Love Beyond Sight Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Note from the Publisher

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  Also by Rebecca Royce

  Reviews

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  Cover Artist: Reese Dante

  Editor: Jason Huffman

  Love Beyond Sight © 2012 Rebecca Royce

  ISBN # 9781614952367

  Attention Readers: This book uses US English.

  All rights reserved.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. The Licensed Art Material is being used for illustrative purposes only; any person depicted in the Licensed Art Material, is a model.

  PUBLISHER

  https://spsilverpublishing.com

  Note from the Publisher

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for your purchase of this title. The authors and staff of Silver Publishing hope you enjoy this read and that we will have a long and happy association together.

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  Lodewyk Deysel

  Publisher

  Silver Publishing

  http:"www.spsilverpublishing.com

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Band-Aid: Johnson & Johnson Corporation

  Abita: Abita Brewing Company

  Wizard of Oz (including Dorothy): Turner Entertainment Co.

  Dumbo: Disney Enterprises, Inc.

  Chapter One

  I'm alone in the house.

  Eden Roan swallowed away the lump in her throat. Why hadn't she known everyone was leaving? Her heart rate picked up, thumping hard against her ribcage. She hadn't been alone in six months. Not since Charma and Marina had found her, nearly comatose, locked up in a mental institution in New Jersey.

  She swung around, calling out into the living room. "Hello? Anyone here?"

  Even as she called out, she knew she need not have bothered. No one was home. She could feel the emptiness around her. Loneliness assaulted her soul and she nearly doubled over from the feeling before she pulled herself together. Wow. She was being really, really ridiculous.

  It didn't mean anything that everyone had left and no one had said goodbye. Probably, they didn't mean to all leave. Each one must have thought someone else remained in the house. No way, no how would she be left by herself, in their huge house on their private island in Maine.

  Except that it was December and getting back and forth from the island in the middle of winter took advanced planning. They would all have had to board the boat at the same time. Marina would have had to spell cast the water to keep it calm…

  No, there was something terribly wrong. She took off at a run. Her large, sturdy feet bracing her body for the run she made down the hall. Sebastian, the demon, must have gotten to them. They were all dead. That was the only explanation.

  "I've got your mind, Eden." She heard the voice of the demon resonate through the halls of the too empty house. Even though she had personally never spoken with him before, she had no doubt he was who tormented her now. "I've killed the others and now I'll spend eternity torturing you with just what I want you to see."

  With a jolt, Eden sat up. She panted like she'd really been tearing down the hall instead of sleeping in her bed. Her white cotton floor-length nightgown felt soaked and she realized she'd drenched it with cold sweat. Wrapping the covers around herself, she shivered as she lay back down on her pillow.

  Through the slight cracks in her drapes the light of the early dawn illuminated her bedroom in the dampened colors of a new day. December in Maine proved to be an unforgiving month. She'd lived in cold climates before but never what she faced on the small private island the Outsiders called home. If she tried to get up now, soaked to the bone as she was, she'd freeze. The heating system in their house wouldn't kick into full gear until more than just she got up and moved around. It was supposed to be ecologically friendly.

  As Eden always awoke—usually in a panic—hours before everyone else, she couldn't help but think it really, really sucked. A tear slipped from her eye and she brushed it away, scratching her cheek slightly with a nail she really needed to trim.

  She sniffed. There was no denying the truth any longer. The dreams were getting worse. Nightmares were no longer a sometimes occurrence. When they happened every night they had to be called what they were: a chronic problem. Added to the still uncontrollable premonitions she couldn't seem to learn to handle, Eden spent more and more time lost in hellish visions presented to her by her own mind.

  A slight tapping on her door startled her and she rolled over, pulling the covers up around her neck. Her nightgown hid her better than most dresses did but she'd been raised in a world where modesty ruled and she suspected she'd never get over her prudish nature.

  "Come in." Her voice sounded like a frog had taken up residence in her throat with no intention of ever leaving.

  The door creaked open and the face of Charma, one of her fellow Outsiders, peeked around the door. Her petite friend smiled at her through barely opened eyes. Charma always looked put together, even with her pixie cut hair sticking out in a million directions. Eden suspected her own strawberry-blonde hair had plastered down to the top of her head when she'd sweated in her sleep.

