Ignited: a reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 4)

by Steffanie Holmes

  I would never see the Kings again. I’d never feel Trey’s lips on mine or breathe in the scent of Ayaz or laugh at Quinn’s… Quinnness.

  We wouldn’t even see the same stars.

  I sucked in a breath.

  “Trey. Quinn. Ayaz. I love you.”

  To the god inside my head. I will join you.

  With a final burst of power, I slammed my arms down, breaking the grip of the Kings. The three of them crashed to the ground, their skin marred with a lattice of blue flame. I threw my arms wide and pitched myself toward the crack.

  Quinn cried, “Hazy, you don’t have to do this.”

  I opened my mouth to explain, to order him back, but all that rushed out was a torrent of screams that didn’t belong to me. The voices of a thousand victims. My chest ached as the voices tore through my veins – a sound that burned like fire.

  “You can’t have her!” Trey screamed. “She’s ours. Where she goes, we will follow.”

  My heart tore open. Behind me, Quinn let out a furious sob, and it took everything I had not to turn around again.

  I lifted a leg. It was like moving through treacle. I stretched out my hands. My fingers brushed the void, and the god’s love reached out to pull me in, to join our souls together for eternity—

  Something crashed into me from the side. I staggered against the onslaught. The god flailed to catch me, but I hit the earth first. Someone kicked me in the side. I opened my eyes just as the assailant flung herself off me and raced toward the void.

  Ms. West.

  She stood before the god’s mouth, her fingers trailing through the miasma. Black hair streamed behind her, inky and malevolence.

  “This is my reward,” she cried. “For decades I have toiled alone, my advances misunderstood by frail human minds, my experiments shunned. I was destined for greater things. I will be his star mistress.”

  Her mouth opened, and the god’s screams poured into her.

  “No,” I gasped, rushing at her, crashing my body into her and wrestling her hands down. “I have to save them.”

  “You don’t get this honor, Hazel Waite.” Her eyes flashed with malevolence. She shoved me back, and the connection between us snapped.

  As she fell into the god’s mouth, the voice in my head burned with desire.

  She issssss beautiful.

  He’d never seen her before, not as she wished him to see her. Until now – as his voice filled her and he found in the depth of her blackened soul a light that would guide him. A light made not of fire, but of ice.

  The darkness swallowed her. A light of a new color that still didn’t exist on our spectrum shot from the three pillars. The beams crossed in the sky, writing a symbol with the light of a star.

  Rebecca Nurse’s sigil. A map, charting their course across the cosmos.

  The ground bucked, throwing up jagged rocks.

  “Get out of the triangle!” I yelled at everyone and no one.

  Students scrambled over the chairs and headed for the trees, falling over each other in their desperate race for safety. I couldn’t feel my legs, but I must’ve been running, for Trey and Quinn and Ayaz formed a triangle around me.

  All I heard was the puff of their breath. All I felt were their hands on me. Skin to skin, warm, protective. Mine.

  We crashed into the trees and kept on going. “Get to the garden!” Trey yelled. Students passed the shout. Balls of fire burst around us, tossing ancient trees like Pixy Stix.

  Down, down, down, we slipped and skidded on the stone steps. Courtney screamed as she fell. Quinn picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, kept running.

  Rock and branches rained down on us. A crack appeared down the steps as the earth cracked and splintered. We huddled together under the rotunda, necks craned to the sky. The rocks tumbled from the cliff as the crack grew, spreading like a black web across the ground.

  The sigil grew and grew, its fire like a magnet pulling the pillars toward it. The earth roared as the top of the peninsula broke away. The pillars rose into the sky. Whole trees toppled off the edges. Beneath, a great cone of black stone stretched like the tail of a comet, its tip glowing with an eerie light.

  The god’s ship.

  A lump of solid, cyclopean stone, carrying Miskatonic Prep and all its evil away with it.

  As it rose high, high, high, it dragged the heat from inside me. The last vestiges of my power tore from my fingers, pouring into the three pillars to fuel the god’s assent. My flame would go with them on their star-journey.

