Realms and Rebels: A Paranormal and Fantasy Reverse Harem Collection Read online

Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  About the Author

  A and E Kirk

  Demon In Distress

  Demon In Distress

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  See No Devils

  Trust No Evil #1

  C.M. Stunich

  See No Devils

  Trust No Evil #1

  See no evil; speak no evil; hear no evil.

  But what if evil is all you’ve ever known?

  What if evil’s been chasing you since the day you were born?

  Trick, the sinfully hot tattooed a-hole, with a magic staff. Crew, the knight in shining armor with a devilish grin. And Jensen, the enigma I may never know.

  The blind man, the mute man, the deaf man… They’re my only keys to unlocking the truth.Supposedly, I’m a fucking goddess.

  Inside, I’m just a scared little girl running from devils. Inside, I’m full of magic I barely understand. Inside, I’m falling in love with three men who may very well be my undoing.

  1

  I wake up screaming, fingers clawing at the sheets, breath ragged and short and hot. I can't breathe; I can't even remember what it feels like to breathe. The only thing I know is that I have to get up and out and away.

  My feet hit the floor and there's blood everywhere, spatters of crimson that catch my eye, dangerously beautiful against the pale, white-washed pine floors.

  I blink a few times and run my hands over my face, feeling drops of cold sweat slide down my back.

  Where the hell am I going? What am I doing?

  Lifting my head, I meet my own eyes in the mirror above my dresser, these two lavender spots that mark me as different. Everyone else in my family has brown eyes and yet, somehow, I've got these blue-going-on-purple irises that draw stares and mocking comments. My coworkers think I wear colored contacts, even though it's against company policy.

  I've never worn contacts in my life.

  Sitting down heavily on the edge of my bed, I orient myself. Apartment, downtown Eugene, home. This is my home. I don't need to run; nothing bad is happening to me.

  "It's just a fucking nightmare," I tell myself as I try to figure out where the blood is coming from. I'm not on a period, so ... blood on the floor is concerning, even if a screwed-up dream about having my eyes gouged out isn't. Lifting my fingers, I touch them to the wetness on my cheeks and they come away gleaming ruby red. The shadows in my room make the blood hard to see in my reflection, but there it is, wet and sticky. I pinch two fingers together, rubbing the liquid against the rough whorls.

  "What in the ever-loving fuck?" I whisper. I have a dream about losing my eyes, and then wake up to blood on my cheeks? Some coincidence. "You probably scratched your face, made yourself bleed, and then dreamed it," I say to the empty room, standing up and making my way into the attached bathroom.

  Outside, I can hear the sounds of college students partying, and do my best not to roll my eyes. I might be the same age as those assholes, but I don't relate to them, not at all. I'm not a college kid, was never meant to be. I'm lucky to even have a nice job with suits and key cards and a paycheck that doesn't completely suck.

  "That's it, be rational," I whisper as I flick the lights on in my bathroom ... and find myself face-to-face with a man, a blind man with milky white eyes and a staff.

  "This is where you've been hiding," he whispers in a whip-sharp voice, just before I stumble back, slip on my own blood, and hit my head on the edge of that sleek glass nightstand I just had to have.

  The sharp corner cuts my scalp, the impact of the fall bruises me, and I lose consciousness on the floor of my apartment.

  Morning sunshine streams across my dry lips, hot and unwelcome in the darkness of my brain. It takes me a few minutes to remember why, exactly, the light is so god-awful and painful as it slashes across my eyes, and I groan as I sit up, putting a hand to the back of my head ... and finding a bandage over a painful bump.

  Not only that, but I'm in the bed instead of on the floor. Casting a quick glance over the edge, I don't see a single drop of blood. But even as I'm wondering if I've lost my goddamn mind, I haven't forgotten about the weirdo in my bathroom. No way in hell I dreamed that shit.

  "If you're still here, I'm not so left-leaning that I don't have a twenty-two in my nightstand," I call out, grabbing the pistol from the drawer and shoving the magazine in. I learned a long time ago that the world is cruel and dark and unfair; I get why people hate guns, but I know that I can't and won't live long without one. "You hear me, you fucking psycho!"

  I edge off the mattress and clear the bathroom first, followed by the closet, then underneath the bed. In the back of my mind, I realize that I could call the police. That I should call the police, and yet, I'm not going to. First off, because calling and telling the operator that I saw a shirtless tattooed blind guy with a staff sounds ridiculous as fuck. And second, because I'm not entirely sure that I really saw him in the first place.

  After clearing the rest of the apartment–thank goddess my roommate is out for the weekend–I pause in front of the mirror near the apartment door and check my cheeks for blood. There's nothing. Purple eyes stare back at me as I reach up to touch the bump on the back of my head. It's clearly still there, and it hurts, so my memory isn't totally screwed up.

  My phone buzzes on the counter and slowly, reluctantly, I back away and head over to pick it up.

  "This better be you telling me you're on your way home," I tell Daniel, my longtime roomie, and the only person in the world who knows how I grew up.

