It’s barely a whisper. I’m unable to produce more, my lungs giving up on me. I run, stumbling through the foot of snow until I’m on my knees and crawling forward to close the distance. A distance of no more than ten feet and yet one that seems like miles.

There’s no mistaking the spray of crimson freckling the snow around her head. Or that most of her long hair is now dark and matted. Or that her silver stockings are torn and stained red, and a pool of blood has formed where her dress barely covers her thighs. Plenty of footprints mark the ground around her. He must have been here for a while.

I know that there are rules to follow, steps to make sure that I don’t cause her further harm. But I ignore them because the sinking feeling in my stomach tells me I can’t possibly hurt her more than he already has. I nestle her head with one hand while I slide the other under her shoulder. I roll her over.

Cold shock knocks the wind out of me.

I’ve never seen anybody look like this.

I scoop her limp body into my arms, cradling the once beautiful face that I’ve seen in every light—rage to ecstasy and the full gamut in between—yet is now unrecognizable. Placing two blood-coated fingers over her throat, I wait. Nothing.

A light pinch against her lifeless wrist.Nothing.

Maybe a pulse does exist but it’s hidden, masked by my own racing one.

Then again, by the look of her, likely not.

One . . . two . . . three . . . plump, serene snowflakes begin floating down from the unseen sky above. Soon, they will converge and cover the tracks, the blood. The evidence.Mother Nature’s own blanket to hide the unsightly blemish in her yard.

“I’m so sorry.” I don’t try to restrain the hot tears as they roll down my cheeks to land on her mangled lips—lips I had stolen plenty of kisses from, back when I was too stupid to realize how dangerous that really was. This is my fault. She had warned me. If I had just listened, had stayed away from her, had not told her how I felt . . .

. . . had not fallen wildly in love with her.

I lean down to steal a kiss even now, the coppery taste of her blood mixing with my salty tears. “I’m so damn sorry. I should never have even looked your way,” I manage to get out around my sobs, tucking the blanket she loved to curl up in over her.

An almost inaudible gasp slips out. A slight breeze against my mouth more than anything else.

My lungs freeze, my eyes glued to her, afraid to hope. “Alex?” Is it possible?

A moment later, a second gasp—a wet, rattling sound—escapes.

She’s not dead.

Not yet, anyway.

Dire - Alysse Ivy Rose || Excerpt

A single howl made me stop short. “The wolves!”

“Let’s hope they are farther away than they sound.” Gage tightened his hold on my hand and pulled me forward.

Three more howls filled the night. “They sound closer.”

We picked up the pace, and I chanced a glance behind me. That was a mistake. Several large grey wolves came into view. “Run!”

Gage didn’t need to be told twice. He broke into a run without letting go of my hand.

I ran as fast as possible over the frozen snow, but we didn’t get far before the wolves started circling around us. “Oh my god.” Could things get any worse?

“You have to make a run for it.” Gage’s voice quivered. “They’re going to kill us.”

“I’m not leaving you.” I tried to stay strong, and I kept my eyes locked on the wolves. There were five of them. All of them were massive, much larger than any wolf I’d seen before, but one of them was even bigger and had a large silver streak running down its back. That wolf seemed to be staring right at me.

“I’ll distract them. You run. I’ll catch up.”

I spotted an opening next to one of the smaller of the wolves and went for it. I didn’t make it far before one of the wolves stepped in front of me. I froze, paralyzed with fear, before my legs were knocked from under me. Suddenly, I was lying in the snow with a giant wolf hovering over me.

“We’re fucked.” Gage voiced exactly what I was thinking.

The silver streaked wolf stared down at me. It’s almost glowing eyes bored into mine. Was I really going to die as half-frozen food for a giant wild animal?

Then things got hazy and the air seemed to buzz. Moments later it wasn’t a wolf on top of me—it was a man. A completely naked man with a faint scar across his face.

“What the heck?” I tried to scurry back, but Hunter didn’t move. His very exposed parts nearly touched me. I didn’t want to notice his size, but I did. He was huge. He also didn’t look remotely concerned with the cold.

His lips brushed against my ear. “Were you going somewhere?”

Guardian - Courtney Cole | Excerpt

Sometimes the things that go bump in the night are real. 

Happy birthday to me. 

 I close my eyes and burrow into my pillow as I try to sleep, as I try to escape this life. 

It’s a life I never thought I’d have, a life I most certainly don’t want. 

I’m still feeling sorry for myself as the blackness of sleep finally overtakes me. 

I don’t know what time it is when I shoot straight upward like a rocket.  Something had yanked me from the oblivion of sleep, something loud and shrill scraping my window.

My room is completely dark and I glanceat my clock in confusion. 

3:00 a.m.

As my heart pounds hard against my ribcage, I quickly scan every corner of the room.

 In the last few hours, dark shadows had migrated onto my pink walls, but they’re familiar, nothing out of the ordinary, although in the night, they seem twisted and scary.  

I remain motionless as I allow the sleep-induced fog to clear from my brain.

As I sit, I feel common sense and logic slowly returning.

Of course nothing had touched my window because my bedroom is on the second floor. Nothing can reach it.  And there are no trees near enough to brush against it.  It was just a dream.

It was only a dream.

I chant it silently to myself like a mantra as I consciously slow my breathing down, hoping that my racing pulse will soon follow. It was only a dream.

But just as I’m calming down, I hear it again.

A high-pitched shrill shriek, reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard, scraping down my window. I gasp and pull my feet up to my chest, which is when I notice the temperature. 

