Dead by Morning (Rituals of the Night
Book 1) by Kayla Krantz
"He was real, and he was a monster."
Obsession is deadly. No one learns that better than
Luna Ketz, a pessimistic high school senior. She wishes more than anything to
graduate but things don’t always go as planned. Luna quickly finds herself
trapped in a web of lies and murders, spun by the least suspected person in her
hometown. It’s not long before she realizes she’s being targeted by the person
she despises most in the world. When Luna figures out who is behind the
killings, things make a turn for the bizarre when she is contacted by a friend
she has not heard from in years. It is then Luna realizes she is very much in
danger, but although she can avoid the killer in reality, she cannot avoid him
in her dreams.
Excerpt:
Chance stayed where he
was, studying the nearby people. At the sight of him alone, a couple girls ran
up to him and Luna guessed they were asking him for a dance. She smiled a bit
to herself…maybe if he got distracted with the other girls he would forget she
was there. As she watched, he shooed the girls away with a simple movement of
his arm, and Luna’s hope turned to disappointment. He walked over to her,
searching her eyes with his.
“What’s wrong? Don’t like
the paparazzi?” He laughed.
“You should dance with
those other girls.”
“Why?” he asked,
scrunching up his face.
“Because I want to go
home.”
He shook his head. “No
way, you’re not going home without at least giving me one dance.”
Luna slumped her
shoulders. “Do we really have to?”
“Do I have to tell David
that you didn’t follow his orders?” he asked, tipping his head to the side.
Luna closed her eyes for
a long moment to hold back the building anger. He’d keep his promise. “Fine,
you win.”
He smiled and held out
his hand to her. “Of course I did.”
Reluctantly, she set her
hand in his. His skin felt clammy beneath her fingers, like he had been
sweating. Luna wanted to pull her hand back, but she forced herself to keep it
there. He closed his fingers around hers and pulled her onto the dance floor.
The music turned to a slow, sappy song, forcing them to slow dance. He forced
her arms up onto his shoulders and set his hands on her waist.
As he stepped to the
music, she searched his expression for any sign of compassion. “Why do you do
this to me?”
“Do what?”
“Make me go to things
like this. I mean, I know you don’t like me. What could you possibly want from
me?”
He looked back at her,
and for a minute, he didn’t speak, as if he had been caught off-guard by her
question. “I can’t tell you.”
“You can blackmail me
into going on dates with you, and you can have your friends kidnap me, but you
can’t tell me why you do it?” she asked in disbelief.
“Look, you’ll find out
eventually, and you won’t like it, I know. I try hard to get you to feel
something toward me so that when you find that out, you won’t fight me,” he
whispered in her ear.
“Find what out? What
could be so bad? Do Susan and Kate and all of them know what it is?” She pulled
back to watch his face carefully.
“No, they don’t. No one
does. Just keep quiet, okay?”
“Does this have to do
with the thing you hide in your pocket?” Luna asked him a bit louder. “Do you
have it on you now?” She reached her hand forward to try to touch the side of
his pants.
A couple people around
them turned to look as she raised her voice to him. Chance caught her wrist
easily in his hand, returned their stares, and smiled nervously before looking
back at Luna. He had to resist the urge to shake her into silence as he let go
of her arm.
“I don’t hide anything in
my pocket okay?” he snarled. “That’s all just your imagination, Luna. Now drop
it.”
Part of her was
frightened by his sudden anger. He was hiding something from her…and from
everyone else as well.
“Okay, we’re setting up
to play,” a voice called from the stage. “We need a volunteer singer to help us
out.”
“How about Chance does
it?” Luna heard a nearby girl suggest.
The anger dissolved from
Chance’s face as he turned to the girl who had spoken. Luna realized all of his
rage had been solely directed at her, and she felt oddly cold at the thought.
“Yeah, I’ll do it. Why
not?” she barely heard him say.
He let go of her and
moved through the cheering crowd toward the stage. The band took its place, and
Chance stood at the microphone. He looked completely comfortable up there,
normal, as if he weren’t the center of attention. The band began to play “Every
Breath You Take” by The Police, and Luna studied Chance. He began to sing the
words gently, and his voice surprised her.
It sounded beautiful.
As Luna watched him, she
knew he looked like any other teenage boy. The girls around Luna cheered him
on, but she stayed silent. His eyes flicked to her as he reached the chorus of
the song, flashing in the lights. There was something bad about him. Something
that separated him from all the other teenage boys and made him a danger to the
people who called him ‘friend.’
Author Bio:
Proud author of Dead by
Morning, fascinated by the dark and macabre. Stephen King is her all time
inspiration mixed in with a little bit of Eminem. When she began writing, she
started in horror but it somehow drifted into thriller. She loves the 1988
movie Heathers. She was born and raised in Michigan but traveled across the
country to where she currently resides in Texas.
