The Haunted (Sleeping with Monsters Book 1) (18 page)

The
Haunted was the first book in my Sleeping with Monsters series, about women who
love dangerous creatures. The second book in that series is called
The Hunted
– excerpt
below! – and it will be released on 9/1/14.

The House
, a Come Find
Your Fantasy adventure book, was my first erotica release, if you’d like to go
back and see where it all began.

If
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and/or Goodreads!

Before
Tales from The House or Sleeping with Monsters, I wrote the Edie Spence urban
fantasy series, about a nurse working with supernatural creatures on a secret
hospital floor. All five books of the series –
Nightshifted
,
Moonshifted
,
Shapeshifted
,
Deadshifted
, and
Bloodshifted
– are currently
available on Amazon.com or through your local bookstore.

If you’d like to follow me on social media, check
out my website at
www.cassiealexander.com
,
follow me on twitter at
@CassieY4
,
or like my Facebook page at
http://www.facebook.com/CassieAlexanderAuthor
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Thank you for reading The Haunted. I hope you
enjoyed it!

~ Cassie

Read on for a sneak peek of
The Hunted
,
the next Sleeping with Monsters book.

In my dreams I could pretend the sounds I heard were fireworks or drums, not gunfire. But when I woke to Vincent shaking me I knew our life together was done.

"Time to go."

I sat up instantly. The shots were closer, faster, matching the doubletime of my heart. The Carmino family was coming for us, at last.

Vincent shook me again. "Go," he demanded. He was beautiful, stern, and violent. Muscles in his arms bunched, bracing for a fight.

"No – I won't leave you – I can't –"

He shoved me off the bed. "Wake up. This is it. You remember what to do."

I stumbled up and snatched my robe off a chair. "Okay –" I ran for the bathroom, realized he wasn't following me, and turned. "I'm not going without you."

"Yes you are."

"But –" This wasn't how we'd run the drills. When we'd practiced them, we'd both escaped.

"Things have escalated, Sam." He stepped onto the bed and then off of it again to reach my side. Why wasn't he reaching for guns? I knew we had them, under the bed, and in the closets -- "They're not going to let me live. And I don't want to watch you die." He took my shoulders in his hands and held so tight I knew there'd be bruises by dawn.

"This is really it?" I asked, my voice small.

He nodded and came in, pulling me close for one last kiss. I kissed him as hard as he kissed me, lips and teeth and tongue. If this was good-bye, I wanted to take part of him with me, to always be able to put fingers to my lips and feel the piece of himself he'd left there.

"I love you. You know what to do. Go."

Leaving would mean never coming back – and knowing that Vincent was gone. Another round of gunshots neared.

"Go!" he shouted. I could hear the fear creep into his voice – not for himself, but for me, that I'd get caught in here with him. It was the only thing that made me run. I wasn't afraid of dying – but I didn't want to make his death any worse than it already would be.

"I love you," I whispered, and ran for the bathroom door.

We'd practiced escaping, like elementary school kids practiced crazy-killer drills – talked about what we would do, how we would survive, where we'd meet up again in time. I never thought I'd be running alone though, without him – but he did. I looked under the bathroom sink, and there was only one backpack there.
Goddamn him.
I grabbed it and threw the ladder out the window where it would be hidden by the chimney and took the rungs on it two at a time. Halfway down I heard the shots get nearer, with shouting – and then everything stopped. I let go of the ladder without thinking and fell eight feet down, into a bush.

Vincent was dead. I knew it. I clutched my hands into fists to keep from screaming, and gathered myself to run for the treeline.

I snuck out the back of our compound, past men already gloating, and reached the street.

My first stop was blocks away, a gas station that we'd copied the bathroom key for. I let myself in and sank to my knees on the dirty tile.

He was gone. He'd always be gone. They'd killed him, taken him away from me and now I would never see his face again, feel his touch, lie purring against his chest after sex. All of that was in my past -- and once again, the only future I had was on my back. I put my head in my hands and let myself cry.

