Realms and Rebels: A Paranormal and Fantasy Reverse Harem Collection

by C. M. Stunich

  And by before, I mean in the few hours since I first met him, standing creepily inside the dark bathroom of my apartment. At least with the smoking and the portals, I can at least understand how he was able to get inside without me knowing.

  Crew signs something else, and I do my best to explain the motions to Trick.

  "He's saying he knows where one of your Sanshi is," Trick explains, surprising me. Guess I did a pretty job describing the swirl of those long, pale fingers, right? Crew's nails are painted black, and he has the same twisting designs on his hands that he has on his armor.

  "How would he know it's one of mine?" I ask, still not quite believing where I am and what I'm doing. Within the span of a few hours, my entire life has shifted gears. I'm half-hoping I'm just on the crazy train, but the longer this shit goes on, the more I'm starting to realize that ... this could very well be real.

  Crew answers my question, signing something that involves pointing at himself, at Trick, at me.

  "He'd know," is all Trick says, and I get the idea that this is a sensitive subject. Clearly, there's tension between the two men. Sorry, not translating this time. "We'll stay here tonight and leave in the morning."

  This time, Crew puts one of his big hands on Trick's shoulder and squeezes to get his attention.

  "You don't want to stay here? If we don't sleep now, we're not gonna get another chance for days. Fuck you, man. While you've been sitting here plotting away, I have been searching for the goddess. I'm tired and I'm taking a damn nap." Trick shoves his ... friend's? ... hand off his shoulder and heads back over to the couch, flopping down and dragging his shades over his eyes again.

  I lift my eyes to meet Crew's, those two big beautiful rose-red irises staring back at me with interest. He winks at me and then moves over to a cast iron stove in the corner, lifting the lid of the pot and letting a spicy-sweet smell drift out. The look he casts back at me clearly asks if I'm hungry.

  "What's in it?" I ask, moving closer, and Crew grins. He lifts up his hand and points to a painting on the wall with a hulking white boar in it. I swear, his expression says it tastes like pork. Or maybe I'm just hoping that's what he's saying because I'm starving right now. I haven't eaten since my phone call with Daniel, and to be fair, I haven't exactly had the easiest day.

  I woke up in Oregon, and now I'm about to have dinner in some white-capped wilderness with a dude in metal armor.

  "Serve me up," I say with a sigh, reaching out a hand to accept the wooden bowl Crew's offering. He passes a spoon over next and let's his fingers linger against mine, warm and inviting, shooting lines of fire up my arm and into my heart. I can feel it racing now.

  Sitting down at the table with a mute man doesn't leave a lot of room for conversation, but he tries his best to make up for it by giving me these ridiculously over the top facial expressions as I talk.

  "What am I even doing here?" I ask, hesitating with the wooden spoon in my hand, some sweet-smelling golden broth steaming inside of it. It only takes about ten seconds for me to get over my aversion to eating an unknown animal, and then I'm popping the food into my mouth. There's an explosion of flavor that makes me groan, drawing a silent chuckle from Crew. For real, he can't even laugh. There's just this little smile on his face and the gentle shaking of his shoulders.

  He tilts his head to one side and then draws the shape of a heart on his chest.

  "What does that even mean?" I probe, feeling frustration bubble up inside of me. That's when I realize that the pills are starting to wear off. Well, pills or curses, if Trick is to be believed. "Your heart? What does my coming here have to do with you? Because you're my ... lips?"

  I mean, if Trick called himself my Eyes then logic only follows that this guy is, what, my mouth? My tongue? For fuck's sake.

  "Your Voice," Trick mumbles, rolling over on the couch and dragging a blanket down from the back. "Eat quick and grab as much sleep as you can. Might be awhile before you get anymore."

  I ignore him and turn back to Crew, watching as he pulls out a leather-bound notebook and a quill. Yep, a fucking quill. I am definitely not in Eugene, Oregon anymore, am I?

  As I watch, Crew dips the pen and writes something down on the sheet of paper before passing it over to me.

  You're here to save the world, it says.

  I have no idea how to respond to that shit.

