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

by Steffanie Holmes

  Chapter Nineteen

  I knocked on Ayaz’s door. In the corridor, students skirted around me, pressing their backs against the walls and refusing to lift their eyes from me until they were out of firing range.

  Classes had finished for the day, although I hadn’t attended any of them. As soon as we got back, Trey and I fell into bed and slept the whole day. I must have needed the rest because not even the god could penetrate my dreams. I woke just as the final bell ring with the overwhelming urge to speak to Ayaz.

  It might have had something to do with my mother’s box sitting on the shelf in Trey’s room, calling me, taunting me.

  But it was mostly the fact that I’d made a promise to Ayaz. The Deadmistress had Zehra because of me, and seeing his face pinch every time someone mentioned his sister twisted that knife of guilt deeper into my gut.

  Thanks to Dr. Morgan I might have the chance to reunite them.

  If I could trust her. I turned the vial over in my hand as I waited for Ayaz to answer. Was this really some kind of sedative? Or did Dr. Morgan have some other plot in mind?

  “It’s open,” a delicious voice called from inside.

  I pushed the door open, revealing the Scandinavian furniture and calming colors of Ayaz’s dorm room. At first, I didn’t see him – he wasn’t lying on the bed reading or curled up on the white sofa playing video games. A moment later, Ayaz emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his narrow hips, his bare chest on full display – all hard planes and perfectly-healed chiseled muscle and beautiful ink. Droplets of water glistened over his shoulders, and the scent of musky aftershave curled off him.

  Saliva pooled on my tongue. Fuck. I wasn’t ready for this. I was supposed to be resisting. I had to keep Ayaz at arm’s length to save both our hearts, but if he kept surprising me with nudity I’d be writhing underneath him in minutes…

  No, no. I shook my head. Be strong.

  I tore my eyes from Ayaz to shut the door behind me, letting the CLICK of the lock jolt me back to reality. I stared at a spot on the wall and reached for my pocket to grasp the vial.

  “Hazel, what is it?” He stepped closer, but I held up my hand for him to stop. His scent made my head spin. “Did you and Trey—”

  “Yes, we saw Deborah, and she had a lot to say and it was… confusing as fuck. But that’s not what I came to talk about. I mean, it is, but there’s something else and I would’ve come sooner but I didn’t sleep all night and—” Stop babbling. I took a deep breath. “We’re breaking Zehra out.”

  Ayaz flew across the room, his hands circling my arms. “What? When?”

  “Friday night. Dr. Morgan caught Trey and I coming back inside. She says she wants to help us take control of the school. Apparently, the teachers are planning a party of their own. I know their parties usually take a turn for the occult, and I don’t want to give them the opportunity to do something to Zehra. Dr. Morgan’s given me a sedative that she said will knock them all out, as well as the location of the key, giving us time to sneak into the gym and get Zehra.”

  Ayaz wrapped his arms around himself. His eyelids fluttered shut again, the dark lashes tangling together. Seeing him like that only made me want him more. I dug my nails into the scar on my wrist. Be strong for him. For all of them.

  His eyes flew open. “Wait, why is she helping us?”

  “She thinks Ms. West has gone crazy. Can’t say I disagree. Or she’s really working for West, and this is some ploy to walk us into a trap. The only way to find out is to try it.”

  Ayaz slumped back down. “It’s risky. What will we do with Zehra?”

  “We could keep her here, but I don’t want to risk Ms. West finding out and telling Vincent. Ms. West believes Zehra might be Vincent’s spy in the school, but we know that’s not true. We need to get her off the peninsula – if we send her to Deborah, she’ll help Zehra hide somewhere safe. Zehra’s resourceful and she’s eluded Trey’s father for decades – she’ll do it again.”

