Heart, Haunt, Havoc (The Gideon Testaments, #1)

by Freydís Moon

Most folks didn’t have a use for him, but those who did, people like Bishop, never failed to reach out. And houses like this, houses with heartbeats, never failed to spark Colin’s interest.

haunted places never failed to recognize haunted people.

to the inverted cross tattooed in the soft hollow at the base of his throat.

Hot

he still felt half-framed and hollow. As if his body was a home with too many unused rooms, too much open space. A place still under construction.

“C’mon, exorcist. Don’t make me beg.”

He remembered being young, searching for purpose and hope, and finding the dead instead. Hunting for angels in empty places, praying to a God who didn’t listen. Making mistakes.

Let him see us, then, he thought, and wrung pleasure from Bishop’s tired, beautiful body. Let him watch.

Bishop’s wild, unruly magic shrank from Colin’s manufactured sainthood,

Quiet settled again. Snow fell, ghosts eavesdropped, and Colin wanted nothing more than to scream.

“All gods require payment,” she said. Her eyes fell to Colin’s chest where his rosary sprouted from beneath his scarf. “Especially yours.”

“Deception, dark magic, demonology. Typical marital problems.”

He wanted to tell them to watch, wanted them to see what magic could do when it was bargained for, paid for, earned by way of brutality, but he squeezed their knuckles instead.

A part of him wanted to say I understand, but he didn’t; another part of him wanted to say it will get better, but he knew it wouldn’t. Grief, and betrayal, and fine-tuned desperation were learned, lived, and endured.

People got better from a burst cyst, from an undercooked porkchop, from an impromptu break-up. But no one fully recovered from loss like this. They simply adapted to the sound of it, calloused to the feel of it.

Do you know what that’s like?” He huffed out an annoyed breath and glanced at Bishop, blushing hot. “To find yourself trapped in an unexpected orbit? To know someone’s power, to understand their pain, to get a glimpse of their heart?”

“Before I slept with you, I daydreamed about you. Now that I’ve been with you, I’m consumed by you. How I feel about you, what I want from you… it’s thrilling; it’s excruciating.

“Be scared of me,” they rasped, breathing hard against his chin. “But don’t be afraid to touch me.”

Colin felt their magic sting beneath his tattoos, settling in the arcs and grooves of mystic runes and angel-speak. Power recognized power. Like called unceremoniously to like.

Colin knew what it was like to find safety in pain. He understood the narrow space people searched for when they needed to be hurt and held and outside themselves.

He gave them what they wanted: pain and pleasure, obedience and release. But he hopelessly, selfishly wanted more.

“Don’t look at me like I’m speaking in tongues.”

The divinity thrumming in his runic tattoos made him brave or stupid. Both, perhaps.

“You’re famous, Colin Hart,” Lincoln said, returning to his rich, venomous voice. “So far from God, so close to Hell, so rich in sin. More like us than you think, yes?”

“There is no Hell, priest. No Heaven, no after, no cometh from. There is only here, the place we’ve been given, populated with your tiny, abandoned selves searching aimlessly for recognition, for sustenance, for our father’s long-gone purpose. You were created out of nothing, destined to become nothing, and we—the fallen, the true heirs—are here to govern that nothingness—”

“I didn’t know people still used smelling salts.” “And I didn’t know priests played Weekend at Bernie’s with legitimate dead bodies,”

Bishop Martínez was smart and brave and powerful and beautiful, and he did not want to leave. But if he didn’t leave then, he might not leave at all.

He’d channeled angels and saints, ripped demons out of writhing bodies, captured ghosts and ghouls with his bare hands, but he couldn’t leave Bishop without trying.