“I’m not certain why you’re coming to me with this. We broke up over six weeks ago,” I said lightly. Her glistening eyes hardened at my dismissive tone, but not for one second did I believe she was here for anything good.
“I know he was still seein’ you, Ruby. And now he’s up an’ disappeared. I haven’t heard from him since Friday…” She swallowed hard, fighting her wasted tears. Part of me wanted to tell her to keep her tears; save them for someone worthy. Someone who wouldn’t be with her while still pining for his ex like a dog in heat. The rest of me knew not to believe any show she put on.
“Well, I haven’t seen him. So I don’t know what to—”
“Don’t lie to me!” she snapped. I blinked in surprise but didn’t react otherwise as Kendall smoothed her bubblegum pink dress. “I’m givin’ you the chance to confess your sins an’ tell me where he is.” Angry tears burst through causing her black mascara to streak down her cheeks. She didn’t outright cry or sob, but the venom that filled her eyes was telling.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I didn’t even miss a beat in my response because I’d planned for this moment since I woke up from that nightmare at Pandora’s Box. Kendall was nearly as obsessive as he was, and I knew that as much as the Horsemen assured me it would be like he never existed, this wouldn’t go away.
Sure, they could cover up his death, but they couldn’t cover up his life. He wasn’t a demon. He was human. A weak-willed human that lost his mind from a desire I caused but didn’t know how to undo.
I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad, not when his very name awoke memories of that night. Nightmares of lying on a conference table, drugged out of my mind and unable to move while he dry humped my body and molested me.
He would have raped me if the Horsemen hadn’t shown, and so I would not feel guilty.
Not for him.
Kendall dabbed at her eyes and cheeks with a handkerchief, erasing the evidence of tears. A cruel smile stole her lips as she reached inside her purse and withdrew a single sheet of paper.
She crossed the space between us and extended her hand.
Devil save me.
It was a photo. Of Josh and me. At the bar in Pandora’s Box.
This couldn’t have been taken more than an hour before he tried to rape me.
Before he groped me, and undressed me, and—I was going to be sick.
Blood roared in my veins as I toppled sideways from the chair. The onslaught to my system hit me fast and sudden as I tried to heave up food that wasn’t there. My stomach rolled as the world went sideways and my connection to the outside severed.
I’d never had a panic attack in my life, despite all the bad things that had happened.
I took those memories, even as they were happening, and stored them in a box. Placed inside a vault where I would lock it away, never to see the light of day again.
That was how it worked. How I coped.
I didn’t have panic or anxiety. I lived my life, accepting that it happened but forgetting a little more every day.
Until I couldn’t.
“What in the name of—” Kendall started screaming. I went from hearing nothing, being trapped in a bubble of my own creation, to being yanked back into a reality where the picture in her hand made me sick to my stomach.
He’s dead. He can no longer harm you.
I swallowed hard, taking in deep breaths as the door to the shop slammed open.
I didn’t have to look to know that Moira and Rysten had returned. Their combined emotions were like jumper cables to my heart. The fear receded as the cold fury of an entity that very much wanted to burn her alive took its place.
I was still in control, but hanging on by a thread.
“Kendall, I don’t know what the fuck you are doing here, but if you don’t walk out right now, you’re leaving in a body bag. You hear me?” Moira didn’t scream. She didn’t shout. Hell, she didn’t even raise her voice. She let the calm chill of her words settle over us and wrap around Kendall, using the quiet to speak her intentions louder than the words themselves.
“Th-thi-this isn’t over! I know what happened! I know the truth!” she screamed and then she was gone.
The truth? She didn’t know that. I doubt any of them knew the whole truth as to what happened that night. I knew the truth, because I’d seen it before.
Josh’s case was not specific to him. It was the same story for most males that crossed my path. I’d accepted that and learned to live with it a long time ago. Or so I thought.
Moira hugged me and whispered promises of revenge. She meant to soothe me. To calm me.
Right there in the place I chose to leave my mark on this world, I decided that this would not break me. Kendall said this wasn’t over, and I would be ready when she returned. Ready to let the lies run from my lips.
Even if I cared nothing for Josh, it was not the truth that mattered here. Only what Kendall saw as the truth, and for all his affections and obsessive thoughts—I was still the one, even in death, paying the price.
Chapter 6
Moira and I didn’t speak on it as the day went on, but I could sense her worried glances. Both what she directed at me as well as the ones shared with Rysten. I locked myself in my office after my last client left and didn’t come out, even when she knocked and told me she was leaving. I didn’t feel like seeing anyone.
Alone with nothing but my own thoughts, I chewed at the corner of my thumbnail and flipped through my files for designs to work on. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
The first design I completed was done in pencil. A simple black and white drawing of a rose for a mother who lost her daughter as a baby. The second was a tempest, quite literally, done in the most brilliant of blues and yellows. The sky was clad with lightning and the clouds rolled so effortlessly they could have been real. This one was for an older woman who had once been a sailor. She told me of the skies and the sea, and how they tried to claim her life again and again. She endured, much like the mother had when her daughter died. That old woman had cancer now, but she wanted a sleeve on her right arm as a reminder of what she’s been through. An aid, to weather the storm.
