I remembered something Trey had said last quarter. He’d wondered if the fire hadn’t been an accident, if the senior Eldritch Club members had been planning something for a long time. At the time, I dismissed it because it seemed impossible – how could so many parents conspire to do something so evil? Looking at these documents, I saw the evidence of what we’d long suspected – that Vincent and the other parents had brought Ms. West to Miskatonic deliberately, three years before the fire.
I couldn’t say anything for certain. But I knew who might be able to. I flipped back through the hospital notes, searching for a name the might denote Zehra’s contact. The forensic pathologist, Dr. Deborah Pratt, had given a particularly chilling eyewitness statement when she’d found Hermia West in the lab at night, conducting experiments on cadavers. Beside her report, Zehra had stuck a Post-it note with an address and phone number and initials. This must be her.
Deborah Pratt. The name sounded familiar. I shuffled through the other papers until I found the list of Rebecca Nurse’s descendants. Sure enough, Deborah Pratt was one of the last names on the list, along with her younger sister Jessica. That can’t be a coincidence. This is all connected in some way, but how?
I leaned against the fridge, rubbing my eyes. What was I going to do now? I could go find this Deborah woman and tell her about the icehouse laboratory, and maybe she could figure out how to reverse whatever evil Ms. West had done to the students. But that didn’t solve the problem of the god under the gymnasium, or the Eldritch Club manipulating the world behind the scenes. Not to mention the fact that I didn’t exactly want to help any of the Miskatonic Prep students right now, especially not the ones who betrayed me.
Ayaz’s dark eyes flashed before me. How had I read him so wrong? He’d convinced me he cared about me. I’d lost my virginity to him, for fuck’s sake. In the end, he had been the one to betray me. How deep was the spell Ms. West had him under?
No. I couldn’t entertain the idea that Ayaz’s betrayal was a trick. I didn’t need that kind of hope clouding my judgment. He betrayed me just as everyone else in my life had betrayed me, and I’d fallen right into his trap. That was what happened when you allowed yourself to care about people. You became weak.
I held up two of my fingers. A tiny flame danced between them. I watched the shadows bend around it. I would never be weak again.
Chapter Seven
I slept in Zehra’s RV that night, although ‘sleep’ was a wildly generous word for staring at the ceiling while wild thoughts raced around in my head. I’d placed a knife from the kitchen drawer beside my pillow, but even that didn’t make me feel safe.
At some point, I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew I was back in the underground cavern of the god. Apart from its oppressive presence in its cage far below, I appeared to be alone. Flickers of sickly light played off the alien mineral veins crisscrossing the walls as I stepped out of the shadows and made my way to the edge of the platform.
I reached up, touching the ropes where they’d suspended Greg at Ms. West’s command. A cold hatred pulsed in the jute. These ropes had known so much pain.
Beneath my feet, the wooden boards creaked as they swelled against their bonds. The padlock jerked as the god rattled and railed against it.
This is a dream. None of it is real.
It was supposed to frighten me, but I wasn’t afraid. What could this god in this school do to me that it hadn’t already done? I wanted to fuck with them. I wanted to cause a little chaos.
I bent down and slid the bolt free.
The doors fell open, clattering against the platform. A shadow rushed forth to surround me. Darkness blanketed me, of the beginning of the universe. From inside the shadow, form and substance stretched from another dimension to rake at my flesh, rolling over my body, invading every pore and orifice. I longed to slink away, but I stood my ground.
You hurt me, it seemed to be saying, although there were no words, only a sensation of speech touching the edges of my mind.
“What are you?” I screamed into the hatred. “What do you want?”
I want what you want. You and I are the same.
“I’m nothing like you! I don’t steal the futures of innocent kids.”
I don’t understand—
A thump startled me from my dream state. I bolted upright, my breath catching in my throat as I remembered where I was. In Zehra’s RV, in the woods, with no cosmic deities present. I fumbled for my knife, my fingers closing with satisfaction around the handle as I listened hard. What was that sound?
