Death and the Crone Read online

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgment

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Book Club Questions

  Author Bio

  Death and the Crone

  A Lucky Devil Romance

  Copyright © 2023 Megan Mackie. All rights reserved.

  4 Horsemen Publications, Inc.

  1497 Main St. Suite 169

  Dunedin, FL 34698

  4horsemenpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Cover design by J. Caleb Clark

  Editing by Jamie Garner and Jen Paquette

  Typesetting by Autumn Skye and Niki Tantillo

  All rights to the work within are reserved to the author and publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please contact either the Publisher or Author to gain permission.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2022949667

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-715-5

  Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-716-2

  Audiobook ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-718-6

  Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-64450-717-9

  To my mother Connie, the teacher

  Acknowledgment

  Thank you first and foremost to my mother, Connie, for my entire life in general and for proofreading my book three times specifically.

  Thank you to Jamie, my editor, who always has my back

  Thank you to Caleb for being the standard of talented professionalism.

  Thank you to my husband and friend, Paul, for supporting me unwaveringly. I love you with all my heart. Thank you to Byron and Alaina for keeping me motivated.

  “We all die.

  The goal isn’t to live forever.

  The goal is to create something that will.”

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Chapter 1

  The young man unlocked the metal door and let it swing open, beckoning Margaret inside. The old, homeless woman stopped on the threshold, a small, wizened thing, wearing clothes that were never hers and stinking to high heaven of her own and others’ filth.

  “You are one crazy kid, you know that?” she told the young man standing before her as he struggled a moment to remove the high-tech key card that never-quite-fit-the-lock from the door.

  The young man flashed his youthful smile at her, tossing his newly freed keys and his umbrella onto the glass coffee table in the open living room. Without a further response, he walked past the island—the only thing separating the kitchen from the living room—to a refrigerator that shone dull silver in the dim light. The old woman stood still in the doorway, clinging onto the frame, fighting her instincts to run. The room would have been less scary if it had been filled with torture equipment.

  Instead, a dark-wood dining room set with tall, throne-like chairs stood just a few feet from the doorway. To her left was a dark leather couch with a clear glass coffee table. Both pieces of furniture faced a wide flat-screen TV mounted on the wall. The couch sat on a beige carpet while the dining room set sat on wide square blocks of smooth stone-like tile with no wall in between to separate the two rooms, as a sane person would expect. It was pure, uncomfortable luxury.

  The extreme contrast of herself to the world in which she now stood was so keen even she was embarrassed by it. The feeling penetrated through the hardened shell that told the world she didn’t care what it thought of her, to touch the gentle little girl she had once been, and in some ways still was, underneath.

  “Come in, shut the door,” the kid said from the kitchen.

  Two glasses now sat on the island counter. She watched as he drew a bottle of something from his stainless-steel fridge and set it next to them. Three red-topped stools waited on the opposite side for some glamorous woman in a too-short little black dress and heels to sit upon one of them. Not a woman dressed in rags, old enough to be his grandmother.

  When she didn’t move, he left the kitchen to come to her once more. He smiled his gentle smile, the one that persuaded her to take him up on his offer in the first damn place. As the smile washed over her, it made her insides melt. Most people shunned her at first sight, tried to keep upwind, and at least five feet away—more if possible. It had been like that for too many years. This kid, instead, had come up to less than a foot beside her, both in the alley and now as she hovered in his doorway. Gently, he touched her shoulder to guide her inside and shut the door behind her.

  “Would you like some water?” he asked. The old woman filled with a sense of doomed finality as he locked the door behind her. Her skin itched.

  “Whatever,” she answered and proceeded further inside. If he didn’t care about the crud on her tattered shoes staining his pretty carpet, then she didn’t give a rat’s ass either.

  She brought her old body up onto one of the stools, though it took all her limited strength to climb up the damn things. It seemed to satisfy him, and he continued with that angelic smile as he poured out two glasses of bubbly water from the fancy bottle. While he did that, she studied him again in the light coming down from the three hanging lamps over the island counter.

  He was beautiful. Too beautiful in her mind. Tall and thin without being gangly. The word ‘lithe’ floated through her mind. He wore dark clothes, a fine black button-up shirt that was open at the top, and matching black slacks with dark, square-toed shoes she had seen models wear in magazines. His hair was the longish style that only beautiful men could pull off without it looking like a mullet. The hair itself was dark, framing a perfectly chiseled face with nice cheekbones and a sharp chin. His eyes were dark blue, so dark the pupils were hard to see. They were as equally hypnotic as his smile. To her, they seemed like eyes that had seen too much, full of understanding instead of judgment. He had long fingers that handled the bottle of water expertly, and for a minute, she imagined those hands wrapping around her throat, choking the life out of her while she got to gaze deep into those dark, dark eyes. She snorted at the image.

