Wicked Games_A Reverse Harem Romance

by Kel Carpenter

  Rysten reached forward and started removing tops from dishes. My mouth watered instantly as the scent of Shrimp Pad Thai fell over me. “Is that what I think it is?” I asked, reaching for the tasty dish.

  “Shrimp Pad Thai, number five, from E-San,” Rysten smirked. It reminded me of the smile Allistair had when I told him the tea was perfect.

  “You’re the best,” I crooned between mouthfuls of steaming noodles. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, whatever storm was brewing within Julian became infinitely worse.

  All four of the Horsemen have the problem of wearing their power too loosely. I have grown to realize that is partially because they can’t help it. In the same way that my beast fights me, their power is simply too much to be easily contained. The fact that Rysten attempted to for my sake was sweet, and it was honestly somewhat frightening that he could even accomplish it. The other part of them, I believe, is that they have done it for so long that I don’t think they notice it.

  Unlike me, who was new to this whole power dynamic, they have been around for thousands of years. They’ve never had any reason to contain it.

  The problem was that it bleeds into me and colors my own perceptions. Much like it was doing right now.

  I clamped my mouth shut to keep from saying anything, but the damage was done. My good mood had gone sour. I placed a lid on my dinner and pushed it away. My elbows rested on the table as my hands fell together in a steeple. They both set down their forks and regarded me curiously.

  “Something wrong, love?” Rysten asked. The shuddering in my heart intensified. Blood roared in my ears.

  “Do we need to talk?” The question was aimed at Julian as a not-too-subtle hint for him to either say his piece or calm the fuck down.

  “Have you been outside this afternoon?” Julian responded. Was he purposely evading my question? He can’t be so stupid as to not see what I was getting at. Maybe him changing the topic was his way of saying he’d cut the shit out.

  “I came home right after work.” They locked eyes, and it didn’t take a mind reader to tell that they were engaged in a silent conversation. “Did something happen?” I asked slowly. Rysten sighed and turned away from his brother. He reached behind him, into his back pocket, and withdrew a folded-up piece of paper.

  “What’s this?” I asked. Rysten handed it over to me silently.

  “Open it,” Julian said.

  I ran my fingers over the fraying edges and slowly unfurled the single sheet of paper. Dread formed in my gut when there was nothing left but the final unfolding and my fingers stilled.

  What could possibly be in here that would make them both so melancholic?

  Only one way to find out.

  I opened the paper.

  And instantly understood.

  In large, bolded black letters: Justice for Josh.

  Accompanied by a picture of his face.

  But that wasn’t all.

  My face. And the picture she showed me several days ago. That picture had a date and time stamp and a website claiming to have more information underneath.

  She all but said I outright did it.

  Whatever it was.

  My fingers brushed over the creases in the paper, committing them to memory. I didn’t say anything while I allowed myself time to process this. Eventually I muttered, “Where did you find this?”

  “She has them up all across town,” Rysten replied softly. I didn’t want to see the pity in his eyes, but it was too late. Just as much as blame and self-loathing existed in Julian’s. Maybe I had misread Julian. Maybe not. Right now, it didn’t matter either way.

  “Am I going to be arrested?” I asked, the thought should have scared me more than it did.

  “No. Allistair has already taken the liberty to speak with the police on your behalf. You have an alibi, and because these pictures were illegally obtained, they aren’t admissible in court.” Rysten knew just the thing to say. He was so sweet. So kind.

  Maybe that’s why it was what he didn’t say that I heard the loudest.

  I won’t be arrested, but there is going to be blood to pay for this.

  “How did she even get this picture?” I continued. Ask questions. Get answers. That’s all I needed to do right now. Just one step at a time.

  “We don’t know yet. I’ve currently got a program running to hack into the club’s security system and see who accessed this video tape,” Rysten said.

  Again I nodded, because nodding was better than crying. Nodding was at least doing something. It meant I was at least trying to get answers and keep my life together.

  Crying meant I was falling apart, but these people... these humans—they weren’t worth falling apart for. Josh was dead. The damage was done. Yet somehow, it always came back to me paying the price.

  There is always a price. Isn’t that what the beast said?

  Was this my price for getting even? For choosing to end my own suffering? For making the choice to not be a victim, but instead a survivor?

  Whatever heartstrings I had left had been severed when John came to me. All that was left was the shallow beat of my own heart, the strength of my own limbs, and the fortitude of my mind to continue forward.

  To survive.

  My fingers wrapped around the paper, crushing it into a ball. My beast called upon the fire in my veins, and blue flames sprung to life. The paper blazed a brilliant cobalt blue, and then it was gone, leaving nothing but obsidian ashes behind. I rose from my seat and dumped the handful of ash in the garbage, washed my hands, and took my seat back at the rickety table I bought from Goodwill three years ago.

  I reached across the surface and unclasped the plastic top. The scent of Shrimp Pad Thai was no longer as appetizing, but I didn’t care. I was going to eat every damn bite.

  Because for the second time that week, I made the choice to not let this define me. The choice that it will not break me. The choice to not be afraid.

