Dead by Morning (Rituals of the Night Book 1) (9 page)

                                                                      Chapter Fourteen

As the song kept going, Luna turned and looked for the exit. She knew it might be her only chance to leave. It was hard for her to see over the other kids as she pushed through them slowly. No one paid her any attention as they continued to cheer Chance on.

Luna made her way to the door and breathed in the cool night air in relief. She looked up at the twinkling stars above as she began to walk slowly towards the parking lot. Luna heard the doors behind her open, and she turned to see Chance coming outside.

“You’re not leaving without me,” he panted. “It was a good try though.”

“Yeah, I know,” Luna replied not looking at him as she looked for his black truck in the parking lot.

“Why didn’t you want to stay longer? You might make some friends being seen with me,” he boasted.

She rolled her eyes at his over confidence. “I’m not interested in any of that, okay?”

“Is something bothering you?” he asked.

She looked at him and realized he was looking back at her through narrowed eyes.

“No,” she replied. “I’m fine; I just want to go home.”

He sighed as they reached his car. He opened the door and undid the locks. Luna climbed into the passenger seat. He climbed in as well and started the car. She watched the road pass by as the truck moved along. Suddenly, Chance took a turn that led away from her house.

“Um, Chance this isn’t the way,” Luna pointed out worriedly.

“I know. I’m not taking you home,” he replied calmly.

“Why? Where are we going?”

“We’re going back to my house,” he replied.

“But…why?” Luna asked feeling her heart sink in her chest.

“I can tell you’re upset over something. David wouldn’t be pleased with me if you came home like that,” he snorted.

He was being evasive. Luna could tell that there was an underlying reason to his motives.

                                                                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Being alone with Luna in his truck in the same place as all of his victims made Chance feel like he was going to slip into That mind. He was just barely able to keep himself steady though he didn’t know how it was possible. If he slipped completely, she’d be gone he was sure. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye.

He thought about what it would be like to cut her throat and kick her bleeding body out of his truck like he had done to Kate. Even though he was on the edge of going into that twisted mindset, the thought of killing Luna (even injuring her) sickened him. Flashes of a bloody white gown filled his mind again causing him to shiver. Luna looked over at him for a minute, the rose he had given her clutched carefully in her hand. She did not suspect the darkness of his thoughts. He forced his eyes to look back at the road.

Part of him worried how she’d react when she saw the broken down house that he was living in. Chance was sure that she wouldn’t tell, but what would Luna herself think about it? He didn’t quite know why he was taking her to his house, but her suspicion at the dance was very unsettling. That mind was controlling him more than he was willing to admit. Was he really taking her this way because part of him
was
planning to kill her?

Luna knew something was off about him. He didn’t know how she knew that but she had figured it out. She knew his knife had something to do with why he was acting funny as well. He looked at her again as her sad eyes stared out the window. She had nothing on him at the moment.

Nothing at all.

                                                                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After a twenty minute drive, Chance finally began to slow the car. Luna looked out the window, but she could hardly see anything in the gloom of the night. She could just make out the shapes of trees. Wariness tugged at her very core.

“Well, we’re here,” Chance said shutting off the engine to his truck.

He opened the door and stared at her expectantly to do the same. She pushed it open hesitantly and jumped out of the truck into the chilly night air.  Chance was beside her in an instant. He began to walk and she followed slowly behind him wondering why he had brought her to his house.

“I don’t see a house,” Luna said quietly.

“Just keep walking and you will,” he replied.

She frowned as they passed a huge towering oak tree.

In the distance she noticed a black gate that looked like it should be around a cemetery. Past that was a rundown house. It was ancient looking with dark siding. On the second floor there was a stone perch that hung underneath a window. The shingles on the roof were black and she noticed some of them were missing. In between the two round windows on the top floor sat a stone gargoyle that stared sightlessly from its perch. The house looked like it had originally been designed as a haunted house.

“
That’s
your house?” Luna asked him in disbelief.

