Devil’S Kiss

By Alexandra Jones

Iris Isaacs is a troubled twenty-year-old with a dark past, which haunts her endlessly and finally catches up with her as she decides to end it once and for all by taking her own life.
As the saying goes, everyone deserves a second chance, even Iris.
Little did she know it would be much more than she bargained for, changing her life forever.
In a single encounter with a mysterious stranger who calls himself Storm, her sole protector tells her she possesses a gift to see the future, altering her world forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: May 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493194735

Alexandra Jones

Allie is a nickname she calls herself. She holds a National Diploma in performing arts and describes those days as the most memorable times of her life. She currently resides in North Wales within the UK with her fiancé, near her family, who have endlessly encouraged her with her creativity. One person in particular is her dad Bryan, who peacefully passed away in 2013. From that, she now believes more than ever to finally share her stories. She is a strong believer in fate and faith and knows her dad, wherever he is, is watching over her, something he always did in life.

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Copyright © 2014 by Alexandra Jones.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 05/07/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Prologue: The Beginning

Chapter One: Welcome To My World

Chapter Two: Only The Good Die Young

Chapter Three: Let Death Be The End Of Me

Chapter Four: Reality Or Make-Believe

Chapter Five: Reasons And Reunions

Chapter Six: And So It Begins

Chapter Seven: Setting The Stone

Chapter Eight: History Lessons

Chapter Nine: Small Things, Great Wonders

Chapter Ten: Trick Or Treat

Chapter Eleven: Relatives And Resolutions

Chapter Twelve: Rock Bottom

Someone once told me:

‘A good book, makes great literature.’

-Bryan Owen Jones

(My hero, my dad)

For you, dad

My ‘Toothless’

This first book of mine is for you, for always believing in me and telling me.

I have always had a gift with my writing and a way with words.

Love you always and forever.

RIP.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wrote the first draft of Devil’s Kiss during my performing art days. I’m now turning twenty-seven this December. Sometimes, like all of you, I have to sit down and wonder where the time has gone, flown away like a beautiful butterfly taking flight in the skies, morphing into some beautiful memories of mine that will last a lifetime.

The first person I need to thank is the one and only Bryan Owen Jones (1952–2013) who peacefully passed away last year, as I think that’s the only way God could have taken such a strong, great man like him – in his sleep; otherwise, knowing my dad he wouldn’t have gone quietly, and to all the dear friends he has, you know that’s true. It makes me chuckle while I sit here writing this, thinking of him, remembering his influence on me, and his words of wisdom keeping me sane through some of life’s struggles, especially during my terrible teens and giving me a sensible head on my shoulders.

The genetics he created with my mum Kathleen, blessing me with a very vivid imagination to write stories, which worries me sometimes but in a good way at the fact how I can happily sit at a computer and write away for hours on end and escape to all the places and characters I create in my head. It’s pretty magical, like many of life’s mysteries.

To my beautiful mum Kathleen, you are simply wonderful. I love you unconditionally and thank you for being the anchor for the Jones ship, through thick and thin. You are my best friend who I can talk to and trust. Someone who always speaks the truth, and always have my best interests at heart; the three of us are lucky to have you, and I will love you forever and always.

To my brother Scott and my sister Daisy – believe it or not, I’m actually a triplet, that’s what you get for trying for twelve years, Mum and Dad, you don’t just get one, you get three. Well, that’s how the saying goes, everything happens in threes; well, on this occasion, it’s a happy one. Don’t know where I would be without you both; I love you.

To all my friends, you know who you are. I see friends as passing ships through the ocean of life, and only very few ships stick around through stormy shores and to those friends I say thank you for keeping my head above the water and being my life jacket, supporting me through my recent loss of my hero, my dad, and for that I look forward to sailing the seas towards many more life journeys with you all.