  My legs failed me. My head swam. Faces danced in front of my eyes, but I no longer knew if they were real or imagined. A voice called my name, soft and sweet. “Hazel…”

  Dante’s voice.

  Calling me home.

  I closed my eyes. I gave myself over to the void of my own making. My power was spent. I had nothing left but love in my heart.

  Darkness took me.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  From the darkness emerged a light that was more than light – a light that gave off a shimmer that made my heart light and made all my problems a million miles away. In the back of my mind, something itched – a sense that I was supposed to be somewhere else, doing something important. But when I tried to grasp at the thought, it trickled through my fingers.

  Two figures emerged from the light, their forms resolving into limbs, into smiles that I thought I’d never see again.

  “Mom?” My breath came out in a wheeze. “Dante?”

  In reply, my mother stopped in her tracks, opening her arms for me. I threw myself at her, allowing her to envelop me in her embrace. Warmth radiated from her skin – the kind of warmth that soaked into my bones.

  “My baby girl,” she whispered into my hair.

  I pressed my lips against her neck, feeling the warmth of her skin, tasting the richness of her perfume – strawberry and lime, a zesty smell that always made me feel safe and loved.

  “We’ve been watching you,” Dante’s deep voice reverberated through my bones, grabbing my heart and squeezing it tight. “I saw you got a tattoo. Pretty shitty work – I hope you choose a better artist next time.”

  Laughing, I fell into Dante’s arms. His eyes crinkled at the edges, and my heart skipped. All the things I’d felt for him over the years rushed me at once – all that teen longing had gone, replaced by the love that underpinned it all.

  He grinned as he fist-bumped me.

  “I’m dead, right?” I looked around at the world made of light. “I mean, you guys aren’t ghosts. You’re chilling out in heaven. But then why am I here? I should be in the place with the more sulphuric interior decorating scheme.”

  My mother shrugged. “You could be in heaven, honey. Or this could be the lack of oxygen messing with your brain. But I’m holding you again, so let’s not waste a moment questioning it.”

  She crushed me to her chest, and my heart cracked open. She was right – to hold her again, smell her familiar scent, feel her arms squeezing me… it was all that mattered.

  Only…

  I pulled back, studying her beautiful face beaming with love. “Why do you still love me? Don’t you know what I did? I’m the reason you’re here. I’m your—”

  I choked on the word murderer.

  “Hazel Waite, you listen to me.” Mom wagged her finger at me in mock annoyance. “You’re my daughter, and that’s what you’ll always be to me. This was not your fault. Dante and I… we knew what we did would hurt you, but we did it anyway. Because our lives were so shitty that to grab on to one moment of happiness was worth all the pain.”

  “We’re sorry ‘bout that,” Dante grinned.

  “You can’t… you can’t apologize after I—”

  Mom gave me one of her stern looks, and I snapped my mouth shut. “No more. You can’t carry around this anger – not for us, and certainly not for yourself. You’ve been given something beautiful, and I expect you to enjoy it.”

  I shook my head. “You’re wrong. You sit up her
e in heaven or wherever the fuck, but back on earth there are consequences. I killed you. I have to answer for my crimes. That’s the only way I’ll be free of the guilt.”

  “Have you not answered for them already?” Dante planted his lips against mine.

  His kiss was pure light, so different from my King’s, whose lips bore the scars of their inner darkness.

  The only thing was… I needed that darkness.

  Dante’s light was not what I wanted any more. If his kiss was meant to draw me closer, then it did the exact opposite – it closed the door forever on what we had. I loved him still, but not in that way.

  He pulled back, and his smile told me that was exactly his plan. “Goodbye, Hazel. Or should I say, Hazy? You’re going to be amazing.”

  “She already is.” My mother’s smile faded at the edges as her face melted into the light. A ringing sounded in my ears as she drew away, as the light pulled me back, back, away from them. “I love you, darling.”

  I stretched out my arms to her, but she was already far away.

