Of Sins and Psychos (The Beautiful Monsters Series Book 1) Page 2

  But the pink walls and the white plush comforter isn’t what greets me. The flashy room that I helped her decorate isn’t there anymore. Flat white walls press in on me, and the bed that was once hers has an old quilt that Grandma made thrown across it like it’s ready for a guest.

  “What the fuck is happening?” I hiss. I know exactly what’s happening. I just have never seen it firsthand.

  He made her disappear.

  How? How could he erase her entire existence?

  I guess I understood when it happened to me but Ivy? She was different. She’s too much of a memory for anyone to forget. Especially her own mother.

  Dampness stings my eyes and still I refuse to believe it. I stride through the small room and throw open the closet doors. They bang against the hinges, but . . .

  Three plastic hangers sway in the vacant closet.

  It’s empty.

  The dresses, the belts, the glitter boots, they’re all gone.

  My fingers fist hard into my palms, and I feel myself trembling with fury and helplessness. My head shakes back and forth.

  I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.

  Once more, I search for any sign of the little girl who climbed all over me when she was a toddler and I was just a teen who’d always wanted a sibling. I was an only child for so long, I loved her the moment I saw her. Eleven years separated us, but it never mattered. She was my baby sister. And I’d always be there for her.

  My feet stomp through the upstairs without care for my parents who are sleeping just one room below. Out in the darkness of the hall, I search the long walls that lead to the bathroom and the office at the end. Picture frames cascade down the space.

  And vomit stings my throat when I see the picture of Iv and me in red Christmas dresses ten years ago. Except . . . I sit alone in the portrait. A big smile plastered across my face as I look to the left . . . where a shadowy spot lies empty in my father’s arms.

  “No,” I whisper.

  The family picture to the right of it is just as unsettling. So much so that I pull the thing from the wall entirely. Mom and Dad smile bright behind me. I sit in the front with a fresh pink scar across my left cheek that no one ever fully looks at. My head tilts in toward someone . . . but no one’s there.

  The quaking in my hands clenches around the black frame before I release it and slam it to the ground altogether. Glass kicks up around my socks, but I ignore it as I walk away. I fucking can’t sit back and accept that she’s gone.

  I won’t let her go through the torment I did. The Sand Man will never hurt her the way he did me. I won’t let him!

  The quietness of the house is only disturbed by the shaking of the lamp from my feet storming through my bedroom once more. Instead of preparing for bed, though, I pull my black boots on, tie my long dark hair back, and climb into bed.

  There’s an anger to the way I stare up at the ceiling. I used to memorize the shapes and strokes of the mundane white surface above my bed. It’s something I’ve looked at a hundred thousand times.

  But tonight, it’s different.

  Tonight, I summon a monster.

  Chapter Three

  Bella

  I wish I could say this is the first time I’ve called out to The Ruiner since I left the Kingdom of Carnal. It’s not though. I’ve practiced to speak to him as much as I have to avoid him. He’s a monster . . .

  And he’s my friend.

  I think about his name. The way it sounds when I whisper it. The way it crawls across my tongue and leaves anticipation pulsing in my chest.

  My lashes close softly against my cheeks.

  Lucid dreaming isn’t for the faint of heart. You have to be a real control freak to want to be in control of your life during your waking and sleeping hours.

  I guess I’m that special of a fuck-up that I studied it for years. It has helped me avoid nightmares as much as it has helped me enter them.

  The last time I did it was the last night Jonathon came home drunk. He blamed me for not making him dinner. At two in the morning. He blamed me for the guy in our calc class for asking for my number. Even though I smiled and said I had a boyfriend. He just . . . he blamed me. For everything.

  Then he punished me.

  And then I called The Ruiner.

  I shove out the memory of the last time I ever saw Jonathon screaming from the other side of our bed. Our blue comforter still has a tear in the corner from how hard he hung on before being ripped away.

  I don’t think of that. I focus.

