Page 6 of Spicy Little Curses (Scared Sexy Collection #3)
Six
Petra
The Hollow Man
T he air in the shop had grown ice cold and thickened, pressing down on me like a thousand-pound weight. Also, a stench had suddenly filled my lungs. It was almost indescribably disgusting, as if rotting meat and black mold had mated and had kids.
A man stood in the shadows at the back of the shop. Darkness clung to him like a second skin. Tall and unnaturally still, he wore a top hat and an old-fashioned suit with a high collar and silver buttons that caught the faint light, but that wasn’t what had made my heart spasm.
He—it—had no face.
No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just decaying gray skin stretched out in place of features.
Either I needed to get my vision checked, or Dax knew I’d come back and hoped to scare the living daylights out of me with a prop boogeyman so I’d leave him alone forever.
If the latter, I had to give him credit for effort. That stinky faceless thing was pure nightmare fuel.
I wasn’t sure if I should turn and run or congratulate Dax on his creativity, but either way, I couldn’t move.
My muscles were locked, and my gaze was stuck on the empty space where its eyes should have been.
Without eyes, it couldn’t see me, but my stomach churned with the unsettling feeling that whatever that thing was, it was looking straight into my soul.
Slowly and deliberately, the figure raised a hand and pointed a bony finger at me.
Great. The faceless corpse is pointing at me like I won a prize. Hope it’s not demonic possession.
“What’s wrong?” said Dax. “What’re you staring at?”
Keeping my voice low, I said, “There’s a man. Standing behind the counter.”
“A man?” Tensing, Dax turned to peer into the darkness.
“Yeah. With no face.”
Dax stiffened, then grabbed me by the arm and pulled me toward the door.
“Move.”
I dropped the cat and stumbled after him, barely keeping my feet under me.
“Dax—”
“Not now.” His voice was low and urgent. No sarcasm, no teasing. Just cold, raw fear.
Apparently the faceless thing wasn’t Dax’s doing. His obvious fear made it clear that it wasn’t a prop he’d set up to scare me away.
That so didn’t make me feel better.
We burst through the door out onto the street and started to run, the thick mist muffling the sound of our feet pounding the pavement. We didn’t stop for blocks, until we’d left the House of Ink and Blood far behind.
Dax finally let go of my arm when we rounded a corner onto a busy street filled with pedestrians. Bracing his arms against the nearest wall as if he needed the support, he exhaled a hard breath.
“Did you see that thing?” I gasped, shaking.
He was breathing heavily, staring at the pavement as if willing himself to stay calm. Finally, he looked at me with eyes that weren’t just wary but also confused.
“No. And you weren’t supposed to either.”
“What do you mean, I wasn’t supposed to see it?”
He straightened, running a hand over his face and exhaling. “That thing in the shop. He only appears to women who ...”
He trailed off, jaw tightening.
“Who what , Dax?” I pressed, heart pounding.
His throat worked as he swallowed. “Who fall in love with a Rousseau man.”
The words landed like a thunderclap. For a moment, I stared at him, my thoughts spiraling. Then I shook my head. “That’s ridiculous.”
Dax let out a short, bitter laugh. “Tell that to the Hollow Man.”
My skin crawled. “It has a name ?”
He nodded once, curtly, then turned dark eyes on me. “It’s the enforcer of the Rousseau curse. He comes for the women who love us.”
Despite the situation, I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. Loudly.
“ Love you? Listen, Sunshine, I’ll admit you’re easy on the eyes, but you’re living in Disneyland if you think I ... hold on.” I peered at him more closely, my heart beginning to hammer again. “What do you mean, he comes for women?”
He hesitated just a second too long, and I knew.
“Holy shit. You’re telling me that thing kills people ?”
His lips pressed into a grim line. “Not people. Women. Specifically, any woman who falls for a Rousseau.”
Skipping over the fact that he sounded as if he didn’t think women were actual people, I sputtered, “But—but—I haven’t fallen for you! I don’t even like you much, let alone love you! I’d happily push you in front of a speeding train if I thought it would make a good story!”
His look soured. “Gee, how sweet. I’m touched.” Then he looked down at the bandage on his wrist and murmured, “It doesn’t make sense. None of it. This has never happened before, not so soon. It’s like the curse has gotten ahead of us. Like it knows something we don’t.”
I wondered what was under that bandage but focused on the more important matter at hand. “Hold your horses, cowboy. Forget about your creepy supernatural enforcer for a second, but if you’re insinuating that I’m going to fall in love with you, that’s an impossibility.”
