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

by Steffanie Holmes

  Vincent nodded at Damon, who reached across and nudged Trey’s backpack off his shoulders. The sigil made a loud clunk as it hit the floor. Damon used his foot to slide it toward the bed.

  “When the bank showed me the security footage, I admit you gave me a shock. I could tell it was you even through your pitiful disguise. I figured you’d sent Hazel to take the money, but imagine my surprise to see my son and his friends outside of the school walls. How had you done it? Luckily, Damon and I happened to remember a strange thing that happened to our friend Senator Hyde-Jones the other week. A drunk teenager rushed him as he was coming out of a meeting, swinging his arms wildly and yelling that he was the Senator’s son. Of course, security jumped on him. They removed a backpack containing a large rock with a strange symbol carved into it. As soon as they moved the rock away from the teen, his body disintegrated into dust.”

  So John’s gone. I couldn’t say I felt much of anything over his death. But I was anxious that Vincent knew about the sigils.

  “Ever since, Damon and I have been staying nearby, watching the school for any more little field trips. Damon has a lot of time for spying on students, now that he’s no longer practicing law. We saw you sneak in here yesterday, and this woman left soon after you. We decided to have a chat with her when she returned. Tell me, son, and maybe I’ll let your whore live – what are you doing with my money?” Vincent held up a handful of cash. “Who do you have sabotaging our businesses?”

  “The money in my account is in my name,” Trey hissed. “What I do with it is none of your concern. And as for sabotage, I don’t know anything about it. It can’t possibly be us. We’ve trapped up at the school at your behest. We don’t even have internet, so how are we masterminding any attacks? The Eldritch Club has been doing illegal and unethical things for decades – maybe you just got caught.”

  “You little punk. How dare you? Everything you’ve been given has come from me.” Vincent’s smile turned my heart to ice. “For your insolence, Hazel dies slowly and painfully. I’m going to enjoy removing each of her dainty fingers one at a time. Grab them.”

  While Trey tried to wrestle the other gunman, Damon grabbed my arm and yanked me into the room. He pinned me against the wall, leaning in close to press the barrel to my temple.

  An arrow pierced him through the eye.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  At first, I thought I’d imagined it. One moment Damon loomed over me, whisky breath staining my skin. The next moment, an arrow extended through his skull, pinning his head to the wall. He screamed, but the sound was a whoosh of air as his body jerked beneath me.

  “What the fuck?” Vincent whirled to face the window just as a figure ducked below view. “Get them!”

  The second gunman turned toward Damon, the gun wobbling in his hand. Trey swung out and punched the guy in the nose. He went down like a sack of potatoes just as a second whoosh of air penetrated the room and another arrow embedded itself into the wall where his head had previously been.

  Greg. Loretta. Where are they?

  I dived for the window over the bedside as the three Kings rushed the room. They pinned Vincent’s arms and wrestled them behind his back. Trey grabbed a handful of his dad’s thick, dark hair, only to have it come off in his hands. He’s wearing a toupee. I’d have laughed if there weren’t still guns in the room.

  Trey dug his nails into the thinning grey hair and fragile skin on Vincent’s scalp and jerked his head right back to expose his neck and more burns. Loretta leaned through the window, the string of her bow pulled back toward her shoulder, an eerily placid expression on her face.

  “I’m going to enjoy watching you bleed,” she whispered.

  “Trey, son,” Vincent blubbered. “You don’t want to do this. The Eldritch Club is planning something for your graduation. I can tell you—”

  “Shut up.” Trey’s ice eyes focused on Loretta. “Lower the bow.”

  “You joking, Bloomberg?” I demanded.

  Loretta didn’t move an inch. Her fingers on the bowstring remained frozen in place.

  “I’m not going to force you to do this,” Trey said, not looking at anyone except Loretta. “If you take his life, we don’t get a chance to break the cycle. Plus, we need him alive.”

  Tension crackled between us, filling the room with electric energy. Loretta’s arm jerked. She shot Trey a look that would’ve burned a lesser man alive, lowered her bow, and turned away in disgust.