  “Oh, and Hazy?” Dante called after me, his voice quiet against the roar of the light.

  “Yeah?” The light pushed in around me, flooding my veins. I could barely see him anymore. My head throbbed, and a pleasing numbness started in my fingers, spreading down my arms, toward my heart.

  “Don’t eat all the bacon.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but the numbness closed around my heart, and my flame became the light.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “Wakey, wakey, lazy Hazy.”

  A voice called me back from the white void. A dream? I had a sense that dreams didn’t belong in the place where I was, but that voice kept tugging. My mother’s face faded back into pricks of light. Stars sprinkled across my vision, even though my eyes were closed.

  I opened one eye, then the other. Oh, this was so much better than a dream.

  Quinn’s face hung above mine, his lips curled into a shit-eating grin.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but he covered it in his. Talk about the kiss of life. Quinn’s lips on mine shot electricity straight into my veins. I felt invincible, like I could leap a tall building in a single bound or run a marathon or something.

  Well, maybe not a marathon. My head was throbbing something awful. But I could at least get out of… wherever we were.

  Quinn pulled away, knitting his fingers in mine. He had the same idea. “Come with me if you want to live.”

  I burst out laughing. It felt good to laugh.

  We crawled out from beneath the rubble. As the haze cleared, I made out the other students, coughing as they pulled each other free of the collapsed rotunda. Two faces stopped my heart – Trey and Ayaz, beaming at me. I collapsed against the guys. Hands roamed my body, squeezing me, probing me, checking I was alive. Every caress lit my veins, but the fire that burned there had no otherworldly power behind it. It was just pure, old-fashioned, totally normal – an utterly human love.

  I’m alive.

  “Hazy, Hazy, Hazy,” Quinn murmured my nickname over and over, like a mantra. Like a spell. Ayaz buried his lips into my hair while Trey’s arms circled us all, an immovable force against the world.

  “Help me stand,” I groaned.

  Hands lifted me. Not just the Kings, but others. Loretta on my left, a long cut down one side of her face. Greg on the other side, his white-blonde hair streaked with dirt. Behind him, Andre and Sadie, steadying us all. Zehra’s beautiful smile peeked in over their shoulders, as well as Deborah’s concerned features.

  “Hey, Hazel,” Zehra grinned. “Deborah and I decided to stop in to witness the lift-off.”

  I hung between them all, letting their love and relief wash over me. Time had no meaning in this embrace. Slowly, all around me, more students crawled over to join us, crushing me under the weight of their freedom.

  “Are we alive?” Courtney asked. A bruise darkened her chest from where the bullet had penetrated. Luckily, she’d already mostly healed before the god took away her immortality.

  “I propose a test.” Ayaz lifted a sliver of rock and drew it across his wrist, leaving a thin cut in his skin. After a moment, blood trickled from the wound, the red lurid against the dusting that coated all of us.

  We stared at that cut, a hundred silent prayers to a departing deity swirling in the air around us.

  The wound did not close. Ayaz’s body was no longer immortal – the god had gone and taken his healing power with him. The only thing that would heal Ayaz now was time. And love.

  As the realization rippled through the crowd, students whooped and hollered, and all the hugging began anew.

  Trey and Quinn steadied me as we picked our way back up the cliff, first collecting our bags of cash and passports from the mouth of the secret passage where we had them ready. The staircase had been obliterated and the shape of the cliff much changed. Where the grotto had once been was now a pile of rubble, which we used as a staircase to scramble up. I was surprised at how intact some things still were. There were still trees, although many of the rocky protrusions had been smoothed over. The peninsula, it appeared, had a few extra angles and dimensions, long-hidden beneath a facade of normalcy.

  The woods ended on the edge of the school field. We stepped out of the shade of the trees and beheld an incredible, eerie sight.

  Ayaz swore. Quinn burst out laughing. Trey’s hand squeezed mine so hard my knuckles cracked.