He stared at me, arching his brows like he didn’t believe me. As if he were so irresistible, it was a given I’d fall madly in love any second. So, of course, I had to explain.
“Just like I don’t believe in the Loch Ness Monster, I don’t believe in love, okay? It’s a fairy tale. What people call romantic love is just hormones. It doesn’t exist.”
“Right,” he said flatly. “Like curses don’t exist? Like that thing you saw at the shop doesn’t exist?” He stepped closer, eyes blazing. His voice lower, he said, “Like what we both felt when we kissed ... Was that imaginary too?”
“I’m sorry, is this the same man who said that kiss was crap? Because I distinctly remember that guy not being impressed at all by it.”
He lost his temper and started to shout. “Are you seriously going to stand here and argue with me about a kiss when you’ve been marked for death?”
A young couple walking by hand in hand gave each other a worried look and hurried past us.
I muttered, “Temper, temper. Take a breath before someone calls the police.” Spotting a cluster of young girls standing across the street, gawking at him, I added sourly, “And maybe find a shirt. You’re giving everybody a show, muscleman.”
He glared at me, fury glinting in his dark eyes, then shook his head in disbelief. “Where are you staying?”
“The Lafayette Hotel. Why?”
Instead of answering, he strode off down the street in the direction of the hotel, not bothering to look back to see if I followed.
So much for the myth of the Southern gentleman.
I hurried to catch up with him, then began to pester him with rapid-fire questions. “What exactly is the Hollow Man? How does he kill? Can he be stopped? And who even made this stupid curse in the first place?”
“He’s a being that operates outside time and reality. A collector of curses. He can’t be stopped, at least as far as I know. Nobody’s ever been able to escape him. As for who made the curse, well ...” His laugh was brief and cold. “It didn’t start off as a curse. These things never do.”
“Then how did it start?”
“With the root of all evil: greed.”
We didn’t speak again until we were back at the hotel.
Its grand facade cast long shadows under the glow of streetlamps.
Dax threw open the heavy glass doors without hesitation, bursting into the quiet lobby.
It was empty except for the man behind the reception desk, his nose buried in a novel. He didn’t glance up as we strode past.
Avoiding the ancient, slow-moving elevator, we took the stairs two at a time, neither of us speaking.
My head was too full of questions to focus on speech anyway.
The moment we stepped inside my room, I locked the door behind us, pressing my back against it as I surveyed the room with suspicious eyes, thinking of all the possible ways to barricade us in . .. or keep it out.
“You can’t hide from the Hollow Man,” said Dax tightly, prowling around the space like a caged animal. “And you can’t run either. Besides, he doesn’t chase. He just waits, knowing it’s inevitable.”
My death, he meant.
I was really starting to regret staying in New Orleans.
“If we can’t run and we can’t hide, why’d you drag me out of the shop?”
He shot me a dark look, as if he was already wishing he hadn’t.
“Look, just sit for a second, okay? I can’t think with you running around like that.” I waved a hand in his direction, his bare chest and bulging muscles and blistering machismo crossing all my wires.
Pausing to give me a proper glower from under lowered brows, he reluctantly dropped into an overstuffed chintz chair near the window. I stared at his bare feet, remembering I’d woken the poor man from sleep when I broke into his shop.
If he was sleep deprived, he didn’t show it. He was so wound up, he looked ready to spring from the chair at the slightest noise and start killing things with his bare hands.
He watched with unblinking eyes as I started to pace in front of him.
“Okay. Tell me about the origins of your family curse.”
“My ancestor Matthias Rousseau was a master tattooist in the nineteenth century. He was also a thief of souls.”
Thief of souls? I shot Dax an incredulous look, which he ignored.
“He made a pact with a powerful caplata, a dark voodoo priestess, to learn forbidden magic. Using those skills, he created sigils that could steal the strength and talents of others by inking their souls into his own skin. But he got greedy, betraying the caplata by stealing her soul and binding it into a tattoo. With her dying breath, the caplata cursed Matthias’s bloodline to bear the weight of his stolen sins. ”
I stopped pacing and stared at Dax. He finally blinked, drawing a breath and looking away. When he spoke next, his voice came very low.
“From then on, every male descendant of Matthias has been born with tattoos—the same ones he bore on his own skin—as a mark of their curse. And every woman who has loved a male of our bloodline has been taken as payment.”
Horrified, I stared at the black markings covering almost every square inch of Dax’s shoulders, arms, chest, and torso.
Tattoos that weren’t mere ink ... but souls .