It was beautiful. One of my best pieces, and I hadn’t even shown her yet. I smiled, running the tip of my finger around the heavy Aegean clouds dusted with traces of lapis blue. The words replayed over and over in my mind: an aid to weather the storm.
People had faced far worse things than I and lived to smile again. To fight again. Hell, I usually was not one to be thrown so far off track from myself that a picture could blindside me like it had. So what had changed?
Was it me? Was it the Horsemen? I know I didn’t care for Josh enough that it was his actions that stirred me. I’d been down that path before, with devils and demons that were stronger than him. Was that it? That he was weak, and yet he’d bested me? But could you even call that besting when he had to drug me to do it?
My mind was a place of colors and secrets, of paradigms and lies. I did not hurt easily, but little things made me snap. I didn’t consider myself a liar, but my entire existence was one fat fucking lie. I was created to be a ruler, and not just any ruler. The ruler of Hell.
Queen of the Underworld.
But a fucking picture brought me to my knees. There was something so right about that, and yet so cruel. After all, I wasn’t the one who died that night. I’m just the one that has to live with everyone else’s mistakes. The one that got drugged, not once, but twice—thanks to the imp that Laran pissed off for touching me. Of course, he wouldn’t have been touching me if we hadn’t gone there in the first place. Could I actually blame him for taking me there? No. Not as much as I could blame Josh for his actions. I didn’t regret his death, and I still don’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m unaffected either.
Seeing that, doing that, it fucks with your head, and this wasn’t the first time it’s happened. It’s just the first time it’s happened with the Horsemen. Wha
t about next time? What happens when we go to Hell? I’d woefully turned a blind eye to the demon world because I didn’t want to see it, but now it’s here and it can’t be denied.
Fuck it all.
I jumped up from my desk and stored the artwork away where it couldn’t be ruined from spilt coffee or takeout tacos. I grabbed my purse and washed my hands, cleaning away the remaining residue from the colored pencils. The water bled blue and yellow, turning a sickly shade of green. I wasn’t one to believe in omens. That was a different kind of demon, but the color didn’t sit well with me.
The shop was quiet when I locked up and the sun was long asleep. An obsidian sky stared back at me as I stepped out from the light of Blue Ruby Ink.
Calm brushed against my skin and the beast settled for the first time today. It was not a natural calm; not something I gave myself, but a gift from another.
“I take it that it’s your turn?” I asked softly. Allistair stepped out of the shadows. The sharpness of his high cheekbones was particularly prominent tonight against his alabaster skin. During the day, he was devastatingly handsome, but at night…he was somehow more. The light in his eyes shined brighter, and the lushness of his dark curls just begged to be touched. At night, Allistair was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.
The corners of his mouth turned up into a knowing smile.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he replied. On most nights, I probably would have protested, given where I ended up last time I let a Horseman take me somewhere without telling me.
But Allistair wasn’t Laran, and I was a different kind of Ruby now.
He extended his hand, and all I could think about was an aid to weather the storm. I didn’t know who I was right now. I was Ruby. I was Lucifer’s Daughter. I was a monster. I was…living the best I could in our messed-up world and doing the best I can.
But sometimes, you just gotta let a devil take the wheel.
I didn’t ask him where we were going as the lights streaked by like shooting stars. Allistair had the nicest car I’d ever ridden in. Black leather, heated seats, and a cup of tea waiting in the cup holder. I wrapped my hands around the steaming cup, trying to leech its warmth away as I took a small sip.
Earl Grey with a hint of honey and a splash of milk.
Perfect.
I let out a small sigh. This calm was fabricated from him. Instinctually, I knew that.
In reality, I didn’t care where we went as long as it didn’t end.
“How’s the tea?” he asked.
Small talk. It was such a very human thing to do. I didn’t know whether I should be thankful or annoyed that he was bothering at all.
“It’s perfect,” I replied without turning his way. It was easier not to focus on anything. The lights were brilliant and beautiful, carrying with them all my melancholy as they passed by.
“Excellent,” he said. I smiled, just the briefest lift of my lips at the pride in his voice. I’d been wondering if Rysten told him how I liked my tea as a way to cheer me, but maybe Allistair paid attention more than I realized.
The car descended into silence for another moment. This one longer than the first, so long in fact, that the lights were becoming fewer and fewer. We were leaving the city.
The thought both had me intrigued and mildly nervous, but I kept quiet because if he were smuggling me away somewhere for any length of time, I knew the other three would be here, too.
“You know,” Allistair said, breaking the silence, “I know what you’re going through. Right now.” I tensed, and his hand slipped from the steering wheel as he reached across and took my hand from my lap. “You don’t have to say anything. I don’t expect you to. I’d just like you to listen.”
And I did. The blood in my veins heated at his very touch. It wasn’t a sexual touch, nor was it fraught with his own messy emotions. Instead it was... kind. Reassuring. He wasn’t holding my hand like a possessive prick, but instead to offer the only kind of comfort that I was always deprived of.
