Chapter 3
Cori
A young college guy, who was probably in his freshman year if his baby face was anything to go by, admired the new tattoo Cori had put on his arm. He’d asked for a tribal band around his bicep, so she’d spent a couple of hours inking it on there. It was his first. He’d handled it fairly well, but she could tell near the end he was ready for it to be over.
“This looks kickass,” he said, flashing his arm at her like she hadn’t been the one to put it there. It was always amusing to see the reactions of first timers once she finished.
She gave him a professional smile. “Glad you like it.”
The kid was wide-eyed without a hint of the jadedness she saw in her own gaze or even that of her friends. He still looked at the world through rose-colored lenses, full of hope and curiosity. Cori couldn’t remember if she’d ever been that way. An image of Bartol came to mind, and she wondered what he’d been like at nineteen years old. Whatever youthfulness he might have had was likely knocked away a long time ago, leaving no trace of the boy he’d once been. Did nephilim come out of the womb as young and innocent as humans? Or were they programmed from the start to be rebellious and total jackasses? She didn’t even know if he’d had a parent to raise him, or if someone else had taken up the job.
Cori wrapped a bandage around the tattoo and taped it in place. She’d already cleaned and put ointment on it. “Don’t take this off for a few hours.”
“Yeah, okay.” He climbed out of the chair.
She led him out of her private room in the back and up front to the cash register. Cori’s only other employee, Asher, was still working on his customer at his front booth. A woman had commissioned him to do a full sleeve on her right arm, which was going to take a few sessions with this evening being the first. His tattoo machine buzzed away as he worked on the area around her shoulder. The young woman—probably in her mid-twenties—stared up at the ceiling. She didn’t show any obvious signs of pain, but she’d had a few other tattoos done before and had likely gotten used to it.
Cori gave her own customer a small aftercare kit with instructions in it. “Wash the tattoo with non-scented, anti-bacterial soap several times a day until it’s fully healed.” She pointed at the bottle in the baggie. “Also put a thin layer of this A&D ointment on there each time you clean it.”
“When can I take the bandage off?” he asked.
“An hour or two should be enough. You should clean it again when you do.”
The college guy asked her a few more questions, then left. She checked the waiting area but didn’t find any more people milling about. This was the slowest it had been all day. Cori had appreciated staying busy because it took her mind off the note she’d found at her house. She kept expecting to run into the person who wrote it, but as of yet they hadn’t made an appearance or tried to contact her in any way. Could it have been some sort of prank?
She glanced at her watch and realized it was almost eight o’clock already. Her shop didn’t officially close for another hour, but even if someone came in now, she wouldn’t start anything new. “Hey, Asher,” she called. “Think you can close up for me?”
“No problem!” he yelled from the back.
Since she usually arrived at the shop around eleven in the morning to get ready to open at noon, and he didn’t come in until two in the afternoon, she didn’t feel too bad when she left a little early. Asher was a reliable guy, and he’d never failed to close the place up properly when he left. Still, she took the time to clean up and sanitize her work area before going. He’d handle the rest of the place.
Cori grabbed her purse and keys, then ducked her head into his booth. “See you tomorrow.”
He glanced up, looking at her through shaggy blond hair. “Don’t forget I won’t be in until around four. I’ve got that thing I told you about.”
She’d almost forgotten. Asher had a girlfriend who’d recently discovered she was pregnant, and they were going to her first OBGYN appointment. So far, they both seemed very excited. When Cori had found out about it, she’d considered giving Asher a lecture since he was only twenty-four and hadn’t really settled down yet, but then she realized she couldn’t judge. She had been twenty when she got pregnant and had thought it was the greatest thing in the world. She’d dropped out of college soon after that and married the father of her child just before her daughter was born. It had been a major mistake, but not everyone’s relationships ended in disaster the way hers did. She had to remember that.
“Let me know how it goes,” she said.
“Sure thing.” Asher leaned forward and got back to work on his customer.
Cori headed outside, going toward her truck. She’d recently traded her old, beat-up car that broke down more often than it ran for a somewhat newer Dodge Ram. It was about ten years old, but the previous owner had taken good care of it, so it didn’t give her any troubles. Some of her friends gave her a hard time because she changed vehicles so often. It couldn’t be helped, though. She would have to wait for a while before investing in a brand new vehicle since she had other priorities for now—such as paying her home off early. Business at the tattoo shop was going well enough she just might manage it in a few more years. It would have taken longer than that, but when her father passed away a couple of years ago, he’d left her some money. The inheritance had been just enough to start her shop and put a sizable down payment on her cabin, as well as fix it up.
She drove home, thinking about the steaks she’d set out for dinner and whether to take one over to Bartol. It had been a few days since she’d last visited, so at least she’d given him some space, and she knew he enjoyed anything with beef.
