Oracle Saving (The Phoenix Files Book 3) Read online

  Oracle Saving

  By Morgan Kelley

  Copyright © **2017** Morgan Kelley LLC

  All rights reserved without limiting rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, introduced into a retrieval system, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including without limitation photocopying, recording, or other electronic or technical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The scanning, uploading, and/or distribution of this document via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and is punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. For permission requests, email [email protected]

  Content Advisory: This book is intended for mature audiences and contains graphic violence, explicit sexual activity and disturbing imagery

  ©Copyright 2017 cover by VercoDesign

  Adaptation by Morgan Kelley LLC—Celeste Abraham.

  Editing by Rachel Blackett, Laura Matias, and Kelley Alunni.

  Other works by Morgan Kelley:

  Standalone Thrillers

  The Junction

  Serial Sins

  The Blood Betrayal

  FBI Romance Series

  The Killing Times (Book 1)

  Sacred Burial Grounds (Book 2)

  True Love Lost (Book 3)

  Deep Dark Mire (Book 4)

  Fire Burns Hot (Book 5)

  Darkness of Truth (Book 6)

  Devil Hath Come (Book 7)

  Consumed by Wrath (Book 8)

  Redemption is Here (Book 9)

  Dead Shall Speak (Book 10)

  Pledging to Die (Book 11)

  Slay Bells Ring (Book 12)

  Past will Haunt (Book 13)

  Choices will Destroy (Book 14)

  Blood shall Run (Book 15)

  Act of Blood (Book 16)

  Croft & Croft Romance Adventure Series

  Celestia is Falling (1)

  Vegas is Dying (2)

  Christmas is Killing (3)

  Love is Bleeding (4)

  Heaven is Weeping (5)

  Hell is Burning (6)

  Justice is Dead (7)

  Justice Series—Croft Family Mob Justice.

  Dark Justice (Book 1)

  Littlemoon Investigations

  Blood Red Rage (Book 1)

  Lost & Broken (Book 2)

  Unthinkable Games (Book 3)

  Truth is Found (Book 4)

  Haven of Nightmares (Book 5)

  Forbidden Secrets (Book 6)

  The Carter Chronicles Trilogy

  Sinner Repent (1)

  Sinner Realized (2)

  Sinner Reborn (3)

  Oracle/The Phoenix Files

  Oracle Rising (book 1)

  Oracle Seeing (book 2)

  Oracle Saving (book 3)

  The Harcourte Vampyre Society series

  Dangerous Revelations (1)

  Dangerous Choices (2)

  Dangerous Misery (3)

  Dangerous Retaliation (4)

  Dangerous Influence (5)

  Dangerous Sacrifice (6)

  Behind Closed Doors Anthology

  Illegal Fantasies ~ Behind Closed Doors (1)

  Romance Under Arrest~ Behind Closed Doors (2)

