Wiccan, A Witchy Young Adult Paranormal Romance by M. Leighton Page A

mind that was telling me I was missing something,
but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t put my finger on it. After
nearly an hour of going around in circles, I took my frustrated
self to the bathroom to get ready for bed. I felt like I hadn’t
slept in days, suddenly exhausted for some reason.
    That night, I drifted off to sleep with
visions of long red hair and women in goatees swimming lazily
through my head.
    I felt like I’d just gone to sleep when
the images in my dream flickered like a television broadcast with
bad satellite reception. The sights from Lisa’s murder morphed into
a motel room, and a really crappy one at that.
    Faded curtains with orange and brown
bubbles on them were drawn over a motel-style picture window that I
was standing in front of. The only light in the room came from a
single bare bulb that hung over a folding card table in the corner.
The light was swinging back and forth gently, like a
pendulum.
    My point of view turned toward an old
bed. The spread was piled in a heap at the foot and a girl was
lying atop the soiled white sheets. She looked short and petite and
she was wearing low-riding jeans and a red spaghetti-strap top.
There was a black hood over her head, but I could see the tips of
straight blonde hair peeking out from beneath it.
    I approached her and she reacted,
almost as if I’d spoken, but I couldn’t hear the words. It was like
watching a movie that was muted; there was absolute silence but for
a faint buzzing in my ears.
    She began to thrash about as much as
she could, considering that her wrists and ankles were bound with
duct tape. She raised her hands to her head as if to pull off the
hood and I saw a tattoo on the underside of her left forearm. It
was three words, written in cursive, but I couldn’t make out what
they said.
    I reached toward her with my left hand.
My arm was wrapped in plastic and my hand was gloved in latex.
There was duct tape around the wrist. My fingers fisted and reached
out to hit her on the side of the head. The hard knock effectively
subdued her for the moment.
    Her head lolled to one side and my
right hand appeared. In it was a wickedly-curved knife. I bent over
the girl and reached out with my left hand to touch her just below
her collarbone. I tapped a finger on her very first rib then
counted down to her fifth. My fingers dipped in the space between
two ribs and moved a couple of inches to the right. I felt the beat
of her heart banging wildly against my fingertip. And then I raised
the knife and quickly inserted it to the hilt between the ribs.
Blood oozed out from around the knife handle to saturate my fingers
and then…
     

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    I woke with a start. I was trembling. I
felt both sublime pleasure and unspeakable terror all at once. My
body was flooded with adrenaline and my heart was racing. I was
panting as if I’d just run a marathon and my mouth was dry as
desert sand.
    I got up and went to the
bathroom, splashing water on my burning cheeks. The dream was more
than just a little disturbing. The subject matter itself was
extremely bothersome, of course, but even more than that was the
sensation that I was actively
involved in the murder of the hooded girl.
And, if it was possible to be worse than that, my body was reacting
as if I’d enjoyed it. At least until I’d awakened. Now, it seemed
that the initial flood of pleasure was subsiding into a queasy,
sick feeling that I felt all over like the flu.
    As I walked out of my bathroom, I
glanced at the clock. It was already 5:15 and there was probably no
reason to go back to bed. I’d never be able to go back to sleep. I
was shaken. Very deeply shaken.
    I left my bedroom and headed for the
kitchen. Mom wasn’t up because it was the weekend so I started the
coffee and went into the living room to wait for it to brew. I
flung myself sideways into Dad’s recliner and got comfortable. I
closed my eyes and inhaled, the soothing scent of coffee already
permeating the air