Cry in the Fog: Paranormal Peacekeepers, #3

By Nicole Tillman

Grace Wildstone is gone.

She's still walking, talking, and breathing, but she's not pulling the strings. Her puppet master, Daimon Harrington, has grown comfortable and confident in her body as he travels from town to town in search of his next victim. And with every minute of possession that passes, tiny slivers of Grace's soul are being torn away.

Miles is determined to save Grace, but with the other half of his heart committing a string of murders, he's not sure what he's going to find once the Peacekeepers manage to track her down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicole Tillman
• Release date: Dec 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519932426

Nicole Tillman

Nicole Tillman is an author who hasn't always had a love of reading. As a child, she struggled to string words together and would hide in the back of the classroom with her head down in hopes that the teacher would forget she existed. Eventually, she was introduced to a young adult series by a family friend and her love of reading bloomed. Nicole now weaves her own stories, content to lose sleep in order to write both contemporary romance and thriller/suspense novels. She lives in the Ozarks of Missouri with her husband, two sons, and two dogs. Nicole has an Associates Degree in General Studies though Missouri State University and was on her way to completing her Bachelors in Creative Writing when she decided to take a sabbatical to focus on work and her family. Now a stay at home mother, she dedicates her time to her boys, writing, and photography.

Book preview

Other Books by Nicole Tillman

Saving Mercy

Steady

One Vibrant Hue

PARANORMAL PEACEKEEPERS Series

Whisper in the Rain

(Paranormal Peacekeepers: Book 1)

Scream in the Wind

(Paranormal Peacekeepers: Book 2)

Sin in the Storm

(Paranormal Peacekeepers: Book 4)

Coming Soon

DUPONT Series

Come Tear Me Down

Don't Make Me Look

Please Let Me Stay

HOPELESS HERITAGE Series

Secondhand Sapphire

Temporary Partner

FORCED HOME Series

Loving the Cult

Taming the Cult

Dedicated to those who see, hear,

and feel things they can't always explain.

Book Description

Grace Wildstone is gone.

She's still walking, talking, and breathing, but she's not pulling the strings. Her puppet master, Daimon Harrington, has grown comfortable and confident in her body as he travels from town to town in search of his next victim. And with every minute of possession that passes, tiny slivers of Grace's soul are being torn away.

Miles is determined to save Grace, but with the other half of his heart committing a string of murders, he's not sure what he's going to find once the Peacekeepers manage to track her down.

CHAPTER ONE

Miles

I wasn't ready. Not one bit.

I wasn't ready at the viewing, I wasn't ready at the funeral home, and I definitely wasn't ready at the cemetery. But ready or not, I clenched my teeth and fought down the emotions that were trying their best to strangle me. Even though my limbs were saturated with loss, I forced each foot in front of the other and made my way to the recently inhabited grave.

The wind picked up around us and my eyes began to water as bits and pieces of freshly unearthed dirt peppered my face. All the other funeral-goers shielded their eyes with the funeral program or wiped at their cheeks with tissues, but I didn't mind the discomfort. It was just another annoyance to blanket atop the barrels of physical pain stored away in my chest.

I braced myself, both mentally and physically, as people began filing out the gates of the cemetery. Everyone who had ever loved the person asleep in that sealed box was leaving, bidding farewell for one last time. When the funeral director waved his hand to a small crew, I watched solemnly as they approached the ornately carved mahogany coffin and silently lowered my friend into the ground. The box housing his remains slowly disappeared into the earth, and I tried to grab onto one good memory of the two of us together - one good memory to hold me over until they covered his grave with dirt.

But I couldn't.

My anger was too strong, too overpowering, and beneath my anger rested resentment. And beneath that- sorrow. And regret. Heaps of regret. I let a whole cyclone of negative emotions swarm around my heart so I wouldn't have to feel, wouldn't have to grieve.

Not yet, anyway.

You okay?

I jerked to attention and turned to look down at Violet, briefly flitting my eyes over her shoulder to watch the last few stragglers leave the grave site. The two of us stood together, her hand resting on my shoulder as she wiped at the smudges that were once her makeup.

It's time to go.

I nodded, trying my best to pull myself together as I bid farewell to my friend for the very last time.

See you soon, buddy.