  “Ruiner,” I whisper in my mind’s eye, my thoughts calming sweetly. A blankness of just inky nothingness fills me. I am empty.

  All is silent.

  The knocking of my own heart is all that’s heard as I fall into a between space of consciousness and sleep. Minutes tick by unnoticed. Maybe he won’t come. He always comes though. He’s the one thing stable in my life.

  God knows I’m not.

  I sink into the recess of my sleep even more and think about his name once more with hard concentration this time.

  Ruiner.

  Ruiner.

  Ru—

  “You should be asleep, Pretty Monster.” His deep, dark voice hums through the room.

  The hair along my arms lifts. It shivers through me.

  Imagine having a crush on the older guy in school and never, ever admitting it. And now imagine that guy is actually a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall monster who now visits you at night.

  Under your bed.

  Yeah, the crush I had on him then is still alive and well, obviously.

  I pull forward through the heavy curtain of sleep and slowly open my eyes as a soft smile presses to my lips. He can change my mood just like that. He’s a reassurance and a blessing. A true friend.

  “And you shouldn’t be hiding beneath my bed, but here we are.” I lie perfectly still, the smile still haunting my lips as I wait for the quiet to fade and his warm voice to calm me once more.

  “Do you need me for something, Bella?” His breath kisses across my name in a more delicate tone like even my name is something he holds with care.

  I swallow, and though I want to crawl under the bed and demand he take me to her, I try not to show my cards. I don’t want anyone knowing how important she is to me. It’s dangerous in the Kingdom of Carnal to care about someone. Those bastards will kill everyone you love just to see what breaks you.

  So I can’t tell Ruin. Even if he is the closest thing to a friend that I’ve had in a long, long time.

  “I haven’t seen you in years,” I whisper.

  It’s a distraction, but it’s true. He’s careful not to break the rules like some monsters do. They cannot enter the mortal world. If a human comes to them, if they reach into the depths of the darkness under the bed, that’s fair game. If they summon a haunting at a séance, that’s fair game. Hell, if they leave the closet door open and accidently say the wrong prayer before bed, that’s fair game.

  But otherwise, they cannot come uninvited.

  So what the hell did Ivy do to gain the attention of the Sand Man?

  “I’d say the same but . . .” His velvety voice carries off like a shadow in the night, and it has me sidetracked for a moment.

  “You’ve seen me?” I arch a brow at that, but curiosity really can kill.

  “Mmm, you had a mirror on the back of your bedroom door in your apartment. It showed . . .” his throat clears roughly.

  “Did you spy on me?!”

  “No!”

  A disbelieving silence falls in before he speaks again.

  “I checked in on you from time to time. Especially when that man lived there.” His voice rumbles beneath me, and it’s such a relaxing sensation to feel his tone as well as hear it.

  It feels safe.

  The smile against my lips is bittersweet, and it only grows as he confesses his protectiveness over me.

  “Thank you. For taking care of him, by the way.”

  His hum of a repl
y is short. “He tasted as disgusting as he acted.”

  “I believe that.” I don’t dwell on the specifics of how Ruiner got rid of Jonathon. He’s a soul eater, but he’s also . . . a mixture of monster races. I don’t need to think too hard to imagine the details. I’m grateful all the same.

  “Ruin,” I whisper, and I swear I hear a faint groan at the sound of his name against my lips.

  “Yes, Pretty Monster?” His words skim across my flesh, the hair rising across my arms like a lover’s touch ghosting down my body.

  “Can I see you?”

  At that, hesitation settles. The weight of it presses down on me in the silence.

  “Please?”

  “That’s a very bad idea.” His tone’s receding, and my fear of losing Ivy entirely rises up in my chest.

  “Please, Ruiner.”

  “You escaped once, Bella. You won’t leave a second time.”

  “Please.”

  “I—I have to go.”

  He’s saying no without actually saying no because he and I both know that he can’t fucking say no to me!

