The Real Mrs. Price (2 page)

She clawed at his fingers around her throat and scratched at his hand grabbing her hair. Then it dawned on him that he was squeezing too tight.

“I'm sorry, Lucy,” he said, easing his grip around her neck. “You need to stop fighting me. If you'd stop fighting, I wouldn't have to do this. Tell me how you know.” He carefully let her go. “It's important, sweetheart.”

Lucy fell down to the floor, drawing her knees to her chest again and coughing and gasping for air. Suddenly, Ed heard a knock at the door, and his heart jumped into his chest.

“Shhhh, Lucy,” he said, desperately trying to quiet her. “I need you to be quiet,” he warned her. “I never meant to hurt you, and I don't want to have to—”

The knock came again. Reluctantly, he left her sitting there and went to answer the door.

“Hi, Ed.” It was his neighbor Bruce from next door. It took all of his willpower to compose himself, but inside, Ed was screaming.

Lucy could be heard coughing at the door.

“Is everything all right? Barbara thought she heard something.”

Barbara was Bruce's wife.

“Is that Lucy?”

Ed forced a smile. “Yeah, she choked on an almond. I did the Heimlich, and she's all right, but I think we need to go to the emergency room just as a precaution. You know. Make sure everything's where it should be.” Ed could only hope that the alarm in Bruce's expression faded at Ed's lame attempt at a joke.

“Sure,” he said, glancing over Ed's shoulder. “Well, is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, thanks, Bruce. I think I can handle it, but I really should get her to the hospital,” Ed said, quickly shutting the door.

Ed hurried back into the room, but Lucy wasn't there. Instinctively, he raced through the dining room, into the kitchen, and found her pulling open the back door.

“No … no … no, sweetheart,” he said, rushing over to her, wrapping his arms around her waist, and carrying her back to the living room.

Ed didn't like the look on Bruce's face, and he didn't want to take any chances that Bruce might decide to play hero and call the police.

Lucy fell limp in his arms and started to cry. He gently sat her down on the sofa and knelt at her feet. Ed shook his head. Shit was about to hit the fan. Ed had no more time. Bruce looked too concerned to just let this pass.

“It's a mess, Lucy,” Ed muttered. “You have no idea what you've done. I can't stay,” he said tearfully. Ed's life was now forfeit, and time was certainly not on his side. He had no choice but to go. “But I can't just leave you,” he told her, putting his hand underneath her chin and turning her face to his. Lucy had to understand, fully, the gravity of her actions. She had to know just how serious this was, and he had to make it clear just how far she'd pushed him. “If I kill you, they'll never stop looking for me,” he said unemotionally, speaking more to himself than to her. Ed was processing out loud, thinking of how such a scenario could play out and the consequences, unaware of the chilling effects his words were having on his wife. “They'll know it was me. And they'll pin Chuck's murder on me, and they'll never stop looking. There are worse things than going to prison, Lucy,” he murmured with hot and angry tears filling his eyes. “There might even be worse things than dying.” Ed swallowed. Hope began to wane in him, and adrenaline ran high. “It's over, Lucy,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to hers. The bitterness of this moment rose to the back of his throat as bile. Nothing in his life would ever be the same. And as far as his marriage to her was concerned, it truly was over. “You can't tell anybody, Lucy.” He held her face between his hands and stared desperately into her eyes. “I can leave, and you can get on with your life, but you can't tell anybody about me—about Chuck.”

She blinked back tears. Lucy was so afraid, but she needed to be. That's the only way this plan of his had any possibility of working. Fear was his greatest weapon against her, and it would save both their lives.

“Understand this, sweetheart, that if you ever tell anyone about Chuck and I find out, I will come for you, and I will snatch the life right out of you, baby, and I mean that. I mean it, Lucy.” Ed's own tears streamed down his cheeks. “I fucking mean it.”

Could he do it? If he said it, then he'd have to mean it.

“Killing's easier than you think, Lucy.” Ed said it. And yes. He did mean it. “My God, it's so damn easy. And if it comes down to my life or yours,” he swallowed. “I'll take yours.”

