Page 13 of Spicy Little Curses (Scared Sexy Collection #3)
Twelve
Dax
Spicy Little Curses
M y body was on fire.
Every inch of my skin burned, scalded, and smoked.
The tattoos I’d been born with weren’t only writhing this time, they were rebelling, peeling away from my body and slithering into the air like living shadows.
They ripped free with an agony so intense, I couldn’t even scream.
I could only gasp as each twisting sigil tore away, leaving raw, bleeding flesh in its wake.
Petra shouted something. Her voice was distant over the deafening rumble of the catacombs. Stone cracked. Dust choked the air. The fireflies, their eerie glow flickering wildly, darted in frenzied spirals.
And for the first time, I saw him.
The Hollow Man stood unmoving at the edge of the mist. His featureless face betrayed nothing, but I felt a shift in the air. An ancient binding breaking apart. An evil old pact unraveling.
He lifted his arm. Not to beckon or point at me or Petra, but to clutch at his own throat.
The curse was ripping through him now.
Dark tendrils of ink burst from his spectral form, lashing out, swirling then dissolving into nothingness as they unraveled from his flesh. The symbols that had bound his existence and shackled him to his terrible duty for centuries were disappearing, one by one.
He staggered. A horrible, unearthly scream of anguish filled the air.
I caught movement from the corner of my eye. At first, I thought it was just the dust and shifting shadows playing tricks on me, but then I saw them clearly, dozens of shapes rising from the crumbling graves around us.
Women.
Pale and spectral, glowing with otherworldly luminescence, they drifted upward, rising silently. Their faces were blurred, but I knew who they were. I felt who they were.
The lost. The ones who had loved Rousseau men, only to be taken by the curse.
And I knew that in the cemetery where my mother and Emmie were buried, they were rising too.
One by one, they turned to light, teased apart into the shadowed air like whispers into the wind. Their sorrow, their suffering, finally released.
Petra grabbed my arm, pulling me back toward the passageway. “Dax, we have to move!”
I barely heard her over the agony pulsing through my body, but my legs obeyed.
Stone cracked above our heads. A tombstone snapped in half as the earth beneath it caved. The entire catacomb was coming down on top of us.
Petra hauled me forward with surprising strength, her determination an anchor in the chaos. My vision blurred as the pain twisted through me, but I kept my grip on her hand like it was the only thing tethering me to reality.
Behind us, the Hollow Man—Matthias—fell to his knees.
His body and spirit were dissolving, the magic that had bound him dissipating in brilliant ribbons of light. He turned his faceless head toward me, and though I could see no expression, I felt his relief and acceptance.
Then he was gone.
The curse, the weight of my bloodline that I’d carried since birth, vanished with him.
The ground heaved violently, throwing us off balance. I caught Petra, shielded her as the tunnel ceiling above buckled and cracked.
Gritting my teeth, I pushed past the pain and yanked her forward. “Go!”
Together, we ran.
The passage was quickly crumbling behind us, stone and dirt collapsing in a deafening roar. Petra was faster, dragging me up the stone steps as the entrance to the tomb came into view, a sliver of welcoming moonlight at the end of the suffocating chaos and darkness.
A boulder crashed down behind us, missing my heels by a breath. With a final, desperate leap, we flung ourselves through the narrow exit.
The moment our bodies hit the open air, the tunnel gave way entirely, collapsing in on itself with a thunderous crash.
Debris exploded outward, leaving behind a billowing cloud of dust.
Stunned, I rolled onto my back and blinked up at the night sky, brilliant with stars. Beside me, Petra groaned and pushed herself up to a sitting position, coughing. When she turned to me, her eyes were wide.
“You alive?”
I exhaled a laugh, even as pain rattled through my body. “I think so.”
She collapsed back against the ground, limbs sprawled. Sighing in relief, she chuckled. “Good. Because if you had died after all that, I’d have found a way to bring you back just so I could kill you myself.”
I turned my head to look at her. The fireflies had followed us out, drifting lazily into the sky above the tomb. But even their ethereal light and all the winking stars in the sky couldn’t compete with her beauty.
Her mouthy, sassy, exasperating-but-somehow-endearing beauty that I fervently hoped to be able to gaze at for the rest of my life.
I stretched out my arm, found her hand, and squeezed it.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said drily. “Don’t get all sentimental on me now, Sunshine. I might start thinking you like me.”
“I don’t like you at all,” I lied, grinning. “Not even a little bit. You’re awful. And I don’t know if anyone’s mentioned this before, but you bear a striking resemblance to a toad.”
She smiled. “That’s more like it.”
Then she glanced at my arm. Her smile faded, and her eyes widened.
The bandage I’d wound around my wrist had been ripped off in the chaos, exposing the lone tattoo that remained on my skin.
Her name was still inked there, bold and black, indelible as a vow.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. Then she said with a crack in her voice, “Well, shit. I might have to rethink my whole snark-and-bark attitude and start being nicer to you.”
I rolled over, took her face in my hands, and smiled down into her eyes.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
When I kissed her, she was laughing.