  "Not exactly," he says, and I can clearly hear him chewing. Another voice speaks up in the background, but I don't have to make out the words to know it's Daniel's brother talking. Well, one of them anyway. Daniel and his brothers are triplets. We like to joke that the Kavanaugh triplets have conquered the Pacific Northwest: one of them lives in Seattle, the other in San Francisco, and Daniel and I just moved to Eugene from Portland. "We're extending the trip by about a week. Dave’s got this company get-away thing he wants us to go on. We're hiking the Shasta Mountains, some backpacking exercise that's supposed to build trust and–"

  "You don't have to justify the trip," I say with a smile, even as my heart is racing and I'm cursing my childhood friend for leaving me here to deal with my sudden bout of psychosis. Well. Maybe not so sudden. I used to see demons as a child, have I mentioned that? My psychologist thinks all the abuse I suffered at the hands of my parents manifested into visions of them being demons.

  But she didn't see their eyes, or their gaping mouths, or the way–

  "Yeah, I know, but we all feel bad that you couldn't come," Daniel says before his brother, Doug–yeah, all D's, their parents were not the most creative humans in existence–interrupts.

  "You're a corporate workhorse now, Rayne," he yells, but I just smile a bit wider and shake my head. Sure, maybe he's right, but better to be that than a thief who lives in a dead town and beats his daughter so badly she can't even walk. I've chosen the thing furthest from my family, and it feels damn good.

  "Well, this corporate workhorse is going out to buy some new pantyhose today," I reply, standing up and sliding over to the freezer to grab some green tea ice cream. It's just that sort of day, ice cream for breakfast and all that.

  "Sounds riveting," Daniel says, but I can hear him chuckling softly.

  "Ke
ep me posted, okay?" I say around a spoonful, and then we say our goodbyes and hang up.

  I haven't felt so lonely since my sixteen-year-old self hopped a boat, left the Newfoundland coast, and ran as fast and far as my stolen cash would carry me.

  "I need to go out tonight," I say, and then realize that I'm talking to myself yet again.

  Yep.

  Time to get dressed and go.

  Let's just hope I don't see any creepers while I'm out.

  And by creepers, I don't mean men–I mean demons.

  2

  The first demon I ever laid eyes on was wrapped around my mother's neck, this long millipede-like creature with the face and eyes of a goat. Its long tongue was hissing in her ear, and her face, fuck. I won't ever forget that face. That was the first day she called me a demon. Me. When she was the one with a nightmare curled across her throat like a shawl.

  Walking to the restaurant on the corner, I see another creeper–my word for the monsters that plagued my childhood–sitting on a man's shoulder. It looks like a fox, but with slits for eyes and a gaping maw more akin to a crocodile than a vulpine. It smiles at me when I stop, and I know within seconds that I've already made a mistake.

  Never let the creepers know you see them, because the last fucking thing you want is for them to see you.

  My mouth curves into a sudden smile as I approach the man, locking my eyes with his. This situation is still salvageable, if I can manage it. This is my first creeper sighting in eight years. And after a night like I just had? I don't believe in coincidences.

  "You've got a great smile," I tell the guy, caressing his upper arm through his jacket. The fox-thing is still staring at me, but I keep my eyes on the man's brown ones. He's not fully possessed, not yet, but he's on the way there. If I knew some way, anyway, to help him out, I would. Thing is, once a creeper gets a hold of you ... you're fucked.

  "Uh, thanks," he says, clearly confused as to why some random girl is hitting on him. He's not a particularly attractive man by traditional standards, and he's most definitely not my type, but there's no way in hell I'm letting the fox-thing know I saw it. If I do, it'll come after me, and I'm pretty goddamn sure I won't survive another attack.

  "Can I give you my number?" I say, hands shaking, heart racing. The fox's eye slits burn with a yellow-orange light as it tilts its head to the side and smacks its toothy smile, a long pink tongue snaking out to tease the man's cheek. "Maybe we could go out sometime?" I purr, choking back the fear. I shouldn't be seeing these things, not after all the therapy and the medication. They aren't real–according to my therapist–but the things that happen when I see them ... those are real.

  Someone beat me until I bled, someone slit my throat, someone almost killed me.

  If the mental health experts are to be believed, most of that ... I did to myself.

  But whether the creepers are real or not, I know what happens when they target me, and I won't go through that again.

  "Oh ... uh, yeah," the man stutters as the fox creature moves across his shoulders and stares me down, flicking its fluffy white and orange tail in a slow, languorous movement. "That'd be nice. How about tonight?"

  "Tonight is great," I say, taking the man's phone from his outstretched hand and plugging in my number. The thought of actually going out with this guy and his demon tag-along sounds like a fucking nightmare, but I put my real number in anyway. "Text me, okay? We'll work out a time."

  Throwing the guy a wink, I take off as fast as I can down the sidewalk. Even though it's a warm summer evening, I can feel an icy breeze on my neck, this cold, cutting sensation that makes my teeth chatter and my nipples pebble. The fox is watching me; I can feel it.

  As soon as I get around the corner, I lean my back against a brick building and close my eyes. My heart is racing so damn fast, I can barely breathe. Fumbling, I dig my water bottle and pills from my purse, shoving triple the dose into my mouth and closing my eyes.

