Page 1 of Vows & Violence
Prologue
Ghost
Ihear the click before I feel the cold metal against my skin. A trigger. A breath held. A heartbeat waiting to end.
Then…Bang.
My back arches and my ribs crack. I’m falling, but I never hit the ground. Just air, thick and wet, like breathing through blood.
It’s Vale I see first. Not the way he looked when I buried him, bloated and bullet-torn, but clean and calm. He’s too calm. Vale’s wearing his badge like it still meant something. He smiles.
"You let me die, Dean." Vale’s voice isn’t angry. It’s worse. It’s proud.
Raven is behind him, face half-shadowed, lips split in that damn smirk. She runs a blade across her palm and lets the blood drip into a hollow skull at her feet. A child’s skull, I think. I hope I’m wrong.
The shadows move like they're breathing.
“He belongs to us now,” Raven says, pointing at me. “Hollowed out. Empty. Just like you left us.”
I try to move, to speak, but my mouth is sewn shut. Hands crawl out of the dirt. Vale’s victims gripping my legs, draggingme toward a fire that hums a lullaby I heard at my mother’s funeral. But my mother never sang to me.
The flames dance in the shape of Phoenix’s face. She’s screaming my name, and I can’t reach her. I always wake up before I can reach her.
Except this time, I don’t wake up. This time, Vale leans close, his breath sour with grave rot and bourbon, and whispers, "You should’ve stayed dead with me."
Then… BANG.
I shoot up, soaked in sweat. There’s blood on my hands. My palms, my fingernails. It’s fresh and wet.
Phoenix is standing across the room with her gun half-raised, staring at me like she doesn’t know who I am anymore. She doesn’t lower the gun, and I don’t blame her.
My hands are slick with blood. Not imagined, but real. Fresh under my nails, smeared across my palms like I clawed my way out of something buried. I flex my fingers. Nothing hurts. No cuts. No wounds.
Only red.
Phoenix’s voice is low, calm, too calm. “Dean. Tell me that’s yours.”
I want to. God, I want to lie. I want to tell her I cut myself in my sleep, that I got up and broke a glass and didn’t notice the blood. Something normal. But nothing about this is normal.
“I don’t know,” I admit, voice hoarse. “I woke up like this.”
Phoenix slightly lowers her gun. Just enough to meanI trust you, but don’t give me a reason not to.She tosses me a towel from the bathroom. I wipe the blood, and it soaks into terry cloth like it’s never coming out.
“Nightmare?” she asks.
I nod.
“Worse than usual?” she presses.
I nod again.
She studies me for a beat longer, eyes sharp beneath her mess of dark hair, the moonlight painting her jaw in silver. Then she sighs, moves past me, and grabs her boots.
“Get dressed. We’re going for a ride. You need air, and I need answers.”
I want to argue. I want to bury this like I buried everything else, but the blood is already dried under my nails.
I know, deep down, this isn’t the end of the nightmare.