Cori pulled off the highway and started the final trek toward her cabin, passing the nephilim’s place along the way. A soft light shined out from his living room window, but she didn’t see him. The sun had set on the way home, and her headlights barely penetrated the full darkness. She bumped across ruts in the road and swore that once she had more money she’d get the drive paved. Bartol didn’t have to worry about it since he didn’t have a car, and he could flash anywhere he wanted to go. That left it entirely up to her. There used to be a few more homes along the route, but the others had burned down in a forest fire a few years before Cori moved into the area. It was a small miracle the cabins she and Bartol lived in now had been spared.
After parking the truck, she grabbed her purse and got out. The night was quiet and still—more so than usual. She gripped the vehicle door as the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. A flash of movement in the woods caught her eye. She squinted. Clouds covered the moon, making it even darker than usual, and the porch light she always left on didn’t quite penetrate that far.
There—she saw it again.
The distinct shape of a man moving from one tree to another, quiet as a whisper despite the thick underbrush. Her heart rate picked up, and her breathing quickened. There was no reason for anyone to be lurking in the woods near her home.
Keeping her gaze on the trees, she lowered her hand into her purse where she’d put a loaded .44 Magnum revolver before leaving for work this morning. Cori didn’t carry a gun often, though she owned several and practiced with each regularly, but the threatening note from a few days ago had triggered her paranoia. Right after she’d read the letter, she’d gone straight to the cedar chest in her bedroom and pulled out her father’s old revolver from beneath a pile of blankets, trusting the weapon to protect her if she needed it.
Usually, she went with her H&K .45, but if she was going to be haunted by her past, she wanted her dad’s weapon. He was the one who gave her the courage to leave her ex in the first place, and he’d been there to pick her up when everything fell apart after that. It was a piece of him that gave her strength to fight back against whoever was coming for her now.
“Who’s there?” she asked, her voice coming out uncertain in the still night air. Get a grip, Cori. Showing weakness to a stalker will only give them more confidence.
No answer.
She kept the weapon close to her side, cocked but out of sight behind the truck door, not wanting to reveal the revolver until she was certain the person out there was a threat. So far, they’d done nothing more than move between trees. Could Emily and her friends be playing a prank on her? It wouldn’t have surprised Cori. Melena’s adopted teenage daughter had pulled some wild stunts in the past, one of which got a guy stuck in a bear trap out in the middle of nowhere and nearly got Mel turned into a werewolf when she tried to rescue him.
“Stop being a coward and come out,” she said, tone more forceful this time.
Cori waited, hoping her taunts would be enough to put an end to this stalemate. Seconds ticked by before the dark figure stepped around a tree. He moved slowly, once again hardly disturbing the brush. She almost couldn’t breathe as he crept closer. Then the shadows peeled away from the man as he reached the edge of the woods, and he stepped into the circle of light.
Her heart thundered in her ears, and she lost the ability to breathe. It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him, and yet he looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen him nearly four years ago. He was the man who had haunted a thousand nightmares and left her waking up shaking and sweating in the middle of the night. Her gaze started at the top of his head with his shaven brown hair, down to his pitch-black eyes, then on to his goatee and mustache, and she noted his skin had become paler, almost like a ghost. And just the same as before, he had a stocky physique with large muscles built for fighting, especially those weaker than him. She knew about that all too well.
“Hello, baby,” he said, his voice coming out low and rumbling.
A cold shiver ran down her spine. “Griff?”
Her ex-husband chuckled, the resonance sounding similar to something she’d expect from of a horror movie. Everything about him sent alarm bells ringing. He didn’t seem real, but no amount of blinking made the specter of him go away. Cori wanted to pinch herself to see if this was some kind of bad dream. And could she possibly escape it?
He took a step closer, flowing over her lawn so smoothly she couldn’t be certain he actually touched it. “I’ve come back for you, baby, and you’re going to pay for what you did.”
She lifted the stainless steel revolver in her hand. It shook a little, but she didn’t let that deter her. “Stay away from me.”
He barely spared her weapon a glance.
“Come here, Cori,” he beckoned, voice deep and mesmerizing. “I want to look at you.” The tone and expression on his face reminded her of those early years when they were together. Griff had been attentive back then and would do anything to make her happy. Not like later.
Her feet threatened to move of their own volition, but she kept them firmly planted. “No.”
“Yes,” he said, his gaze turning demanding.
“Leave me alone.”
He let out a growl and rushed forward in a blur across her lawn. She fired, squeezing the trigger over and over again. The shots pierced Cori’s ears, and the recoil punished her palms and wrists, but she didn’t stop until she’d unloaded all six rounds.