I thank all the hard-working and talented guys and girls at Xlibris publishing who are in partnership with Penguin house, highly recommended if any of you are interested in publishing a book of your own. To name a few of many, Ann Logico, my publishing consultant, for pursuing me, Randy Smith, my submission representative, for keeping my work in check and his many friendly phone conversations, Kay Benavides, manuscript services representative, and her talented team, who polished my work to perfection, and to all the rest of you at Xlibris, whom I haven’t mentioned, thank you and I look forward to working with you all again for the sequel.

Thank you, Martin Rees, the artistic talent behind my book cover design, highly recommended – the talent you have with nothing more but a pencil and paper fascinates me.

I thank all of you, my readers, who purchased this book, my first but most definitely not my last. I hope you enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I hope my story and characters have captivated you all.

And finally, to Jon: You are my best friend, my love, my partner in crime; you keep our world going. When I put on my pair of specs, well bin lids as you call them, and sit at the computer and write stories for hours and hours, you are ready to pop on the kettle and pour me a cup of Earl Grey. When I’m hopeless you give me hope. When I’m unlovable, prancing around in my pajamas without an ounce of make-up on, you love me anyway even with my womanly mood swings. I can’t understand why you put up with me, but for that I’m eternally grateful to you; I love you.

PROLOGUE

THE BEGINNING

I ’ve lost count of the countless, timeless theories of how the world was created. I love how they used the term ‘the world’ as if the world wasn’t ours to have in the first place.

‘That one god and one god alone built the world in exactly seven days and seven nights’ Earl Felts would preach, inside our local Healing parish on a warm Sunday afternoon. I’m now twenty still made to listen to that same story that never grows old. Plus, Earl always had me in hysterics as he preached; he always made it sound like he was trying to scare all us Mystic Peak lot.

But what my eyes were made to witness would definitely do that, scare just about anybody. It scared even the likes of me.

I let out an outburst of giggles as Earl carried on with his speech, stopping at all the appropriate gaps, holding up his hands in almighty gestures as he spoke, almost as if his life depended on it.

Nothing had changed; Adele Felts still sat in the front row, watching proudly as her middle-aged son performed his quotes from the Bible and his younger brother Bryan Felts sat beside her, unamused, wishing he was in Scarlett’s bar sipping on an ice-cold beer on a pretty warm and dry afternoon like this one, which was perfectly normal weather for Mystic Peak, in southern Louisiana, to be more exact.

That covers the means of how the empty world was made, I thought to myself.

I was trying not to burst out laughing again, to avoid breaking the concentration of silence in the hushed room.

Then next came the first sign of life, told through the tale of how God planned a tree. Only one tree out of all the trees he could have created, this single tree sat in a garden named Eden, and then he created animals. Then came along Adam and Eve, the first man and woman created by God himself, wearing only fig leaves and forbidden to taste the fruit hanging from the tree.

Then came a sneaky snake, believed metamorphosis of Satan himself, who tricked Eve to eat from the tree, then Eve convinced Adam to eat from the tree.

After that came a game of ‘he said, she said’ as Adam blamed Eve for eating from the tree then Eve blamed the slimy, deceiving serpent.

All three then were cursed and banished from the garden, and then magically, mankind popped out.

I knew all the ins and outs of the stories Earl Felts preached so passionately.

Ever since my early childhood, they have lived with me.

I was exactly ten; I remember running to church every Sunday, in my best dresses.

As it’s written, Sunday is the most holy day of them all.

I ran and ran, racing against the church bell, so loud it echoed, ringing brightly in the air, which made almost every tree trunk in Mystic Peak vibrate like a swarm of humming bees. But ten years later, and you might still find yourself, like me, questioning that very story that had lived with you for so many years, a story told through generations and generations.

The story was told to you at such a young age you didn’t even understand it to begin with, and because it was told by your elders, you believed to follow, lived by it as they did.

Now it’s safe to say I’m no longer ten, all religious and righteous as I was back then.

Now I’m a young woman undecided of my beliefs, my existence, and trying to figure out my life, but that doesn’t mean I’m not living in the past, because I am, very much living in