“We’ve got a bit of time to kill before we meet your shady friend.” Quinn turned down a side-street. My nails dug into the seat as I recognized the apartment blocks looming over us. “What do you do around here for fun? Apart from stealing cars and buying weed, of course. Maybe we should go back to that ice cream place—”
“Pull over,” I demanded.
“Why? There’s nothing here apart from a bunch of ugly apartments and that abandoned lot. Or did you—hey!” Quinn yelled as I leaned over his seat and jerked the wheel. He slammed on the brakes and the car shuddered over the curb and came to a stop in front of an enormous pile of garbage dumped in an abandoned lot.
I shoved the door open, kicking mangled beer cans and burnt car parts out of the way. Quinn slid out from behind the wheel, his eyes wide as he took in everything – the garbage, the concrete apartment blocks rising on either side, the ring of soot marring the remains of cinder block walls.
Trey slid out of the passenger seat, his brow wrinkling as he lifted his foot. Something brown smeared across the expensive leather of his brogues.
Quinn kicked a can across the lot. “Hazy, why are we here?”
Ayaz came up behind me. His eyes burned holes in my back. He slipped his fingers in mine and squeezed.
He knew. Of course, he’d be the first to figure it out.
I opened my mouth to explain, but I couldn’t find the words. Quinn kicked his can across the lot while Trey used a stick to lift away some of the weeds from the foundation ring. I heard Trey’s intake of breath, and I knew he’d figured it out, too. It was obvious from the charred earth and the household debris choked with weeds what this was.
My old home.
The one I burned down in a fit of rage. A funerary pyre for the first two people who ever loved me.
“Fuck, Hazy.” Quinn’s can skittered away. He dropped his eyes to the debris at his feet. He’d dislodged a wooden box with one corner rotted away. The lid fell open on rusted hinges, spilling out damp, crumpled photographs.
The foundation ring had held up a block of eight apartments, five unoccupied and the other neighbors out for the evening when I burned the place down. Our apartment was on the top floor, which was why the firefighters couldn’t get to my mother in time. The objects that survived could have come from any of the rooms, and yet Quinn had laid hands on that box almost immediately.
My mother loved to print out photographs from her phone. She’d often take her dollar tips down to a place in central Philly that had a machine, and she’d come home with a whole stack. We used them to decorate the apartment walls, changing them out as often as we liked. She kept her favorites in a wooden box.
Quinn picked up the stack, his hands trembling as he fanned out the images. Trey and Ayaz crowded around.
They were all of me – me as a toddler, dressed up and posing in some of Mom’s clothes, my tiny feet dwarfed inside a pair of red pumps. Me grinning from the swing in the playground, and striking a pose in the doorway of the treehouse. Dante and I when we were eight years old, wearing birthday hats and big smiles, in front of a cheap ice cream cake.
Mom and I – our smiles identical – sprawled out on top of a pile of cushions in a blanket fort we made in our bedroom. The lump in my throat burned as I swallowed.
I will not cry. I will not cry.
“So that’s what love looks like.” Trey’s voice trembled. He held out the picture to me. I took it in shaking fingers.
For the first time since Deborah had told me about Mom’s past, I looked into the eyes of the woman in the picture and I saw her, truly saw her. She had fled hell itself and carved out a life with me in this place. And maybe to people like Trey and Quinn, our life looked like a nightmare, but it truly wasn’t. She made it wonderful.
She did everything for me.
Quinn handed me another picture. And here’s Dante. He’d been a part of our lives since I was five years old. In and out of foster homes, used by adults for money, for drugs, he felt safe with us, and there were very few places where Dante was safe. Mom was broken and Dante was broken, and both of them were desperate for love, for belonging. Mom had so much love to give.
And although I wasn’t privy to this secret between them until it was too late, I could see how it had happened – in the moments around me, where I was too focused on being strong, on believing that I didn’t need anyone. They were both falling – why should they not crash into each other?
