Up in Smoke (King #8)

I secure the cuff back around my wrists. I kick off my jeans and can practically feel her panic as I get in beside her. I pull her back against my chest, wrapping my arms around her tiny body, resting my hands on her flat stomach. She smells like the lavender shampoo I just used to wash her hair. I begin to relax with my chin on top of her head when I feel her tremble against me.

“What are you doing?” she asks with a shaky voice.

“It’s this or the cuffs,” I tell her. It’s aggravating to even feel like I should explain why I don’t want to fuck her right now.

No matter how beautiful her trembling is. No matter how hard my cock swells as she takes a deep breath to steady herself, but doesn’t stop shaking.

Defiant little hellion.

“I fucking can’t sleep with you trembling like a frightened Chihuahua,” I scold.

“I just don’t know what you…I don’t want you to…” she says.

I sigh. “What you want doesn’t matter. Your ‘no’s’ don’t fucking matter. YOU don’t fucking matter. Now get some fucking sleep, before I cuff you, strip that shirt from your body, and show you first hand that you belong to me.”

“No. Please. I’m in high school,” she whimpers. “I’m seventeen. I’m too young—”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t give a shit how old you are, even though I know you’re twenty-two.”

I don’t know why I feel the need to defend myself.

Especially to her.

She stops trembling and eventually falls asleep, making a soft snoring sound through her dried blood clogged nose. She’s small and warm and I find myself nuzzling my nose and lips into the crook of her neck inhaling the fresh scent of the bath soap.

“Tell me where your old man is and I’ll make this all go away,” I tell her even though she’s sleeping. It’s not true either. If her old man came to the fucking door right now and turned himself in it’s not like I could just let Frankie go. She knows and has seen too much.

She’s mine now.

I close my eyes, not expecting her to answer. I get one anyway. To my ears her words sound and feel like the beginning of the end.

“That’s where you’re wrong.”





Chapter Eighteen





I’m lying on my side in a grassy field. Various rocks and pebbles stab into my back as I try to move. It smells like sour milk and rotten meat. I hear the crackling of fire along with echoes of screams in the distance.

Then nothing.

Slowly, I raise my head only to find that I’m surrounded by thousands of bloodied bodies. I sit up and realize I’m on the top of a pile directly in the center. Not just a mound of bodies. But parts. Men and women, all in various stages of death and decay. All bent in unnatural positions. Grayish skin sagging from broken bones. Thick red turns to black as the blood on their clothing dries before my eyes.

I scramble to my feet. My stomach rolls but there’s no time to get sick, there’s only time to run. I stumble between limbs and torsos as I try to climb down, lifting my knees high. I free my sunken foot by pressing my hand onto hard cold flesh that contains what feels like teeth, but I don’t look to see what I’ve touched.

My feet finally hit the ground, and I’m free of the pile. I freeze. There are more bodies than grass on the field where I'm standing. As far as I can see. I can’t process what’s around me because the need to flee is stronger than the need to contemplate their mortality or even my own for that matter.

I navigate the field the best I can, jumping over human obstacles like they’re land mines and not corpses. I try not to stare too long at the bulging eyes staring up at me, or the mouths frozen-open in deadly screams, but I can’t help it. I look then quickly turn away, but it’s too late. Now, I can hear them. Their screams. Their last pleas for their lives. Begging that went unanswered.

It’s too much. It’s all way too much. I move faster. Push harder. But I’m too fast. I trip over a leg, and when I brace myself, my hands land on a severed head. Not just any severed head.

My mother.

Now, it’s me who’s screaming.

I pick the head up in my hands, but when it hits me what exactly I’m holding, I drop it at my feet and it lands in a position that looks like she’s buried up to her neck in the ground except I know there’s no body beneath. I turn to the side, and the churning of my stomach finally emerges as I purge its contents until I’m sure there’s nothing left. I bend over with my hands on my knees and try to catch my breath while trying to turn off my thoughts. I won’t be able to get free of this field if I concentrate too hard on what’s around me. I have to keep going, keep moving, but the screams of the dead around me grow louder, holding me in place. They're so loud now I cover my ears and shut my eyes tightly in an attempt to silence them. It doesn't work. I’m lost. I don’t know what to do. I’m going to die by way of scream and soon I’ll be just another body on the already bloodied field.

I’ll take it. I'll die right now. Eternal silence has to be better than the shrill screams adding to my own.

“Be quiet, girl,” I hear my father’s voice echo from somewhere above me. I take my hands from my ears and look around, but he’s not there. It’s like he’s speaking into a microphone from the clouds. His voice is distant and echoing all around me. The screams become muted. “He’ll hear you.”

“Where are you?” I ask, spinning around in a circle. I can barely see through my unshed tears. But still, he’s not there.

There’s an explosion in the distance. It takes me by surprise, and I take cover, diving behind a tree stump. I can’t tell if it’s me shaking or the earth beneath me. However, it might be me because I can hear my teeth chattering. After a few minutes, I realize it’s not my teeth, but my mother’s as her head vibrates from the aftershock of the explosion.

There’s another explosion. A flash of yellow then red appears from over a small hill in the distance followed by a huge plume of grey.

I don’t know where I’m going I just know that I need to leave. “Run, Frankie. Run,” My father orders angrily, his voice surrounding me on all sides. I’m drowning in his voice, but he’s still nowhere to be seen. “Run,” he commands again. “Be smart. Stay safe and RUN. He’s coming for you, Frankie. RUN RUN RUN!”

“Where?” I cry, looking to the cloud covered sky above me. “Where do you want me to run? And if you want me to be safe then why won’t you rescue me yourself! Where are you? Why aren’t you here?” I shout at the sky, growing angrier at the man who won’t show himself. I ball up my fists and dig my fingernails into my palms.

Only the sky answers with a rumbling roll of deep thunder that rattles my bones. From over the small hill, a shadow of a man appears from the smoke. Not just any man. He’s as massive as a bear. My spine straightens with awareness, fear, and familiarity. His strides are sure and wide, and I realize it’s because he knows where he’s going.

Or WHO he’s going to.

Me.