  First off, I don't even know what world we're fucking in. And if there were someone destined to save it, it sure as hell wouldn't be me. Trick can say whatever he wants, but I'm no goddess. As soon as I figure out if this is real or not, and how to get myself out of whatever danger I'm in, I'm done.

  I want a normal life; it's what I've always wanted.

  Finishing off my bowl of soup–it's honestly one of the best things I've ever tasted–I stand up and Crew follows suit. With a generous sweep of his arm, he beckons me down a short hallway and shows me a large wooden bed covered in thick furs and skins. He steps inside, moves over to a dresser and pulls out a big, soft shirt with a UC Santa Cruz logo on the front of it.

  Hmm.

  He might be dressed in armor and sporting a sword, but there's no way in hell this t-shirt comes from here ... wherever here is.

  I take the shirt from him, careful not to let our fingers touch this time, and then wait for him to leave the room. I barely manage to get myself undressed when I pass out on the end of the bed.

  Guess I'll be waking up naked in the morning.

  How exciting.

  6

  I wake up shivering, sitting up on the edge of that fur covered bed and wrapping one of the skins around me. Whatever animal it came from, I hardly recognize the shape, but I don't care. It's too bloody fucking cold to give a crap about anything but getting warm.

  I've barely managed to blink the sleep from my eyes when the door opens and Trick steps inside, his staff clicking across the hardwood floors. I'd be embarrassed, but at least I know he can't see me sitting here, shivering my ass off. Bet he can hear my teeth chattering though.

  "Sorry," Trick says, smirking at me. "We had to put the fire out to hide our location." He doesn't look sorry. No, the wicked shaped of that mouth says he's enjoying this moment. Me, I just woke up in a foreign land (at least I think it's a foreign land) and I can tell that right now, all of my meds have worn off. There's a small, wispy looking wolf wrapped around Trick's staff, its head resting on the purple orb. It has eyes to match, two violet orbs shimmering as it stares vaguely in my direction. My guess ... is that it's blind, too.

  "What is that?" I ask, pointing at the demon I know I didn't see yesterday.

  Guess my meds were working. There was just too much shit for them to shield me completely.

  "This?" Trick asks, reaching up to scratch the wolf on the head. Well, I say wolf, but really, it's about the size of a chihuahua. "This is Dunshi." The name sounds like doon-she as it slides across those full, sultry lips of his. "He's the first of my Three Corpses. Like I said, the others ..." He runs one of his tattooed hands down his face and sighs. "We'll have to find them eventually. For now, let's just focus on yours." Trick drops his hand by his side, and then flashes a sultry grin. "You should put some clothes on and meet us in the living room." He turns to leave and then pauses, casting a glance over his shoulder. Even though I know he can't see me, I shift and cover my breasts with the animal skin. Trick just chuckles and heads out, closing the door behind him.

  "Asswad," I murmur, standing up and noticing that there's an outfit laid out on a big, leather chair in the corner of the room. It makes me chuckle because I swear to God, it looks just like the big ass throne that Gaston sits on in Beauty and the Beast. Touching the soft leather of the outfit, it's pretty easy to see that it was intended for me. "Suppose I can't wear a crop top and skinny jeans in the snow," I grumble, slipping into the clothing.

  It's almost eerie how well it all fits.

  There's a pair of tight, black suede pants, thick boots covered in white fur, and a soft black linen shi
rt with a white vest that goes over the top. The best part though is the coat. Normally, I'm pretty against fur, but I can see from the tusks still attached to this thing that it's the coat of the boar in that painting. Well, at least from a boar like the one in that painting. If he hunted it for food, and then made this cloak, I'm cool with it.

  I slip into the jacket and decide that when I'm done with this shit, I'm keeping this.

  Crew and Trick are waiting in the dark living room, staring out the window and into a blizzard. Well, Crew is anyway. Trick hears me coming first, and then glances over his shoulder in my direction.

  "We're heading up the mountain. Hopefully we get there before anyone else does."

  "Up that mountain?" I ask, stepping forward and looking at out the sharp point in the distance. It looks like a shark's tooth, and it's–I kid you not–surrounded by gray, swirling clouds. I'd be more likely to believe we were on the set of a new Lords of the Ring movie than somewhere that exists in nature. "Why?"

