Without Mercy (Mercy 1)

The French doors were open, a breeze playing with the gauzy curtains. The red light for the VCR indicated the machine was playing, the clock stuck at two forty-seven.

Goose bumps pimpled her arms as she stared at the television screen, where muted images danced, a study of light and shadow.

And still the drip. Jules looked down at the knife in her hand. Beads of blood splashed onto her foot, pooled around her toes, trailed to the body of her father lying on the floor.

A scream ripped through the room, and she jerked up, saw Edie standing in the hallway, her face ashen.

“What have you done?” Edie cried.

Jules’s eyes flew open.

For a second she didn’t know where she was.

The school. That’s right. Blue Rock Academy. She glanced at the clock and her heart stopped.

Two forty-seven.

“Oh, Lord,” she whispered, trying to calm her racing heart. Rolling onto her side, she took in deep calming breaths as the dream receded into the dark corners of her mind. She was sweating, her muscles cramped, though the room was as cold as death.

She heard a squeak on the stairs outside her door, and for a second she thought that someone

had been in the room. Someone stealthily rifling through her things, standing over her as she slept.

A shudder ripped through her body, and she pulled the covers to her chin, curling into a ball. She was imagining things. The vestiges of the dream were still scraping at her, teasing her.

Her robe sat in a mound at the foot of the bed, just where she’d flung it. She wrapped it around her body, walked to the window, and opened the blinds.

Sometime during the night, the snow had stopped. The deputy’s cruiser was gone, tracks indicating that the car had driven away from the heart of the campus. There were mashed trails of snow on the paths to the various buildings, solitary tracks made while most of the residents were asleep.

Tracks to Stanton House.

That was nothing in and of itself. The deputies were still on duty, and Reverend Lynch had promised that the staff would be more vigilant.

Still, with the feeling that someone had been in her room, she couldn’t help the shiver of fear that slid down her spine.

“Ninny,” she told herself even as she walked to the door of her apartment. She checked the lock and the dead bolt for the tenth time that night. Locked tight.

But the dream …

She pulled the robe tight around her and huddled on the sofa. Had it been a warning? Or just a trick of the mind?

She wondered if she’d ever know.

CHAPTER 24

As the harsh winds of February swirled around him, the Leader crossed the campus and thought of the new teacher who had been hired at the academy.

Julia Farentino.

She was beautiful.

Hauntingly so.

With eyes the color of a stormy northern sea and a tongue that was as sharp as a razor; he’d heard it a time or two and had been intrigued. Tempted.

He’d noticed the way she walked, purposeful, her strides long, her ass … Oh, God, he’d seen it tighten beneath her jeans as she’d taken a step, and in his mind’s eye, he envisioned her tight little cheeks, split perfectly, begging him to enter that warm, seductive valley.

Even now, in this frigid winter, his cock twitched as he thought of plunging into her sweet, slick warmth. Of reaching around her and feeling her breasts fill his hands, her nipples hard. Her neck would arch, a low moan of pleasure coming from her lips. He would pinch those nipples, make her gasp and buck and scream in pleasure and pain. And he would take her as she’d never been taken before, press his lips and teeth into the back of her neck, push harder and faster!