I shoved the pictures into my pocket and picked my way around the perimeter, taking in the details. It was less than a year since I’d watched this building burn, but it felt like forever, like another lifetime. No one had cleaned up the site after the fire. Looters would already have picked through the debris for anything of value – I could see the faint shapes of bootprints impressed in the ash. But other things, useless things, stuck out of the ruins – bits of broken crockery from the mismatched mugs in our kitchen. The aerial from our shitty little TV. Mom’s jazz records melted into a puddle of strange shapes.
My fingers slid through the ash, pulling out something that made my breath catch.
A drawing.
Coated in dirt, crumpled and torn at the corner, but intact. How it had survived fire and rain and looters, I didn’t know. It had found its way back to me.
I remembered the image like I’d seen it only yesterday. It was the first thing Dante ever drew for me, when he was about ten. He was a great artist even then. I hung this over my bed and it stayed there until the fire.
Three stray cats sat on top of a rusting swing set – one black, one tabby, one slinky and grey. All rendered in colored pencils. The grey one held a mouse by its tail between her teeth, while the other two batted at it with tiny paws, their tails curled over each other, forming a heart.
Mom. Dante. Me.
Family.
Ayaz took the image from my fingers and held it up to the dim light. “He had talent.”
I nodded. I knew if I tried to speak, I’d burst into tears.
I lay the picture flat on the backseat of the car, and we picked our way down the slope at the rear of the property, which led to the rusting playground where I swung and slid, and later, Dante and I laid in the treehouse and smoked weed and wished on the stars to be anywhere but here.
Careful what you wish for.
The treehouse was still there. Rough wood jabbed my skin as I flung myself up the ladder and slumped into a dark corner. I held my head in my hands, trying to force back the memories. It was too much, coming at me like a freight train. How am I supposed to deal with this?
A face appeared in the doorway. My mind saw Dante – I was so used to his face that I couldn’t fix on anyone else.
But it was Ayaz. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. He climbed up beside me, his back resting against the wall. He stretched out his legs and stared at his shoes.
“I’m sorry we destroyed your journal,” he said.
That journal the Kings stole from me and tore up was ancient history, but those words… they opened the waterworks.
Tears fell thick and fast. I cried for all the things I hadn’t yet cried for. Because I missed my mother. Because I missed my best friend. Because in a moment of weakness I’d lost them both. And I was about to lose my Kings, too.
Warm lips pressed against my eyelids, kissing the tears away. “Hazy, what can we do?”
My eyes flew open. Without me noticing, Quinn and Trey had climbed up into the treehouse. Quinn knelt in front of me, studying my face with a mixture of awe and concern. Trey bent his body awkwardly around the door, his long legs dangling outside.
They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to.
Quinn bent forward, his lips brushing mine. “I know we can’t take the pain away,” he whispered. “But can we at least give you another happy memory of this place?”
I had promised myself that the night of the party was my last taste of them. I had to make a clean slate so when the time came, I could say goodby
e. But as Trey kissed a line of fire along my collarbone and Quinn’s hands slid between my thighs, I didn’t have the strength to refuse.
Ayaz bent my face to his, and his lips sought mine. This kiss wasn’t one of hunger – it was something deeper. Ayaz understood things about me the others never could. He’d been a stranger to their world at first, as I’d been a stranger when I first came to Derleth Academy. He had his own locked box of mixed memories that would take a whole lifetime to sift through.
Three Kings propped me up as I confronted my past. I wanted to be there with them when they faced theirs, as they would again and again in their new lives. I wanted it more than I’d wanted anything ever before.
Bad girls like me never get what we want. We get ashes and dust.
Tears streamed down my cheeks. I pulled back and tried to wipe them away.
“You can cry,” Trey whispered, his fingers catching the tears running down my cheeks. “Crying is not weak, Hazel. Your love and your pain make you strong.”
Trey’s words seared across my soul. I swallowed down a sob that threatened to collapse me as Trey turned my head to his. His kiss spoke of the places in his heart that were also burned out and destroyed by his own hand. My mirror.