The still night closed in around me. I dropped the knife. I must’ve imagined it. There’s no one…
Thump. Scrape… scrape.
Fuck shit fuck.
Someone… or something… was outside the RV. Right outside. I could hear breathing, heavy and hard. I palmed the knife handle again, sliding out of bed as silently as I could and flattening myself against the cabinets. My breath hitched as a shadow moved across the window, obscuring the square of pale moonlight.
A voice cursed as they tripped up over the stoop. A man.
It’s probably just a drunk trying to find his way to his RV in the dark, I told myself, but I didn’t believe it. The god’s presence still scratched behind my eyelids. I wasn’t safe anywhere, not even inside my own head.
Whoever it was, I wasn’t going to wait for him to come in and rape me. Or worse.
I crept as silently as I could toward the door. Zehra’s research I’d left spread everywhere muffled my steps. The man outside tried the handle, tugging it so hard the entire RV rocked, but the door remained locked. Idiot.
The man let out a grunt of defeat. His footsteps shuffled away, probably to try the window. I raised the knife above my shoulder and slid my hand across the door, turning the lock and pushing down the handle as silently as I could. With a click like a gunshot, the door unlocked. The shadow lurched toward the noise, and I threw the door open, barging out with knife raised and fire rising through my chest.
“Arrrrghh!” I wailed like a banshee, lunging at the man. He raised his hands to cover his face, dropping a satchel into the dirt. The moonlight caught high cheekbones and wide, terrified eyes. The knife froze midair, and I gaped.
Cowering under the window, wearing a black death metal hoodie pulled tight over a rumpled Derleth uniform… was Trey Bloomberg.
Chapter Eight
The knife clattered from my hand. Trey jerked back as the blade bounced down the steps. I managed to force air into my lungs long enough to form the words, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Hello to you, too.” Trey tried to shove his way past me into the RV. I blocked the door with my body, which meant he pressed himself up against me instead. My breath hitched as he sizzled against me, his fingers hot as they brushed the back of my hand. Even now, he could make me feel completely turned about.
Well, fuck him.
Trey was a revenant who wasn’t able to leave the school, which meant this wasn’t Trey. It was an apparition, or a trick of the god, or some new horror sent from Vincent and Ms. West to torment me—
I lunged for the knife, but Not-Trey was too fast, his fingers closing around my wrist and pressing it against the wall. Heat sizzled beneath his fingers, jolting straight down my arm to warm my core.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” he growled.
“Funny. You could’ve fooled me,” I shot back, but the words came out breathy, thick with lust. It smelled like Trey – fresh herbs and sweet cypress. It felt like Trey – hard and hot and immovable. I had so many questions, but my eyes fixed on those pouty lips, and I struggled to form the words.
“Hazel, it’s me.”
“You’re not Trey. It’s impossible.”
“Oh, I assure you, I’m me.” There was that familiar voice, thick with scorn but dripping with barely-concealed desire.
Focus, Hazel. This can’t be happening. Trey can’t be here. How is he here? How did he get outside the walls of
the school?
“Let me inside.” Not-Trey’s breath brushed against my ear. “I don’t want to risk anyone recognizing me.”
I weighed my options. I didn’t have the knife. Not-Trey had me pressed against the wall, and yet he was asking permission. Sort of. If he’d wanted to hurt me, he could’ve done some serious damage by now.
And Trey did come to me in my dreams, back at the Dunwich Institute. Maybe this was a dream. A very realistic, very lustful dream. I bit my lip and nodded.
Trey released my hand and stepped back, panting hard. I took in the sight of him – dressed in his Derleth uniform, usually immaculate but now torn at the knee and streaked with dirt. Twigs stuck out in all directions from his dark hair.
