Unleashing Mayhem (Demon Bound Book 4), page 2
Against all odds, Matty survived the night.
Well, it probably wasn’t actually against any odds, but it made him feel better to think that it was.
He’d passed out around dawn, into a (thankfully) dreamless sleep, and he’d caught a whole four hours. He was feeling almost good now. Refreshed.
Hungry as all hell.
It was possible he’d forgotten to stock up on actual groceries when he’d stocked up on sweets. Matty had gotten away with a lot of delivered meals so far—thank God for the “leave on porch” option there—and then eating leftovers for lunch. But now he didn’t have anything in the house for breakfast, unless he counted his remaining candy.
So Matty was going to do what he’d promised to do and go to the Bakeshop, to be seen by Seth and get delicious pastries for breakfast at the same time.
Lemon bars were a suitable breakfast food, right? They had fruit in them and everything.
Matty showered, changed into a clean oversize hoodie and more size-appropriate sweatpants, and headed out.
The morning was still nice and cool, and Matty breathed it in greedily. He hated to admit it, but the fresh air was beyond decent, even with his hood pulled over his head. He could already feel it cleansing the dust from his lungs.
On the other hand, people were already out and about, and that was…less decent.
Seacliff, Maine, was a small town when it came to population, but it was adorable and coastal enough that it had an influx of tourists every summer. A selfish part of Matty wished Sascha and Kai had left on their getaway in the winter, when the town was dead and he had the residents’ faces mostly memorized. Plus, if they’d left in the winter, Matty would have been able to stay inside the whole time and just blame the snow and the cold.
But alas, Matty was venturing out mid-tourist-season, and it was a beautiful, sunny morning. The horror.
Luckily, the Bakeshop was never super crowded. Locals loved it, especially since it stayed open all winter, but visitors usually preferred the town’s other diners, where they could get lobster eggs Benedict and crab cake sandwiches or whatever.
Matty loitered on a bench outside until the place was fully empty of customers, then headed in, lowering his hood. It was the kind of bakery that was almost offensively cute, with little ceramic cats and doilies on the counter, supposedly put there by the ever-absent owner, Marjorie.
Matty was greeted by the familiar sight of Seth, the bakery’s head baker, all round cheeks and big smile and floral cloth headband holding back his dark curls.
“Matty!” Seth cried, like he was genuinely happy to see him. “So glad you’re here. Did Sascha tell you about the lemon bars?”
Matty nodded, a shy smile of his own on his lips. “He did.”
“Excellent. Should I pack one up for you? Or two?” Seth gave him a devilish look, lowering his voice. “Or perhaps even three?”
“Two, please. And, um, maybe a muffin I can heat up tomorrow?”
If Seth was annoyed by Matty asking it as a question instead of ordering it outright, he didn’t show it. “Sure thing! Blueberry crumble? Banana nut? Lemon poppy seed?”
“The lemon one, please.”
“Sticking with the citrus theme,” Seth said, nodding as he began placing Matty’s items carefully in a white paper bag. “Respect.”
Matty smiled a little wider but didn’t say anything back. Seth never seemed to mind that Matty was shy or awkward though. He treated him with the same warmth he gave Sascha and Kai. Like Matty was fine just the way he was. Like he belonged.
Seth rang him up, and Matty took the bag gratefully, peering inside. “Hey,” he said after a moment. “You think— It’s okay to have a lemon bar for breakfast, right?”
“Psh, of course,” Seth said, waving a hand. “There’s fruit in them. Just think of it as a sugar-dusted square Danish.”
Matty gave him a happy grin and pulled his hood back up, ducking out of the bakery with his prize.
Maybe there was something to this whole leaving-the-house thing after all. It had been nice to see a friendly face. Nice enough that Matty was thinking he could head down the coastal path to the little sandy cove his housemates liked so much. It probably wouldn’t be too crowded yet. Or, if it was, Matty could find a corner in the rocks to tuck himself away into. He was pretty small; he wouldn’t take up too much room.