Violet and I walked, hand in hand, out of the cemetery. Even though our friends did a double take, we didn't let go. Our physical affection wasn't anything other than friendly; we both knew that. To hell with what everyone else thought.

Our touch was a necessity. I needed someone to keep me from sinking and she needed someone to ground her. If we didn't have those reassuring squeezes to keep our heads on straight, we'd lose it. Those innocent touches also reminded us that we were still alive. Alive when others weren't.

We survived.

We persevered.

And as a result, we buried one of our own.

You care to drive? She asked as we neared the van.

Sure.

Bodhi and Zeke caught a ride with some of Mark's cousins who took an interest in our field, so I took the keys clipped to Violet's purse, opened the passenger side door, and held it until she was safely inside. I was more than happy to drive. That way, at least, I wouldn't have to watch her fall apart.

That definitely wasn't something I wanted to witness. Not because I was an insensitive asshole who couldn't stand to watch a woman cry;  quite the opposite, really. I was more than happy to lend anyone - especially Violet - a shoulder to cry on. However, at the moment, I knew that each sparkling, pain-filled tear would only stand as a grim reminder of what was to come.

My own tears.

My own breakdown.

Although my life had been stricken with a kind of grief I could never in a million years prepare myself for, I never blamed the Peacekeepers. Not once. I didn't even blame Grace. It was difficult, considering how this different and foreign pain consumed me, but I kept it locked away in an attempt to protect myself from the inevitable crash and burn. If I started crying, if I started to break, it wouldn't be cathartic. If I allowed myself to fall apart, I wasn't sure I'd be able to put myself back together again.

Before, I would have gone to Grace with my troubles. She would have been the remedy I needed. She'd always been my savior. If I was scared, she'd make me feel courageous. If I was conflicted, she laid all my obstacles at my feet and found a solution. She held the answers to everything, even when she didn't know it. She made everything better just by being...

But that was before.

That was the Grace I fell in love with. The Grace I let into my heart when she was scared, alone, and struggling with a gift she didn't understand. The Grace with beautiful chocolate-colored eyes and long ebony hair and a soul so vibrant and strong I was in awe.

It wasn't the Grace whose fractured voice screamed its way through my head every single night. It wasn't the Grace who broke a man's neck and laughed as the light left his eyes. It wasn't the Grace who turned her dead stare my way and confirmed my greatest fear...

Grace is gone, lover boy. But don't worry, she went out screaming. Just like your friend.

Her voice played on a never-ending loop in my dreams, no matter what I did to silence her. And sometimes, even during my waking hours, it would crawl in my ear and take over. It would paralyze me with a hopeless cocktail of fear and grief and absolute devastation.

But what burned brightest just behind the veil I was hiding behind was the fact that I'd lost. I had done everything in my power and still failed her. Failed everyone.

I was the weakest link in the Paranormal Peacekeepers.

And everyone knew it.

Violet and I drove to the bar where everyone was meeting to toast our fallen. Friends and family alike were about to raise their glasses and speak of the life that was lost. They would recount stories of his childhood, his schooling, the good and the bad that both polished and tarnished his short life.

But I couldn't do that. I couldn't reminisce. Not when I was still so consumed with guilt.

I pulled to a stop right outside the door and parked as Violet checked her reflection in the side mirror. She was beautiful in the fading sun, even with her streaked makeup and disheveled hair.

Watching her, I wished that she had someone to lean on for comfort. Someone who could give her everything she needed in that moment, even if it was just a distraction. A hug. A kiss. Maybe more... She needed someone to come along and take away the pain.

But I couldn't be that someone.

I'll be back in an hour.

Violet turned to me, surprise and hurt filling her already overflowing eyes. You're not staying?

Her voice hitched, and that only fueled my shame, my disgrace. There was no use lying to Violet or throwing out a cheap, meaningless excuse. So I didn't.

I can't, Vi. I'm sorry.

She wrenched the door open with more force than necessary, dropped down to the pavement on shaky legs, and shot a look over her shoulder. The shine of her eyes and the fierce tilt of her lips told me just how hurt she was by my desertion, but I was a selfish man. I couldn't be her rock when I wasn't even holding myself together.

You know, she said, voice breaking on a sob that cut me even deeper, I loved him too.

