The Resurrected Compendium Read online

  Contents

  Also by Megan Hart

  Title

  License Notes

  Author's Note

  One

  1

  2

  3

  Two

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Three

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Four

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  Five

  27

  Six

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  Seven

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Eight

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  Nine

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  Ten

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  About the Author

  Also by Megan Hart

  Tear You Apart

  The Favor

  The Darkest Embrace

  Precious and Fragile Things

  Exit Light

  Ride With the Devil

  Beneath the Veil

  Reawakened Passions

  Hot and Haunted

  Collide

  Dirty

  Broken

  Tempted

  Stranger

  Deeper

  Naked

  The Space Between Us

  Pleasure and Purpose

  Switch

  Stranger

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  Megan Hart

  The Resurrected

  Compendium

  Parts 1-10

  Chaos Publishing

  August 2013

  The Resurrected — Compendium

  Megan Hart

  Chaos Publishing

  **

  Copyright 2013 Megan Hart

  Chaos Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This edition of The Resurrected, Compendium, includes parts 1-10, originally published from October 2011 through August 2013. This final content has been revised and may differ slightly from the original content.

  ONE

  1

  That man walked like he’d never been afraid of anything.

  That’s what Abbie Monroe thought when she looked at her own reflection in the mirror behind the bar at the Hole in the Wall and saw him passing behind her without so much as a second glance. That man walked like he’d never been afraid of anything and would never have to be. She turned to look at him in the real world, not in the mirror, thinking maybe it was the shadows or flashing lights from the tiny dance floor, or maybe simply the backwards, through-the-looking-glass reversal of everything that had made him stand out to her so clearly.

  Nope.

  It was still all him.

  Her grandfather had been a sailor in the Navy during World War II and for most of his life, and he’d never lost that sort of rolling lope of a man for whom the ground beneath him was never still. The man heading toward the pool table at the back of the bar didn’t walk quite that way, but there was something familiar in the stride, in the shift of his hips. In the way he looked neither to right nor left unless he was focusing his gaze on someone reaching out to shake his hand, and even then, he shifted his entire body so briefly, so intently, that it was clear very little could ever take him by surprise.

  And, Abbie reasoned as she signaled the bartender for another beer, she was probably full of seven different kinds of shit.

  Maybe she just wanted him to not be afraid of anything, she thought as she sipped cold, foamy beer and twisted in her stool to watch the man nod at the couple playing pool. Was he going to play? She watched him tip his cap with some sort of letter logo on it, a big OU. It looked like a giant Kosher symbol to her, which was so unlikely it had to be wrong. Out here in the middle-of-nowhere, Oklahoma, it was all boots and hats and worn denim jeans with big belt buckles, shirts with the mother-of-pearl snap-front buttons and sleeves rolled up to elbows. Even on the women. She looked down at her skinny jeans and ballet flats, her fitted t-shirt and cardigan sweater. Maybe if she wore a hat like his, a pair of shit-kicking boots, she’d never be afraid either.

  The bartender slid a basket of onion rings toward her along with a small plastic cup of some kind of spicy dip. It smelled so strongly of horseradish she had to blink and turn her head to hold back a sneeze, but her mouth watered in anticipation of the burn. She dipped a ring, thick with batter and grease and the size of her fist, into the sauce and took a bite.

  Damn, she thought with a sigh of ecstasy. That is some good dip.

  “You like it?” The bartender laughed and rapped the top of the bar with his knuckles. “It’ll grow hair on your chest.”

  “It just about seared my sinuses, that’s for sure.” Abbie gulped some beer and wiped her lips with a napkin. She gave the bartender a grin that felt a little too big, a little too bright. She was a little out of practice, but was nevertheless genuine and didn’t seem to scare him too much. She must be getting better at it. “Not sure if I need any hair on my chest, though.”

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  She shook her head. “I’m good for now.”

  Behind him, above the mirror, a flat-screen TV flickered and danced with pictures of products and services she’d never used or bought but could easily be convinced she needed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d watched television — cable had been one of the first things to go when she moved into her own place, and though she’d taken her share of the DVD collection, she’d never gotten around to getting a DVD player. Even in hotels she rarely turned on the television, having grown out of the habit of needing mindless background noise. When she’d still been paying for her smart phone, Twitter had provided her news, and if her tweet stream filled up too much with chatter about some subjects that had become incomprehensible to her because she wasn’t up on pop culture she simply tuned out for a few days. It had been months since she’d had a smart phone.

  Television, the great hypnotist. When her children had been smaller, Abbie had often needed to physically stand between them and the set in order to break the hold it had on their attention. Ryan had been the same way, gaze ensnared by infomercials and cartoons with the same sticky strength. Now Abbie found herself understanding, sort of, the allure. Watching the TV meant she didn’t have to think much about anything but the steady stream of images, the sound turned down so it beca