  “Look, kid, I know this has to be a part of some ritual for you or something, but you don’t have to play nice with me before you do whatever the fuck it is you plan on doing to me. I don’t really give a damn anymore,” she said defensively.

  “I understand,” he said and slid the glass of water over to her on its own fancy-schmancy coaster made of cork. “Drink that up. We have all night, and you’ll need it.”

  “What is this bullshit?” she grumbled, but picked up the water anyway and stared down into it. “Probably drugged anyway,” she said. Before she could take a sip, he plucked it out of her hands with those long fingers and took a healthy gulp instead.

  “What the fuck? You fucking with me?” she snapped. “Some sort of power trip, you ass…”

  “See, not drugged,” he said and held it back out to her to take. She eyed him and the glass with hateful suspicion for several long minutes. The last thing she wanted was to reach out for it and be made a fool of again. She had known several so-called men who would have thought yanking it out of her grasp the height of hilarity.

  “I reach for that, you’ll just snatch it back again,” she concluded bitterly.

  Nodding again with those damn understanding eyes, he set the water back on its coaster and picked up his own to drink. He leaned against the far counter, putting himself out of snatching range, and watched to see what she would do.

  She ignored the water. “Don’t like feeling like a goddamn lab rat,” she grumbled again. “You’ve got me up here, kid. Now, what do you want with an old bitch like me?”

  “I told you, I’m interested in you. I want to help you,” he answered and sipped his water, his eyes roving over her being.

  God knows what he could be looking at. The old woman stared down at her wrinkled, scarred hands; the skin had gone thin until her bones showed underneath. She hated looking at her hands; she never recognized them. Over most of her body, she wore an old, burnt-orange jacket that was made for a man three times her size and went down to her knees. She liked it because it kept her warm on cold nights like this one if she tucked her knees into it. Dirty, white sneakers that were falling apart held her feet. On her legs were three pairs of sweatpants, layered one over the other. She had just as many layers of shirt under the jacket, and her mess of gray, dirty, greasy hair was stuffed up under an old, black, knitted hat that she hadn’t taken off for a long, long while. It was probably fused to her head by now. She hadn’t seen herself in a mirror in years. She didn’t have to. God knew how bad and ugly and old she looked, and this dumb fool just kept smiling at her as if she was…. she was…. what?

  “What the fuck are you looking at, you freak?” she snapped again, with the old reliable defensiven
ess that was meant to keep her safe and away from harm.

  He laughed out loud. Genuinely laughed as if she had just told the world’s greatest joke. There was no malice in it, which left her stunned.

  “I’m looking at you, of course,” he said, in that cryptic way that he had been doing for the last hour. Never quite answering her questions. He had picked her up in the alley only a few streets away. She had been digging through a garbage can when he came up beside her, an umbrella over his head to keep the light, cold drizzle of late fall from coming down onto his beautiful self.

  “You want to come home with me?” he had asked after he had stared at her for a too-long moment. She was hurting, hurting for another fix or another drink, anything to keep the demons away. The need was so great that her instinct to protect herself gave way to the addiction, much as it had most of the years of her adult life.

  She would have followed Lucifer himself if he had come a-calling.

  “Why am I here?” she finally asked when the silence between them became annoying. Her skin crawled.

  “Why do you think you are here?” he asked back.

  “Because you either want to fuck an old cunt because you’re sick in the head or something, or you want to murder me in some horrible way because who would miss street trash? So, whichever it’s going to be, can we just get on with it?!” she shouted and swiped the glass of water off the counter. It made a satisfying, wet crash on the floor. “Because it don’t much matter to me either way. I’m done with living.”

  He didn’t move when she threw away his hospitality water. Didn’t get angry either; just studied her, then slid his own glass of water across the counter to replace the one she broke and waited. She shot him an angry, black look, then picked it up. For a moment, she almost threw it after the other. It would have been satisfying, but she didn’t. This time, she stared at the crystal-clear liquid with its tiny bubbles and started to drink it. It actually tasted so good in her dry mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time she had simply drunk water. As she gulped it down, she had to resist the urge to slosh it all over her face as well.

  “How old are you?” he asked after she came up for air.

  “Too damn old. Should have died years ago,” she answered.

  “Especially after all the drugs you’ve done,” he stated simply. Again, no judgment, just facts. She still reacted as if he was judging her, anyway.

  “You been spying on me, you fucking animal?”

  He held up his right hand, letting the sleeve fall back to show his right wrist. He tapped the wrist with the finger of his left hand and pointed at her own.

  “You’ve got scars. I bet they go all the way up, don’t they?” he said.

