Page 16 of Marked By Shadows
I ran my fingers over his face, enjoying the shape of it in the pale light of the room. “Nothing to be sorry for.”
“It’s not late and I’m already crapping out.”
“You’re recovering.”
“From being possessed,” Alex muttered bitterly.
“Maybe,” I agreed. “Is that what worries you?”
“If I fall asleep, I might have an episode,” he admitted. A PTSD episode. As far as I knew, he hadn’t developed PSTD until that night in the desert. Or perhaps it was the following day in which his team was slaughtered by something he still couldn’t explain. Either way, sometimes Alex woke up not remembering where or when he was.
“I’m here.” And while I wasn’t a psychologist, I’d had training in handling PTSD. Alex wasn’t armed, and he was bigger than me, but he was also malnourished. He had combat training, but didn’t seem to want to hurt me. His last attack, triggered by stumbling across a murder scene in a cemetery, had turned him back in time, and I’d become someone he had to protect. Hopefully this time there would be no police aiming guns his way since we also wouldn’t have his twin to stand between us and death by cop.
“We’ll be fine,” I assured him. “I’m here. You’ll protect me, right?”
Alex was quiet for a few minutes. I thought he’d fallen asleep, even though I could see his eyes open a tiny slit. Then he said, “Don’t go into the woods without me.”
“I won’t,” I promised, and that was the truth. We were here to craft, sew, cosplay, and socialize, not camp or discover some ghost in an old house. I wrapped my arms around him, tugging the blanket up until we were both beneath the subtle weight of it, and closed my eyes, willing myself to relax to the sound of his breathing.
I don’t know when exactly I fell asleep, but knew I had been when the screaming started.
Chapter 6
After experiencing years’ worth of unexplained night noises, the screaming shouldn’t have been anything to react to. I’d grown used to tuning out noise, or even having it worked into my dreams sometimes. However, this shrieking did not sound like an animal of any kind, more like a person being murdered.
I reacted on instinct, and so did Alex. He bolted up, half falling down the stairs, me hot on his heels. Him in boxers and a snug T-shirt, and me in bikinis and an oversized T-shirt, neither of us were dressed for the chilly night air that blasted us when we stepped outside.
The sound, a female scream, unlike anything I’d ever heard outside my house at night, came from the main house. Alex paused, blinking into the distance as we stumbled down the path, his eyes trying to focus as he’d been startled from sleep. Was he seeing the here and now? Or some terrifying desert night?
Another scream echoed across the open lawn. I passed him, running up the back stairs, I vaguely remembered the house would be locked this late at night. We had no way to get in, so I paused, trying to think, would the key from the cabin work? Should we call the police? Was someone hurt? Alex moved, falling into step behind me, clutching the back of my shirt.
We reached the door just as it burst open and out came a rush of people. Alex caught me, pulling me into a tight embrace as they bolted down the stairs half shoving me aside, screaming and thundering over the wood like a herd of elephants.
I squinted at the group, trying to make out faces in the dark. No one looked hurt. No one was bleeding that I could tell. Nicole and Julie, Chad and MaryAnn, huddled in a group a few feet from the back stairs, but I saw no sign of Melissa or Byrony. I frowned at them, brain struggling to keep up with the things they said as for some reason sleep had turned the ‘English is not my first language’ button to full distortion.
“Oh my God,” someone said.
“What was that?” I think Chad replied.
Jonah came up behind us, wrapped in a robe, and from the path leading to the cabin on the opposite end of ours.
“Is someone hurt?” he asked. “Someone better be hurt, or else I’m going to show someone a little pain for waking a man from his beauty sleep.”
“It’s not even midnight yet,” Julie said.
“We were sleeping too,” I said, taking Alex’s hand and trying to make out enough of his face in the dark to tell if he was in the here and now or some nightmare battlefield of his past. “Alex?”
He blinked at me. I could see the flutter of his lashes in the pale moonlight. “Hurt? I have first aid training.” He did? It made sense since he’d been a Ranger. Technically so did I, but no one looked injured.
“I don’t think anyone is hurt.” I looked at the group. “Where are Melissa and Byrony? What about Freya? Who was screaming?”
Julie raised her hand. “I screamed. Something touched me.” She shuddered. “Nicole and I were doing an EVP session in the upstairs sitting room. Our room is right next to it. Something touched me. I screamed. Nicole screamed.” She looked at MaryAnn and Chad.
“Don’t look at us,” Chad said. “I didn’t scream.”
“No you just hauled ass out the door when they came zipping down the stairs,” MaryAnn remarked.
“You followed!” Chad defended himself.