Trey saw himself in my ashes and dust. I’d ruined everything I touched until I met him. He’d done the same. He longed to rebuild together. His languid kiss dripped with promises and plans for a future he had no idea didn’t exist.
My tears flowed freely as Quinn yanked down my panties and pressed his lips between my legs. He raked his fingers along my thigh, cutting me to pieces and fitting me together again. His amber eyes met mine as he circled his tongue around my clit, piling fuel on a fire that had ignited the very first day we met.
Ayaz ran his hot tongue down the curve of my neck. As he bent to kiss my collarbone, his nazar pendant touched the bare skin on my throat.
Quinn thrust a finger inside me. His teeth scraped across my clit, arcing molten pleasure through my core.
As the pleasure rose inside me, crashing against the pain, Trey turned my hand over, his fingers knitting in mine. He pressed his tongue to the scar on my wrist.
I came apart under their touch, ashes and star-dust hovering over the treehouse before returning to myself.
In the remnants of my former life, I screamed through an orgasm, not caring who heard me.
We had to scramble into the car to make it to the drop in time. Quinn was the one who took the money inside the abandoned railway station, the doors swinging shut behind him. I bit my nails down to the quick, bracing myself for the gunshot I felt certain was coming. But he came out the same doors a few moments later, whistling a tune as he swung a new duffel bag into the car.
“Got ‘em.” Quinn tossed the bag into my lap. Trey gunned the engine. I upended the bag. Passports spilled out – hundreds of them, each one containing the photographs we’d taken at school and the fake names each student had chosen. They looked perfect (they’d better, for the money we paid) but it was hard for me to tell – I’d never needed a passport before.
Ayaz held up his passport next to his face. “How do I look?”
“As dapper as always,” I said, busying myself with sorting through the pile so I wouldn’t have to look at his new name. AYAZ WAITE. My clit still throbbed from the orgasm they’d given me. I felt dangerously close to throwing open the door and hurling myself across the freeway.
I can’t lose it now.
I had to take every moment that was given to me, savor my last taste of freedom.
Because I knew something they didn’t. In my lap were enough passports for all the Miskatonic students, for the maintenance staff, for Greg and Andre and Loretta. I’d offered one to Zehra, but she already had a stash in some secret location down in Mexico.
There was no passport in this bag for me. No new beginning awaited me on the other side of the god’s embrace.
My life ended as soon as we set the god free. Because I was like him – I was a murderer. And I had to face the consequences.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Our drive back to Arkham was subdued. Nothing like visiting the ashes of your old life to ruin a jovial road trip.
Trey took the wheel most of the way. Apart from a hairy incident involving a squirrel, he seemed to have a decent grasp of the road rules even after twenty years. Of course, he applied his usual intense focus to the task, refusing to turn the stereo on even though Quinn begged.
I spent the entire trip back snuggled into Ayaz’s arms, silently turning over my own memories. All I’d wanted to do was find a way to erase them. I’d stamped them down so that I didn’t have to face what I did, but they were all I’d carry with me into the great beyond. I needed to hold them close, even the ones that brought me pain.
Ayaz was right – pain made me strong. And I’d need all the strength I had left for what I was about to do.
When we passed the turnoff to the town of Innsmouth, I texted Deborah to let her know we were twenty minutes away. She sent back a smiley face.
We pulled into the parking lot of the motel. Deborah’s lights blazed, her door hung open, swaying slightly in the breeze. Odd, considering how nervous she was about someone watching her when we were here yesterday.
Yet, as we slid out of the car with the bag of passports, she didn’t step out to greet us or tell us to shut the door. The dogs didn’t bark as we approached. Goosebumps crawled along my arms. Something’s wrong.
Maybe she’s just taken them for a walk. But then why leave the door open—
No. Something was definitely wrong. There was a vibe, a trill that sang in the air like a bowstring pulled taut. The Kings felt it, too. Ayaz and Quinn moved close to me, building a wall of broad shoulders and tight muscles around me. Trey flattened himself against the door and peered inside.
“It’s been trashed,” he whispered. “There’s no one there.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
This had to have just happened, because Deborah sent me that text.