  "I woke up and felt like you needed me." After silently closing the
door, Charma padded quietly to her bed. "Scoot over."

  Eden obeyed without thought. Charma and the other Outsiders had become family to her in the six months she'd been with them. She trusted them implicitly, which was a good thing considering they were all expected to kill a demon together. Charma climbed into the bed next to her.

  The bed dipped as Charma adjusted herself. Eden couldn't help but smile. She'd never had a sister. This must have been what it was like.

  "Did you have another dream?"

  "Nothing new." Eden stared up at the ceiling. "Jason doesn't mind you abandoning your marriage bed to come in here and deal with me this early in the morning?"

  Charma groaned. "First of all, Jason is happily snoring away. I don't even think he noticed I left the room and even if he had, he wouldn't care. You're like his sister. We're both worried sick about what is happening to you."

  Great. When both the physical and emotional healers of the Outsiders worried about you, it couldn't be a good a thing.

  "Second, you're never a bother. You're important to me. You're family. And finally, third… marriage bed?"

  Eden snickered. "Every once in a while my rural-hickness rears its ugly head in my vocabulary."

  Charma covered her mouth to restrain her laughter. "The things you say. Jason and I aren't married."

  "You might as well be. You're soul mates. That's probably more important than marriage."

  Not that Eden would ever know. Her own soul mate refused to show himself, speaking to her telepathically in times of crisis but otherwise staying out of sight.

  A knock sounded on the door and they both turned to look in that direction. The door cracked open and Marina thrust her head through the opening. Her dark curls swung slightly in front of her.

  "You okay?" Marina walked into the room and closed the door behind her. "I just had this feeling that you needed me, Eden." Marina stood still, staring at the scene in front of her. "Clearly, Charma had the same thought and she beat me to you."

  Charma scooted over. "There's room for all of us in this huge bed."

  Marina grinned. "Like a sleepover in Eden's bed at five in the morning."

  "Exactly." Charma yawned. "She had another dream."

  Marina climbed into the bed on the other side of Eden. "I'll be fine, ladies."

  The truth was she wasn't used to this much attention from other people. Her problems had always been her own to handle. Now, her fellow Outsiders, whom she adored, wanted her to share all the time. It made her feel exposed. Not to mention she'd never actually shared a bed with anyone before.

  "I wish we could fix this for you." Marina pulled the cover up to her chin exposing Eden's feet at the end of the bed.

  The other Outsider women were all small and waif-like but Eden was tall, almost six foot in her bare feet and big boned. All-in-all, she didn't fit in with the women around her.

  "I wish you could too but I've always been a problem. It may be that I'm simply not fixable."

  "Nonsense." A voice from the door startled her. Standing in the doorway were Isabelle and Loraine.

  "All of you had the feeling that I needed you this morning?"

  Loraine laughed. "Apparently."

  "And you all left your soul mates to come here and climb into bed with me?"

  Marina shook her head. "Nope, my soul mate has vanished. I didn't leave anyone."

  Marina's soul mate, Drew, kept showing up and leaving. Unlike Eden's who occasionally spoke to her telepathically but told her he would never be seeing her in person. Who could blame him? She was a mess. Given the choice, she wouldn't spend time in her own company either.

  Loraine and Isabelle sat down on the end of the bed. This was getting ridiculous. Eden sat up and Isabelle gasped.

  "You're soaking wet."

  "I know. I had a really intense dream."

  And she wanted to change her clothes. Immediately. Shivering, she moved quickly across the room into the bathroom hearing the whispers behind her from her friends. They cared about her but she still didn't like to be spoken about, literally, behind her back.

  Closing the bathroom door behind her, she yanked her cold nightgown over her head and pushed on the lever to make the hot water come on in the shower. She needed to get the sweat off her before she put anything else back on. The spray came out with a rush and after a few seconds it heated up. Apparently, enough of their crew was up and moving since the heating system produced the needed hot water.

  There wasn't much Eden missed from her previous life—but hot water whenever she wanted it was one thing she craved.

  She stepped under the spray and let it rinse the night off her body. Staring down at herself, she winced. It was better not to regard herself naked. Maybe it would be different if she had a soul mate who actually wanted to be around her, who enjoyed her body the way the other women had with their men. She'd read enough self-help books over the last months to know she was supposed to find self-confidence from inside of herself but, realistically, it had to help to have someone look at you with heat in their eyes.

