Page 1 of Cursed Touch
Chapter 1
With her head bent forward and her keys in her hand, Vanessa Rayne’s short brown hair fell forward as she flitted to the only blue key on the ring. She grabbed the key between her thumb and forefinger as she approached her second-floor apartment.
A small grunt sounded from nearby, and she rolled her eyes. Finn, her neighbor from the apartment beneath hers, must have left his window open again. She needed to remind him that no one wanted to hear him getting laid. He was a nice enough guy, but she was sick of hearing the grunts and moans of the men and women he slept with.
Vanessa slid the key into the lock as another grunt was followed by a closer hiss of pain. Her brows pinched together, and she peered over her shoulder to the stairs leading to her floor. Alarm filled her at the sight of her other neighbor, Tyler, climbing the final stairs to their landing. His face was pale, the muscles of his jaw clenched tight.
“Tyler?” Vanessa called as she removed her key from the still-locked door.
His head turned at the sound of his name, and a knot of worry filled her empty stomach. Tyler’s normally bright-blue eyes were a dull gray, his lips were pulled into a thin line, and beads of sweat peppered his forehead. He gave her a dismissive wave and stumbled with his next step.
Vanessa shoved her keys into her jeans pocket and rushed to him. “Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?” she asked, searching his face for clues. Her eyes moved down his body, rounding when they met his torn and bloody jeans. “Whoa!”
“Just a dog bite. I gotta go clean it,” he said and hissed.
Vanessa shook her head. “Um, no. That looks awful, Tyler.”
“Yeah? Well, it feels worse. Promise I’ll be okay,” he said and took another step in the direction of his apartment.
She put a hand to his chest before lowering to a knee for closer inspection. Staring at the jagged wound, she pulled out the small pack of tissues she had slid into her hoodie’s pocket earlier that day. She carefully dabbed around the bite, and her eyes darted up and noted his pinched lips and shut eyes. The bite was inflamed, and his blood wasn’t showing any signs of clotting. His jeans were soaking it up, but soon there would not be anywhere else for it to go.
“What kind of dog did this?” she asked, envisioning a monstrosity with elongated fangs.
Tyler mumbled unintelligibly, but she thought she heard him mentioning his herbs. Looking from his face to the bite, she knew there was no homeopathic remedy available to help the festering wound.
Vanessa pushed to her feet, then tucked herself under his arm to bear some of his weight. “Come on, let’s get you to a doctor.”
“No—”
“Arguing with me won’t do you any good, so just save your energy and help me get you to the car,” she said, cutting off his protest.
Her gaze shifted between Finn’s door and the next step as she neared the bottom of the staircase. It was her luck that the one time she could use his strength, he was nowhere to be found. After what felt like forever, Vanessa managed Tyler down the stairs without breaking either of their necks. He floated in and out of consciousness, which only made the process scarier and harder.
She debated reaching into her back pocket and calling nine one one a few times, but if Tyler was like her, he wouldn’t be able to pay the cost of an ambulance. By some miracle, she got him down from their floor and all the way to her car. She pulled the seatbelt across his chest, her heart pounding with the workout it received, and gave the injury one last glance before shutting the door and rounding her car.
Along the drive, she reached across and pressed two fingers to his throat, relieved to feel his faint pulse. She did not know what had attacked him, but she was pretty sure it was not a dog. Shifting her eyes from the road to his mouth, she noted there was no foamy saliva, but his lips looked rather dry.
“Do humans even get foaming mouths from rabies?” she muttered to herself as the hospital appeared in the distance.
Vanessa pulled her lower lip in and chewed. It was a nervous habit of hers when she faced a puzzle. As of lately, she did it daily. Things in town had become rather strange in the last year, but anytime she brought it up, no one else had noticed the same things.
One night she had peered out her window and saw a few rather large dogs strolling down the street on the sidewalk. Another time, she returned to her shop with new plants to replace her dead mums but found them as vibrant as the day she had planted them.
The list of strange happenings went on and left her with only one conclusion: magic was real.
Her eyes darted toward Tyler when he moaned in pain. “Maybe werewolves?”
Vanessa turned into the hospital and drove up to the emergency room doors. She set the car into park as movement drew her eye. Tyler’s leg twitched and then his hips, torso, one arm, and the next.
Panic filled her at the unnatural jerky spasms wracking Tyler. Unsure what to do, she shut off the car and ran inside. “Help! Someone please help me!” she yelled into the lobby, alarming the people at the desk and a few sitting on hard chairs against the wall. A man standing at the side of the desk came rushing toward her before she even finished her cry for help.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his deep voice sending a tingle down her skin. His hand brushed her as he moved past, and an electric spark snapped her out of her panic.
Their eyes held for a strange moment before she raised a finger at her car, parked only twenty feet away. “Tyler.”
The man nodded and ran out ahead of her. He wore black slacks that did everything to accentuate the round muscles of his ass and cover his long legs. Her body tingled once again, her nipples puckering with arousal.
“What the hell, Vanessa?” she muttered before joining him as he knelt beside Tyler.