Unless they’ve got her mobile phone.
Double fuck.
All the fucks.
The fear rose inside me, overpowering my common sense. I elbowed my way through the guys and burst through the door. “Deborah?”
I took in the carnage – the coffee table overturned, a smashed vase on the floor, a chair in splinters in the corner. The only sign of Deborah or the dogs was a dark smear of blood across the blanket on the dog-bed.
Trey lifted a corner the blood-soaked blanket.
“No.” I reached out to stop him.
Too late.
The blanket slipped from Trey’s hand, and he staggered back, his face pale, his jaw tight with horror.
Roger lay on his back, one paw cocked in the air, the other disappearing under a spray of blood and gore. Fresh blood still bubbled from the wound in his chest.
“Shit.” Quinn grabbed the blanket from Trey’s frozen fingers and threw it back over the poor dog. Trey looked like he was going to be sick. Hot rage burned inside me. Roger had done nothing to deserve that. Nothing.
There was one person I could think of sick enough to kill an animal without a second thought. And he’d been in this room, perhaps only moments ago.
And he’s got Deborah.
Ayaz clamped a hand on my shoulder, his voice taking on the authority of Trey’s. When his brother was incapacitated by grief, Ayaz stepped into his place. “Hazel, the bedroom.”
His words snapped Trey out of his stupor. I followed Ayaz’s gaze across the room. The bedroom door had been shut. It had always been wide open when we visited. Blood smeared the handle.
Bile rose in my throat as I imagined what I’d see on the other side.
A hand squeezed mine. Trey. He stood beside me, his back straight, his eyes clouded with his silent rage. He gripped the iron. He nodded, once. Whatever was inside, we’d face it together.
I grabbed the handle.
Turned.
Blood soaked my fi
ngers.
Whose blood? Whose?
I shoved the door open.
The lights were off. Before my eyes could adjust to the gloom, the barrel of a gun swung from nowhere and pointed directly at my face.
The lights flicked on.
The gunman’s face leaped into view. Quinn’s father, Damon Delacorte, although much aged, his eyes and mouth drooping. He licked his lips like he was about to devour a juicy steak. A second man I didn’t recognize held another gun to Trey’s face.
Vincent Bloomberg sat on the edge of the bed, his cruel lips twisted into a smile. “Hello, son.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Vincent’s eyes and his thick, dark hair were the only part of him that resembled the cool businessman who’d first shown up at Miskatonic Prep. Papery skin sagged over his bones, his back hunched and his fingers curled and struggled to grip. Black patches marred the skin on his neck and hands – the remnants of a flame I’d never regret. I read in one of Zehra’s updates that he’d been having extensive plastic surgery to rebuild his physique after a mysterious fire at his residence. Apparently, they hadn’t got to his face yet because he still had the visage of a hideous old man. His outer appearance was beginning to mirror the monster within.
“That weapon can’t kill me.” Trey kept his voice placid, even, concealing the rage beneath it.
“No, but it will mess up that pretty face of yours for graduation. And you can’t say the same for your little girlfriend.”
The guy in front of Trey waved the gun just over his shoulder. “Back up, boys,” he said to Quinn and Ayaz. I heard them shuffling behind me, but I didn’t dare turn around.
“You had to know I’d discover your secret.” Vincent shifted aside, and I saw Deborah – her hands tied to the bed, her mouth gagged with a dog toy, her eyes wide and terrified. Sitting between her legs was the open duffel bag filled with the students’ money.
Vincent lifted out a stack of bills and waved them in Trey’s face. “You must think I’m an idiot. I’ve had an alert set on your credit card ever since you entered that school. Last quarter it pinged for the first time in twenty years – at an ice cream store some forty miles from Arkham. I assumed Hazel Waite stole the card during her escape. By the time my team arrived at the shop, they could find no trace of her, or you. Imagine my surprise when it pinged again, only this time to withdraw a large sum of money. I thought to myself, who would be stupid enough to continue to use that card? My son, of course.”
Ignited: a reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 4) Page 23