  Her soul mate knew what she looked like and he didn't come around. As far as Eden was concerned, that pretty much said it all.

  A haze settled over her gaze and she gasped. Gripping the side of the shower, she knew she didn't have enough time to even open the door before the vision would overtake her. This was a powerful one. All she could do was hold on and hope she didn't drown in the shower before it passed.

  One second she stood, dripping in the shower and the next she found herself in the living room downstairs. Only, it wasn't the living room of 'now' but instead it was the living room of the future or, rather, a potential future the Fates had decided to show her. It could still be changed. Maybe.

  Now, if she could manage to somehow not lose sight of the fact that she was in a vision she could weather this experience and come out the other end intact. The problem? She'd never managed to actually accomplish that feat.

  Eden looked left and right, trying to get a handle on what she'd walked into. No longer naked, thank god, she wore a pair of black slacks and a green and white T-shirt she'd never seen before. In the 'now,' she didn't own those clothes, which meant that at some point she would acquire them. Small details. She needed to keep track of all of them. She always got asked a million questions when she came back into the present.

  At the moment, she was alone in the room. That was unusual. Most of the time, she got shoved into the middle of a horrific battle or a scene of doom and gloom. Did she need to go looking around for the purpose of this vision?

  She'd taken two steps toward the hallway door when it flung open. Leonardo and Jason rushed inside. Kal followed, holding Gabriel over his shoulder.

  Jason pointed at the couch and Kal sat the clearly unconscious Gabriel down on it. "Where did they get him?"

  Leonardo swore before answering. "Getting off the boat."

  "That fast?" Jason placed his hand over Kal's stomach. "I think I can save him but this has to stop. We have to either decide to never leave this island or we have to find some way to have a warning system. They are picking us off too easily. Charma got grabbed coming out of the grocery store. We almost didn't get her away."

  Kal kicked the sofa and Jason shot him a dirty look. Eden wasn't sure what to do. They couldn't see her. She wasn't really there but Gabriel was out cold and she felt like an idiot not going over to help him. Was she supposed to stand there and watch?

  The clarity of this vision felt remarkable. Most of the time what she saw seemed so dire she could hardly watch it. Once, she'd watched Jason get beheaded by a minion of the demon. They'd managed to avoid that occurrence and both he and Charma had taken the news well but Eden hadn't been able to look at either of them without sobbing.

  "We have to get a warning system. Eden's obviously not going to get control of her powers. We have to find something else." Leonardo, their leader in all ways that counted, shook his head, his eyes looking tired.

  Oh well th
is was just wonderful. She needed her visions to tell her what a terrible job she'd been doing? She didn't get enough of that during the present? Eden fisted her hands at her sides. She wished she could, well, punch something.

  Maybe they all should have just left her in that mental institution in New Jersey under the ministrations of Sebastian the demon and his psycho sister. Tears flung from her eyes and she didn't even try to wipe them away. She was alone in her vision. No one could see her; no one could witness how pathetic she'd truly become.

  "I can see you." She whirled around, her vision swimming for a second before correcting itself.

  Standing in front of her was a tall man with dark hair. He was aristocratically good looking. His clothes spoke of expensive tastes. Eden didn't know anything about fashion—she'd been raised to believe looking at magazines was akin to devil worship. But, she knew none of the men she lived with had clothes tailored to fit them so precisely.

  It was his eyes she couldn't look away from, even as she knew she should be running for the door. They were red. Blood red. She almost laughed from the cliché that her mind came up with to describe the shade. But sometimes clichés worked because they adequately described something. In this case, the demon who stood before her with bored amusement radiating from his stance had absolute blood red eyes.

  "Do you drink blood?" She cleared her throat. Having never spoken to anyone in a vision before, she felt surprised she actually could. "Like a vampire?"

  "Vampires are fiction, sweet Eden. I, by contrast, am the stuff of nightmares. Your nightmares, to be specific." He took a few slow steps toward her. "But to answer your question—yes, I drink blood. All of the time. And I will consume yours, before I munch on your brains."

  The imagery made her gag and she covered her mouth with her hands like she could physically force the bile that rose in her throat to go back down. Her misery seemed to delight the demon, who broke out in a straight, tooth-filled grin.