  Holiday Reinforcements ~ Behind Closed Doors (3)

  ~~~~ About the Author ~~~~

  Morgan Kelley lives in the beautiful Pocono Mountains with her husband and two children. After attending college at Penn State University and studying Criminal Justice, Morgan knew her only true passion in life would be murder and books. She put them both together and began her career as a writer. Other than books and writing, you can find Morgan hanging out in her garden and digging in the dirt.

  Her other works include: The Junction, Serial Sins, The Blood Betrayal, The Killing Times (1), Sacred Burial Grounds (2), True Love Lost (3), Deep Dark Mire (4), Fire Burns Hot (5), Darkness of Truth (6), Devil Hath Come (7), Consumed by Wrath (8), Redemption is Here (9), Dead Shall Speak (10), Pledging to Die (11), Slay Bells Ring (12), Past will Haunt (13), Choices will Destroy (14), Blood shall Run (15), Act of Blood (16), Blood Red Rage (1) Lost & Broken (2), Unthinkable Games (3), Truth is Found (4), Haven of Nightmares (5), Forbidden Secrets (6), Celestia is Falling (1), Vegas is Dying (2), Christmas is Killing (3), Love is Bleeding (4), Heaven is Weeping (5), Hell is Burning (6), Justice is Dead (7), Dangerous Revelations (1), Dangerous Choices (2), Dangerous Misery (3), Dangerous Retaliation (4), Dangerous Influence (5), Dangerous Sacrifice (6), Sinner Repent (1), Sinner Realized (2), Sinner Reborn (3), Oracle Rising (1), Illegal Fantasies (Anthology 1), Romance Under Arrest (Anthology 2), and Holiday Reinforcements (Anthology 3)

  Please feel free to visit Morgan at her website: www.morgankelley.com, email her [email protected], or visit her blog at www.morgankelley.blogspot.com, or stop at her website www.morgankelley.com.

  Case File Three

  The Phoenix Files:

  Roxanne Faust & Jagger Armstrong

  Jagger Armstrong…the heart wants what the heart wants.

  Roxanne Faust…you can only run for so long.

  prologue

  Happy

  Monday Evening

  Nothing was ever going to be the same again.

  Oh, the peaceful little town of Happy, known for its Mayberry setting, was about to find itself in a whole lot of pain.

  Every day was pretty much like the others, and nothing ever happened there. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to the residents. They liked the quiet.

  They loved the calm.

  People went about their business, getting their work done, talking to their neighbors, and simply existing. It was a place that time had forgotten, along with crime. The worst thing that happened in Happy was a kid might steal a candy bar from the corner store.

  It was laid back and so were the residents.

  Well, all of them but one.

  He had a gift.

  It was a gift that he had suppressed for a very long time, but the cravings and needs overwhelmed him. As a child, he knew he was special. He knew that he was born different from the rest of the little boys and girls around town.

  Maybe special wasn’t the right word.

  He was unique.

  He was scary.

  In fact, he was so exceptional that he had the power to sneak into dreams and manipulate them—for the good or for the worst. He could waltz right into their sleeping slumber to make their lives Heaven or Hell.

  He preferred the latter.

  Oh, he lived for that hell that wrapped its fearful tendrils around them, choking the life from them. It fed him.

  Why should these simpletons have easy lives?

  Why let them survive when they were nothing but ants going from anthill to work, back again, and never truly living? He could play with them, altering their lives, adding a twist or turn here or there, and they would have to work harder to exist. They were puppets to him and he controlled their fate.

  Dreams were a powerful thing.

  Oh, he’d learned that as a child.

  He could make them feel that excitement.

  Or the pain.

  Well, that’s how it started so many years ago. A little tweak here or there, and he was able to alter everything around them. They were like putty in his hands.

  Then he realized something.

  He was a God.

  He could control whether they liv
ed or died. He could slip into their dreams and make them scream for help, and no one could save them.

  He had the power of playing with them for his own pleasure. It wasn’t about sex or taking them to be his own.

  No, he didn’t care about that.

  This was so much more.

  He got off on the kick of adrenaline that they felt when he was stalking them in their dreams. He loved how they felt like scared little bunnies running for their lives.

  He loved how it felt to break them—like the world had broken him as a child. He’d been a pariah.

  An outsider.

  Now he was paying them back.

  He hated seeing someone weaker being tormented, blamed, or vilified for being themselves.

  To him, this was about justice and what was deserved in life. This was about making sure he got what was coming to him, and they got the same.

  This was about making sure that they got the picture.

  He was in control.

  Before, when he first realized his power, he would simply scare them and leave their minds. He’d done what he wanted and got the ultimate reward.

  Their fear.

  Their screams.

  Their nightmares.

  Now it had changed.

  Last year, he realized that if he took them to the brink, it was nice, but if he took them over the edge and into death, it was something so amazing that he couldn’t resist.

  It was beyond powerful.

  It was as close to God as he was ever going to get. The sinner had become the saint, and he was enjoying his new hobby in life.

  As they were succumbing to their fears, he would drink in that delicious energy. He would bask in its power, knowing that no one could stop him.

  He would revel in the control.

  What else was he supposed to do?

  Happy, believe it or not, was a miserable place, contrary to its name. The small town wasn’t ever going to be on anyone’s lips. It was a simple place that was ignored by the rest of the world. It angered him, since this was his home.

  This was his haven.

  He was a great gift being offered to this town, and he should be celebrated.

  Well, since no one noticed, he was putting Happy on the map—one way or another.

  He was making it one hell of a place to live, work, and, if you were unlucky, to die.

  Before it was over, they’d be well known for one thing.

  All the pretty dead women.

  Oh, and he was going to love every second of planning and plotting this out.