  Ayaz reached for my hand again, pulling me onto the bed beside him. I tensed, ready to jerk away if he tried to kiss me. Instead, he squeezed my hand, and his serious face broke out into a brilliant smile. “Zehra’s always been resourceful – no matter where I hid my toys, she’d find them and break them. She was advanced for her age – more than I ever was – and she had my parents wrapped around her tiny finger. Sometimes I hated her for that. She was only four when my parents sent me to America. She was so angry with them that she blocked all the sinks and flooded their house.” He laughed at the memory. “That’s Zehra – a slave to her passions, but fierce in the face of what she sees as injustice. I adored her after that. She has that effect on people.”

  “I believe it.” I smiled, remembering the first time I met Zehra. Except for Dante, never in my life had I met someone and so instantly clicked with them. It felt like we’d been sisters in another life.

  I wanted the chance to get to know her for real, to be the friend to her that she deserved. Yet another cord binding me to this world that I would have to cut loose if I wanted to save them all.

  Ayaz continued. “After I moved in with Trey, we’d talk a few times a month over video chat, and I text her every day. She always made me laugh. Trey was a bit jealous, I think. His younger brother Wilhem was a creep, and his dad barely acknowledged his existence. Even he would talk to Zehra sometimes, and she’d always win him around. She was so clever, she never seemed like a younger sister, and now she’s grown older and I haven’t, and it almost feels…” He shook his head. “Zehra may not be an Edimmu, but she’s missed out on so much. If it weren’t for me, she’d be a doctor or a Fortune 500 CEO or the first president of Mars.”

  “It’s not your fault, Ayaz.”

  “It’s not.” He spat the words, his hands balling into fists. “I have much to feel guilty about, Hazy. So much evil weighs on my conscience that I’ll never be rid of the burden, but for ruining Zehra’s life I blame Ms. West and the Eldritch Club. And I cannot let them go unpunished.”

  “And we will punish them, I promise. But right now, we’re focused on Zehra. Because of you, if we can pull this off, she’ll get her life back.” I reminded him. “Will you survive till Friday?”

  “Only if you distract me.” Ayaz leaned in, his beard brushing my skin, sending a delicious flicker of heat through my body. He grazed his lips over my cheek, laying a trail down to—

  I leaped to my feet and went over to the stack of books beside the table, desperate to put some distance between us. “We’ve got work to do.”

  “Hazel—” Ayaz’s feet slapped on the marble as he padded over. His eyes burned into me. I didn’t dare look up, knowing I’d crumble under the intensity of his gaze.

  “We want to know about everything we can about this pillar, and why it’s appeared now.” I pulled over a stack of books and opened one at random. “I need to know if I’m being tricked by the god. He says it’s a piece of something, and the rats tell me it’s a lock and I’m the key. But a key to what? Is the god trying to get me to free him so he can devour the entire human race? That wouldn’t sit with his plan to populate the universe, so then what—”

  Ayaz chuckled, sliding into the chair opposite me. “As you Americans say, no pressure.”

  “Right.” I handed him Rebecca Nurse’s diary. “I’ve found a few things. We tried to chisel a piece off the pillar to take to the lab, but the stone broke all our tools. Greg did a couple of tests for his geology project, and as far as he can tell the stone isn’t made of anything that exists on earth. That could mean we don’t have the right lab equipment to get better data, or it could mean…”

  “…that you’re avoiding kissing me,” Ayaz cut in.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Fire raced along my veins. “That’s not true.”

  “Trey and Quinn said the same thing,” he whispered.

  “Well, it’s not true.” I slammed the book shut a little harder than I intended. “I just have bigger things on my mind right now.
As I was saying, it could also mean that no human could have carved that symbol… or for that matter, built the pillar itself. And the rock didn’t come from our planet.”

  Ayaz stood. “I need to see this pillar.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not going to sit here while you lie and pretend there isn’t something you’re keeping from me. Because I’ll be able to understand more once I’ve seen it for myself. I was a bit… unconscious from crippling pain by the time it appeared on the scene.”

  “I’m not keeping anything from you, I swear.” The lie stung my throat. I threw everything I had into smiling at him. He needed to believe everything was fine – if he found out what I’d agreed, he might do something stupid and mess it all up. I held out my hand to him, knowing that his touch would burn me inside. I had to endure it if I wanted to save him. “We’re going there right now – all four of us. I can dream with the god. Maybe that will give us some answers.”

