Chapter 21
Something woke Rue in the middle of the night. At first, he wasn’t sure what it was, frowning at the dark window. Then Ryker shifted at his back and the echoing shrill scream from somewhere in the lodge faded away. Somehow the sudden lack of sound was what made him process it.
“Stay.” Ryker held him closer when Rue went to roll over. “Go back to sleep.”
“But…Who was that?” It’d sounded female. Esti? It must have been Esti.
“It came from the second floor,” the Black Hart said. “You’re safe.”
That wasn’t what Rue was worried about at the moment but…Ryker was right to stop him. What exactly could he do even if he did rush out there? He was no match for one of those things, and if the scream had been any indicator, it was already too late for Esti anyway.
Bile rose up the back of his throat and a tear slipped past his defenses.
“Do you blame me?” Ryker asked.
Rue knew what he meant.
Because he might be the creator of this nightmare.
Because his father was most likely the person behind bringing it to life.
Rhys was the one who’d gathered them all here. He was in charge of the guest list for every company outing, and he’d been the one who’d decided to rent out the entire resort. He had money and access to Ryker’s things, and everyone knew he was creative in his cruelty.
His first wife had died from anaphylactic shock after eating a food she was deathly allergic to.
In the form of a desert that never contained that ingredient.
One that she frequently requested the kitchen staff to make.
At the dinner table, in front of her seven-year-old twin boys and their father.
A man who had kicked her EpiPen across the room casually when she tried to get it.
Rue remembered asking Ryker once, when they’d been in their teens, why his dad had turned it into a production. Rhys could have easily killed her without all the flare.
He’d never forget the angry gleam in Ryker’s eyes, or the tight sound of his voice when he’d explained Rhys had done it because he hadn’t wanted it to be easy.
Not only had he wanted her to suffer until the very end, painfully aware what was happening to her, that she was dying, he’d also wanted her to know the cause was her favorite dessert and the man she’d insulted.
Apparently that dessert had been served at their wedding.
Rue had looked for it when his mom had married Rhys two years ago, but it had been absent.
“No.” Rue answered honestly. He’d made a game for his brother. No one could have imagined something like this would actually happen.
Ryker may have inherited his dad’s anger issues and arrogance, but he didn’t waste time on intricate plots and schemes. He certainly wouldn’t find joy in making them all fearful for their lives for days on end, without needing them to know the exact reason for their suffering beforehand.
“If you were the villain of this story,” he dared to say, “you would have locked the doors with one of those things inside the very first night. Would have laughed as you watched us all scramble and panic. You’d make sure we all knew we were being tormented for crossing you. You and Rhys are miles apart.”
Ryker grew quiet, and in his silence, it became apparent that he didn’t believe him.
To anyone else, it might come off strange, but Rue knew about his hidden insecurities, especially when it came to members of his family.
Ryker hated his father and compared himself to his brother.
Not with the intention to change himself or try to be more like Ryder, but almost as a desperate attempt to stand out from the rest of the Harts.
On the outside, he was a bratty bully. Vicious and cruel. But anger issues aside, Ryker was hardly the most violent of the Black Harts. Hell, he wouldn’t even make the top three.
Rue should have known, no matter how upset he was, Ryker would never resort to this. Not only because it was certifiably insane, but also because pulling something like this off required a level of fixation that, frankly, the eldest Hart twin lacked.
Ryker acted in the moment.
Spending three years concocting some wild scheme would seem like a massive waste of energy to him. He would have either gotten bored halfway through, or lost patience with the process and openly attacked them to vent his anger.
“You didn’t know I was sneaking into your room at night,” Ryker said softly then, as if able to read Rue’s mind.
He hummed. “You left me covered in come every time, Ryk. You were hardly subtle.”
“Are you saying you knew?”
He hadn’t, because it would have been a major stretch to assume his new stepbrother who openly hated him spent his evening pleasuring himself over Rue’s body.
“Even if I didn’t know about that part of the equation, you made your ire toward me abundantly clear.
Whenever anything went wrong, I knew exactly who to suspect first.”
Yet even pinning down it was Rhys didn’t give them any clues as to what his motive could be. That part still stumped them both.
“Who else worked with you on the game?” Rue asked, because there had to have been a team, for all the reasons he’d just thought of and more. Even if it was something he was interested in, Ryker wouldn’t have stuck with it for a year without outside motivation.