He walked off in that direction, grabbing one of the lemon bars out of the bag. Seth made the best ones Matty had ever had, tart but also overwhelmingly sweet, enough to kind of hurt the roof of his mouth. And Seth didn’t skimp on the powdered sugar—an oft-overlooked metric.
Matty would eat one on his walk and then the other at the beach, and that would be two servings of fruit right there.
He’d been pretty scrawny when Kai and Sascha had found him—living in abject misery hadn’t done great things for Matty’s appetite—but thanks to Kai’s insistence on learning human cooking and Seth’s delicious baked goods, Matty had filled out reasonably. He would always be short, but he at least looked like his actual twenty-one years now and no longer like a malnourished teenager. Growing out the buzz cut his stepfather had insisted on helped too; his big brown eyes no longer looked too large for his head.
Sometimes it didn’t feel real, that Matty’s stepfather was really dead. That he and his main men had been taken out by Sascha and Kai, and that Matty didn’t have to cater to that cruel man’s every whim anymore. Didn’t have to be hurt without remorse when he inevitably failed to please.
Didn’t have to worry about being given over to him.
For a second, Matty thought he’d imagined it. That the mental image of a familiar face was brought on by thinking of the past.
But Matty looked again, and in the brief moment before the man was swallowed up by a family taking over the sidewalk, Matty could swear he’d seen him. One of his stepfather’s men. Here. In Seacliff.
It couldn’t be real. As far as Matty knew, they all thought he’d died with the rest of the henchmen there that night, another of Kai’s deserving victims. And even if they knew he was alive, why would anyone think he was holed up with Sascha Kozlov, the little brother of a rival Mafia leader?
It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t stop the fear from taking over.
The lemon bar slipped from Matty’s shaking grip, landing on the sidewalk, and for a moment he was stuck there staring at it, smashed and broken on the ground.
Then he turned and bolted.
Matty ducked his head and did his best to dodge tourists on the sidewalk before giving up and running in the street. Sprinting back to the house, back to safety. He looked over his shoulder only once, to make sure no one was running behind him.
When Matty got to the house, he slammed the door behind him, checking and double-checking and triple-checking the lock before he went to the back door and did the same.
Then he went to all the windows to check their latches, even the ones on the second floor. Even the tiny circular one in the attic, which turned out to be too high to reach, so Matty just stood there for a long moment, staring at it as he tried to stop hyperventilating.
Eventually he crawled back onto the familiar living room couch, piling blankets up around himself and jumping at every little sound from the outside world. He could have hidden in his room, but if someone made it into the house, Matty didn’t want to be stuck on the second floor with an intruder between him and the stairs.
Matty had watched too many horror movies to make that mistake.
He realized he was still somehow clutching the white paper bag from the bakery in his hand. Matty grabbed the remaining lemon bar and took the largest bite he could fit in his mouth, ignoring the powdered sugar that showered over his blanket nest.
Tart lemon. Melty-soft sweetness.
Matty let out a sigh, blowing more powdered sugar everywhere, and tried not to notice that he was still shaking.
He’d imagined the whole thing; he was sure of it. He wasn’t Luca Caruso’s stepson anymore. That was the past, and Matty was here now. In the present.
I’m okay, he told himself. I’m safe.
But Matty’s gaze darted again and again to the bookshelf, and he couldn’t help asking the same question he’d asked himself over and over, ever since the day he’d arrived here:
Safe for how long?
2
Matty
Matty lasted until nightfall.
He’d done okay for the rest of the day, if he didn’t count the frantic trembling and equally frantic rechecking of all the doors and windows. He’d even talked to Sascha briefly and put on a brave face for his friend, though he wasn’t sure how convinced Sascha had been.
But then the sun had finally set, the automatic porch light turning on as the outside world plunged to darkness, and that was it.
