Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
GEMMA
Sandwiched between Wraith and Raze, I replayed the events as the car rumbled farther away from my home. Blood. Screaming.
I felt another panic attack coming.
My mom.
My brother.
My sister.
My world—
“People will talk,” I said. “The police will come. You can’t just…just hurt someone because he talked to me.” And what was wrong with me that I liked it? That I had goose bumps?
At my side, Raze laughed, like what I’d said was ridiculous.
I always knew they were powerful. They were the darkness in Crowne Point. Seen but unseen. Felt. But there was no way they could have so much power that they could beat a man in broad daylight and get away with it. Right?
Lock’s blue eyes fastened on me in the rearview. “Afraid yet, princess?”
A few moments later we pulled up to the Wharf. Raze tugged me out of the car, shoving me toward the Underworld.
The Wharf was divided into parts. The famous Underworld, the club, was originally an old lighthouse.
Sometime in the nineteen hundreds, a hurricane hit and the lighthouse was destroyed.
After that, the Wharf ended serious functionality, and the lighthouse was reconstituted into a church.
The result was a Frankenstein of architecture, an uncanny mix of stained glass shoved into concrete and industrial purpose.
A few yards behind the club sat the only other functional building: the Horsemen’s home. Like the club, it dated back almost as far as Crowne Hall. When the Ferris wheel was operational, it was a haunted house. Before that, it was the preacher’s residence. Before that, the lighthouse keeper’s home.
They pushed me through a door of black wood and jewel-stained glass.
I’d been to this part of the Wharf once before, when I needed Grim’s help and he kept me as collateral. But even then, I’d been blindfolded, shoved into a dark room.
Opulent wasn’t the right word for their house. Rich, maybe, like a good wine or expensive steak. I expected the inside to be as cold as the people who lived here, but it was filled with a delicious warmth that came from fireplaces and wrapped like a blanket.
It was well kept. Black, exposed brick lined the hallway. Great windows overlooked the Wharf and beach where the ocean was an inky-black void, and a reckless wind blew, loud and rushing. It was impossible to tell if the roaring came from the trees bending to the wind, or waves crashing on the sand.
I caught a glimpse of the kitchen and living room as they shoved me down a short hallway, up black wooden stairs, and into a room on the second floor.
Floor-to-ceiling mullioned windows overlooked the old pier and the rusted Ferris wheel, while a vaulted ceiling with exposed ribs of black wood gave the room a feeling of ghostly sanctuary.
There was a bed, not neat, not messy—silky black sheets, heavy blankets, metal frame.
Scattered remnants of normalcy lingered. A chipped mug, a lighter, a gun on the nightstand.
Someone lived here.
“Time you learned the rules, princess,” Lock said.
I blinked out of my thoughts, into Lock’s cold blue eyes. Lock and Raze faced me, blocking the exit. Wraith leaned against the doorframe, partially obscured by their bodies. To the left, Grim leaned against the wall, one foot up behind him, hands in his pocket.
They looked…relaxed.
“Rules?” I asked.
“Pretty sure you’ve figured out the first one,” Raze said. “Don’t fuck other people.”
“I wasn’t fucking him—I was talking to him.”
“Don’t talk, don’t look, don’t think about people who aren’t the Reaper.”
I put a freshly manicured finger to my temple and stared directly at Lock, licking my bottom lip, before sliding my gaze back to Grim.
“What happens if I break them? Gonna kill someone else? Me?”
“Yes,” Wraith growled from behind Raze and Lock, his tattooed face obscured half in shadows. “We know all about your games. The monsters you court for attention. The death you put on Grim’s hand.”
As Wraith continued, I glanced at Grim, uncertainty wrinkling my brow.
They knew?
“Any man who touches you,” Wraith said, stepping between Lock and Raze into the room, “monster or not, we will kill. We will all kill for you.”
Wraith had the same tone in his voice as Grim held in his eyes. Not bitter or angry, but resolved. A man at the gallows.
It made my chest tighten.
It felt different, like it wasn’t a game anymore.
“Well.” I shrugged. “You’re going to be killing a lot of people.”
“Maybe,” Raze said.
“Definitely,” Lock added.
They laughed like this was just a regular day. As if they hadn’t kidnapped the most famous girl in America, as if it was normal for that girl to lure monsters to their death.
The game had ended. That nice buffer between us and reality crumbled.
So I searched for something, anything, to build that defense back up.
“Five years ago you stole my life and promised to kill me,” I said, attention on Grim. “If you won’t do it willingly, I’ll make you.”
Grim laughed. “Good luck with that.”
“You don’t believe me?”
He arched a brow. “I believe you’ll try.”
“We won’t let you die, princess,” Lock said.
Wraith stared. “We’re your monsters now.”
Oh, wow, there it was. Fear. In the five years I’d been under Grim’s thumb, I’d never felt it.
I was starting to think I was immune. But you could always count on fear.
It was your emotional period, coming at the worst possible time, in the worst possible place, and likely involved a boy. Or in this case, four.
The Horsemen shared a knowing look with Grim, and then they left, shutting the door as they did.
The room transformed. The air heady and thick.
Grim leaned against the opposite wall, one leg propped up.
His pose gave an illusion of calm, easily shattered by the tension threading his neck, the ravenous glare in his eyes.
Everything I’d done landed on me at once. It was always a game between Grim and me. We pushed to see who would crack first.
There was no game in his eyes.
“Say something,” I demanded.
“You have that look in your eyes,” he said, dragging a hand over his mouth.
“What look?”
“The one you had with a knife to your neck. Like you’re daring me to do something.” He stood off the wall. “It’s fucking hot.”
I swallowed. “I’m not—”
“I’ve thought about this moment a lot, Gemma.” In three quick strides, Grim closed the distance.
“The moment when you kidnap me?” I joked.
“What I would do when I had you again.” He thumbed the blood on my collarbone, smearing it. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was going to be sweeter.”
The idea that Grim had been fantasizing about me as much as I had him—that he wanted it…sweet?—made me hot. I couldn’t breathe. I shouldn’t want this, but then that was Grim and me, a sky of starry shouldn’ts that somehow made a constellation.
He gripped the back of my neck, forcing me to look at him as he did so. I hissed at the pressure on my tattoo, and his eyes grew heavy lidded. He dragged my lips down with his free hand, and forced his thumb into my mouth, tasting lingering blood, sharp and coppery.
“You deserve sweet.” He pressed against my neck, soft yet hard, and the pain transformed into hot, twisting pleasure. A small sound fell from my lips without my consent.
This was the moment I should turn back. Where I fought, where I said I’d made a mistake.
Back at my house, blood spilled garnet on the marble.
The foundation beneath my feet was crumbling.
Maybe Grim felt it too.
He dragged me to him by his grip on my neck, forcing me to arch into him.
“Last chance to get out, Rich Girl.” He dragged a bloody hand down my face, waiting.
“I don’t want sweet,” I said. “I want you.”
His eyes went dark. Black.
Everything changed in an instant. He reached behind his back, gripping the collar of his shirt and pulling it over his head.
Ripped.
Each muscle brutally cut.
That tattoo I hadn’t seen since the night that bound us, vivid. Three blood-red lines, shadowed in black. Scratch marks—mine.
Then his lips were on mine.