  "This is where the first of your Sanshi is," Trick explains, but he sounds skeptical. Guess he doesn't exactly trust Crew. "Can't you feel it?" he asks after a moment, squeezing his hands into fists. He's wearing black leather gloves now, along with matching pants, and a huge black fur cloak. I can't decide if I liked him better shirtless and in jeans ... or in this. Can't say that either look disappoints.

  "I don't feel anything," I say, but that's not true at all. Now that the pills have worn off, I can feel everything. It's been years since I went this long without taking my medication. My skin is crawling; my hair is standing on end; my heart is thumping so hard that my ribs ache inside my chest.

  Turning my attention to Crew, I notice that attached to his sword ... is another demon. This one looks like a black cat with a white design on its forehead. It stares at me with its red eyes, and then smiles like some sort of fucked up Alice in Wonderland shit. I turn my head and refuse to make eye contact with it. Demons are demons, and I'm not about to change decades of hard-learned lessons.

  Crew sees me looking, tilts his head to the side, and then signs a few letters in ASL. Once upon a time, when I was in elementary school, I was made to learn sign language and dance to songs onstage with the other kids. They all seemed to love it, catching the eyes of their proud parents. Mine, though, all I could see were the demons wrapped around their necks, smirking at me.

  Still, the lesson comes in handy as I read the letters Crew spells out.

  Maoshi.

  He points to the cat on his sword and smiles, not just with his mouth but with his eyes, too.

  "Do they all have names that end with shi?" I ask and Crew nods, spelling out the letters c-o-r-p-s-e. Ah, how sweet. Little demons who all have the word corpse in their names. "Hmm." I exhale sharply and push my fingers through my hair. "So you're serious about trudging about this mountain in the middle of a snowstorm?" As if in agreement with me, the wind howls and rattles the glass window panes.

  "We'll take mounts, but yeah, we're fucked six ways to Sunday without your Sanshi." Trick shrugs as Crew plops a furry hat on my head and tugs it down over my ears. His fingers brush the tops of my ears and that sensation from yesterday hits me like a truck. Fire races through my veins as my stomach twists and catapults into my throat. With a gasp, I tear away from Crew and slam my shoulder into the wall.

  "You'll get more used to the magic over time," Trick says, almost like he feels sorry for me. "It'll be ten times easier with a Sanshi to ground you." He taps his staff on the ground three times, and the door swings open, letting in a flurry of white flakes and a bone-chilling wind that brings goose bumps up on my arms. "So let's go find one." He steps backward and into the snow, turning around and lifting his staff up.

  The wolf demon lifts its head and howls, drawing shadows from the orb and sending them off into the darkness like shooting stars. The snow beneath glows purple for a minute before the lights disappear into the darkness of the storm. I think it's supposed to be early morning, but the sky is blocked by the swirling snow, and the tips of the trees disappear into blackness.

  A moment later, I hear an answering howl and my entire body goes cold.

  Something's coming. That instinct isn't even a magical one; this is pure, basic, animalistic fear that's surging through me. A smart animal is one that knows it's being hunted. When I step back, I bump right into Crew's massive form. One of his big hands settles on my shoulders. Since he's wearing gloves, and I'm in the big, white boar fur jacket, our skin doesn't make contact, but somehow, I can still feel some of that power leaking into me. It feels like an electrical current, one that's threatening to fry me from the inside out if I don't break it.

  Thing is, I can't move. I can feel wild energy outside the house, too. Hell, it's like the whole world is made of energy right now. I'd kill for my pills back, curse or no curse. Choking back some bile, I watch as three large figures appear out of the storm, hot breath steaming from their nostrils.

  "What the fuck are those?" I ask as the monsters snort and snuffle around in the snow. They have the heads of wolves, the bodies of lions, and tails like dragons. That, and they've each got massive horns growing out of their thick skulls. In short, not something you'd ever want to meet in a dark alley.

  "Urutatsu," Trick says, nodding his head in the direction of the beasts at the same time he swings his staff in a circle. The tiny wolf demon clinging to it howls again, and three more shadows dart from the orb and into the mouths of the waiting creatures.

  Oh.

  He's feeding them souls, isn't he?