Matty hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that face he couldn’t have seen, of phone calls being made, of a group of terrifying men bursting in with guns and knives and—and him at the forefront.
There you are, Matteo. Disobedient as always. Now what will I do with you?
Matty could picture it too perfectly: his worst nightmare come to life. And he just…couldn’t do it anymore. He was tired, and he was scared, and he’d been both of those things for so long now, and he didn’t want to be. Not anymore. Not for another second.
And maybe now was supposed to be the moment in his life where Matty turned inward and looked to his pool of inner strength to become something better than a scared mouse. Something braver. Something bolder.
But whatever inner strength Matty might have held had been broken a long time ago by cruel hands and terrifying threats, and Matty didn’t think there was any better or braver or bolder version of himself waiting in the wings.
Matty needed someone. Someone who was his. Someone he didn’t have to feel guilty about clinging to by his pathetic fingernails.
Sascha and Kai were wonderful, but they had lives of their own, as this vacation of theirs proved. And really, they’d given Matty too much already. Sascha had even gifted Matty with access to one of his generous bank accounts, since Matty had been too terrified of anyone tracking his funds to use the one meager account Luca had allowed him.
Matty was penniless, jobless, and cowardly beyond measure. A failure of an adult human.
But that was all going to be fine because the someone Matty needed wasn’t human at all.
Matty had been doing his best to hide from the monsters of his past, but he was done with all that.
It was time to catch a monster of his own.
Matty shook off the blankets shrouding him, rose from the couch, and shuffled over to the bookshelf. He began painstakingly checking between each book, hoping what he was looking for wasn’t hiding between any of their pages. He was pretty sure they’d all been left by the previous owner of the house—there was no way Sascha had ever bought a book called Lighthouses of the World: A Beginner’s Guide on purpose—and there were a lot of them packed together on the bookcase.
But Matty didn’t have to go through each individual book. He found it on the middle shelf: a loose page of strangely thick paper, with words in a language Matty didn’t recognize on one side and a foreign symbol on the other. The symbol was painted with thick black lines, smudged and twisted at various points. Some people would probably think it was creepy-looking, but Matty couldn’t help smiling as his eyes followed its path.
He thought of Kai in his demon form, huge and blue and horned, able to cut through nine armed human men without breaking a sweat. He thought of Nix, beautiful and sly and willing to stand up to Ivan at his scariest. He thought of the chaos demon, small and kind of cute, but with a predator’s edge and talons that Matty had been told shredded through flesh like butter.
Matty traced his finger along the stark black symbol; it was oddly warm against his fingertip.
He hoped it summoned the scariest monster there ever was. He hoped the demon waiting within its magic was vicious and bloodthirsty and willing to do its worst.
Maybe then Matty would finally feel safe in a way that lasted.
He continued to trace the symbol as he tried to remember the instructions Kai had given him when he’d suggested Matty summon a protector.
Copy the symbol. Recite the words. Spill his blood.
Kai had taken his suggestion back that very night and told Matty in no uncertain terms that the demon this page would summon was not someone Matty would want around, even in the short term.
But Kai wasn’t here right now, was he? He and Sascha had left, and now Matty had to do what he had to do, didn’t he?
He just hoped they’d forgive him later, after the fact.
Matty looked around the room for something to copy the symbol with. He was pretty sure Sascha had summoned Kai with a bottle of nail polish, but that had been a whole accidental thing. This was on purpose, and Matty felt like he should make it nice. So his scary monster demon would feel welcome.
Oh! He had something!
Matty ran up the stairs. Sascha and Kai had gotten him art supplies, back when they’d had hopes for him adopting a hobby that didn’t involve watching bloody movies and hiding in his room. Matty found the box in his closet and gathered everything he could carry before rushing it all back down to the living room.
He spread the mess out on the floor, seeing what he had to work with. There was some thick, artsy paper—the kind people drew beautiful portraits on—and Matty carefully laid a piece of it on the living room rug, separate from the rest.