And then he said the last thing I ever expected him to say.
“In all my time, both in this world and ours, I have only ever fallen in love once.” Even in the dark cab of the car I could sense his eyes watching me. “As someone raised among humans, you might find it surprising that it only ever happened once,” he continued. “But as a woman who is half-succubus, I think you can understand.
“I have lived for thousands and thousands of years, watching women do anything in the name of what they call love. I have seen women kill themselves, their lovers, even other women they thought were a threat…just to get to me.
“In the beginning, I struggled with the blame and where it lay when I realized there was little I could do to stop them. Eventually the guilt faded, replaced by anger at the women for being so stupid. For not seeing what I thought was obvious. For not seeing the love wasn’t real—or so I thought at the time.” That almost pulled a scoff from my lips, had I not been so speechless at his confession. He was Famine, one of the Four Horsemen…and still just a male at heart. Except unlike the men of earth, demons were not confined by gender roles and stereotypes. We saw ourselves as we were and did not apologize for it. In some ways that made us, him, better than the people of earth.
I kept my thoughts to myself as he continued.
“And then eventually I did fall in love with someone. A female that was forbidden in every way, but I could not stop myself. I was as caught up in it as the foolish women who’d chased me for centuries. Until I wasn’t.”
“What?” The question popped from my lips before I could stop myself. Allistair smiled, but there was nothing kind about it. If his hand weren’t wrapped around mine, I would be scared shitless at the hateful smile he wore.
“The falling out is unimportant. The moral of the story was that the female and I split up, and we went our separate ways. She is the only one I have ever been able to do that with and it not end in bloodshed. Do you know why that is?”
I shook my head and the car came rolling to a stop. I didn’t recognize where we were, only that the headlights stared off into an abyss where only the night sky reigned.
“Because they were beneath me. I was created to be strong enough to rival you, to ground you when it was needed. Women, she-demons, they were not strong enough to combat that. They were beneath me. Just because we wear the same form does not change that. I cannot apologize for being what I was created to be, any more than a hellhound can apologize for being loyal.”
I was starting to see exactly where he was going, and as someone raised among humans… I didn’t know where I fell with it.
“I can’t be some mindless person that just walks around killing people. That’s not me, that’s—” I stopped myself short from admitting those dark desires aloud.
“The beast?” he asked softly.
I bit my lip, nodding my reply.
“You were created to be the ultimate predator. The one that can keep our kind in line.” He said it so simply; like that’s all there was to it.
“And what if I don’t want to be?” I asked.
“Don’t want to be the beast, or don’t want to be a succubus?” he countered, another smile playing on his lips.
“Both.” He actually had the nerve to laugh.
“I don’t think it’s that you don’t want to be them. I think it’s your misconceptions of who you are and who you think you need to be. I think you’re apologizing for existing, because you think that without you, things would have been different for all the men that crossed your path.”
Devil save me. He was either brilliant, or a much better manipulator than I gave him credit for. I was pretty sure I was fucked either way.
“And what would you have me do?”
“Stop apologizing. Be who you are and be unashamed. I know that you want to. I can see it in your eyes. This world has done nothing for you, and yet you bleed for it. Why? You don’t feel bad for the pig when you eat the bacon. Why do you feel bad for the man th
at hurt you?”
I shook my head. “It’s not Josh I feel bad for.” His hand tightened around mine briefly before he pulled away.
“Come with me.”
We opened our doors and welcomed the night as an icy breeze ran over me. My ponytail whipped away from my face, a slave to the current that caught it. I walked around the front of the car, taking in deep breaths of air. It tasted different out here. Cleaner. Crisper. My boots crunched on the frosted grass as I followed the headlights to the edge of the ravine.
I gasped as I looked down. At that same moment, the lights clicked off.
Darkness sprang from the shadows, bathing me in night. I didn’t move an inch as I took in the view from hundreds of feet above. I couldn’t make out the surface below us, where the rock face ended, and the dark lake began. I wouldn’t have known it was water at all, if not for the two moons. One up in the sky and the other down below it, settled on the horizon. The ripples in the water scattered the light of the stars, fragmenting the vision of space around us.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” I whispered.
In a void where sound is violent, a whisper became a shout.
“I thought you might like it. Our kind have a longing for beautiful things,” he murmured. Strong fingers settled against my lower back, and even through three layers of clothing, my skin flamed. “We also seek out thrills and out of this world experiences,” he continued.
The heat was joined by a prickling sensation. A warning?
“Do you trust me?” he asked, his lips grazed my ear and there was nothing friendly about this touch.
My breath stalled in my throat as my mouth hung open. Allistair moved behind me as he nipped my earlobe, the heat of his breathe tingling against my skin. I came alive in the flip of a switch, instantly feeling the aching throb between my legs.
“Do you trust me?” he repeated.
Did I trust him? Here? Now? That was a hefty request. His fingers fisted in the fabric of my sweatshirt, bunching it around my back.
Wicked Games Page 4