  Maybe some would say he was bored, or he simply had too much time on his hands, but he said he was living his life to its fullest. He was balancing the scales of justice, and giving them something to talk about all over the world.

  Sooner or later, they’d see the truth.

  It would be the world according to him, and that was the ideal world to live in too. The powers that be had given him this gift—or some might say curse—and he was going to make sure that not a day went by without the world knowing the truth.

  God did exist.

  It was him.

  He was able to take life in the blink of an eye. He was the judge, the jury, the executioner, and no one…NO ONE…could stop him.

  So, the year he opted to take it one step further, he picked a goal to achieve. It was a matter of choosing a number that he was comfortable with, and that would pique some interest.

  Five.

  It was his lucky number, and it was perfect. For someone smart, they would pick up on it, and the game would begin.

  Five was a perfect number.

  He loved that it gave him time to draw this out. There was no need to rush or too hastily end their lives.

  No.

  This was about panache, showing the rest of the world what Happy had in store for its residents, and making a statement.

  His mind was made up.

  It was going to be set in stone.

  That first year, when he began taking their lives, he loved every single second of his hunt. It was delicious to feel their fear, to watch them race through their dreams, running from the one thing that scared them.

  Some hated the dark.

  Well, they died in it.

  Some hated spiders.

  They were covered in them and in a web they couldn’t escape the minute they closed their eyes.

  There were ones who burned alive.

  He lit the match and watched them burn.

  Some were afraid of being raped by some serial killer.

  He was that killer. It was his body that took theirs.

  There was nothing off limits, and that was the beauty of it all. Those five died by his hand, and he never had to leave the comfort of his house.

  From his bed, he played God, and it was fun.

  With each kill, he realized two things.

  This was an amazing gift to have, and that if he was ever caught, they’d never be able to prove it was him. How could a court ever convict him?

  Psychics didn’t exist, right?

  It was laughable.

  He was real, and he was going to be their worst nightmare until he was no longer able to kill them.

  Their downfall would be ignorance.

  In this day and age with the advance of technology and the way the world was progressing, they still didn’t believe people like him existed.

  They were a fairytale.

  Made up.

  Lies.

  Oh, well, that was their loss.

  He did exist, and there were others like him too. He could feel each and every one of them. That’s one more reason he thought himself to be a God.

  He was at the top of the food chain.

  With each victim, he could hear them chattering and alerting the others as he slipped into each woman’s dream state to end her life.

  It was amusing.

  He could hear a powerful one directing the traffic in all of their heads. She was like their mother.

  How sweet.

  He knew she would be the one to really dazzle with his gift. A part of him wanted to impress her. With his vile sick gift, he wanted her to be astounded and excited that he was one of the few truly powerful psychics who didn’t need to touch his victims.

  Well, the opposite was true.

  She wasn’t impressed at all.

  In fact, she was making him very angry.

  The bitch was trying to track him. She was in his head, trying to figure out what was happening and how to stop it. It was clear that they weren’t going to get along at all.

  He wasn’t stoppable.

  Yeah, she was too late.

  This was a game they played back and forth. She tried to find him, and he tried to kill. Last year, when she sought him out, he went under, stopping his game until she was occupied with other things.

  While he was stronger than she was, he was afraid of her too. It was unnerving how she could hone in on him.

  A few times, she’d gotten close to finding him, or his general location, and he wasn’t ready for her. Truth be told, he was having way too much fun killing.

  It saddened him to shut down his game, block out his mind, and end the festivities for the time being.

  Then, to add insult to injury, the nosey woman came around and started digging in his personal business.

  That pissed him off.

  The deaths were considered a mystery, and that was how he liked it—for now. He wasn’t done making a statement to Happy and the world. While he wanted to gain notoriety, he wasn’t done yet. Now, with the arrival of this odd woman in town, she was stirring it up—one way or another.

  She was pretty.

  She was smart.

  All the men in town lusted after her, and all the women hated her. This stranger was making so many lives miserable. She had to go.

  He put her on his list.

  Simply because she couldn’t mind her damn business.

  In Happy, you didn’t bother your neighb
or—you helped him, and that was exactly what he was doing. He was helping the stupid women end their pathetic lives and cleaning up the riff raff.

  He was doing God’s work.

  He was doing what he needed to do.

  It was simply how it was.

  Now this pain in the ass Coroner was drawing attention to him, and that wasn’t going to be good. It was bad enough the psychic was bothering him, but this ordinary woman too?

  It was on his last damn nerve.

  Just by listening to the static, he could hear the other psychics talking amongst themselves.

  He could hear the one they called Oracle, doing everything she could to find him.

  He wanted her job.

  He wanted to be her.

  To have all that adoration and control over the others like them…it was…God-like.

  He wanted it.

  He needed it.

  He had to have it.

  She was talked about by the others. What they said about her was making him insane. She was the strongest, and he knew that was a lie. She wasn’t nearly as strong as he was, and he was about to prove it.

  It pissed him off.

  He saw the connection in the woman’s mind. He saw that this doctor, Roxanne Faust, was important to her—to her family. So, not only was she stirring up the shit, she was going to have to pay. He’d take out the weaker of the two, and work his way to the one who thought she was unstoppable.