Page 4 of Grotesque

H ow delicious.

Her brown hair had appeared dull through the windshield of her beat up car, but as soon as she’d stepped out, the sunlight had burnished it a dark copper.

She had looked up at the manor and that was when my breath had caught.

Bright green eyes, like two fine emerald gems. I flexed my tongue, imagining what they would feel like rolling around the inside of my mouth.

She was a long-legged meal I could make several courses out of.

I would have to take my time with her. Savor her.

It had been six months since the death of Maxine. Six months of waiting before the jewel-eyed beauty rolled up the drive and stepped onto the Glamis grounds. I’d been seething, a mass of fury and rage until the girl appeared.

Maxine, as dull-witted as she had appeared, had been cleverer than I had given her credit for. As she’d lain dying, her last breaths coming quick and shallow, she had spat in my face.

“You will never get what you desire,” she rasped.

All this time, all the years that I had spent priming her, the luxuries I had showered upon her, fantasies I had fulfilled – meant nothing. A wasted effort.

“I will have it,” I snarled.

She had smiled, a shadow of what used to be her greatest feature. “My children and their children will never know about you. It ends here, Corban. Your time has run out.”

Before I could strangle her, she was gone. Just like that, all the hard work I had carefully crafted, vanished in a final exhale of breath.

I’d torn the house apart for months until I finally found where she had stashed the will.

It had taken another two weeks before I found the correct names of her children, and the single offspring of the female.

As the youngest, the granddaughter would be the easiest to mold.

The one with the longest thread in life, that I could take my time with.

I would not make the same mistake with her that I had with Maxine.

Sorcha would be different.

Sorcha.

Something in her name clawed through my blood.

The funny thing about magik, is that you can shape it into whatever you want.

Of course there is always a price, but when you have lived as long as I have, that price means little.

A brief intention had the letters rearranging themselves, new words appearing between them, and the will was good as new, naming little Sorcha Grendel as heir to Glamis Manor.

The ‘hovel’ that was meant to be forgotten. That Maxine would have left to rot.

I was not someone who would be forgotten.

I’d waited patiently throughout the day, watching Sorcha as she made her rounds through the house and the grounds. I tracked her every move. Stars, my blood was alight with anticipation.

“You’re not doing your job very well,” she had said.

Was she talking to the guardians?

I let a feral grin fall over my face. The gargoyles no longer moved.

It was a mystery to me if they lived at all or had finally truly turned to the stone that encased them.

Not that I cared. They had been nothing but a nuisance with their incessant nagging – insisting that I could not eat anyone that came on the grounds.

The constant lecturing, that I was to protect the women of the manor, not torment them.

But I was no gargoyle, and their rules did not apply to me.

I tracked Sorcha across the grounds as she circled the hedge-shrouded garden. She reached out hesitantly to one of the pink blooms, her brow furrowing. Oh, it would do no good if she touched it. If she played with something that could kill her before I had my fun.

While the Belladonna Garden was exceptionally beautiful, it was also exceptionally deadly.

Maxine had taken to planting more thrilling plants, as if they would ward me off or keep me from her.

That was lethal oleander that bloomed beneath Sorcha’s fingertips.

A little down the path, should she dare to enter, she would find foxglove, deadly nightshade, and so on.

And that was to say nothing of the danger the hedges themselves concealed.

I exhaled lightly when Sorcha withdrew her hand.

Good. If she really wanted something from the garden, I would pick it for her myself.

Or depending on where her eyes fell next, slip it into her evening drink.

Did she drink? Most of them did. Liquor was a poison in and of itself, but it worked too slow.

The side effects would take years to surface.

Brushing her palms over her thighs, she turned back to the house.

Yes, finish your exploring. Take your time. And then we can play.

I would have pounced on her there and then had the sun not been cocked high in the sky. It would be hours before I could relieve my impatience. It did, however, allow me to remind myself that I needed to take my time with this one. ThatI needed her.

As the last of the light faded between the trees, I slipped out of the shadows. I slunk onto the balcony that wrapped around the second-floor parlor and peered down at the young woman. Her head was bent over a book. I couldn’t see her eyes from this angle, though.

I let a flicker of my power skirt across the hallway. Her head snapped up.

“Look here,” I breathed against the glass. I spread myself wide, making sure that she would see only me. “Turn around, Sorcha.”

Slowly, she did.

Those eyes.

They paired with a proud, angular nose and full pouty mouth that was parted in fear. Oh, the wicked things I was going to do to that mouth. I wondered how her teeth would feel sliding against me. Biting into me.

My blood thrummed within my veins. I took a step back as she turned away, and leaned against the far side of the balcony.

My heart was racing, my need burning. Before she looked back outside, I was leaping onto the roof and loping to the room I knew she had made for herself.

I didn’t have to wait long before she came bursting in, locking the door behind her.

I tsked. That would not keep me out.

I was leaning toward the glass when she jerked the curtains closed. With a flash of my teeth, I went to the next set of windows, but she covered those too.

Fine.

I would wait her out. I had all night. All year. All of eternity.

I waited until I heard her fingers gliding through the pages of her book to come to a halt, until the light seeping through the crack in the curtains was extinguished. I tapped against the window, inviting her to look out and find me. There was no response.

It would be risky slipping into the house now when I couldn’t see if she was asleep, but by the sound of it… I cocked my head, pressing my ear against the window. It sounded like she was. Her breath deepened with the sound of dreams.

I slipped in through the front door, pausing in the foyer to cast a glance down at Maxine’s silly list of rules, exactly where I’d left them for Sorcha to discover. I snorted. As if those flimsy lines had ever worked. As if they would stop me from taking what I wanted.

They hadn’t before.

Well, almost.

In two bounds I was up the stairs and before her door. In the wink of an eye, I was on the other side of it, leering down at her.

Sorcha was even more attractive up close.

She looked nothing like Maxine, and I supposed that was a blessing.

Maxine had been short with a craggy face, and a pudgy, splotched body to match.

All of Sorcha was sharp and long, while the best parts of her–I pulled back the sheet to confirm–looked deliciously soft.

Sorcha stirred, mumbling in her sleep, but didn’t wake. I continued my visual feast.

A black moth was tattooed on her upper thigh. I ran my talon over the outline of the wing. Normally I detested tattoos, but this one was special. It was a bad omen.

So, my little meal liked death, did she? I wondered how at ease she would feel once she was face to face with it.

I let my hand drift over her face, but I didn’t touch her the way I wanted to. Not yet. I wanted to savor this moment. How innocent and unprotected she was beneath me, a predator of lethal shadow.

She would do nicely.