As she lowered the revolver, she squinted into the darkness, unable to find a body or any sign of her ex-husband. He’d vanished. She scanned left and right, studied the woods, and finally spun about in case he’d somehow gotten behind her. Nothing. She couldn’t have imagined him, though. Griff had been standing directly in front of her when she’d started firing, but sometime between the first round and the last, he’d fled.
Cori lowered her weapon with one hand and used the other to dig into her purse, searching for the box of ammunition she’d put in there. Her ex was hiding out there somewhere, and she had to be ready for him when he came out again. She grasped hold of the package with trembling fingers and started to pull it out, but a flash of light ten feet away made her freeze.
Bartol appeared, his gaze scanning the area with alarm. “What is going on?”
Cori shook herself and continued the process of reloading her weapon. A nephilim might be a lot more deadly than a revolver, but she still wanted her own weapon on hand in case her ex appeared again. Assuming, of course, that Griff wasn’t just a ghost who’d come back to haunt her. She had no idea how to fight one of those since no one had ever mentioned them being real before.
“A man tried to attack me,” she said, forcing herself to sound calmer than she felt. Cori wasn’t prepared to tell Bartol she knew the guy and that he was someone from her past. “I shot at him, but he disappeared.”
His brows drew together. “He disappeared?”
“Yes.”
He frowned at the empty field and woods. “I don’t see anyone. Did you hit him?”
“I don’t know.” She checked her revolver and dropped it back into her purse. “He moved too fast for me to be able to tell—like he was a ghost or something.”
“Where exactly?”
She pointed at the spot in the woods where she’d fired all her rounds. “There.”
They walked together to the place where her ex-husband had stood. She didn’t spot any drops of blood on the ground to prove Griff had been hit, and none of the underbrush appeared disturbed. The only evidence of the confrontation at all was several of the trees had bits of bark torn off of them from where her bullets had struck. Could she have just been seeing things? Her ex-husband’s body had seemed almost ethereal, but darkness could play tricks on the eyes. He had to have been real because she couldn’t be going crazy. Not when things were actually looking up for her.
“He was here?” Bartol pointed to the shrubbery where her ex-husband’s specter had exited the woods. “In this spot?”
Cori nodded. “Yes. He even spoke to me.”
“What did he say?”
She took a deep breath. “That he was coming for me.”
“Did you recognize him?” Bartol asked.
That was not a subject she wanted to get into since then she’d have to admit her would-be attacker was supposed to be dead because she’d killed him. No one knew what she’d done except her father who passed away a couple of years ago, and she wasn’t about to admit it to anyone else now.
“Can you smell him?” she asked, avoiding Bartol’s gaze. “With your heightened senses or whatever?”
He grunted. “A nephilim may have a better sense of smell than a human, but we are not werewolves. We can’t track anyone outdoors unless they have a particularly strong odor, which this man does not.” He flashed away from her, reappearing deeper in the woods. For the next ten minutes, Bartol moved from one spot to another until he’d searched the whole area around her house. “I cannot find any trace of him. If he was here, he is long gone now.”
Cori was both relieved and frustrated. She probably didn’t have to worry about the ghost of her ex-husband returning tonight—it had to take a lot of mojo for one to appear at all since they weren’t exactly common—but now she looked like she’d lost her mind. How could he have gotten away like that? How did none of her shots hit him?
“Okay, thanks.” She shifted from foot to foot. “I appreciate your checking.”
Bartol lifted a brow. “What is it you’re not telling me?”
She pasted a blank expression on her face, hiding the terror she felt. “It’s nothing. I’m sorry I disturbed you from…whatever it is you do in the evenings.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “You shot at this man, and you were shaking when I found you. It is not nothing.”
No, it wasn’t. Cori felt as if the proverbial walls were closing in on her. She’d thought she’d put the past behind her, and now it was back and more frightening than ever. It wasn’t Bartol’s problem, though. It was hers, and she’d deal with it on her own.
“Look, I’ve had a long day, and I’m tired,” she said, adjusting the purse strap over her shoulder. “Maybe I imagined the man, or maybe it was a bear or something. It’s gone now, so let’s just drop it.”
Cori began to turn away, but Bartol grabbed her arm. “You’re lying to me.”
She stared at the hand wrapped around her bicep. He’d never touched her—not in anger or for any other reason. She lifted her gaze back to his. “I have a past, and like you, I don’t want to talk about things that happened a long time ago. Can we please drop it?”
He studied her for a long moment. If anyone could understand how much she needed her privacy, it would be him. Still, she couldn’t miss the warring emotions in his eyes. He was reluctant to leave her alone, and yet he didn’t want to push things, either.
“Fine.” He pulled his hand away. “I’ll let it go—for now.”
Without another word, he flashed away. Cori locked up her truck and hurried into her cabin, sliding a bar across the front door for extra protection. Something told her she wouldn’t be sleeping very well tonight.