  I know who I am, and Kendall can paint this however the fuck she wants.

  I was done caring.

  Chapter 10

  I was ripped from a dead sleep by Moira’s ring tone, “Fergilicious.”

  “What?” I croaked. My mouth tasted like dragon’s breath.

  “Don’t come into the shop today.”

  I bolted upright. “Why? What happened?” I asked, kicking my feet out of bed. I flipped the speaker phone on and set my phone on the nightstand while I dressed in a hurry.

  “Kendall happened. I’m being serious, Ruby. Don’t come in. You don’t need to deal with this shit,” she sighed into the speaker. Moira didn’t wait for a reply. The line went dead.

  Fuck that. I was not sitting at home and making her deal with everyone like I was some fragile flower. I was Ruby Morningstar, damnit, but today the world could call me karma.

  I brushed my teeth and fed Bandit in record time before running out the door, only stopping to see if my shoes matched after I was in the car. My fingers shook as I gripped the steering wheel.

  I took a deep breath. You can do this.

  I was pulling out of the driveway within three minutes of the phone call. Halfway there I felt like I was getting stopped by what seemed like every red light in the fricken city.

  “For fuck’s sake, change already,” I growled. My complaining didn’t make it go any faster. After another ten agonizing minutes in my car, I was finally pulling into the lot behind Blue Ruby Ink. Despite the cold, my palms were sweating as I pulled the key from the ignition. I thrust the door open and raced down the alley, not stopping to catch my breath for one second. My heart pounded in my chest as I ran towards my store, stopping short when it came into view.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected to find, but a mob of protestors was not it.

  Fifty or sixty people were gathered out front, screaming terrible things at Moira as she attempted to rip all the flyers away from the glass wall. These weren’t just a few flyers either. They lined every inch of the front of my store, stuck to
the glass by rain. More sat at her feet, forming piles of mush at least half a foot tall. The crowd screamed nasty things at her. Called her a murderer and whore.

  And right there in the middle of it, was Kendall.

  Her white blonde hair was damp from the misting rain. She was dressed as the proper lady with her dress and sheer hose, despite the freezing temperatures. From this angle, I couldn’t see her face, but I could imagine the smug smirk on her lips. Or maybe it was the crying girlfriend that showed up today.

  I didn’t care.

  Beside her stood a woman with a microphone. Not a megaphone.

  That’s odd. Why would she have a microphone? Unless…

  A man stood a couple yards back with a massive video camera mounted on his shoulder. A news reporter. She was fucking interviewing with a news reporter, telling the world how I killed Josh. Or kidnapped him. Or tortured him.

  Honestly, after everything both of them have put me through, I wish I’d tortured him a bit longer. I wish that I had been the one to burn him alive. If I was going to be blamed for it, I may as well have committed the crime.

  Despite all, that wasn’t what broke me.

  It was when a someone threw a rock.

  They didn’t throw it at my store. Oh, no.

  They threw it at Moira.

  It was like the diner again, on the day that started it all.

  Except this was a thousand times worse. This time it wasn’t just my rage. It was the beast’s rage I channeled as well.

  “They must die. Nobody hurts what’s mine,” she seethed.

  “No. We won’t kill them. That’s too easy. I have a better idea,” I told her. My feet were sure and steady as I approached the rallying mob. I completely walked around it and right up to Moira. I threw the door open, feeling the crowd behind me start into a frenzy when they realized I had arrived. My best friend looked at me with tears in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. I pulled her with me inside and locked the door behind us.

  They have no idea who they’re messing with.

  If I was a different kind of demon, I would kill them all and be done with it. That was what my dark entity wanted after all.

  But I wasn’t a different kind of demon.

  I was Ruby Morningstar.

  And they would not break me.

  I guided Moira into my office and motioned for her to take a seat in my chair. She wobbled sideways and all but fell into it as the shock set in. In the other room, I grabbed a bottle of water and brought it back to my office, uncapping it and setting it on the desk in front of her.

  “Drink it,” I told her as I got down on my knees. Behind my desk I kept a safe. Most people would think that was where the money was, given that I was paid in cash quite often. Actually, it was where I kept a list of things in case of emergencies. One such emergency was in case we were ever robbed. I kept the money in an account that Moira managed, but the robbers didn’t know that. Like I’d keep that kind of cash around.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What I should have done the first time she crossed me.” Moira didn’t say anything when I placed the gas mask over my head and grabbed a small tank from the safe. I slung it over my shoulder and hauled myself to my feet. I placed the taser in Moira’s lap and closed the office door firmly behind me.

  “I’m going to need your help for this to work,” I whispered.

  “Make them pay.”

  I unlocked the door and stepped outside. People were already backing away, but not Kendall. Her back was to me, still interviewing on camera. She wouldn’t know what was coming until it was too late. I smiled faintly beneath the mask as I set the tank down a few feet from the door. Two or three broke away from the crowd in a vain attempt at running.

  The beast and I laughed together, because we didn’t need a switch or a trigger.

  We were the trigger.

  My eyes flicked over to the container, no bigger than a loaf of bread.

