Dead End: Midnight Hollow by Penn Cassidy (free novel 24 TXT) 📗

I panted, loving his throaty chuckle as he stepped out from between my legs, grasping my cheeks with both hands and placing a lingering, sweet kiss on my lips.

A girl could get used to this. Who knew morgue sex was a thing? I just went with it and could honestly say it was amazing. Ten out of ten, would repeat again…and again.

“How about we head back to the manor so I can find out what else we’ve been missing this past year,” he suggested, a dark promise in his voice as he bent down and grabbed his shirt off the floor.

I thought he would put it back on, but he used it to clean between my legs, making me jump in shock and stare up at him flabbergasted as he winked, tossing the shirt away in the bin. I hopped down from the table with a wince, already feeling the ghost of him between my legs and trying to hide my pleased giggle by biting down on my lip.

He pulled his jeans up, chuckling as he looped his belt through, and I declared it was my favorite belt. He should wear it all the time no matter what, just in case of a need to have sex right away emergency. I smoothed down my skirt, glancing around and beneath the table for my underwear, only to see him holding them out of my reach as he pocketed them with a shrug.

“Just in case I have to do a tracking spell again. It comes in handy to have a pair ready.” He grinned devilishly, leaning into my touch as I skimmed my hand down his cheekbone, standing on my toes to kiss him one last time before leaving.

“Right, that’s all it’s for. Let’s go home, I miss everyone. Time to hang out with the living instead of the dead.”

I grabbed his hand and turned towards the doors, but suddenly, the lights flickered off and the emergency lights turned on, filling the room with an eerie red light. Michael wrapped an arm around me when a loud bang echoed in the silence, his head whipping back and forth as he tried to pinpoint the noise.

“What is that?” I asked shakily, scratching my arm frantically as it itched more and more, until it felt like tiny ants were crawling all over me.

“Do you feel that?” Michael let go of me and went cautiously to the metal boxes, skimming his hand over them as he walked alongside them.

He stopped at the cubby with the John Doe we’d opened earlier, cocking his head to the side, eyebrows scrunched together. I jumped when another bang sounded through the sterile room and couldn’t stop itching my arm as my body shook from a wave of chills. My breath was fogging the air all of a sudden, and I watched Michael glance at me with a nod towards the cubby.

He waited until I reached his side, grasping his bicep as he leaned to the right and placed his ear against the metal with his eyes closed. The metal door shook as another bang happened on the other side, and he quickly drew back as it sounded like someone was pounding on the door, until it just stopped suddenly.

“Open it,” I told him with sickening dread, smearing dots of blood on my arm as I scratched, until Michael laid a hand over mine to stop me.

It was eerily quiet, and I was shaking like a leaf as he opened the drawer, pulling out the metal bed in the process. The dead body looked the same as before, like he was sleeping peacefully, but for some reason, it felt off. The air seemed stale, and there was a chill that I couldn’t shake off. Something unnatural was lurking around the John Doe, and it had me leaning closer.

I screamed as the man’s eyes popped open, and I was suddenly staring into an empty dark abyss that looked like it would never, ever end. His chest didn’t move. He wasn’t breathing at all, but somehow, he was here, staring at me. I stumbled back a step, my hand over my mouth to hold in my scream.

“October, stop. Send him back.” Michael grabbed my waist and backed us away as the dead body sat up, the white sheet pooling around his waist. Then he turned his head towards us, his bones cracking together from rigor mortis.

“This isn’t me! I’m not doing this!” I cried out, beyond terrified as the dead man opened his mouth, tearing the stitching inside his lips. He let out a long, drawn out, pained moan that stopped me in my tracks, Michael panting behind me.

“He’s coming… So close… Always watching and always waiting. He’s coming for you,” the dead male said in a haunting voice, so croaked and broken after not speaking in a long while. It was hollow, as if he was empty.

Michael stepped in front of me and ran an black clawed finger over the snake tattoo on his torso, chanting a spell under his breath, “Et serpens imperium…”

I peaked around him, bracing my hand on his tight back, and felt his body twitch as his snake tattoo started slithering out of his skin. Its head slid down Michael’s torso as the rest of its body detached itself from his skin. The snake hissed as it zigzagged towards the dead guy, slithering up the sides of the metal death box, and made its way to the corpse, wrapping around his neck with wisps of black smoke coming off the snake's long tail.

“Who sent you?” Michael said in a voice that sounded far away, his gaze not once looking away from the corpse jerking on the metal slab like it was having a seizure.

“He’s been watching you, October Grimm. He’s always watching. Right behind you,” John Doe said, his voice pitching low with a croak that turned into a bone chilling moan, growing louder as his mouth gaped open wide. Then he slumped on the slab and