  My soul isn’t tainted. I’m not cruel or sinful. I’d be delicious. He has said so himself a time or two.

  I leap from the bed. My boots hit the floor hard with impatience, and instead of fearfully pulling back the sheet, I rip it away and reach into the heavy darkness.

  You never reach under the bed.

  Never.

  Because a monster can’t resist the smell of a human.

  Especially a monster who can’t resist me already.

  Claws sink into the skin of my wrist. Pain tears through my flesh. Air shoves from my lungs. A slamming overtakes my frail heart. My eyes clench closed.

  And then he takes me.

  Chapter Four

  The splinter of floorboards bites against my stomach as my shirt catches on an old nail and then a twisted, jagged tree root. Dirt scatters over my hair and eyes. My mouth clamps shut, and I try not to breathe in the cold earth as I’m pulled right through it.

  The talons around my wrist are accompanied by another set of razor-sharp nails before a hard, strong chest meets mine. Everything’s a mess of darkness and dust. It takes some time before it all settles around us in shining rays like glitter glinting in the sun.

  But it does settle. My eyes open slowly, and those piercing bright blue eyes stare down on me. Not blue like the sea . . . blue like nature clawed its way into this man’s gaze and froze his heart solid.

  Singed cerulean maybe. Crystalized turquoise.

  His eyes are so hypnotic, I don’t immediately notice the burning scar that’s lighting up his face like lava just beneath the inky black wound.

  “Wha—what happened?” My fingertips lift, and the sting of his jagged blemish burns across my fingertips. But I don’t pull back.

  Dark lashes close softly, and for a moment, it feels like eight long years haven’t passed at all. He’s cradling me in his arms. His broad shoulders and towering height shadow over me like I’m a small gem he’ll always keep hidden away close to his heart. Enormous black wings cover protectively around us. Hidden beneath those wings are eight spiderlike legs. He uses them like weapons. He splits his victims open, and . . .

  I blink those vicious thoughts away.

  When he looks at me, it’s like I’m that sixteen-year-old girl still trying to remember how to keep my weak heartbeat steady so he doesn’t hear how he affects me.

  Ruiner isn’t generically attractive. He’s bulky and scarred. A man with eight thin spider legs and massive black wings isn’t typically called cute. But just beneath that calm and collected exterior is a violent man.

  He’s sinfully sexy. A roughness that can protect and a heart that can love only emphasize that.

  And I fell right into that attraction as a young girl. Even if I never did tell him.

  The sunlight shines high in the sky above the pine-scented forest. The midnight hours of my little hometown are long gone. That’s not the only difference between the two places though. No, the magic that’s burnt into this kingdom effects its inhabitants far more than anything else.

  The darkness, they call it.

  I know that firsthand. Magic crawled beneath my skin during the short year I was here. And the embered scar on my friend’s body is just another symbol of the power in this world. The longer you stay, the more monstrous you become.

  “Why did you do that?” he growls, showing the sharpness of his upper and lower canines. He lowers me to the mossy earth much more gently than how he speaks. “I told you not to come here!”

  There’s that rage that burns beneath his smooth surface.

  “You didn’t have to bring me.” My arms cross over my chest, and it takes a second for me to notice his gaze lingering there. Unlike most people, it isn’t my cherry-red birthmark he’s looking at. His attention is like the flames of a fire licking along my skin.

  “You’re . . . different.” Those words are mumbled instead of spoken with the confidence and dominance he normally has.

  “So are you,” I say, my attention sweeping over his black boots and pants to the veering valley of his hips, his broad shoulders, his dark beard, and midnight black wingspan. I guess that’s the bonus for men who have wings: shirts are overrated.

  Physically, he’s the same. Brutishly handsome in a very nontypical way. A giant of a man, standing over my five-eleven frame like I’m a petite little thing. But something buried deep inside him, it’s different. He was always the laughing, good-time friend. He hid his jagged side from me so well back then. And now . . .

  He has been hurt.