He sorted through the remainder of the supplies and finally settled on a plain piece of charcoal. There were other, brighter paints and markers, but the charcoal felt right.
Matty set the demon’s symbol next to his blank page. Should he just…go for it? Was a piece of paper and a stick of charcoal really enough to summon a monster?
He hopped up, remembering that Sascha had gotten flowers for the house before he and Kai had left. They were still in a vase on the kitchen table, and Matty selected a mostly wilted and forlorn-looking purple flower and brought it back to the living room, setting it above the blank page where he was going to copy the symbol.
There. That was kind of…appropriately gothic? Maybe?
Although, the more Matty stared at it, the more it looked like nothing at all.
Voices rang through the air outside, and Matty jumped in place before turning to stare through the living room doorway. The voices sounded deep. A group of men? Were they on the street or had they made it to the porch already? Were they coming for him finally? Had he been too slow in realizing he needed protection?
But then there was bright laughter and then the lighter, higher-pitched voices of small children, yelling something about a beach. A tourist family on the way back to their rental, most likely.
Matty sat there clutching his chest, his heart racing much too fast.
He couldn’t do this anymore. Couldn’t jump at shadows and panic over nothing over and over again.
Appropriately gothic presentation or not, it was time.
Matty waited until his hands were as steady as they were going to be, and then he carefully copied the symbol onto his paper, the charcoal blackening his fingertips. When he was done, he cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, studying the final result.
It looked…close enough.
Matty turned the symbol over and painstakingly sounded out the strange words on the other side.
Now he just needed blood.
Matty refused to touch a knife—not to harm another human, not even himself—so Matty bit down as hard as he could on his lower lip, wincing at the sharp sting. He swiped at it with a charcoal-dusted finger, then smeared the blood on the symbol he’d traced. It messed up the lines a little, but hopefully that wouldn’t matter.
Matty repeated the words on the page one more time for good measure, even though he was pretty sure he only needed to say them once.
There. It was done.
Wasn’t it?
An icy wind blew across his back, and Matty hunched over his paper to keep it from blowing away. Had the front door opened somehow? It was locked. Matty knew it was locked. But…were the wrong monsters already here? The human kind? Ready to steal him away and make him hurt? Make him pay?
But then a dark fog poured in from nowhere, filling the room and bringing with it the scent of smoke and hidden shadows. It wasn’t long before the living room floor was hidden from view, the smoke still rising steadily, Matty’s hold on his paper the only reassurance that it hadn’t disappeared.
Matty grinned around chattering teeth, the pain in his lip sharp and satisfying as the wound stretched.
He’d done it. Matty had actually done it.
His monster was coming for him.
3
Nightmare
Nightmare’s smoke and shadow filled the room, obscuring the vision of the human before him but not his own.
Nightmare took advantage of the momentary imbalance between them to feel out the space as best he could from within the confines of the summoning circle.
He’d been summoned into an unfamiliar dwelling, although there were threads of recognition Nightmare could follow. Dream-altered corridors and shadowy corners that had been recreated inside a fearful mind.
Nightmare had walked these halls before, hadn’t he, inside his summoner’s psyche.
They were in a living room, a large space dominated by a long couch and two overstuffed armchairs, pillows and blankets abounding on all of them, with a gigantic, modern television fixed to the wall.
A familiar demonic signature filled the space, though it had gone stale in its owner’s absence.
Nightmare bared his teeth, sending his shadows out into the rest of the house. They returned within mere moments. There were no other humans lurking in the vicinity, according to his companions. Nor demons, for that matter. No threats of any kind.
Satisfied for the moment, Nightmare focused on the human standing before him, the young man craning his neck in an attempt to see Nightmare’s face through the smoke. He was short and slight, with a few inches of unkempt dark-brown hair and enormous brown eyes. Olive-skinned and dressed in a garment many sizes too big for him.
