Midnight Rose by Shelby Reed Read Free Book Online Page B

quickly we forget our resolve. Gideon leaned in the shadow of the pool house, his attention fixed on Kate’s balcony, where golden warmth glowed from behind partially drawn draperies. A phantom moved past the window. The hot, crimson outline radiating from it told his hungry eyes it was Kate, performing feminine bedtime rituals.
    He loved to watch a woman ready herself for sleep, savored the slow, methodic disrobing, the removal of hairpins, the soft whisk of the brush dragging through loosened strands. How he missed hearing the rush of water from behind the bathroom door, the sound of a toothbrush tapped on the edge of a sink, and then her reappearance, fresh-faced, untouched by cosmetics and scented with some mysterious moisturizer.
    Deep within the core of his residual humanity, the old melancholy stirred, a yearning for the banal routines of mortal life. And something more. Tonight, gazing at Kate O’Brien’s face over a cup of coffee that he’d merely played at tasting, he’d felt…possibilities.
    Love is the great redeemer, the old Franciscan had told him a decade before, pressing the small, wooden box into Gideon’s palm. Through love, all things are possible.
    Gideon, newly widowed and desperate for hope, had wept and clutched the box with silent gratitude.
    The tiny relic it contained, a vial of sacred blood, held the answer to his deepest desire. Then, of course, the old priest had doused his hope by setting the book atop the box.
    Ah, the book. The instruction manual, with its vehement and unarguable laws. Years had passed since he’d touched it. It was the enemy, the cruel tormentor to his gossamer hopes.
    Stepping back into the pool house, he retrieved a key from the top of a narrow secretary, opened the cabinet, and withdrew a small, leather-bound manual. The cover was cracked with age, its pages brittle.
    He searched the fine print with inhuman speed, vision rapier-sharp as he peered through the darkness and found the verse he sought.
    ….And through the blood of St. Xanthia shall the cursed find salvation, and having clothed himself in the ways of the righteous, drink from the vial and sustain no injury, and be made whole, the soul restored.
    But commit a single infraction before consuming the sacred essence, destroy another creature even for the sake of sustenance, and the blood of Xanthia will deliver the darkness of death, and it will come like a slow oppressor, visiting much agony upon the perpetrator until the end, when God and soul shall be forever parted.
    Gideon closed his eyes and pressed the book against his heart. He was the sinner, the soulless one for whom the warning was intended. In the agony of passion he’d destroyed another creature, maybe not directly, but Caroline had died in the end.
    Unable to help himself, he’d tasted her, touched her, planted the seed within her that blossomed and drained her life force, day by day, until her fragile human body could serve one purpose only—to deliver their son into a world that proved painful and cruel.
    Death had come to Gideon’s wife like a slow oppressor, delivered at his hand. And it would visit him a thousand times more horribly if he drank the vial. There were no amendments to the law of St. Xanthia.
    He gingerly returned the book to its keeping place, closed the secretary, turned the brass key and slid it behind the ornate scroll at the top of the cabinet.
    Nothing could redeem him now.
     
     
     
    “Amazing. Utterly amazing.” Kate squinted at the dark-haired adolescent sitting across from her. “Are you this good with all your school subjects?”
    Jude shrugged, pushing back from the table to regard her with a hauntingly familiar expression. So like Gideon, especially in the dim light they used to study by. “I’m okay at most stuff. I like algebra best, though.” Clicking her pen, she glanced at the eighth-grade mathematics textbook in front of him. He’d made mincemeat out of every challenge she’d thrown his way.