He didn’t answer her as he kept walking towards the creepy house. Luna didn’t want to follow him. Chance turned to look at her and she knew by the look on his face that he wasn’t going to give her a choice. She sighed and followed him through the knee-high grass. A minute later, they were standing on the old porch and part of her feared she’d fall right through the ancient boards.

“I don’t want to go in there,” she said.

He rolled his eyes and grasped her arm.

“Hey! Let go!” Luna said angrily.

He didn’t listen to her as he pushed open the old door with his other hand. He dragged her inside and closed the door behind them. Inside, she couldn’t see anything. It was pitch-black and suddenly a light illuminated near her. She realized that Chance had lit a candle.

With the light glowing radiantly, Luna could see her surroundings. It was a living room…a very old one. The room was wide with a high ceiling. Two light colored couches were sitting across from each other beside an old stone fireplace. A table sat between them. On the other side of the room she could see the doorway to a hallway and beside that was a staircase with a deep blue carpet that led upstairs.

Chance let go of her arm and crossed the room without looking around at any of the furniture. He walked over to the couches and lit a candle that sat on the old fireplace.

“Are your parents home?” she asked him as she realized that the only sound in the room was the sound made by their breathing.

He was quiet for a minute, cautiously thinking of how he could reply.

“No, I don’t live with my parents,” he replied.

She looked at him confused. “What? Why’s that?”

“I’m emancipated from them,” he explained without looking at her.

“Oh,” Luna replied nervously as she realized that it was just him and her.

“Come, sit down on the couch,” he said. “You look like you’re very uncomfortable standing there.”

“I’m uncomfortable being here,” Luna muttered.

She looked warily down the nearest hallway. It was cloaked in the haunting darkness that the living room had worn a moment prior. She wondered where it led. She walked past it slowly and sat down lightly on the nearest couch looking at Chance nervously. He was still standing beside the fireplace.

  “So, what’re you thinking?” he asked quietly.

“That I want to go home,” she said.

“Really?” he asked tipping his head to the side before looking around his house. “I would’ve thought what I said at the dance would still be on your mind.”

She looked at him frowning. “It is. Why do you ask?”

“That’s why you’re still here,” he said.

              “I don’t understand.”

              Chance tensed. “I’m still not telling you.”

Luna gritted her teeth and looked at the dark fireplace.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said quickly.

He looked at her before he pointed at the strange dark hallway. “It’s down that hall, the first door on the left.”

Luna stood up and nodded at him. There had to be something in the house that would explain why he was so weird. If there was, she was going to find it. She walked over to the beginning of the hall and set her hand against the wall. Once she reached where the bathroom was she peeked over her shoulder to make sure Chance wasn’t paying attention. She kept going down the hallway. All the doors along it were closed and when she tried to pull them open, she realized they were locked.

When she reached the end of the hallway, she turned to begin to walk back towards the living room, checking the doors on the way back. She pushed on one of them and it swung open quietly on its hinges. Luna opened the door the rest of the way and stepped inside the room. Just like the living room, this one was also lit with candles.

As she looked around the room, she noticed that there wasn’t any furniture. Her eyes focused on two blood red candles that sat in golden candle holders on the floor. At the base of the holders sat random bones that she guessed had belonged to the animals that Chance had hunted.

The candles were lit and the wax ran down them and dripped onto the gold looking like blood. The two candles illuminated the wall above them. Luna stared at it in horror as she realized that a five pointed star had been drawn on the wall in bright red. She backed away from it in horror. She turned back towards the door and ducked into the dark hallway. Luna silently closed the door shut and crept back down the hallway. She breathed in deep to calm her frightened nerves before she emerged into the living room.

Chance looked at her with his eyebrow raised. “You were gone a long time. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, I um…fell in the hallway is all,” she said weakly with a small laugh.

“Yeah, the carpet can be tricky,” he said yawning.

He looked up at the wall suddenly, and Luna noticed there was a clock there.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “I should probably take you home before David gets mad.”

She nodded at him wordlessly.

He stopped walking suddenly and turned to look at her through suspicious eyes. “Are you okay?”

