Ruin: A Reverse Harem Dark Fantasy Vampire Romance (Fire & Blood Book 1)

by Alexa B. James

  “I was running, so I’d say… I could go quite a bit slower if I’d wanted to.” I shrugged, trying to come off as nonchalant, but my gut was squeezed into a hard knot, and I felt like throwing up—even though I hadn’t done that since the last time I’d endured my own grog.

  Ash’s brown eyes narrowed at me, and he stood slowly and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you feeling so fucking guilty, Ruin? What kind of situation did you get us in now?”

  Fuck.

  Sometimes, I thought that the bond that connected Ash, Death, and me was the best thing that ever happened in my life. After losing everything and everyone I’d ever cared about, suddenly I had a connection with Ash and Death in a way that was closer than family. We were a pack—bound by our souls. But right now, I wanted to sucker punch Death for connecting all three of our emotions so we couldn’t feel a damn thing without the other immediately feeling it too. It was inconvenient as hell when I wanted to keep anything from them.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Death, who didn’t even seem aware that Ash and I were standing a foot away. He glowered at the street like it had personally offended him. No anger fed through our bond, so the guy was probably just thinking very hard about something.

  “So… I might have…” I winced as I turned back to Ash, “Dropped our last note in the middle of the throne room… and I may have done it on purpose.”

  “Why the fuck?” Ash growled as his eyes widened.

  I winced again and held up my hands. “I was thinking--”

  “Thinking? Do you know how to do that? Because sometimes I wonder, Ruin,” Ash snarled.

  “Well, that’s going a bit far. Who doesn’t love a challenge?” I patted Ash on the back.

  Hot rage fed from Ash so thick I could swear that I tasted smoke. “So, you thought that completing our mission and escaping the dome alive wasn’t hard enough, and you decided to put a couple more deathtraps in our way?”

  “Can you just hit me already?” I pointed at my chin. “That way, you’ll be less angry, and I’ll feel less guilty, and we both win.”

  Without hesitating, Ash pulled back his fist, but Death stepped between us. I hadn’t seen or heard the big guy move, and I had good fucking hearing and could usually sense Death. But then, no one heard Death coming—that was what made him so deadly—one of the many things that made the guy so deadly.

  “Not here. Not now. You can kick Ruin’s ass tomorrow when we’re safe.” Death immediately fell into a sprint, and, after Ash shot me a glare that clearly said that tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough, he fell into a run. We halted at the end of the alley, and Death lifted his head and sniffed the air. “I don’t see or smell vampires. There might be several if they’re hiding their scent downwind, but I doubt that they’d take us on with those odds.”

  He said “us,” but I had no doubt that seven vampires would feel confident taking Ash and me on. I could take seven if they came at me one at a time or perhaps two at a time if my luck kept up. Ash could do the same. Death could kill twice that number and not break a sweat.

  The first time that King Razor tried to kill Death, he sent thirty warriors after him. He didn’t make that mistake again.

  “As fuck-head delivered our address to the king, the warriors are probably already waiting in our room for us,” Ash grumbled as all three of us tucked our hair into black caps.

  Ash took one glance up and down the road, and then we headed out into the crowded street. There wasn’t anything that we could do to make ourselves appear human anymore. The tallest humans stood at about at the height of our ears. But most of the residents glanced our way and looked away. They were used to vampire warriors coming in and out of these places. The residents were probably accustomed to seeing royals, too, when the wealthiest vampires were looking for a less protected and regulated brand of feeding.

  Low boiling anger rose at the thought, and I pushed the images that flashed through my mind away. I’d seen enough of the aftermath of those types of feedings to last a lifetime. The queen had us run her errands at home as well, and there were bad vampires in Seattle Dome too, only there, they actually saw consequences for their actions.

  Our room was as empty as we’d left it, but a layer of grime clung to the floor, interrupted by dozens of boot marks. The toilet was clogged with something unmentionable, and the whole space smelled like something crawled in here and died. It stunk like fucking shit. Damn. And, I invited a woman who lived in a fucking palace and wore shoes more expensive than anything I’d ever owned in my entire life into this fucking hovel.

