If you’ve been following me for a while you may have heard of this one. I’ve been working on my soucouyant book for ages. Based on Trini folklore we got all sorts of jumbies (a ghost, spirit, or demon in the folklore of many Caribbean countries) in this one. No clue when I’ll be ready to actually pub it but in the mean time I’m offering a lil unedited snippet as a freebie for everyone!
***
Chapter 1
“The island holds many beautiful things but beneath the surface is something far more sinister.” – from the journal of Gary Pierre
Lynx
Waking up with the sweet taste of blood on her lips, the crimson splash of it on her hand, wasn’t how Lynx wanted to cap off this already challenging night but here she was.
She’d come to, laying on her back, night sounds dancing about her, the forest trees towering over her. The scent of half ripe mangoes tickled her nose. At least that was something. It meant she was in the middle of Mr. Baksh’s grove of fruit trees. And yet the taste on her lips overpowered the sweet scent of the mangoes.
Flicking her tongue against her teeth, she caught the delicious flavour again.
What the fuck?
She rose to her elbows, head thrown back as she took deep inhales of the cool night air. The fresh, crisp scent did nothing to wash away the bloody essence in her mouth. The urge to feed, the desire to sate her gnawing hunger. She remembered that had driven her out of the house. And now she was here, the delicious taste of someone’s blood coating her tongue like the sweetest treat. But anything else in between that was blurry. Shit, it was getting worse.
This goddamn curse her mother had left her with. She knew what she was. Always had. Still tried to blend into her little human community as a regular woman.
But this hunger was getting worse. Feeding it was fine. Mostly. To her other community, no one would make a big deal about that? But this constant blacking out, not knowing what had happened. That was a danger. Waking up messy with some poor soul’s blood was a problem. Exposing herself and her fellow jumbies to the humans on the island was frowned upon.
Feed to your heart’s desire but leave no messes behind. Rule number one.
She didn’t know if she had left a mess behind because she didn’t have a clue where she had gone and who she had fed on. Being here, surrounded by these trees was a little indicator that she hadn’t gone too far from home.
She had to get out of here, get cleaned up and hope that nothing had gone off the rails. Hope that she hadn’t gone too far and left a lifeless course somewhere for an unsuspecting human to stumble upon.
It could be explained somehow. Perhaps she had been a bit too exuberant in feeding, spilled some blood. Hadn’t done anything else that might shed a light on those who thrived in the dark.
Rising to her feet the small sound of something tumbling to the ground had her looking down in surprise. Her phone, which was smeared with blood too. Too preoccupied with her concerning situation to notice it on her lap before. Frowning down at the thing she tried to wipe her hands on her pants. Thankfully she had chosen something in a dark color. Her aunt would chide her for wasting good blood, but she shook away that voice, tried to scrub her phone clean too. She’d need to dump these pants after this. Washing them would do no good.
The blood couldn’t be seen against the dark fabric, but she would smell it. The others would too.
Checking her last call she wasn’t surprised to see Dia’s number. She didn’t remember dialling, but help was probably on the way. She hoped. Walking back to her house looking like this would draw unwanted attention.
The buzz along her skin felt odd. She clenched and unclenched her hands, the feel of her nails digging into her palm. The glow of the fire that always simmered beneath her skin pulsed along her skin. So this is what it felt like when she fed as she should. When she didn’t deny herself a proper meal. When she didn’t let the fear of losing control overwhelm her to the point of starvation. She felt invincible. This is what her mother had cautioned her about. Never deny herself, but don’t overdo it. Take what she needed and walk away. Humans were their source of food, but they didn’t have to see them just as prey. Cursing loudly at the unwanted memory, she scooted back until she was pressed up against the bark, trying to use the feel of the rough texture through her thin t-shirt to orient herself.
Dammit.
Thinking of her mother never did her any good. Even as her lessons always cycled through her head. Going too long without blood made her kind weak. She had been trying to be better about that. The bloodlust loved when she waited too long to feed because then she had no choice but to slake her thirst. She hated that shit.
Is that what she had done? Had she gorged on some sorry soul until they were…
No, she didn’t want to think about that. She had never gone too far. Just fed enough to not feel like she was wasting away. Which got her aunt all in a snit because she wasn’t feeding properly. Was barely, regularly at her full strength, which, with her mother and grandmother gone, put them at a disadvantage. She needed to be strong, her aunt insisted. For what Lynx couldn’t fathom. There hadn’t been a war in decades.
Sure, the peace treaty between their kind and the hunters was shaky but it still held. Alana was courting worry where it didn’t need to be. Her aunt’s constant state of readiness seemed like plain paranoia to Lynx. Then again, she had been born after the war that had nearly torn this island apart—unknown to most of the human population—but she heard enough about it growing up. So many dead. On both sides.
Lynx had more pressing issues than some potential war. Her hunger never truly felt like it was satisfied. It was always a slow simmering thing. Waiting. Scared her, which she was ashamed to admit. She wasn’t supposed to be afraid, was she? She was one of the things that went bump in the night. A thing the island’s inhabitants told their children stories about, to keep them in line.
Broken. A disgrace. An embarrassment to her kind.
Dia would frown and growl at her that she wasn’t broken, but what sort of bloodsucker couldn’t control her hunger by now? What kind of jumbie was afraid to kill? Humans were disposable as far as most jumbies were concerned. Not what she had been raised to believe. Which was why her mother had clashed with many of their kind.
Having waited late in her life to have a child, Aisha had been accused of having a soft heart on numerous occasions. And passing that on to her only daughter. Compared to the other jumbies on the island, Lynx wasn’t that old. While she looked like a twenty-five-year-old woman, she had been around for sixty years.
Jumbies aged differently. Her kind especially. The ageing process slowed down for them around their twenties. She wouldn’t look much different again until maybe another hundred years had passed, and even then, the changes would be so minute a regular human would never notice.