Luna swallowed her fear and looked back at him. “Yeah, yeah, I’m great. Just exhausted,” she said and let out a fake yawn.

“I thought that was it. Well, come on,” Chance said and turned back towards the door.

Neither of them spoke as they headed back towards the black gate. Could it be that Chance was something more than the perfect popular high school senior that he pretended to be?

                                                                      Chapter Fifteen

When Chance finally dropped her off at home, Luna stumbled through the door and didn’t waste a second closing it. She glanced around warily to see where David was at. After a minute of searching, she didn’t see him. She knew he was probably asleep.

She let out a sigh of relief. She really didn’t want to be questioned about her evening. She sank to the nearest chair in relief and stared straight ahead at the wall. Maybe the mysterious room she had found at the back of Chance’s old house
was
her clue to finding out what he had been talking about at the dance. It was a weak link, but it was something.

She frowned, but what could it mean? She had to find out, it just seemed so suddenly vital. If she could figure out the pentagram, maybe she could get an idea of what was running through Chance’s mind.

She got up as she made her way towards her room. Her computer was in there and she planned to look up all she could on the pentagram she had seen in Chance’s house. Luna turned on the computer and waited for it to load. When it was ready she clicked on the internet button. As quickly as she could, she typed the word ‘pentagram’ into the search bar and pressed enter.

Almost instantly she got hundreds of pages in results. She sighed and clicked on the first one. At the top of the page it said pentagram in a blood red color with a black background. When she scrolled down she noticed the paragraph underneath it that was also written in blood red.

The pentagram throughout time has been a sign of evil. It’s thought that witches use it after they sign a pact with the devil. Another theory is that a pentagram can be found on the body of a man who is a werewolf. Whatever the case, most often the sight of the pentagram is associated with Satan.

In more recent times the pentagram is used by Satanists. Usually a pentagram is drawn in blood during rituals to call on the power of spirits of the underworld to grant the performer power. Though not all Satanists do rituals and sacrifice, they all make use of the pentagram.

Luna stopped reading it as she stared at the computer screen not feeling too pleased with what she had read. She re-read it to make sure that she hadn’t missed anything and thought about what it was telling her.

She was sure that Chance was no witch. She was also positive that he wasn’t a werewolf, though the sight of him eating the bloody steak in that restaurant the other night had been disturbing.

That only left one thing…Satanism. Luna thought about it and realized it worked. Satanism would certainly explain Chance’s obsession with death and his room full of bones with bleeding candles.

Luna sat back in her chair in disbelief as she continued to stare at the computer screen. Part of her hoped that maybe, just maybe she had read something wrong but the more she stared at it, the more she realized the words were real. There was no denying what she now knew.

Chance, the most popular boy at her school, worshipped the Devil.     

                                                                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That night both Violet and Chance sat alone in their rooms, both feeling hollower than they had ever felt before. Chance was in his pitch black room leaning against the wall, an alcohol bottle clutched sloppily in his hand. He was trying to numb his mind, stop it from working for just a little while. The bloody white gown seemed to haunt his mind as it clashed with more recent events. He kept running thoughts of his evening through his mind trying to find out where it went wrong.

He couldn’t hurt Luna…he just couldn’t. He didn’t know what that meant for him, but he guessed it couldn’t be good. Never before had he felt disgust and guilt when That mind came into play. It usually only filled him with adrenaline and anger and made him feel better than usual.

But Luna was different from all the other people that he had turned on before, and so were the emotions that she sparked in him…but
why
was she so different? Was it that she didn’t use him for his popularity (or the fact she simply seemed to not care about him at all?). Or could it be that he cared…actually
cared
about the loner and her ability was only an added benefit?

Inside, he knew that this wasn’t just about trying to attract her attention anymore. That had been a game to him, something to pass the time, but this was serious. He sighed and lifted the bottom of the cold glass bottle to his forehead. He had never cared about anyone before, not even his own parents. Yet Luna seemed to break him down to a vulnerable state that he couldn’t even define.

What a mess.