  Ash grabbed his pack from where he’d set it in the corner. “We’re leaving with the train. It’s our best chance of making it out tonight without having to fight our way to Seattle.” He headed back to the door and glanced over his shoulder, brow furrowing. “Let’s go… Death, Ruin… what’s the matter with you?”

  Death shook his head, and wisps of his white-blond hair fell free of his dark cap. “I’m helping you with the mission, but I’m not leaving until one minute before the dome turns crimson.”

  “Can I ask why?” Ash pinched the bridge of his nose as his palpable frustration thrummed through our bond.

  Death rubbed his knuckles under his chin as his dark eyes looked far away. “I need to take care of something.”

  That was as much as Ash would get out of Death, and clearly, Ash knew it too, because he wheeled on me. “You’re fucking coming with me out of here. I know he’ll make it out alive without me, but you need me watching your back.”

  “The thing is….” I clicked my tongue, wondering how I could put this without getting my nose broken… again. I decided just to break it to him. “Well, I’m coming back here after the mission is complete too.”

  Ash threw his bag to the floor. “You want to tell me why?”

  “I have to take care of something,” I said with a shrug. When Ash only glared harder, I threw a thumb at Death. “The excuse worked for this guy.”

  “We don’t have time for this shit.” Ash blew out a breath. “I’m giving the signal, and if I had any sense at all, I’d leave you two behind to die in this dome tonight, but obviously I’m as stupid as fucking Ruin.”

  “Meaning that you must be a genius, right there, buddy?” I gave him a look that I hoped told him to cool his fucking heels with the insults. I might make the odd… okay, frequent, impulsive decision, but that had no bearing on my intelligence. I let Ash get away with mocking me earlier only because he had a right to be furious at what I did, but I was done at two insults. I lifted a hand. “Give the signal. If King Razor got his hands on the note with our address, we should get the mission over with.”

  Ash muttered something that might have been an apology… or possibly another insult, and then he flicked the lights on and off in a quick, short pattern, before leaving them off.

  Across the street, a warehouse door slid open to reveal a large black truck, loaded down with boxes. There was once a time where vehicles were all over the road, but these days, there were only three drivable roads away from the city center, and a truck only meant one thing—official vampire royal business.

  King Razor was trying to kill us for delivering a message he didn’t like—but, if he knew our true purpose in coming to Portland, he’d have the whole damn city on lockdown and every single warrior combing the streets with automatic weapons.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DEATH

  I stood staring down at the bearded warrior, trying to ignore the fact that he reeked of prey. A light flickered from above, illuminating the freight train platform in flashes. Seven men worked to unload the boxes from the bed of our truck and slid the cargo into the final freight car.

  The vampire in charge was as large as me, but he stunk of fear so ripe, it made saliva pool in my mouth.

  “So… warriors came by earlier to check through the passenger and freight cars for you. These boxes my men and I have been loading, they’re not King Razor’s property or something…” th
e vampire quavered. “You just see… we’ve been helping you under the understanding that this is a legal transaction, but after tonight, you’re never coming back and we’re all going to be stuck at King Razor’s whim.”

  “We’ve been working with the understanding that the shipments were illegal,” I corrected him, “—but they’re not. Nothing contained in those boxes whatsoever belongs to King Razor, and Queen Hell wants everything here delivered safely and carefully before trade cuts off between the domes. We understand that you’re taking twice the risk tonight.” I tossed the man a velvet bag, and he scrambled to catch it.

  As he glanced inside, the prey scent subsided. He swallowed heavily and then tied the string. “We’ll get this wrapped up for you. It’s too bad that we have to end our business arrangement after tonight.”

  Clearly, the warrior’s feelings about our deal were directly proportionate to the quantity of gems he currently held in his hand.