Get it together, Sammy.
His voice snapped at me in my head, and I caught my breath like I always did when he spoke like that. Sometimes I was bad on purpose to make him have to use that tone – other times, I'd genuinely screwed up. It'd been followed by a whip's bite enough times that it made my world narrow down to just him from habit.
What did he want? How could I make him happy?

But he wasn't here anymore. In my head, or otherwise. I blinked and realized I was curled up on the bathroom floor. I didn't know how much time had passed. It could've been minutes – or hours.

Come on, Vincent. Talk to me again, baby.

I waited, hoping beyond hope, and nothing answered. I was alone. But – I looked at the backpack by my knees. I did know what he wanted, and what would please him most.

Death doesn't break a collar.

I picked the backpack up and put it into the sink.

My new life. Here we go.

The clothes and shoes I'd packed months ago were still in the bag. I put them on and shoved the robe in, right beside several thousand dollars in twenties – which wouldn't be suspicious at all if I ever got pulled over.
Just leaving the strip club, officer.

Then I opened up the front pouch. There was a charged burner cell phone and an envelope full of my new driver's licenses. The top one said I was Sarah Hartford, and there were ten more below it, all with different names.

The last thing to do was the only one I hadn't practiced. I reached for the heavy silver chain around my neck and let my fingers sink down to its locket.

Vincent had given it to me three years into our relationship. It was oval, small, and silver, not ostentatious at all.

My relationship with Vincent would be hard to explain to anyone in the outside world. He was a gangster, and I'd been a whore. Normal people would make assumptions, and say that we were broken. Shit yes, we were, but what we'd had was good and real.

Which was why when he told me not to open the locket unless he'd died, I'd listened to him and never had. He trusted me. It was a token of his love, and it'd become a good luck charm. On some subconscious level I believed peeking would cause Vincent's demise, and that not looking could somehow keep him safe.

But that hadn't worked, had it.

What was inside? Diamonds to sell? Cyanide to poison myself with? A picture to remember him by? I carefully pried it open with a thumbnail. Inside was a small piece of paper. I took it out, unfolded it, and found a phone number written down.

The only thing left to do was call. I turned on the cellphone and dialed.

Three rings – six rings – who the hell was I calling?
Why didn't you tell me, Vincent?
– and a gruff voice answered. "Who is this?"

I didn't recognize the voice. In the four years since I'd been given the locket, Vincent had never once taken it back. Maybe whoever had had this number in the past didn't anymore, maybe they'd been killed by the Carminos too –

"How'd you get this number?" the man on the other end of the line asked, sounding annoyed.

"Vincent." Either his name would mean something to this stranger or it wouldn't.

There was a thoughtful pause at the far end. "Why'd he give it to you?"

I didn't know – but I thought fast. It hadn't been a birthday, Christmas, or an anniversary gift. It was when things had started to take a dark turn, when he'd been out later, getting his hands bloody, forced by the family to do things he didn't want – I bit my lips and gave an answer I knew to be true.

"He wanted you to keep me safe."

The man contemplated Vincent's request. Then: "Where are you at?"

I gave him my address.

"You're way too near eastside. Can you get to International and 35th?" He named a cross-section on the south of town.

I knew about the south side. I didn't want to go there, but I could. "Yeah."

"I'll be there in thirty."

"K." I began to put the phone down.

"Hey –" he shouted, getting my attention again. "Destroy whatever he gave you that had my number on it. I don't care how, but don't throw it away."

"All right," I said, but it was too late, he – whoever he was – had already hung up.

I stood there in the bathroom, swaying like a losing prizefighter, pummeled by my loss. Vincent was gone. I would never see him again, never hear his laugh, never know his pleasure. All of my memories – photos, hard drives, tapes -- with him were back inside our house, and going back would be suicide. The locket around my neck was the last thing of his I had. I reached for it and hid it protectively inside my shirt. That – and this – the small piece of paper I held, that he'd written the stranger's number down on for me, just in case of this.

I stared at the phone number, memorizing it without meaning to – and then put it in my mouth and swallowed it to destroy it like I'd been told.

What was one more bitter pill after a long and bitter night?

Want more of The Hunted? Click
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