Free Death's Avatar (The Descent Series) by S.M. Reine Page A

Maurice
Lawless

    Waking up naked was
usually a good thing for me. It meant I'd had a
particularly nice night dancing at the club, followed by a little
horizontal dancing with a cute guy (or girl, if I’m really drunk). I usually wake up content, warm, and relatively unharmed.
So maybe I'd have to pluck my bra off the ceiling fan and sneak out
without waking up my friend-for-an-evening. It was all par for the
course.
    But waking up cold, wet, and dirty was new.
I’d never had to pick leaves and mud out of my hair before, and
this was the first time I had to wander aimlessly through a damp
forest for most of the day before I figured out where I was. I ran
barefoot and bare-assed from bushes to trees to random parked cars
and climbed into my apartment through the bedroom window to avoid
being caught without a stitch to my name.
    It was one hell of a way to start the
week.
    I skipped work that day—big surprise, right?
Something about waking up naked in the woods two miles from my
place really makes me drag. It took me a solid hour to scrub off
the caked mud and leaves, and that wasn't mentioning the freak-out
that followed realizing I'd joined the ranks of the heavily
inked.
    I sure as hell should've remembered
how I got that tattoo. It took up my entire goddamn back! It looked
like some weird cross between runes and a tribal armband a meathead
might get on a date, and it ran from the tops of my shoulders to
the small of my back.
    It didn’t make sense. I'd never liked
needles. They had to pretty much sedate me growing up whenever I
needed a shot. Sedative before the sedative in some cases. What
could I say? I was a biter. I’d never set foot inside a tattoo
parlor, much less sat through the hours—no, days—it would take to
get that amount of ink put on. It didn’t even feel tender, and I’m
pretty sure I wasn’t unconscious for a month while it healed.
    After my shower, I took another look at my
back. There were six runes, staggered in two rows of three. The
intricate patterns surrounding the runes looked more like something
you’d see on a Scottish coat of arms.
    Looking too closely made me shiver, and I
was sickened to see the tattoo shiver with me. This was a part of
my skin now. It would take months of painful laser treatments—and
permanent scars—to get it off, and I couldn’t even remember how it
got there.
    I covered the evidence with a towel and
retreated to my bedroom. I don’t remember much after that. I
must've fallen asleep because my phone woke me up. The ring was
"Highway to Hell”, which meant it was my only friend at work: Peggy
Jane Mackenzie, or PJ, as she preferred.
    I reached for my phone, still mostly asleep.
It took a few tries to hit the answer button.
    “Hello?”
    “This is your 7:30 wake up call. You coming
over or what?”
    I looked at my clock radio. “Oh crap. Sorry.
Yeah, just let me get dressed.”
    “Someone over there I should know
about?”
    PJ was very open about her sex life. Too open. She expected the same amount of details from me
and was constantly disappointed.
    “No. I was just more tired than I thought.
Nodded off.”
    “Well, get dressed and get over here. Or
skip the first part. Might make the drive more interesting.”
    “Whatever. See you in a bit.”
    I rolled over and looked at the ceiling,
then down at myself. I was still naked. Save the occasional weekend
delight, I generally slept in something. I get cold easily.
    Not only was I less shocked than I should've
been with everything in the open, I was actually warm. I pulled on
panties, jeans, and a top, and when I went to check the thermostat,
it read what it always did: 75. It felt ten degrees above that. I
made a mental note to call the office and get the dial fixed.
    I looked at myself
in the mirror on the way out, and then I sighed and went back to
change my top. My usual ones showed too much of my neck. I wasn’t
ready to breech the subject of the ink with PJ. I settled on the
same top with a light