  “Don’t be caught with those,” I said, nodding to the bag as I turned away. Ash and Ruin stood on the train platform, making sure the warriors loading the supply train followed instructions like, “this side up,” as they hurried to load the wooden crates with tense muscles and quickening breaths.

  I kept my distance. The closer I stood, the clumsier the warriors got, and we couldn’t risk them mishandling a single box.

  I was used to the palpable fear, that even the strongest vampires excreted around me. I was the monster that stalked their nightmares.

  When Queen Hell turned a dying werewolf alpha into a vampire, she thought she was making herself the most terrifying warrior any vampire monarch had ever leashed to their will—a killing-machine known only as Death to anyone who crossed the queen’s will. That was what she wanted, and that was what she got—and Queen Hell regretted it every day. As much as she feared to keep me at her side, the queen had no issue with unleashing me on her enemies for the better part of a century. And that was why every damn vampire on this loading platform stunk of terror the moment I stepped out of the truck.

  The group of vampires in dirty jumpsuits slid the last crate up the ramp and pulled a sliding door down, secured it with a padlock, and rushed away like I might murder them all on a whim.

  It probably didn’t matter that every vampire I killed deserved worse than the quick death I delivered to them. I wondered if they would be comforted by the knowledge that I only killed about a half-dozen vampires a year these days. Probably not.

  There wasn’t a place for a killing machine in the world of the domes—death had to come softly and quietly in the night in the new world. Queen Hell knew that even before the dome over Seattle was complete. She faced a choice: destroy the creature that made her will absolute or find a way to control me. So, she turned two more vampires—heroes who’d saved countless lives during the apocalypse.

  Her plan to bind me worked—but not in the way she intended. Even now, as Ash and Ruin headed across the cement platform toward me, I felt trickles of their emotions through our bond—our werewolf pack bond. It shouldn’t have been possible, neither Ash nor Ruin were ever werewolves, but it was as strong between us as the bond I shared with my werewolf pack a century ago.

  Ash was still brimming with frustration—though I didn’t need to feel the hot, sticky emotion pumping through our bond to know. He stomped across the platform, ran his hands through his blond, curly hair, and growled, “Why the hell aren’t we walking out of here right now?” He gestured to the tunnel leading into the dark recesses of the caves. “That down there is survival. Can you give me one good reason for us to go back in there?”

  I probably could give him one if I understood it myself. I remembered the first moment I saw Koribella Ignis. She was standing just outside the throne room. Her jaw was tight and eyes closed, and I remembered thinking how fucking disgusting I found it that the Vampire Royals started their courtesans off at eighteen. Her features were sharp and defined as an adult woman, but she was small even by human standards. She seemed fragile, breakable, and I wanted to destroy the vampires that took women like this. And then she opened her eyes, and I saw that though this woman was small and young, there was nothing breakable about her.

  Her amber eyes met mine, and she smiled like she knew me. And, as I stared into her big brown eyes that were at both times warm and hard as steel, I knew that she was pack. It hadn’t made any more sense to me back then than it did now. She wasn’t a werewolf or even a vampire like Ash and Ruin. No bond set in between us connecting our emotions. It wasn’t sexual—not back then when she was eighteen, the attraction developed slowly, years later. But the knowledge was always there. Koribella was pack, and I couldn’t leave Portland Dome tonight without offering to take her with us.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out the reason that Ruin left that note behind in the throne room with our address on it. Ash knew it, too. Otherwise he’d be shaking an explanation from Ruin. Ash wanted a full accounting of all plans and obstacles—but he’d let Ruin get away with skirting the question three times now. We all knew that when Ruin acted on one of his impulses, he usually did what Ash and I were too cautious to try.

  But, as bizarre as it was even to me, Koribella was pack, and I couldn’t leave Portland forever without doing everything in my power to convince her to come with us.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  KORI

  For my entire twenty-three years of life in the Portland Dome, I led small rebellions. On the day the Portland Royal Court admitted me into training as a vampire courtesan, I was instructed to grow my hair down to my waist, and I chopped it off. I gave my virginity to a sweet, fumbling human at sixteen, circumventing my royal virginity auction. I once snuck out on a vampire duke, leaving him painfully erect after he talked down to me.