Questions burned inside my head. Fire sizzled in my veins. Who was I kidding – I wasn’t going to tell him to piss off. I stepped back into the RV and held the door open. Maybe-Trey picked up his satchel from where it had fallen and stepped inside, slamming the door shut behind him.
“Thanks for—” he started, but I cut him off.
“If you’re Trey, how did you get outside the walls of the school?”
Trey dropped his satchel on the RV’s tiny table. It made a heavy thump. He folded down the edges to reveal an enormous chunk of stone, engraved with a circular sigil about the size of a dinner plate.
“You cut this out of one of the caves?”
He nodded. “It was Ayaz who figured it out, although he doesn’t know it yet. He did a presentation for alchemy class about a magician who used a sigil to trap a demon inside. The magician then moved the sigil all over the world, bringing the demon with it so it other covens could use it in their rituals. I wondered if I moved the boundary sigils, I could extend the boundary of the school as far as I wanted.”
“Clever.”
Trey dared a smile.
“I didn’t mean you. I was talking about Ayaz.” I leaned against the wall and folded my arms. “It must’ve taken some serious muscle to chip out that sigil.”
Trey grunted. He held up his hand. I gasped at the lattice of scars across his palm and fingers. Hands that were usually smooth and soft, used to being waited on, now bore the marks of manual work. It was a sign of his desperation. “I’ve been working it free ever since I found you in your dream. I stole a chisel and hammer from the maintenance shed, but it took so long to walk out to the boundary I could only do a bit at a time before I had to head back to school.”
I touched the edge of the stone, feeling the bumps of the chisel marks beneath my fingers. My chest tightened in that way it did when I was around the guys, when one of them did something that might’ve been considered sweet if I wasn’t so completely fucked up.
I wasn’t the girl guys chisel sigils out of caves for.
But apparently I was. Because there was the sigil, and there was Trey fucking Bloomberg, standing in the RV in vivid Technicolor, and he smelled so good.
“Why did you come looking for me? I’d have thought the first thing you’d do once you were free was to go on a complete bender or apply for college.”
“Why did I come for you?” Trey rested a hand on the wall behind my head. His breath feathered my face. That fire inside me leaped and danced against my chest. “Because I heard Dunwich burned down and you’d disappeared. I had to see if you were okay, and I figured if you escaped you’d try to find Zehra. Fuck, Hazel. After everything we’ve been through, you still don’t trust me?”
His words pinched in my chest. I tried to slide out from beneath him, but his bulk blocked my path. “Zehra’s dead, and I just escaped from an asylum your dad threw me in. They were going to lobotomize me, and it was Ayaz that put me there – your best friend. I think I’ve earned the right to be skeptical—”
Trey’s lips pressed against mine, and any protests I’d been formulating died on my lips. I wrapped my arms around his neck, clinging to him. All those nights alone in Dunwich, I’d thought of this moment, of seeing him and Quinn and Ayaz again. And now… Trey’s lips on mine were achingly real. The moan that escaped his mouth tore through me like a forest fire.
This kiss… this kiss… I can’t think… I can’t… Trey pulled me under. I tore my mouth from his. He had me pinned against the doorframe. I couldn’t duck around him, so I bent my neck back as far as I could, breathing hard. My lips tingled, my body aching with heat for whatever he wanted to do to me.
For whatever I wanted to do to him.
He came all this way… for me. He chipped away at that stone so he could reach me.
“Does that answer your question?” Trey traced a line along my jaw.
“Not entirely.” I tugged him toward the bed. The fire inside me flared high, drowning out any last warning.
I had to know. I couldn’t explain it, but I needed Trey’s scarred hands on me. I needed those lips on mine, I needed to hear him moan with need again. Maybe with him, I could erase Ayaz’s betrayal from my mind.
We crashed down onto the narrow bed in a fury of limbs. Trey’s teeth scraped my lip. I tasted the tang of blood, but it only made me press against him harder, clawing at his body, trying to crawl inside him. The fire inside me longed to burn the clothes from his flesh, to destroy every barrier that held me from him.