I notice because I can see my breath.

Timidly, I blow a puff out again, watching the way my breath turns white in the air. 

Holy crap.  Oh my God. 

What the hell?

The sound stops and stillness surrounds me once again, the silence so loud that it echoes in my ear.

Nothing moves around me, the shadows are perfectly still as they twist across my wall.  They look like mangled fingers and arms and legs, but they don’t move. 

My legs are weak and shaking, but I know I have to move.   I have to move off my bed because it feels like something is under it.  Something terrifying. 

With a leap, I bound across the room, my feet hitting the floor several feet away from the edge of my bed. 

The floor is ice cold, as though it had been covered in a blanket of snow. 

I’m trembling as I race to the far wall and check the thermostat.  Because that’s the only explanation.  I must’ve bumped it earlier, I must’ve turned the AC way down. 

But the luminous numbers stare at me in contradiction. 

74 degrees. 

It must be broken.  It has to be broken.

My breath is coming in pants now, terrified, anxious pants. 

My fear isn’t logical.  I know there’s nothing here.  I’m the only one in this room. 

Or am I?

The air seems to push at me from all around, something dark, something heavy, something real.  Something unseen. 

My fingers shake, my legs tremble, and then all of a sudden, they can no longer support my weight.  I go down like a pile of bricks, collapsing onto the floor.  I lie still because I can’t move, because something seems to sit on my chest, holding me down. 

The shadows start to move, to slither across the walls, to reach and pull and dance. 

I struggle to focus, to see what it is. 

But all I can see are the numbers on the thermostat suddenly moving, rapidly counting down from 74 to 20. 

Twenty degrees?

The air is frigid as I suck it in, as I try to pull the ice crystals into my mouth so I can breathe. 

All of a sudden, there’s a blackness in front of me.  It hovers over me, a shapeless mass, sucking in the cells of the air, the atoms and the molecules.  It’s darker than the blackness of my room, blacker than the blackest black. 

Something is here. 

With me. 

“Dad?” I whisper in a white puff.  Because what else could it be?

I reach out a finger to touch it, and then I can’t see anything else, because the darkness of it surrounds me, bleeding into everything else, even my vision.   The shriek is back, screaming into my ears, bleeding into my brain. 

Then there’s nothing. 

Trust in me Quotes

My smile was the size of an earthquake crater. "You've been checking me out haven't you? In between your flaming insults? I feel like man candy


"Holy shit? She said yes? I had to force my self to play cool, because I was about to first pump the sky or some shit."

In that moment, I realized I was seeing a very different side of Avery. One I'd never seem before, where she was lively and carefree, and fucking perfect. "I'm going to marry that girl one day" I heard myself say. Jase chocked on his beer and bent over, dragging in deep breaths. "Holy shit"

Secrets are... well, sometimes they are necessary and sometimes they kill things before they have a chance to grow..

I had no idea why but seeing her... well it was like seeing the sun after days of rain.

"No I'm not." I breathed her in, making a silent promise that I would always be whatever she needed me to be. "I'm only good with you"

Favorite Quotes On Dublin Street - Samantha Young

"Because reality has no authority there. My imagination controls everything"
- Jocelyn Pg.52

"But you... I think you've made an art form out of deflection and self-possession."
-Jocelyn Pg.53

"Angels with dirty faces, as the saying goes."
-Pg.181

"Yes. I'm lying, babe. But I won't survive you. And worse, you won't survive me."
-Jocelyn Pg.260

"Once the rain starts falling it doesn't stop just because you tell it to. I guess it stops in its own time. My tears, like the rain, kept falling as I made my way home through blurry vision. In truth it's difficult to describe a broken heart. All I know is that unimaginable pain-this throbbing, sharp ache that almost incapacitates you-centers in you chest and radiates out. But there's more than the ache. Denial lodges itself in your throat, and that lump is its own kind of pain. The affliction of heartbreak can also be found in a knot in your stomach. The knot contracts and expands, contracts, and expands, until you're pretty sure you're not going to be able to hold down the vomit."
-Jocelyn Pg.263

"Jealousy is a horrible thing-the pain of it is almost as consuming as heartbreak"
- Jocelyn Pg.283

Favorite Quotes from Stolen - Lucy Christopher

“Why?” I whispered.

“I had to take you.”

"I chased the money, pretended to be someone else to get it. It got easier the longer I did it... but that's the trap, see? When the deadness gets easier, you know you're sinking deeper, becoming dead yourself."

- Ty Pg. 166

"But I hated you for something else, too. Right, then and at every moment since you'd left me, all I could think about was you. I wanted your arms around me, your face close to mine. I wanted your smell. And I knew I couldn't - shouldn't - have it. That's what I hated most. The uncertainty of you. You'd kidnapped me, put my life in danger.. but I loved you, too. Or thought I did. None of it made sense"

- Gemma Pg. 289

"And lets face it, you did steal me. But you saved my life, too. And somewhere in the middle, you showed me a place so different and beautiful I can never get it out of my mind. And I can't get you out of there, either. you're stuck in my brain like my own blood vessels."

- Gemma Pg. 292

"I can't save you like that Ty.

What you did to me wasn't this brilliant thing, like you think it was. You took me away from everything - my parents, my friends, my life. You took me to the sand and the heat, the dirt, and isolation. And you expected me to love you. And that's the hardest part. Because I did, or at least I loved something out there."

- Gemma Pg. 297