  Ayaz stared at my hand for a long time. Behind me, a clock ticked on the wall, marking the seconds as hours while my love turned over whether he trusted me. Agonizing moments where he laid our relationship bare in his silence and chose to believe my lies.

  Finally, he stretched out long fingers and entwined them with mine.

  “Let’s go talk to a god,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ayaz and I found Trey and Quinn in Trey’s dorm. Trey sat at his desk, bent over his books as he studied for exams. Quinn slouched on the sofa, playing some video game with the volume on mute in deference to Trey’s need for concentration. This was lovely, except for the fact that Quinn was supplying his own running commentary – which was equal parts annoying and hilarious – and Trey’s shoulders grew tenser by the moment.

  “…feel the sting of my steel! Your own man has betrayed you. In the land of the witless and gullible, you would be king—Oh, hey Hazy. Ataturk.” Quinn paused the game and jumped up.

  “Thank fuck you’re here.” Trey rolled his eyes at the TV screen. “Maybe you can take Quinnanigans for a walk or throw a stick for him or something.”

  “Trey is proof that even cosmic gods don’t have a sense of humor. I’m glad to see you guys.” Quinn jumped up and wrapped his arms around me, his controller bouncing off my shoulder.

  His touch shot heat straight to my core, and I had to grit my teeth to stop myself from meeting his embrace with a smoldering kiss. After Quinn’s fear of my fire, this was such a big step – a grand gesture of trust and faith and love as only Quinn could. I had to endure it, instead of sinking into it and basking in the glow of Quinn’s renewed passion.

  I tried to return the embrace with as much sincerity as I could without being drawn into Quinn’s magnetism. He went to kiss my cheek and I ducked down, pretending to tie my bootlace. Quinn and Ayaz exchanged a glance.

  Shit. They suspect something’s up.

  Of course they do. They’re not idiots.

  An awkward silence descended. I straightened up and started talking before they could all gang up on me. “Ayaz wants to see the pillar tonight, and I think it’s time I talked to the god again. You guys want to come?”

  “Hell yes.” Quinn tossed down the controller with glee. “There’s nothing I love more than sneaking around creepy phallic objects.”

  Trey glanced at his watch and frowned. “We’d better hurry. The teachers will start their rounds in an hour, and I want them to find us safe in our beds.”

  We crept down the hall without speaking (a difficult feat for Quinn), not wanting any of the students to waylay us. Sounds from the dorm rooms bled from under the doors. Expensive sound systems booming old-school tunes, students fucking and talking and crying. It was amazing how even as everything had been turned upside down, this part of student life stayed the same.

  We made it across the school to the auditorium without anyone seeing us. Quinn cracked the stage door and ushered us all inside. “I’ll stand guard here,” he whispered, crouching amongst the props stacked behind the door. “If anyone comes in, I’ll distract them. I’ll make a lot of noise.”

  I kissed his forehead. As my lips brushed his skin, the fire inside me flared to life, begging for more of him.

  Trey and Ayaz flanked me as we picked our way around the ruined stage. If possible, the auditorium looked even worse than before. It certainly smelt worse – damp fabric and charred wood and behind it, the scent of rotting flesh. The scent of the god’s chaos.

  In the center of the room, the pillar gleamed, pristine and perfect amongst the ruin around it. It had definitely grown – the sigil had disappeared through the ceiling and was no longer visible from the floor. I lurched forward, my palms drawn to touch it. The hum shuddered through my body. Trey held me back.

  Ayaz circled the pillar, studying it without touching it. He spent a long time looking up, twisting his head this way and that as he tried to conceptualize it. The pillar had this weird way of warping the space around it – when I stared at it I got a sense that I only saw part of it, like the tip of an iceberg poking above the surface.

  “Non-Euclidean geometry,” Ayaz muttered. “Cyclopean.”

  “Is that a particular school of architecture?” I called out, struggling to free myself from Trey’s grip. “Because I’d just call it ‘giant and terrifying.’”