  “Thank you, son,” Vincent blubbered. “I knew you wouldn’t be so stupid. You still had it in you to be great, to take over the business. I know that’s what you always wanted. I could disinherit Wilhem and—”

  Trey shoved his father into the bed. He spoke in that same calm voice, and his words sent chills down my spine. “You’re pathetic. And you know nothing about me or what I want. As you walk out of here today, I want you to remember that you have no power over me or anyone else at Miskatonic Prep any longer. We don’t care if you know we’ve found a way to get past the boundary. You’re not safe anywhere. The only reason I’m not twisting your head off your body with my bare hands is because you will deliver a message to all the parents. We’re coming for you, for everything you’ve built off the backs of your greed and our torture. We’re going to tear down every last pillar of the empire you’ve built. It’s already started. The only way to stop it is to come to our graduation. Ayaz, you got a flyer?”

  “Sure.” Ayaz pulled a folded poster from his back pocket.

  Trey slapped it across Vincent’s face. “See you there, Father. Dress to impress.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Trey yanked Vincent off the bed and shoved him toward the door, planting his foot in his father’s ass and kicking him so hard Vincent crashed into the wall. Blood gushed from a wound above his eye. His ruined skin couldn’t take the abuse.

  “Ayaz, help me.”

  Ayaz reached for him. Vincent held out his hand, thinking Ayaz was helping him, but instead, Ayaz kicked him in the side. Again and again and again, his jaw set in silent rage and his dark eyes blazing with every evil thing Vincent had made him do.

  Vincent rolled over and dragged himself through the doorframe. He staggered to his feet and flailed across the room. When he reached the entrance, he clung to the frame and turned, his face twisted into an ugly scowl.

  “I raised you out of the gutter, you ungrateful rag-head,” he roared at Ayaz.

  “May Allah bless your family and wealth,” Ayaz replied.

  Quinn burst into hysterical laughter. Vincent stumbled out the door. A moment later, the roar of his Porsche speeding away drew me back to reality. We stood in the middle of a crime scene, and if we were caught, it could be a disaster.

  The second gunman was only unconscious. But Damon Delacorte was dead as a doornail, his blood and brains splattered across the wall like a grisly Rorschach drawing. Loretta’s arrow still stuck out of his eye. Our fingerprints would be all over the room.

  This could ruin everything. I can’t raise the third pillar from a jail cell.

  “Quinn, wait in the car,” I barked. Trey and I untied Deborah, and I slid the gag out of her mouth.

  “Hazel, I’m so glad you’re okay. Is everyone safe? No one’s hurt?” Her skin was pale and her hands trembling as I quickly checked her over, but they didn’t appear to have done anything worse to her.

  Everyone is fine except poor Roger. “We’re okay. I’m so sorry they came after you. If I’d known we put you in danger, I never would have—”

  “Nonsense.” She wiped her eyes. “I went into this with my eyes wide open. You’re not the bad guy here.”

  Don’t be so sure about that. “Ayaz, help Deborah into the kitchen. We need to strip the bed.”

  Ayaz put his arms around Deborah and took her outside. Trey moved to the other side of the bed and helped me strip the sheets. We spread them on the floor and rolled Damon’s body on top, then used a spare set in the cupboard to do the same for the unconscious gun
man.

  I gathered the corners of the sheets around Damon Delacorte’s body, knotting them together into handles that would make him easier to carry. Wordlessly, Quinn stepped into the room, his back rigid as he took up two of the corners.

  “I told you to wait in the car.”

  Quinn didn’t speak. He also didn’t drop the sheet.

  “Quinn.” I set down my end and glared at him. His eyes were a million miles away. “You know we have to hide the body. If the police find out he’s dead, it’s going to ruin everything. They’ll march up to the school and haul all the students all away before we can get your lives back. We have to do this, but you don’t have to be there.”

  He shook his head.

