0.5 Deadly Hearts Read Free

the Mermaids had been terminated by city police, someone who wanted to wiggle his way into the good graces of rich couples having trouble.
    It’s a trap, the voice hissed, and Rich knew it to be true, even if he didn’t understand why.
    The door to the master bedroom at the end of the hall was ajar.
    That was where Elise Faulkner had disappeared.
    Kill her first.
    Rich could imagine closing his hands around the woman’s throat and squeezing as clearly as though it were a memory. The bulging eyes, the frothing saliva. He could imagine the way her body would thrash underneath him.
    Kill her.
    He pushed the door open and stepped inside as though in a dream.
    The door slammed shut behind him.
    He whirled and banged his fist into the door, but it didn’t yield to his touch. The handle wouldn’t even jiggle.
    Rich flattened his back to the wall and stared around the bedroom. Except it wasn’t a bedroom at all—there was no bed, no dresser, no clothes piled on the floor. The windows were blacked out by heavy drapes. A huge circle had been drawn on the ceramic floor in chalk, and candles burned at each of the four cardinal corners. They were the only light in the entire room.
    Elise stood in the center of the circle beside a chair. The oven mitts were gone, baring the kind of black gloves a biker might wear. As he watched, she stripped the pink shirt off over her head. Underneath, she wore a white tank top so tight it might have been painted on, revealing every line of her muscular abs. And her biceps made it look like she could snap him in half with a pinkie.
    Without the baggy clothes or oven mitts, she looked less like a cute young housewife and more like something that had crawled out of Hell.
    Elise reached back, drew a sword from a spine sheath, and then spun the chair around to face him. “Sit down,” she said, and her tone left no room for argument.
    “What’s going on?” He was proud of the fact that his voice only trembled a little bit, even though he felt like he might faint.
    “Sit down,” she said, biting out each word.
    He was prepared to obey her—shit, with a sword like that, she could tell him to jump off a bridge and he would obey—but his body didn’t budge an inch. His leg warmed and something trickled down his ankle. Rich looked down. His slacks were wet.
    Oh, fuck.
    “I think I just—”
    Elise kicked the chair forward an inch. “You’ll sit down, and you’ll do it fast if you know what’s good for you.” But still, his feet didn’t move. Impatience drew her eyebrows low over her eyes. “You’ll die if I don’t take care of you now. Both of you. So let him sit down.”
    Every inch of Rich trembled. “Who are you—I don’t know—I mean, I can’t—”
    “Shut up, Rich. I’m not talking to you anymore,” Elise said. She unclasped the chains at her waist and wound them around her wrist, like brass knuckles made of crucifixes and pentacles. “In the name of God, I’m ordering you to sit the fuck down.”
    A growl rose from deep within his chest. It was an inhuman sound, like the roaring of a furnace, and it burned in his throat. Sulfur stung his nose. His eyes watered.
    Another flash of blinding pain. Rich pressed his fists to his chest as his ribs groaned. Pressure from the inside made them bow outward, straining against his ligaments, and the tension in his sternum was too much.
    And then he spoke.
    “ Fuck you, exorcist. ”
    It wasn’t his voice. He hadn’t even meant to say anything.
    “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Elise said, passing the sword to the fist that was wrapped with chains. The blade was short, only about two feet, but the curved side looked terrifyingly sharp.
    Rich wrapped his arms around himself, and he shook with the effort it took for him to hold his ribs together.
    “It hurts,” he gasped in a normal, human voice.
    “Yeah, possession’s not meant to feel like tender bunny kisses,” she said, clapping a hand on the back of his collar and