Violet was nearly parallel to Chance in emotional drainage that night. She was sitting propped up by the wall as she sat on her bed. She wasn’t drinking but she was exhausted, so out of her mind, that she might as well have been plastered. It was going on her second night of absolutely no sleep and she was feeling just terrible. Her head was radiating from a pain from her brand new headache and her whole body felt thoroughly tired. She had been lying down for hours and her body had cramped up from the lack of movement but still she found she couldn’t sleep.

She propped herself up for a few minutes after lying in bed at least five hours but still sleep wouldn’t come. She had skipped the last Homecoming dance of her school life to get some much-needed sleep and now she was missing out on both. She slid back flat onto her bed and buried her face into the pillow. She screamed out her frustrations into it…what was wrong with her?

                                                                      ~~~~~~

Luna screamed and kicked with all of her might. But it was doing her no good as the forest passed her by. There was just no escaping; he was so much bigger than she was (and stronger to boot). She aimed a kick for his leg again hoping this time to cripple him but he moved it out of the way just in time so that her foot slid through empty air and she was struggling for nothing once again. She let out another frustrated scream to ripple through the silent air.

He stopped walking and turned to her. “Don’t waste your breath, there’s no one else here.”

Luna froze at his words and stared at him in a familiar horror as she remembered all of this happening once already.  As her eyes focused on him, the forest began to slide away into nothing. When she opened her eyes she groaned at the feeling of exhaustion that clouded her mind. She blinked and groaned, she was having another fitful night’s rest.

She lifted her head to look at the alarm clock -2:15- already and she had barely gotten a wink of sleep the entire night. The mere hour she had slept had been plagued with nightmares. She yawned loudly and lay back down as she pulled the covers up to her neck to try to get comfortable.

Once again she had had that same dream. The dream where Violet was killed and she was kidnapped by someone though she couldn’t do anything to stop him. After the second time of having the dream, she couldn’t understand the vague feeling of familiarity she got from him and that bothered her. By now she would’ve thought she’d have figured something out but she was as clueless as the first time she had watched her friend bleed to death in the woods.

She had read a lot on dreams in her time spent studying and her mind automatically wandered to things that she’d prefer to not think about on her own. What if the dream was telling her about events that would actually happen to her in the future? She stopped her thoughts right there; she wouldn’t let herself believe that it could be anything that. It was just a dream, there was no way it was real…right?

Luna turned onto her side and stared at the pattern of shadows on the wall as worried thoughts continued to ruminate in her head anyways. She found that no matter how much she tried to use science to comfort her she still wondered about that dream. There was just something unusual about it…even if she didn’t know what it was. The dream stuck as stubborn as burrs to the front of her thoughts.

She thought to herself, maybe she was just horrified from what she had seen in Chance’s house. Or maybe she was still upset from what he had told her at the dance. She frowned as she re-thought through everything that had happened over last night. Stress was the cause of her strange nightmare: nothing more, nothing less.

There was no meaning in the dream, no danger. It was just a nightmare, a simple nightmare. She closed her eyes. She needed to sleep and it would give her a break from her worried thoughts if she could rest for only an hour. She clamped her eyes together to force herself to sleep. She wanted to open her eyes, but she made herself stay curled up. Finally, she felt a wave of exhaustion crash over her and sleep engulfed her.

                                                                      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chance stared at the shining shards of glass from his broken beer bottle. Hours ago he had thrown it there and not bothered to clean it up. He had sat in the dark, in total silence wondering why the world hated him so much. He hadn’t slept, his mind wouldn’t let him do anything but worry.

He couldn’t care for anyone…he was supposed to be a bloodthirsty monster! A follower of Satan and a murderer. Caring about Luna was a crack in his armor (and a pretty big one, he noted bitterly). If she could get through to him then he was sure that others could too with time and that was the thought that truly bothered him the most.

If he started to care about people then he’d no longer be able to kill and that meant he’d never get out of the rut he was in. He had to work his plan to completion and going soft wouldn’t get it done.

Maybe caring about her could be a good thing.

He shot down that thought down instantly...he knew it was bogus.