  Trey stepped between us, placing a hand on each of Quinn’s shoulders. Their eyes blazed at each other, a dance of will and defiance that had fueled their friendship for so many years. Quinn’s shoulders sagged. Trey turned to me.

  “He stays. He needs to be a part of this.”

  I wanted to argue, but we didn’t have time. Quinn and I took his dad’s sheet, dragging it out into the living area. Trey followed with the unconscious guy and the bag containing the sigil slung over his shoulder. We needed to get him as far away as we could from the crime scene.

  Greg sat on the sofa, his head in his hands. Loretta’s arms wrapped around his shoulders. He looked up when we entered, and a shudder rocked his body as he saw the bloodied sheet.

  “I killed him.” Greg curled into the fetal position, as if that would make the horror and guilt go away.

  Fuck, I was supposed to protect him from this. I wanted to throttle Greg for following us with that bloody bow, and Loretta for letting him do it, knowing what she knew about carrying murder on her conscience. But he saved my life. So I kept my mouth shut.

  “Look after him,” I said to Loretta as we wrangled the bodies outside.

  With every step I expected someone to run from one of the rooms and accost us. I expected Vincent to have snipers in the trees ready to gun us down. Every footfall on the decking rang as loud as a gunshot. I didn’t let out my breath until we penetrated the trees.

  Ayaz ran after us, a long-handled shovel in his hands. “I found this in the hotel’s storage shed. I figured we’d need it.”

  Quinn’s eyes widened, but he didn’t ask what we planned to do with them.

  We walked.

  Deep into the woods, until the lights of the hotel faded into fireflies and my arms burned from dragging the heavy body. Blood soaked the sheet. Quinn gazed all around – above our heads, into the trees, everywhere that wasn’t his father’s shroud.

  We came to a small clearing. Rain falling through a hole in the trees had left the ground soft. Wildflowers poked their heads through a covering of dead, wet leaves. Trey set down his bundle and picked up the shovel. Without stopping for a breath, he began to dig.

  Trey’s muscles rippled as he worked. I thought back to the first time I’d seen him do physical work – when he’d chiseled out the bricks in the tunnel so we could sneak back into school. How he’d worked all night under the light of my fire even though it frightened him.

  From the way he kept glancing over at Quinn, who roamed around the clearing picking the wildflowers, I knew what frightened him now. Quinn just saw his dad killed in front of his eyes. He hated his abuser, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hurting. These things were always complicated. I knew all too well how grief and rage and hurt could be shaken into a potent cocktail of crazy.

  Trey hollowed out a foot of earth before passing the shovel to Ayaz. While Ayaz tossed dirt out of the hole, Trey slumped to the earth beside Quinn.

  “This burial is too dignified for him,” he spat.

  Quinn said nothing, staring down at the posy of flowers clutched in his hands.

  Ayaz dug until his shoulders shook. The soft earth had disappeared, replaced by thick clay. The hole was barely two-feet deep when he finally leaned against the shovel, panting, his energy spent.

  “My turn,” Quinn reached for the shovel.

  Trey grabbed it from Ayaz and tossed it out of reach. “Sit the fuck down. Let us do it.”

  “Don’t fucking tell me what I shouldn’t do,” Quinn snapped. “You don’t have to protect me like I’m some fucking child. I’m not sad. I am more proud that we’re ridding the earth of that shitstain than I am of anything else I’ve ever done, with the possible exception of boning Hazy, cuz she’s fucking spectacular.”

  Despite the horrific situation, I burst out laughing. Quinn would always be… Quinn.

  Quinn grabbed the shovel and jumped into the grave. He dug furiously, flinging clay over his shoulder in all directions. It was like he didn’t even feel the bite.

  When he finally tossed down the shovel, he stood in a hole four-feet deep and about long enough for Loretta to lie down in. Trey helped Quinn clamber out while Ayaz and I rolled Damon’s body into the grave.

  Quinn reached for the shovel again. I planted my hands on his chest and shoved him back. “Let me do this for you. Please.”

