Night of the Demon: Paranormal Romance (Devon Slaughter Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

over each day. She slept with Devon’s picture under her pillow.
    Time crept slowly. 
    She prowled the underground tunnels at night, looking for a
sign from Inka.
    The tunnel was nothing like Inka’s stories. It appeared to
have been abandoned. There were no opium dens teeming with beautiful humans and
their beautiful drugged out dreams, no ceaseless parties with underground rock
stars, none of the glittering revelry she’d heard about. It was damp, dreary …
dead.
    The boardwalk had a string of bars to sustain her but she
couldn’t help thinking Inka and the others had moved on to the next immortal
scene, leaving her far behind.
    She wondered if Devon was with them by now. Jealousy flared
in her veins.
    She wondered if angels had captured him. Rage came like
white heat.
    When she was so lonely, she began to miss the realm, she
headed back down south, to California and the bigger cities, leaving no trace
of her existence, except for a pink lunchbox with her few belongings inside …
and a slew of victims in her wake. 

5. Ruby
    I WENT to China Town, driving through the rain soaked
streets, looking for the address of a hypnotherapist I found in the yellow
pages. My hands sweated on the steering wheel. I didn’t want to go against Dr.
Sinclair’s advice. I worshipped her.
    But I had to know what I did to Scarlet Rose. Her sudden
absence from my student roster chastised me. The memory of what we’d argued
about was tangled up in my mind, lost in the haze of confusion preceding my
downward spiral.
    I circled the block twice, and found the address on a skinny
brick building behind the old hotel that was rumored to be haunted. The parking
lot was torn with potholes and chunks of asphalt. I decided to park on the
street.
    There was a dank smell in the stairway, as I went down.
    I knocked on a red door with the name plate: Dr. Arnold
Ashbury. When no one answered, I tapped my foot eight times ( stop it ),
and went in. My pulse fluttered in my throat.
    The room was cramped and square. It reeked of incense. Three
green cracked vinyl chairs lined the wall, across from a high counter with a
bell. A gold lamé curtain covered a doorway.
    I shivered.
    Just leave, Ruby, while you still can .
    I rang the bell.
    A short, balding man came through the curtain. He wore khaki
pants and a gray plaid shirt, which didn’t go with the décor. I noticed he had
fat hands and fingers like small sausages.
    I wondered why I got myself into these situations. There was
no reason I couldn’t turn around and make a break for my car. Yet, I was rooted
to the floor.
    “Ms. Rain?” his voice was deep and rich.
    He can make anyone do anything with that voice, I thought.
What if he did? Bent people to his will, while they thought they were being
cured of smoking?
    “You’re here for memory recovery?” he said.
    I nodded.
    “It’s a hundred and fifty dollars for the first session.
Seventy-five, after that.”
    “Okay,” I said.
    “Payment up front.”
    “ Oh … oh, I see.” I had the perfect excuse for
backing out, but I pawed through my bag and found the bills I’d folded into the
side pocket.
    His fees had been clearly stated in his ad. He didn’t accept
checks, credit cards or health insurance, so I’d stopped at the ATM machine
earlier, which was my trouble. Once I got obsessed with an idea, it was hard to
become un -obsessed. 
    He led me behind the curtain, into a bigger room, with no
carpet to cover the cement floor. There was a glass counter, containing jars of
what, at first, I thought were dried spices, like sage and basil. But a sign on
the wall, with a green cross, told me it was medical marijuana.
    “Go ahead, take a look around,” Dr. Arnold suggested in his
honeyed voice. “I’m not the fanciest dispensary in town, but I have the best
weed,” he chuckled, like I would appreciate his lack of professionalism.
    “I just want to be hypnotized,” I snapped. I hoped he
wasn’t stoned.
    “Well, then, this way,” he took