Shaking her head from side to side she regained her bearings, she told herself, “You are better than this. Your grandmother is a goddamn leader in this community. Your mother was a fighter until the end…” she broke off.
Nope. Thinking about her mother now was a terrible idea. Who needed to reminisce about dead mothers when they were experiencing some memory gaps and had possibly fucked up enough to piss off the Council?
“Uh…are you alright?” The sudden voice in the otherwise quiet forest caused Lynx to jump.
She braced her hand against the rough bark and slipped her bare feet into her Keds—when had she taken off her shoes?—trying to shake off her trip down memory lane, head cocked to the side so she could focus on the man. She had been so deep in her mind she hadn’t heard him come up.
Bad, very fucking bad.
He was unfamiliar. Definitely not from the island. Not with that accent. British it sounded like. Not one of Mr. Baksh’s relatives who showed up from time to time. The man lived alone, was protective of his space and his fruit trees. Lynx suspected it was more his weed plants he was worried about than the other trees, but she wasn’t one to judge. Whatever got him through his days. He was pretty damn old; he might not have many left.
The isolation of this place was one of the reasons she sometimes stashed her human skin here, when it was time to feed. No one would stumble upon it and dash it with salt, making her unable to put it back on.
Luckily, she wasn’t in her fiery form for this man. That would be harder to explain away. The warm brown eyes behind those glasses looked more intrigued than wary. Not a lick of self-preservation this one. Most humans sensed something wasn’t quite right with her and other jumbies on the island. Gave them a wide berth. She could move among them thanks to her human skin but there was still gossip. About her aunt especially, and by extension her.
The most amusing rumour was that they were a family of black widows because where were the men? Where was her grandfather? Why didn’t she have a father? That last one made her curious too because her mother had never told her whether her father had been some human man or another jumbie like them. She wondered about that specifically because something was not quite right with her. Her too large desire to feed for one.
Most jumbies could control themselves by this point in their lives. Some just weren’t so inclined. Preferring to give in to their baser instincts but for her it wasn’t that at all. She felt like she was hanging on by a thread every time her hunger came. So, her mind ran rampant with the possibilities. Was there something in her bloodline that made her this way or was it all just her?
“You shouldn’t be here,” she snapped because who in their right mind would be traipsing about a place like this at night?
“Ah, shit, you’re bleeding,” the man said, bringing her back to the matter at hand. That some human, who was a stranger to this island, had come upon her in this state.
“Not my blood,” she replied before thinking better of it. Well fuck. His eyes widened a fraction; there was a slight clenching of that jaw. The brown skin pulled taut as the muscle beneath his skin jumped. He didn’t step back but his body locked up like he wanted to. “It isn’t safe for you to be out here this hour, you know,” she chided, hoping he would be sensible. Run. Do anything but stand and gape at her like this.
“What happened?” he asked, surprising her. “Do you need me to get help for you?”
Oh, did he think she had been assaulted? Maybe she could roll with that excuse. Not that she was in the mood to entertain some tourist’s ill placed concern. He had no idea what a precarious spot he was in. She had fed, which made her extremely aware of how fragile this man was. She could snap his pretty neck in the blink of an eye, before he could even think to move. It wouldn’t take much really. He’d assume he was stronger than her—which would make it that more delicious when she grasped his throat, his eyes wide with surprise when…
Fuck. She didn’t want to do that. Would take no real pleasure in it, even as her innate desire would make her want to. She shook off her dangerous thoughts. She wasn’t in the mood for this. Not for her monstrous musing and certainly not for this man, who would go traipsing about a forest alone.
Foolish. It almost made her certain that because of that he did deserve to get eaten by anything lurking out here.
“I don’t need anything from you. I want you to go. Lots of things out tonight that’ll love to gobble you up. You stick out, with that accent. Do you want to be robbed? Or worse?”
“I just want to know you’re alright,” he countered.
She wasn’t. Not really. Considering she didn’t know what the hell she was doing out here. Frustration at the entire situation took hold of her body. “And I just want you to leave me the fuck alone!” she snarled, baring her teeth because enough was enough.
Hands raised he stumbled back. “Okay, okay. I’ll go…just…your teeth.”
Shit, she really needed to get the fuck away from here. She was slipping. She lunged at him, grasping onto his shirt, took a deep inhale of the rich scent rushing beneath his skin. She was sate, no hunger tingled at her gums and yet the thrill of the hunt was a tiny buzz battering her senses.
At times it felt like she was fighting to stay true to her mother’s ways. That they could feed and not do harm to humans. It warred with her constant need to give chase. Fingers curling deep into the human’s t-shirt she grinned at him. “You smell like my next meal. I’m not hungry but I might be inclined to a little gluttony.”
“Lynx!”
Ah crap, that was Dia. He tried to yank away from her, but she kept her grip strong for a few heartbeats, drinking in the way his eyes went wide. No fear. Not a single stink of it. Interesting. How was it that this one wasn’t afraid of her? Who was this man? She hadn’t pegged him as a hunter. He didn’t hold himself like most of them did. But perhaps the hunters were trying new tactics by recruiting awkward men to lull them into thinking they were easy prey.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, voice hushed.
It brought her back to her senses, made her stumble back, uncurl her finger and release him. He hesitated for all of a beat before taking off. Odd tourist. Scaring him hadn’t been her best idea but what else was she supposed to do? Not that he had even seemed all that scared. Dammit. He couldn’t be left to tell anyone that he had seen her bloody and feral in the forest. The Council would be pissed.
She brushed some leaves from her shirt as Dia appeared in the little clearing, eyebrow raised as she took in Lynx’s less than put together state.
“Jesus, you’re bloody. What the hell happened?”
***