  And then it exploded.

  My ears rang with the start of a bad Archer joke about tinnitus. Just like the beast told me, she set it on fire, but no more. She was giving me the chance to take my pound of flesh in the way I wanted to, and for that, I thanked her.

  Dust and debris mixed with the particles of chloroform as the light mist carried them far and wide. One by one the rioters dropped like the dead. Falling flat on their faces. It was a terrible sight. Bad in a way that was almost beautiful. I stood amongst them with my gas mask on, rain dampening my sweatshirt, my aged converse sneakers soaked to my ankles from the puddles I ran through in the alley.

  It was a monumental moment for me as I stood in this place in-between. Me versus the world. Isn’t that the way it’s always been though? I was born a demon with two sides and raised a human to hate both of them. Oh, how the world loved irony.

  I waited in the rain for every single person in the lot to drop. The cameraman was the last to go, and I looked forward to watching the footage as bodies dropped around, standing against them like the murderer I was.

  If I wanted them dead, they would be. It was as simple as that.

  No amount of explaining would ever earn back my reputation. Not after this. I acknowledged that as I walked forward, ignoring the squelch of my feet in the water clogged shoes and squishy socks. Leaning down, I turned the recorder off and removed the media card. Bringing my foot down on top of the machine as I did.

  Honestly, my foot did very little, but it made me feel better.

  I pocketed the card and turned to Kendall.

  Her blonde hair was splayed across the dirty concrete. The ends were stained black and her clothes were speckled with mud, but she was otherwise unharmed.

  I took a deep breath through my nose, inhaling the dust and mildew that clung to the mask. This was it. The moment I made my mark.

  “They hurt Moira,” the beast reminded me. That was all she needed to say for me the grab the girl’s feet and start dragging her inside.

  It was going to be a long day, and I was just getting started.

  The skies let open sometime that afternoon, releasing a downpour that caused anything further than three feet away to fade into the nothingness. It was nice, having a small piece of quiet while I worked. I suspected it would not be the same after today, but I could worry about that tomorrow.

  For now, I was out for revenge.

  And I’d come to collect.

  Moira sat beside me on her favorite barstool, biting her nails as she watched.

  “There’s no going back. You know that, right?” she asked me for the seventeenth time. I nodded my head, as I brought the tip of the of the tattoo machine to Kendall’s face.

  She had spent nearly two months torturing me for something that wasn’t my fault. Most people would say I should be the bigger person. I shouldn’t respond. Just call the cops and let them deal with it.

  Here’s the thing about that.

  People like Kendall, they don’t care about the rules any more than I do. Her family has the police in their pocket. She’s been playing this game with me for long enough now that I realized she had no intention of getting me arrested. If I were arrested, then suddenly all of it goes away. She no longer has someone to blame, and without someone to throw under the bus, how could she possibly continue to play the victim?

  The simple answer is, she can’t.

  She needs me. She couldn’t continue to harass me, to start riots, try to pin a death or disappearance on me that she knows nothing about if I suddenly didn’t exist. Because if she did know something about it, she wouldn’t be here right now. She would have torn every flyer down herself if she knew what actually happened to him, because no one, not even her, would risk her own skin if she realized the things the Horsemen would do to people who hurt me.

  Josh got what he deserved.

  And now Kendall would, too.

  I was going to give her everything she ever wanted. I was going to make her face so unrecognizable between th
e carefully shaded wrinkles and artificially added unibrow, that people would give her the pity and attention she craved for years to come. She would be the beautiful twenty-something young woman that lost her face in a wicked game.

  A game of truths and lies.

  A game she should have played better.

  A game that I wasn’t going to lose.

  Not this time.

  The creases around her eyes now formed crow’s feet, even when she was at rest. Her cheeks were weak and sallow, age spots dotting her face. Her brows were constructed of a blend of white, blond, and browns, meant to not only match but to make sure that even if she had laser surgery to remove it—she would never fully be free. Not until her skin was truly old and wrinkled.

  Josh may have died by Rysten’s hand, but the world would do well to remember that there are some punishments worse than death. As a demon that grew up among humans, I’ve studied them long enough to know their weakness, understand what makes them tick, and ultimately—destroy them.

  Except I didn’t want to burn the world to the ground.

  I just wanted to get even.

  I placed the machine on the table beside us and dabbed at the fresh ink. Kendall’s once youthful face now looked like that of a ninety-year-old woman with a unibrow and wispy chin hairs to match. She would do her damnedest to remove it when she woke and saw what I’d done.

  I applied bandages to her face as gently as I would any other client. I even took the liberty of having Moira break into her car so she had a dry place to sleep while the chloroform wore off.

  How kind of me.

  “Can you help me move her?” I asked my green-skinned best friend. Moira’s shaking stopped shortly after I dragged the body in, and the suspicious over-calculating banshee demeanor was slowly setting back in.

  “I can’t really say no. We’ve already come this far,” she sighed dramatically. “Just so we’re on the same page: you’re the crazy one. I may scream and shit, but I’ve never done anyth—”