Ed quickly went upstairs and packed the things he knew he couldn't easily replace. He was literally getting ready to run for his life because of her. A few minutes later, he came back downstairs and saw Lucy slumped on the sofa, staring straight ahead at nothing, numb and trembling. His beautiful Lucy was a shell of the woman he'd married. But she should've minded her own fucking business.

He had two choices. He could stay and be arrested, or he could get as far away from here and this life as he could, as quickly as he could, and hope that he would never be found. On his way out the back door, he stopped and looked back at her one last time. Ed thought that maybe he should tell her that he would always love her. But saying something like that would just be silly.

 

Six Months Later …

 

Bone Talk

“B
E MINDFUL OF ME.
And watch. Wait. Come,” he said.

Was she naked? Of course. Of course she was. Bare outside and in. Vulnerable. And fragile, anticipating and needing. Him.

A light shone over her, but the space around her was dark. It was as if she were on display, but only for him. Marlowe raised her knees to her chest and let them fall open from her thighs. Was she afraid? Yes. But she wanted him more than she feared him. Inside. He was close. She didn't have to see him to know it. Marlowe scented him, she felt his presence in that room, the air warming as he drew nearer.

“No rules. Only lust. And come. And us.”

His hand emerged from the darkness, black as tar, planting on the bed between her legs, leaving a print. Marlowe sucked in her breath and held it. Her heart raced, chasing fear and desire. Her nipples hardened at the thought of the warm caress of his lips.

He could hurt her. Kill. It's what he did. He could break her. Make her beg. Want.

The dark space at the foot of her bed transformed into him, his frame. Broad. Long. Without an end or beginning. He had no face. And yet, she loved him. Her body convulsed in anticipation of him. He pushed his fingers between the lips of her pussy, through the folds of her vagina, and fucked her. Slowly. Deeply. Rivers flowed from her, soaking the sheets. Filling the cup of his palm. Marlowe cried out in ecstasy and agony. It was so good that it hurt. And her desire for him became maddening.

He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth … A biblical testament that erupted from her memories.

He was killing her in his own sick way. Tormenting her. Torturing her with his fingers. Teasing.

“Come on!” she growled in frustration at him as he brought her to orgasm with his touch. Marlowe's body rocked. She cried out, and she reached for him, but her hand passed through him. He wasn't real. But he was.

He pulled his fingers from her and raised them to the place where his mouth would be. They disappeared into him, and he moaned.

“My sweet love,” he whispered.

Waves of orgasms rippled through her body long after he'd removed his fingers. And then he mounted her. Marlowe cried out in anticipation and terror. The warm and thick tip of his dick pressed against her opening. He balanced himself on his elbows, braced on either side of her. His broad and powerful chest pressed down on her until she could hardly breathe. He pushed inside her. Pulled out of her. Pushed deeper. Pulled out again. He did this over and over again, until the full length of him, which felt endless, was inside her.

“Scream, Marlowe. Scream for me.”

She opened her mouth, but no scream came. He pummeled her, fucked her, licked and kissed her. He covered her with all of him, until the light above her dimmed. There was no name for what he was doing to her. Marlowe lay slathered in him, filled with him, consumed by him, in glorious throes of passion so fantastic that she dreamed they would never fade. She belonged to him, mind, body, and soul.

“Yessssss,” he hissed, bucking slow and hard and deep at his own orgasmic waves. “I claim you. And you claim me, too. Yessssss.”

She was his. He was hers. And the bond was unbreakable. Sealed.

*   *   *

Marlowe had been sleeping restlessly when the phone rang next to her bed. “Hello?” she asked, half-awake.

She'd been dreaming. Goodness gracious! Marlowe's eyes widened as she scanned the space in her room.

“It's me,” Shou Shou said without apology. Shou Shou was Marlowe's aunt. “I had an intuition,” the old woman told her.

Marlowe sat up in bed. The last time Shou Shou had had an intuition, Marlowe's twin sister, Marjorie, died.

“What it look like?” Marlowe asked anxiously.

“It look like you,” Shou Shou told her. “I want you to do something for me.”