  “That’s basically what Cyclopean means. It’s used to describe large blocks of dry stone fitted together without mortar, like the kind used on Mycenaean palaces. This work is so fine that it’s impossible to see the joins in the stone.” Ayaz squinted harder. “It’s definitely the same stone as the god’s cavern is made of.”

  “That’s all the answers you’re going to get from it.” I wrenched my hand away from Trey’s grip. “My turn.”

  “Don’t touch it,” Trey warned.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” I grinned. To spite him, I slammed my hand against the stone.

  The strange… strangeness of the pillar wrapped around my fingers. The hum echoed through my body as my mind toppled into the stone. The edge of my vision blurred with black shadows – the servants that would step forward at my command.

  With my other hand I held up my chalk stick and drew the sigil on the pillar – the one that allowed me to call the god into my dreams. Keeping my fingers against the stone, I slid down onto my ass, resting my body against the pillar. The stone hummed against my back.

  I closed my eyes.

  Sleep came instantly, unnaturally. Someone flicked a switch inside my brain. One moment I was in the auditorium. The next, I stood inside a vast burning sphere. Smoke stung my eyes, and the heat felt like it stripped the skin from my bones. I looked down, expecting to see my body boiling away — but I floated inside the flames, apart from them but painfully aware of their presence.

  My back still pressed against the pillar, the cool stone the only relief from the primordial heat around me. The flames parted, revealing a ruined landscape of burning peaks and valleys crimson with liquid magma. The air burned in my lungs – thick and viscous, tasting of ash and poison.

  The smoke swirled, revealing two more pillars standing in front of me, forming a triangle. Their tips were invisible in the miasma. The geometry of them seemed all wrong. Every time I blinked, the angles appeared different, out of touch with the others, as though each face yearned deeper into some other place beyond where my eyes could see.

  I edged my foot forward, and my boot slipped across a platform of smooth, faceless stone. Its edges fell away into the burning landscape below. From beneath its surface, I felt the strangling tendrils of some cancerous horror reaching up, circling my ankles, rooting me in place.

  I’m just some poor-ass white girl from Philly. I can’t deal with this.

  And yet, here I was.

  “Where am I?” I screamed into the void.

  This time, the god’s screams came from all around me, from the smoke and the primordial mountains and the poison air. You stand in the origin of all, in the place where I fel
l from the stars.

  I understood then that I stood exactly where I was – on the grounds of Miskatonic Prep, only years in the distant past. Perhaps a millennia. Perhaps even during the formation of the earth itself.

  “Why are you showing me this?” I demanded. “Why is this same pillar now in the middle of my school?”

  What has risen will sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of man.

  “Okay, right. So the pillar signifies the beginning and end of something. Where are the other pillars?” I gestured to the two flanking me.

  You have not called them forth. I need more of your power. More of your… truthness. And they too will rise.

  I gathered that in god-speak that meant he needed me to burn more shit down. In the moments before the pillar appeared, I’d been in a murderous frame of mind – the same way I’d felt right before I unleashed a hail of flames down on my mother and Dante. Only this time, there’d been a voice inside my head stoking the flames. The god and I had been one. He’d needed someone like me to act as a conduit and call up this blasphemous architecture.

  He needed me to do that twice more, to raise the final two pillars. But why?

  To free himself? To attract more souls? To act like a giant speaker system broadcasting his power across the world? Or something else – something about his children?

  “I promised I’d find you new children, but I’m not going to do anything that will hurt the human race. You said you would stop taking sacrifices and giving out your power, so you can’t—”

  I did speak this. I am my truth. But I cannot control what stirs beneath, what is preparing to ascend. That is your domain, because you are the light, and light is required for ascension.

  “What is preparing to ascend?” My head was all twisted around from his words. It reminded me of that scene from The Hobbit when Bilbo Baggins bamboozled Gollum at the riddle competition. Only in this case, I was Gollum and I was going to lose the most precious thing of all if I couldn’t figure out this riddle.