  My stomach heaves again, and I feel every muscle in my body go taut. Crew reaches up and squeezes my shoulders, like he's trying to relax me. Except, you know, I don't know him for shit. But holy hell, that feels good ...

  I move away from him before I second-guess myself and stare into the dark eyes of the urutatsu. Their tails are flicking like angry cats, but their ears are perked forward like a dog's. hope that tail wag means the damn things are happy.

  "Are we riding these?" I start, but Crew is already moving around me and grabbing a saddle from a wooden rack outside. He tosses it over the back of the gray-brown creature on the far left and then holds out a hand, inviting me to climb up. One white brow quirks up as he waits for me to move closer.

  "You do realize that as of yesterday, I was sitting in my apartment and binge-watching Twilight, right?" Crew lifts his other brow, and the right corner of his lips. He's clearly telling me he hates Twilight. Well, that, or I'm projecting.

  "Why don't you just climb up and ride him?" Trick asks, swaggering up beside me, his staff kicking up bits of snow. "And I don't mean the mount." He smirks at me, but there's this angry little slash to his mouth that makes me wonder if he's jealous. Ridiculous considering we met yesterday, but what do I know?

  There are fucking wolf-lion-dragon chimera things standing in front of me.

  The world is not as it seems.

  "God, I wish I still had my fucking pills,” I murmur, feeling tendrils of hatred creep into my bloodstream. Should’ve never handed them over to Trick in the first place. He takes a saddle, throws it onto one of the creature’s massive backs, and then tightens the strap around its middle. It lets out a little growl as he goes about it, and he taps the staff on the ground. Another howl from his ... Sanshi or whatever the fuck, and three more souls shoot like comets from the orb.

  They're snapped up in seconds by the three beasts, their massive fangs as white as the fresh now coating Trick's ebony hair.

  "Those curses? You don’t fucking need them." He climbs up on the saddle and gets comfortable, casting a very haughty glance down at me through his shades. Well, again, it feels like he's looking at me, even if he isn't really. "Why?"

  "Why?" I ask, rubbing at my temples. "Because that's prescription shit, and I want it back."

  "Those are not pills, Rayne," Trick says, sliding his shades off and tucking them into the leather satchel at his side. He pulls out a black leather strip and ties it
around his eyes, knotting it in the back and giving me a look that's pretty easy to read, even if I can only see his lips. "They're curses. Each time you take one of those, you block yourself from seeing evil." He smiles again, but it's not entirely pleasant. "Seeing evil, or speaking to evil. Trust me: you're better off without them."

  Trick lays his staff across his thighs, kicks his mount, and takes off, leaving me to grit my teeth. Maybe he's right, maybe not, but I should at least have the right to make my own decisions.

  Glancing over at Crew, I see his frown clearly painted across his face. I guess being mute has taught him to show what he's feeling on the surface. I'm guessing Trick didn't tell him about my bottle of curses, huh?

  With a sigh, I hold out my hand and let him help me up and into the saddle. The wolf-like creature between my thighs is huge, almost too big. And when it moves, it doesn't move anything like a horse. A small squeak escapes my lips as I curl my fingers in the monster's fur, my body rocking back and forth as the thing takes off through the snow, following the scent of Trick's souls.

  I can see them as we run, escaping the orb on the end of his staff, like purple fireflies in a white, white storm. They'd be almost pretty if I didn't know what they were. And based on the number of them, it seems like Trick's been taking care of demons for quite some time. He's got a huge stash in there.

  As we run, I feel my entire body tensing up, my anxiety climbing to an all-time high. Even if my pills really did contain curses, they must also have had some blessings in there, too, because I haven't felt this level of ... of anything since I started taking them at age fourteen. My emotions are all over the place and memories are resurfacing that I haven't thought of in almost a decade.

  For good reason, too.

  "You see this," the demon hisses, perched on my mother's shoulder with slits for eyes, and a wicked, wicked grin on its lips. "You are nothing but flesh and blood and bone. How easy you break." While my mother looks down at me with blank eyes and an empty smile, I bleed on the floor and I hurt. I hurt so bad, but nobody cares. My parents hurt me and then they heal me. Over and over again, so no one knows. No one knows that I suffer behind closed doors; they don't believe me.