“Arcadia,” he answered. “It was a start-up company when I approached them. I paid for everything, with the understanding that they don’t own the rights and aren’t allowed to reproduce, copy, or distribute the game without my say so. It’s in the contract.”
“Do you think someone from there helped your dad?”
“Doubtful. Even though I wouldn’t give them the rights to sell, it was a small team, and we got on pretty well.
I still speak with most of them. We just haven’t talked about the game.
The setting is wrong too. I put the players in the middle of an old sanitorium.
There are ghosts from wronged patients and an evil doctor. ”
“He create the monsters?”
“Yes, but he isn’t the killer in the story. Players have to uncover the truth as they go, but eventually they find out the doctor was murdered by one of them. The real culprit is amongst them, and planned the whole thing out.”
“For revenge?” Rue would prefer if they were playing that game instead of partially living in it.
“No,” Ryker said. “Just for shits and giggles. They’re all test subjects in his mind.”
“Did you pull that from Ares’ dad?” Their friend’s father had been the epitome of a mad scientist. And also one of the worst people Rue had ever had the misfortune of knowing. Thankfully, he was dead now, but the suffering he’d caused when he’d been alive still lingered.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t see Rhys randomly deciding to play a video game, even if he found your copy.”
“Notes, game maps, character sketches, and basic gameplay and lore details were in my desk,” Ryker replied.
“I had the materials printed because I knew Ryder would get a kick out of spreading them all out on the floor. My dad had access if he wanted it. I never bothered checking if the materials were still there. I was trying not to think about it.”
Trying not to think about Ryder, he meant.
The Black Hart sighed. “Sleep. We still have a couple of hours before the sun is up.”
There hadn’t been any more noises since the scream that’d woken him.
For years now Rue had needed heavy duty sleep aids, but ever since getting back with Ryker, that had changed.
These past few nights, nights spent hunted and terrified and confused, had been some of the best sleeps he’d had possibly ever.
Whatever that said about him as a person, he couldn’t dwell on it.
Ryker was right, soon they would have to get up and go back out there straight into the bloodshed and insanity. Rue shifted back, pressing closer against the Black Hart’s chest, intent on milking this comfortable feeling for as long as he could.
When it was just the two of them, nothing else mattered.
He preferred it that way.
* * *
“What if we just…didn’t?” Rue wrung his hands as Ryker moved the dresser away from the door. “We could just stay. Eventually help will come, won’t it?”
The Black Harts were close. One of them would realize they’d lost contact with Ryker, Ell, and Uriel.
“We’d run out of food and have to leave the room anyway,” Ryker said. He took his hand. “Don’t be scared. I won’t let you get hurt.”
“I’m not just worried for myself, Ryk.”
“We’ll be fine, sweetheart.”
“You don’t know that.” He couldn’t make that promise. Neither of them could.
“Bowie is still out there, remember?” Ryker changed tactics, using his friend as motivational bait. The corner of his mouth twitched upward when Rue gave him a look, letting him know he was on to him. “As far as we know, there’s also Penn, Hollis, and…”
“Fran,” Rue supplied. “The worker who went to check the fuse box is named Fran.”
“Right, him. I don’t care about them, clearly, but you? You’re a decent person. Are you really going to be okay with leaving them out there to fend for themselves?”
“Ellery and Uriel are there,” Rue drawled. “They’ll be fine.”
“And if they aren’t?”
“Better them than you.” They were both caught off guard by his words, but despite the flash of guilt, Rue didn’t attempt to retract them.
He meant it.
Bad things could happen to anyone else in the entire universe, so long as it didn’t happen to Ryker.
“Careful,” his Black Hart grinned. “You’re sounding more and more like one of us.”
“What’s the plan?” If they were going to do this and risk their necks, they had to have a plan. And rules. Lots of rules. “We stick together. No matter what. No running off without me or leaving me behind because you think it’ll be safer.”
“Only if you make the same promise.”
“Deal.”
“Stay behind me at all times,” Ryker said. “I won’t force you to stay here, but we both know I have a better chance against this thing than you do.”
“No unnecessary risks.”
“Okay.”
Rue exhaled. “We go straight to the game room and check Ishleen for this patch. Then we search for Ellery and Uriel. We are not going out there to hunt this monster.”
“But—”