  Something in my words broke Quinn. He slumped to his knees. A tremor shuddered through his entire body. He was done.

  I pushed the clay and earth back into the hole. With each toss, I thought of the whip marks Damon left on Quinn’s back, of the little boy who’d been belted for hugging his daddy, of the way Damon openly flirted with other women – shunning the weakness of others while succumbing to his own. None of it made this day any less shit, but it did make me throw the clay down extra hard.

  Damon Delacorte would rot in an unmarked grave, and it served him right. He wouldn’t join his fellow Eldritch Club members as children of the god, sailing through the stars on their way home to fuck-knows-where. If Vincent didn’t make the parents show up at graduation, then as far as I cared, they could all enjoy the same fate.

  I knew they’d cook up some scheme to save their asses. We expected it. I just hope like hell we play them before they play us.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “I’m so sorry.” Deborah met us at the edge of the forest as we traipsed out, her arm being wrenched out of its socket by two poodles desperate to get at Trey. He fell to his knees and they licked his face and gazed up at him adoringly like he was a brave soldier returned from war. Which in a way, he was.

  We’d left the other guy, still unconscious, a mile or so away from Damon’s body. Eventually, he’d come to and stumble out of the forest, hopefully with a serious headache. Or he wouldn’t. I didn’t give a fuck.

  “Vincent is the one who’ll be sorry,” Trey growled, standing up to look Deborah over. I knew he was thinking of poor Roger. He touched a cut on Deborah’s cheek. “Are you sure he didn’t hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “Not physically.”

  “Tell us what happened.”

  “It was awful. I was just getting ready to take the dogs out to relieve themselves. I’d unlocked the door, and I turned around to get the doggie bags off the table, and that’s when they ran in and grabbed me. I let go of the leashes. Leopold and Loeb tried to take one of them down, but then he shot Roger and they ran off into the woods. I should have known they wouldn’t be too far.” She nuzzled Leopold’s neck, tears swimming in her eyes. “They came as soon as I called them.”

  “How come none of the hotel staff reacted to the shot?” I asked.

  “He used a silencer.” Deborah shuddered. “That’s how I knew this was serious. That guy was a professional killer. I was so scared. I kept hoping and hoping that you wouldn’t show up. They kept asking me who I was, how I knew you, Hazel, but I didn’t say a word. They seemed to lose interest in me after a while – they were here for you.”

  Coldness settled on my chest as I studied the motel block. I hadn’t planned on covering up a death today. No one had come out of the other rooms, and there didn’t appear to be any cars parked in the lots outside. “Is there anyone else staying in the motel?”

  Deborah shook her head. “The family next d
oor to me left yesterday.”

  “Just in case, could you go and check? Knock on the doors or peek in the windows – whatever you have to do. Make it quick.”

  Deborah handed me the leashes and ran off. Trey fussed the dogs while Ayaz watched him, looking broody. Quinn rested against me, his head on my shoulder. I ran my fingers through his thick surfer hair and wished I had a softness to me like his mother, something that could ease the violence that still hummed in his veins. Ass-kicking I could do, but comfort wasn’t my thing.

  Greg and Loretta stood a little away from us, their heads pressed together as they spoke in low voices. When they saw we returned, they came running over.

  “We took care of Roger,” Loretta pointed to the bushes. “And disposed of the bloody blanket and cleaned the room. It looks as good as new.”

  “I’m so sorry.” I wrapped my arms around Greg’s neck, wanting to squeeze the bad things out of him. “I wanted to protect you from this.”

  “You weren’t the one who loosed the arrow,” Greg shuddered. “It’s not like I didn’t know what I was aiming for, what it would do when it hit the target.”

  “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you did a good thing. You saved my life.” I squeezed him tighter, hoping to imprint the memory of him in my body to carry to the stars. “I’ll never forget that.”

  Deborah came back. “I’ve checked out early and paid the bill. There’s no one else in the motel. I knocked on all the doors and I even checked the registration book when the clerk’s back was turned.”