I restrained myself, barely, tugging his hoodie over his head and moving my hands down his chest, tearing at the buttons on his rumpled shirt. He clawed at my clothes, dragging them from my body, his hands searing my bare flesh. Trey rolled on top of me. In the tiny space, our feet pressed against the wall. Hands and mouths and skin connected. All Trey’s hard corners came apart as he unleashed himself – the desperate boy, the reckless boy, the possessive boy.
More than anything, I wanted to be possessed by him.
He shoved his hands under my ass, pushing down my jeans and panties with a single swipe. Before I could do anything, Trey plunged his face between my legs. This was nothing like before, with Ayaz, who’d been kind and gentle. This was hot and needy, an attack on my clit with his tongue. I surrendered to Trey, giving myself over to the raw fury of the fire he stoked inside me.
Trey thrust two fingers inside me, pressing them against the wall, pushing me harder against his mouth as his tongue spelled out all the things he couldn’t say. The tension that had twanged between us ever since the day we met stretched tight, tugging us together, burning his heart against mine.
He added a third finger, stretching me, demanding more. He sucked my clit into his mouth, pounding the end with his tongue as he sucked. It was the most exquisite torture. The orgasm that tore through me rocked the RV on its wheels.
I slammed my fist into the wall as a scream escaped me. Trey stretched a hand up, trying to cover my mouth, reminding me that we were trying to stay secret, remain hidden. But I was gone, somewhere far away, where Vincent and Ms. West and the fucking Great Old God of dreams couldn’t touch me.
I was in Trey Bloomberg’s arms, and that was the only place I wanted to be.
Trey slid up the narrow bed, cupping my face in his hand once more. I tasted myself on his lips, sweet and tart and intoxicating. His other hand stroked my breast, pinching my nipple as the fire inside me begged for release. I fumbled for Zehra’s condoms. The thought flew through my head that Ayaz would be pissed if he found out his kid sister had a sex life, but I pushed it aside. I couldn’t think of Ayaz now.
I hooked my fingers into Trey’s boxers and slid them down. Trey’s icicle eyes watched me as I took in the sight of him… of all of him. He laughed low in his throat, this earthy growl that did strange and wonderful things to my insides.
“Your eyes are bugging out of your head,” he grinned.
“Um.” That was all I had. Trey was bigger than Ayaz, if that was possible. I tossed the condom at him. “Is that… even going to fit?”
“Sure.” Trey tore open the package and rolled it down with one hand, the other brushing my breast. His thumb slid over my nipple. I tried not to think about how experienced he was, about how many times he’d
done this before with girls like Tillie who knew what to do with a guy like him. He pushed my shoulder, turning me over so I was facing away from him, my back pressed against his chest, that enormous cock rubbing between my ass cheeks.
Trey held my face in his hands, bending me back so he could plunge his tongue inside my mouth. His hand slid down my thigh, fingers light on my skin as he hooked my leg over his. He adjusted himself and pushed inside me, hot and hard and urgent.
My back arched back against him. Trey plunged his hand between my legs, rubbing my clit as he thrust wildly. In minutes, another orgasm built inside me. Our hard edges ground against each other until pieces of our souls chipped off.
With a growl that was more animal than human, Trey’s body finally shuddered with release. He collapsed against me, his arm draped over my chest, his lips pressed against my shoulder.
I wanted to lie there forever. I wanted to pretend this was how it could always be – hot, needy sex, no pretenses, no evil school or Great Old God shadowing our happiness. But as my eyelids fluttered shut, I caught the faint glimpse of the stone on the table. The lines of the sigil glowed with faint blue light.
The glow of a flame.
Chapter Nine
“Can you see that?” I tried to sit up, but Trey held me down, wrapping his arms around my shoulders, his breath hot on my ear. He squeezed me against him, driving out the air in my lungs with the force of his hug.
Possessed: A reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 3) Page 5