  “Everyone’s got fucking scars.” She drank the last dregs of the water. It tasted so good. She didn’t realize it was gone until she had tried to keep drinking when all that was left was air.

  “Do you like doing it?” he asked. He retrieved the glass after she set it down and refilled it, emptying the bottle.

  “What? Drugs? No. Who the fuck does? But the demon’s gotta be fed. I owe him that much,” she answered. “What’s with the questions?”

  “What demon?”

  “What?”

  “You said ‘the demon’s gotta be fed, you owe him.’ Owe him for what?”

  She set the glass gently onto the counter, becoming hyperaware of the shake in her hands, her eyes drifting away to the other place. The place long in the past, the place where the demon had made its home and cried with a baby’s voice. “I owe him for keeping the pain away.”

  The young man honored the silence around that truth. The creeping feeling in her skin that had been slowly building was impossible to ignore now. It was coming for her. Eating her alive, piece by piece. She’d waited too long. It would come for her and eat her heart. It would leave her dead soon enough. She needed the next fix to ward it off. The idea of her heart stopping, her life ending in writhing pain, made her shudder. She had seen it before. Dying of withdrawal… even the corpses looked as if they were in agony.

  While she didn’t care if she lived, that wasn’t what she wanted. Why wouldn’t he simply end this already? It was becoming too hard to focus on him. The light was blinking in and out as she tried to stare at him with his hands braced on the counter behind him, his dark hair and dark clothes made out of the flashing darkness. She could see him for what he was now. The demon himself. He had come for her at last. He was beautiful.

  “Come, it’s time to take a shower,” he said suddenly, straightening up to move around the counter.

  “Shower?” she asked, blinking as she tried to bring awareness back to herself. The darkness melted off him. Panic rose in her. A small voice said she should run now, but why bother? She came here to die by this monster’s hand. She was going to do just that.

  He took her wrist in his hand and pulled her off to her feet.

  “It’s through here. Follow me, my beautiful girl.” He led the way to a doorway just past the living room.

  “I should just fucking run out the door right now,” the old woman mumbled to herself, her old bones creaking as she moved. The right knee took its time working properly, and she limped a few steps before it started smoothing out into a normal gait. He didn’t comment or rush her. He was a well-mannered monster, she’d give him that.

  He led her into a bedroom. It was much like the living room in that it had the beige carpet and high-end motif. A king-size bed dominated the room, neatly made with a black comforter and heaps of pillows. A large mirror hung over the black wood headboard. Out of habit, the old woman side-stepped so she couldn’t see her reflection. Again, the young man didn’t comment, just led her to the right, through another entryway. He slid up a light switch to halfway as he passed.

  Not that she could really see it. What she did see was the darkness of a ritual room, lit with fire all around. She didn’t stop, but double-blinked. The room changed as her demon—or was it a monster?—stopped and let go of her.

  It was a bathroom, not a ritual room.

  “A bathroom makes sense,” she muttered. If he was going to kill her, bathrooms were easier to clean up.

  “You’re going to get clean in here.” He reached into the shower—its own little room made of clear glass—and turned the water on. The rain shower head spouted water down, quickly filling the space with steam as the water made gentle plinking sounds on the faux-stone tiles. The young man shut the glass door and turned to her, still smiling that goddamn peaceful, beautiful smile. Then he came up to her and started popping the snaps on the orange coat.

  She jumped and flinched back, trying to bat his hands away, but her own shook so hard they had become useless. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Undressing you,” he said simply.

  “I can do it myself.” But she couldn’t. Her fingers wouldn’t cooperate. “You want me to shower, right?” she asked, embarrassed. It wasn’t a question she wanted answered, and he didn’t answer it but simply waited. After a few moments, she gave up, and he took over. “I gotta get all clean for you,” she continued to mutter. Staring down at the ground, she realized the floor writhed beneath her shoes. She tried to look elsewhere, only to return her focus to the floor. It was better than looking at the walls as the monsters tried to push their way through the flames burning there. She felt like the small girl she hadn’t been in years. Too late, those old memories surfaced once more, and she was twelve again, not innocent enough to not know what was coming.

  “You need to get clean, yes. Come on. You’ll feel better. Take ten years off you,” the beautiful demon quipped, and he reached out to pop more snaps. She stood there and let him, not moving or responding as he undid the coat and drew it off her arms. The smell got worse even to her blinded senses.

  “It’s… it’s been a long time,” she said in a small, shy voice, though whether she meant bathing or sex, she wasn’t sure. Both were true.

  “It’s okay. Here, I’ll dim the lights down even more, so it’s more relaxing.” He moved to slide down the dimmer switch. Now they stood in a warm twilight, serenaded by the gentle patter of water. The monsters growling in the ground and walls quieted as the light dimmed.