  By what? And why didn’t he ever show it when he was just the mysteriously dark voice beneath my bed?

  “You’re up to something,” he says, his gaze now searching me instead of appraising me.

  “Has it not occurred to you that maybe I missed you?”

  “No. Not once, actually.”

  I shrug.

  I did though.

  It’s hard for me to admit that to a man, but I missed Ruiner more than I’ve ever missed anyone in my entire life. When I was sixteen, I could tell him anything. That’s why I still whispered to him in the middle of the night years later. Even if he didn’t always answer, I’d confess to him like a diary no one would ever know the contents of.

  Instead of correcting him, I simply tilt my head high and stand my ground. Despite his monstrous nature, Ruiner may be the only man in my life who hasn’t hurt me. He’s one of the good ones. From my very first cheating boyfriend at sixteen years old, to the groping men who slip me dollar bills at Club 45, to the Sand Man himself, men . . . they’ve been complete shit to me. Maybe that’s why I can’t truly connect with anyone.

  Especially men.

  So when I show the confidence I’ve built up around me over the years, it doesn’t waver beneath his watchful stare. I don’t second-guess his intentions. He won’t hurt me.

  But I don’t know if he’ll help me either.

  “I want to go to the Kingdom of Carnal.”

  “No,” he says flatly.

  “Fine.” His brows lower at my instant reply. “I’ll find a wild minotaur to take me. Their herds still run rogue on the outskirts of the kingdom?”

  I’d never.

  But he doesn’t need to know that.

  “Stop it.” He chastises like I’m nothing more than a tantrum-throwing child.

  I have news for him: my tantrum hasn’t even fucking started yet, my friend. Just wait till I get my hands on that sandy dandy son of a bitch for taking my little sister!

  “I’m going to the Kingdom. You can take me, or I’ll figure it out myself, Ruin.” I’m good at faking my self-assurance. That’s the thing about dancing: never show your emotions. Only your ability to control them. I tighten my folded arms, but that poised confidence is nothing compared to the striding steps he takes toward me. Another and another and another until my own staggering footfalls hit tree bark, and I’m staring up at those wil
d eyes that are boring down on me. Heat flares to life between us. His temper clearly rises, and in an instant, his massive hand snatches around my jaw. Sharp, black talons slide out, biting at tender flesh.

  “Do not go there, Bella. You’re going to listen to me, and you’re going to pay-fucking-attention when I say you’re going home!”

  His snapping canines are so close to me, I can feel his breath against my lips. And it’s then that he too realizes his mistake: Simply, being close to me.

  Heavy inhales wave across my flesh, turning from furious to curious. His mouth closes without a sound. The dark center of his gaze takes over the pretty blue as he fixates on one thing and one thing only: my scent. Sharp talons hold me in place, the points piercing the skin along my throat and jawline. Black lashes flutter slowly as a long inhale breathes me in. A light sensation flutters along my neck with his every breath. His head tilts low. Smooth skin brushes from the low curve of my neck all the way up behind my ear, his warm breath washing over me as he takes me in.

  I was trained by the Sand Man himself. After that, I practiced defense fighting for eight long years at a gym on the South Side of Chicago. I could get out of Ruiner’s clutches if I wanted . . . if my lusty brain worked well enough to think about anything but how nice it’d feel if he tore off my panties with those sharp teeth of his. In this moment, my panties are malfunctioning and taking control of my rational thoughts. Panties . . . they don’t make good life choices, that’s for sure.

  “I’ve watched you for years. I hear your voice in my dreams even, and yet . . . how could I not know how fucking delectable you smell, Bella?” His voice rasps over my name this time in that darkly intimate tone that shivers all through me.

  I shift in his hold, and as my lashes flutter, I find my palms lightly pressing over his chest, feeling the heavy pulse of his heartbeat just beneath my fingertips. As well as that burning scar that etches down his pectoral. My hips shift beneath his weight, and it only makes things worse for my panty-controlled brain.