The van shook with the force Violet used to slam the door and I closed my eyes, taking a moment to fight off the encroaching tears. But I couldn't fight much longer. I needed to concentrate and drive. I needed to be alone.

I needed to bottle everything up and just... disappear.

After getting lost in the unfamiliar town, I found a dusty stretch of gravel road and let the van bounce along the washboards, not caring where it took me, just as long as it delivered solitude. A few miles through twists and turns and gigantic potholes, my eyes caught the glistening of something off an embankment and I pulled into a clearing.

After searching and finally finding the cooler Zeke kept hidden in the back, I grabbed a beer and abandoned the van. I took off walking and eventually found myself a rock at the edge of a bubbling, serene creek and made myself comfortable. Well, as comfortable as one can get while sitting on a hard ass rock.

I looked down over the shimmering surface, enraptured by the way the rising moon danced across the tiny ripples, until I couldn't take its beauty any longer. My eyes closed and when I exhaled, a lone sob broke through.

Finally alone, I couldn't keep the floodgates latched for one second longer. They burst open and my body absorbed the full effect of the agony crushing my insides. Although I'd vowed not to, I cried. I let myself fall apart.

I cursed.

I screamed.

I asked God why.

I threw sticks and pebbles and any kind of refuse I could get my hands on.

Something inside me wanted to break this beautiful place, to stop the moon's reflection, to quiet the singing insects, to make the air as ugly and polluted as I felt inside.

But nothing changed.

Not a single cricket stopped chirping. The moon continued its waltz across the water. The air remained untainted and cool. And I was still broken. Just an ugly man surrounded by beautiful things, minus the one thing of beauty I'd give anything to hold in my hands.

Grace...

A humorless laugh bounced around my empty chest as I waited for my eyes to cry the last of my tears.

Hours later, when that finally did happen, I opened the warm beer in my hand, took one drink, then poured the rest into the creek before whispering one last goodbye.

Rest easy, Mark.

CHAPTER TWO

Grace

Killing one of your best friends isn't something you forget. Ever. And it definitely wasn't something I could ever scrub from my brain or my soul.

The way his sweat-slicked hair felt against my hands. The sickly sound his neck made as it snapped. The clumsy way his body crumpled to the floor.

Those memories would never leave me. Even when my body grew cold and lifeless and my heart ceased to beat, I had no doubt in my mind that I would travel to the afterlife with a suitcase full of regrets and memories of a murder I couldn't stop. And once there, I would burn.

Because Mark wasn't the last...

Screaming obscenities, I thrashed around in my own head, flinging from one hemisphere to the next, torn and ravaged by the agony of not being in control. I howled with every shattered scrap of energy I could find, but no one could hear me. With every breath, he broke me a little more.

He shred me.

Tore me apart.

Tossed pieces of me into the wind; pieces I'd never get back.

"I hate you! I screamed. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! This is useless! Even if I have to die for it to happen, they'll stop you! So just get it over with. Just let me DIE!"

"Shh, Daimon cooed. Quiet, Grace. Just close your eyes and float away. Let Daddy take care of it."

"Quit saying that," I spat. I was sick of him referring to himself as anything other than my warden. He had some kind of sick assumption that he contributed to my genetic makeup; that he helped herald me into this world.

But then, there were the visions.

No, not visions. Memories.

Snapshots or grainy loops of my mother, my beautiful mother, holding me in her arms. Singing me to sleep. Nursing me in an old rocking chair. Rubbing my back to soften my colicky cry.

And in every memory, he was there. Behind the scenes. He gripped my mother's hand in childbirth. He brushed her hair while she nursed. He brought her breakfast in bed.

And when he happened to walk by a mirror, or stare into my mother's glasses, I caught sight of his reflection, and I saw compassion. Maybe even love.

I saw Daimon.

"You're not my dad. My dad is dead."

"No, sweetie. He's not."

Daimon forced me to watch my shoes as they moved through dewy grass. Then my eyes darted to my fists, curling and uncurling, showing what coiled strength I (now he) possessed. Together, we watched our breath wisp out into the cold night air. We admired the thin cloud as it dissipated into nothingness as we made our way through a deserted parking lot. Every muscle stretched, curled, and