  But as I rushed through the shadowy nighttime streets of Portland Dome, I was openly committing high treason.

  Under the blue light of the massive Portland Dome, the Luxury Heights Hotel leaned precariously toward its neighbors. Even though I was born and raised in the confines of the Portland Dome, I’d never seen buildings so dilapidated as in this sector. They didn’t look safe for people to go near, let alone live inside, but humans gathered on every balcony, and more than one resident sat hanging their legs out of open windows.

  I tugged down my black velvet hood, kicking myself internally for my choice of disguise. It had been eleven years since I traveled away from the luxuries of the Portland Royal Court in the dome’s city center, and I had clearly forgotten what normal humans dressed like. More than one person in the plain coarse gray shirts of the agricultural and factory sector workers glanced over as I started up the slanted hotel stairs. Their gazes passed over my face as they sucked on rolled up tobacco rations and blew out clouds of pungent smoke.

  I headed down the hotel second-floor balcony when a gasp came from right behind me.

  “Vampire,” a woman cried out, making my heart jump.

  The palace guards had found me. My breaths came short and fast, and I hurried my pace and glanced over my shoulder only to see a vampire warrior feeding on a woman.

  My heart slowed, and I arched my neck to see if it was a vampire I recognized, but there was no way to tell as he bent over the woman’s back. The woman’s jean skirt was tangled up around her waist, and the vampire had a hand plunged between her legs as he buried his face against her neck. She moaned in ecstasy as he slurped up her blood. They took no notice of me as she shoved open the hotel door, and the two disappeared inside.

  I adjusted my hood once more and stopped before the hotel room door number two-thirty-one and knocked gently. My hands shook, and I curled them into fists as I waited for a response.

  A rattling sound came from inside, and the door slid open a crack before a familiar vampire leaned out.

  The warrior Ash and I might have never said so much as hello to each other, but I knew his features by heart. Blue light shone across his chiseled cheeks and jaw, thick, sandy brows, broad nose, and full lips. He
’d tucked his voluminous dark blond curly hair behind his ears. Through the crack, I could see a sliver of his bare, muscular chest.

  Just from looking at him, a low-stirring heat coiled in my core. “Hi, Ash,” I whispered, “Can I come in?”

  The vampire’s umber eyes drilled into mine, and he didn’t move out of the doorway. “You shouldn’t be here, Courtesan.”

  My stomach dropped, and I took a step back. “What?” Heat surged up into my cheeks. I plunged my hand into the velvet pocket of my cloak and pulled out Ruin’s note. Leaning in, I held it out to him like some sort of ticket to gain entry into his room. “I thought you three deliberately dropped it for me. It has this address and room number.”

  I had wanted to speak to this warrior for years. I’d caught him looking at me more than once and considered breaking the law, just to say hello. And the first words he ever said to me were: you shouldn’t be here.

  “Damn it, Ruin,” Ash growled as he glowered at the note. “Come in here before anyone sees you.” The blond warrior opened the door and ushered me into a room with only one single bed that had been pushed to the wall and turned on its side. The room smelled like lemon cleaner, and I noticed a mop and several bottles of disinfectant sitting in the corner. Great fissures spread through the tile flooring, and a red low energy bulb dangled from the ceiling.

  Two familiar vampires raised their heads from the bedrolls that were lined up on the floor. The room was sweltering inside and a layer of sweat glistened over the men’s skin. Below the waist, all three of the men wore only boxer briefs that left very little to the imagination. My gaze lingered on the bulges at the apex of their thighs for probably a second too long as I slipped into the room and leaned back against the door. When I was safely inside, my heart only beat faster.

  “Could you have possibly invited anyone higher profile Ruin?” Ash growled as he stepped before me and crossed his arms. The low energy room light bathed the ridges of his arm and chest muscles in a crimson glow. “Why didn’t you fucking invite the consort of Portland while you were at it?”