  "It won't help, you know," a voice says on my right, drawing my attention up and over to ... the man with the staff. His pale eyes are covered with sunglasses, but it's obvious who this is: the guy from my bathroom last night.

  "You!" I choke, which is a totally cliched thing to say, but I'm so freaked out by his presence that I can't help myself. I stumble to my feet and look the man over. Dressed in tight jeans and a black tank, he smirks at me as if he can see the expression on my face, but when he pushes his shades up, his eyes are as dark as pitch.

  "Taking pills doesn't help. All it does is blind you to reality," he says, pausing and then stiffening up, the beautiful muscles in his shoulders going taut. The man turns slightly, leveling his staff by his side. Before I can blink twice, the fox-thing and its host turn the corner. As soon as they do, he's swinging the gleaming wood staff in their direction.

  The large purple crystal on the end smashes into the poor man's face, drawing heaps of blood and dropping him to his knees on the pavement. I shove myself to my feet and lunge forward with a shout, but it's too late. Staff Guy is spinning his weapon in a tight circle and then cracking it down on the poor guy's skull.

  It does not take a medical professional to know that he's dead.

  The fox-thing hisses its frustration, claws digging into the deceased man's back and drawing, not more blood or gore, but a strange charcoal colored smoke. It sucks up a massive breath, like it’s trying to suck the smoke through a straw.

  "You killed him," I manage to choke out, but Staff Guy just sneers at me, blinking those solid dark eyes in my direction. They're eerie as hell, like two bottomless pits shoved into that handsome face.

  "He was dead the moment that thing sunk its claws into his soul," the guy says, like he doesn't give two fucks that he just killed somebody. A somebody who smiled at me, who asked me out for drinks. A somebody who did nothing to deserve his death.

  The fox snaps its crocodile jaws and then hisses at me in a language I don't understand.

  "Oh, get fucked," Staff Guy snarls back, twisting his staff back around so that the jeweled end is pointed at the demon. He growls something out in that same, weird language, and the end of the staff lights up. The fox screams, but it's too late. In the span of a single breath, his body is trailing away like smoke and getting sucked into the ball on the end of the staff.

  "What the hell is going on?" I whisper, closing my eyes and wishing the medication would set in quick. Dealing with a crazy murderer is hard enough; I don't need to be seeing demons at the same time.

  My eyes flick open as Staff Guy blinks, his own eyes going white with the motion.

  "I stepped out for a second," he tells me, like we're old friends or something. Thing is, I'm already backing away and getting ready to run. My mind rushes through possible escape routes. Staff Guy is blind, so even though he's clearly a psychotic, unstable human being, I should be able to get away.

  Right?

  He slams the wood end of the staff against the pavement.

  "I thought you'd be out for a while longer."

  "You thought ... I'd be out?" I ask, realizing that last night, he really had been in my bathroom. I really had passed out, and someone–this guy, I guess–lifted me back into my bed and bandaged my head.

  Oh god.

  My stomach lurches as I take a step back.

  "We're going to have to move worlds," he mumbles, slipping his shades on and lighting up a cigarette. As I stare at this guy, I realize that the tattoos on his body ... are images I well recognize. Demons. And more specifically, the demons that possessed my parents. There's the millipede with the goat head, and the sickly-looking possum with the pipe in his hand.

  "Where did you get those?" I choke out, even though I know I'm probably seeing things. The alternative ... is not good. The alternative is that this shit is real. I don't want this shit to be real.

  "Did you not hear me?" Staff Guy asks, taking a long drag on his cigarette and blowing smoke in my face. I'd assume it was because he's blind and can't see where I'm sta
nding, but I have a feeling that's not the case. Coughing dramatically, I wave the smoke away and reach out to shove this guy in the shoulder.

  Without a second's hesitation, he swings his staff to the side and smacks me hard enough in the hand that it hurts.

  "Just because I'm blind," he starts, leaning in so suddenly that I don't get a chance to move, "doesn't mean the rest of my senses aren't ... heightened." This last part is whispered in my ear, breath tousling my hair. He smells like cloves and tobacco, sending my heart racing wildly out of control. When I move to shove him back, he steps nimbly out of the way and spins his staff in a circle, smirking all the while. "Let's book it before we get caught."

  "Too late," I say, slipping my hand into my jacket and yanking out my cell. "I've already dialed the cops." The smirk on my face belies the naked worry in my heart. I haven't called 911, and if this guy wants to, he could probably knock the phone from my hand before I got a chance to dial.

  "I don't give a shit about the police," he says, glancing back at the bleeding body, crimson streaking the pavement near the man's comatose form. I pretend like I can't see it. Because if I can't see it, it's not real. At some point, my fucking medicine has to kick in, and then all of this ... it'll just go away.

  I think.

  "But we need to change worlds. Now." Staff Guy reaches out to grab my wrist, and I duck away from him. He seems surprised by that, adjusting his shades and tapping his staff on the ground. "Who taught you to do that?" he asks, but I'm not about to explain my life to some psycho stranger.