“Say it,” Marlowe responded. “You know I'll do it.”

“I want you to read the bones, Marlowe. Don't wait 'til sunup. Get up and read 'em now.”

Marlowe could count on two hands how many times she'd read the bones in her lifetime. But if Shou Shou was asking her to do this, then it had to be important.

“Yes, ma'am,” she said nervously. “You want me to call you back and tell you what I saw?”

“No,” she said simply. “It ain't for me. It's for you. Do it now, before midnight. Don't go back to sleep, Marlowe.”

“No, ma'am. I won't.”

“Not 'til you read them bones. Then go back to sleep if you can, darlin'.”

“Yes, ma'am.” Marlowe hung up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and looked at the clock. “Shit.” In twenty minutes, it would be midnight. She climbed, naked, out of bed and went to the bathroom to pee and slip into her robe before heading out into the sunroom at the back of the house. Marlowe kept the bones in a black velvet bag at the bottom of an old flowerpot in the corner on the floor. Reading bones inside her house, even in the sunroom, was something she'd never do.

Shou Shou had always told her to take them outside.
“Bones can bring good news, but they can bring bad news, too. Always read 'em outside in case the news is bad. The last thing you want is to let that mess loose inside your house.”

By
mess,
she meant foul spirits.

Marlowe knelt and spread her casting cloth out on the grass in her yard and then opened the black pouch and poured the possum bones into her hand. Cupping both palms around the bones, she shook them, held them as she took a deep breath, and watched them fall. She studied the positioning of each of them carefully as they related to each other and to themselves.

Shou Shou's words came back to haunt her.
“Sometimes you can see the devil in the bones. He don't look like you think he looks. But you can tell it's him.”

A dreadful feeling snaked up her spine. “Is that you, devil?” she murmured, trying not to give in to the fear rising up from that casting cloth. She had dreamed him, and the bones confirmed her fears.

Were the bones trying to warn her about Eddie? Because if they were, then they were too late. She'd married him already. He'd been inside her house and inside her body too many damn times, so she was tainted with him, soiled and spoiled, and left dirty from him. She studied the bones intensely a few minutes longer and realized that they weren't showing her the devil who had come; they were warning her of the one yet to come.

The thought came to her,
Don't let him in.
Marlowe shuddered.

Marlowe had learned a long time ago that discerning spirits wasn't always a good thing. Looking down at those bones, she had no choice but to commit to the ugly and unwelcome truth. There was a threat in the bones, shrouded by something or someone so dark and dangerous that she trembled at the thought of him. She didn't know who he was or why he had any business with her, but the bones didn't lie, and Marlowe couldn't deny their truth.

“That's you, all right.” She swallowed fearfully.

She wanted no part of him, whoever he was, but that dream still had her shaking. These bones—and what they'd told her—made her physically ill. Marlowe had no idea how to make ready to face him, but there was no doubt that he sure as hell was coming, and he was coming for her.

 

The Ritual Begins

H
OZIER
'
S
“T
AKE
M
E TO
C
HURCH
” streamed through his car speakers. Lyrics were everything when it came to songs like this. It was a love song. The ultimate love. That sacrificial kind. That mother-child kind. Unconditional and shit.

Osiris Plato Wells wasn't the kind of man who lived a life synonymous with love, but he dug this song, and the melody soothed him while he drove. Road trips were his thing, especially at night. In fact, he preferred driving at night, and unless time was against him, he'd get a room during the day and sleep so that he'd be ready to drive all night long if he had to.

The habits of men, especially frightened men, seldom changed a whole lot. Edward Price was being hunted, and if he was still alive, he knew it. So that meant he'd work harder to break the rules and throw the hunter—Plato, in this case—off course. What he didn't understand was the nature of this thing he was running from. In this game, it was Plato who held the advantage. Price was no different from any other man that Plato had been hired to find. He was afraid and desperate. And after all this time, Price undoubtedly had a false sense of security, believing that he may have actually managed to escape his fate. It would be that mistake, that very assumption, that would ultimately prove to be fatal.