  I’d expected a fiery pit, or the entire peninsula to have collapsed into the sea. To be fair, there were a few fires dotted here and there across the lawn, as well as some scattered shards of the black stone pushed up through the field.

  But apart from these, the school grounds were exactly as we’d left them – the concrete drive snaking into the trees. The old fountain. The playing fields and hedges of rose bushes. Trees dotted the edges. Everything was exactly as it was.

  Except for the Miskatonic Preparatory buildings, which were nowhere to be seen.

  Gone were the stone pillars and gargoyles upon gargoyles. Gone was the house of nightmares, the center of a wheel of horror and violence that had turned for centuries.

  I kicked off a boot and took a cautious step forward, allowing my toes to sink into soft grass before I pushed my weight down, not certain it wasn’t a mirage.

  The ground held me. It was all real. It was as if Parris’ home had never existed.

  “Where…”

  I turned to Ayaz. If anyone could fathom what had happened here, it was him.

  “Not being an expert…” Ayaz rubbed the stubble that dotted his jawline. “Is it possible that the god’s ship didn’t entirely exist within our known universe? When it left, it only took what belonged to it, and so the house is gone but not the land that was always part of the earth. Something like that.”

  I shrugged. It was as good a reason as any. Frankly, I didn’t care. Miskatonic Prep was gone forever, and that was good enough for me.

  “What happens now?” Courtney said.

  I leaned back in the grass, relishing the tickle of each blade against my skin. It was such a luxury to just look at the sky.

  “As soon as I can lift my legs of my own accord, we’re walking into Arkham and going our separate ways. You all have your new identifications, and we’ll share out the money. You know what to do – get the fuck out of here before the FBI descends, and make a new life for yourselves. Whatever you do, don’t follow me, because I’m turning myself over to the police.”

  “You… what?”

  I sat up, meeting the eyes of my three guys. Quinn looked completely confused. Ayaz’s dark eyes shone with new fear. But Trey… his eyes narrowed with realization. He knew exactly what I was thinking.

  “What happened here today doesn’t erase the past. I accepted the invitation to Derleth Academy in part because it enabled me to continue to run from my guilt. But I’m not running anymore. I committed a crime. I can’t go back and erase that, so I need to accept responsibility for it.�
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  Quinn shook his head. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”

  I shook my head. “This is my choice to make. I—”

  Sirens screamed along the driveway, cutting me off.

  A hollow laugh escaped my throat. They’d beaten me to it. Of course, the universe found a way to take even that choice away from me.

  At least twenty police, emergency vehicles, and state troopers pulled onto the field. Men and women clad in black kevlar leaped out of the back of an Army vehicle and fanned out around the perimeter, advancing on the spot where the school had once been, machine guns raised.

  Oh well, if you can’t beat ‘em…

  Grinning, I waved at our visitors.

  A man in a dark grey suit walked over to us. “I’m Agent Anderson. I’m guessing you’re students at the school. What happened here? Where did the buildings go?”

  “Uh…” Quinn paused. “Sinkhole?”

  I couldn’t help it. I broke down laughing. Beside me, Ayaz’s stomach rumbled as the laughter caught on, then came Trey’s chortle. All four of us rolled on the grass, clutching our stomachs as tears rolled down our cheeks. The laughter caught, and the entire school broke down into uncontrollable giggles.

  A fucking sinkhole!

  “Is something funny?” Agent Anderson demanded.

  “I think they’ve had a terrible fright.” His partner squatted to peer at Courtney as her shoulders shook in uncontrollable mirth. “They might be delirious. Get the paramedics over here. All these kids should be thoroughly checked out.”

  “I think you need to get that sinkhole checked out.” I wiped my eyes. My stomach hurt from all the laughing.

  It felt good to laugh. It felt like I hadn’t really laughed in a long time.

  Paramedics rushed over, dragging stretchers and medical kits. They sank down in the grass, talking to the students. Agent Anderson fixed me with a laser stare. “They’ll take you to the hospital and get you checked out. After that, the FBI wants to have a word with you all. Especially you, Hazel Waite.”