Page 3 of Wreaking Havoc (Demon Bound #1)

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Sascha

T wo months later

The thing about adorable Maine tourist towns was that apparently half the town shut down for the off-season.

Sascha stared at the “Closed for Winter” sign on his favorite coffee shop—the only one he’d found that knew how to make a decent espresso—his lower lip pushed out into a pout.

Well, what the hell was he supposed to do now?

Five minutes later, his answer was apparently the Bakeshop, a bakery Sascha had passed almost daily the past six weeks here but had never entered because he could already tell from the sidewalk that it was most decidedly not his scene.

There were doilies on the counter, for God’s sake.

But as he peered in the window now, he could see a coffee pot percolating behind the pastry case, so he was going to have to brave the doilies, wasn’t he?

The aproned teen behind the counter, all round cheeks and bouncing curls, smiled brightly at him as he entered. “Morning!”

“Morning,” Sascha replied, maybe a little sulkily, but what did it matter? No one here knew him for who he was. He could be as sulky as he wanted, damn it.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. Sascha ignored it for the tenth time that morning. “You don’t happen to have an espresso machine hiding back there, do you?” he asked without much hope.

“Nope. Sorry. Marjorie doesn’t like them,” the teen answered, as if Sascha was supposed to know who Marjorie was. Sascha didn’t even know who this person was, except his name tag said Seth, with a little “He/Him” underneath. “But what we’ve got is freshly brewed.”

“I’ll take a large cup, then. Very large. And—” Sascha perused the pastry case, which didn’t look nearly as despairing as he’d first assumed “—one of those chocolate croissants.”

“Coming right up!”

God, he was perky. Weren’t teens supposed to be sullen assholes?

“We don’t usually get many tourists off-season,” Seth pointed out chattily as he grabbed the croissant from the case, further proving Sascha wrong.

“I’m not a tourist. I live here.” For now , was the part Sascha left unspoken. Until Ivan deems it safe to return.

Which would perhaps be sometime in the next million years.

Seth’s eyes widened in apparent delight. “Oh! You’re going to love Seacliff in the winter. Gets real cozy. And don’t worry, there’s still a ton to do. Cross-country skiing…”

Sascha would not be doing that.

“Skating on the lake…”

Nope.

“Ice fishing.”

Fuck no.

Seth seemed to see something in Sascha’s expression as he handed over the croissant, because he suddenly grinned. “Or, you know, indoor stuff. Weekly karaoke. Drag night at the Lighthouse. But not the literal lighthouse,” he told Sascha, like that was a common mistake people made. “The bar.”

Sascha perked up a little at that. He’d known the town hosted a gay bar, but he’d avoided it like the plague, assuming it would be too tragic to bear.

But a drag night was promising.

He noticed for the first time, as his coffee was placed in front of him, that Seth’s nails were painted lime green. Seth saw him looking and wiggled his fingers. “You like?”

God, Sascha did. He’d never been allowed to paint his nails. His father would have chopped his fingers off, probably.

But Papa wasn’t here, was he? Neither was Ivan, the controlling fuck. “You get that color at the drugstore?” he asked.

Maybe he’d need to make another stop.

“Yep! But I’ve got the bottle in my bag. One sec.” Seth disappeared into what Sascha presumed to be a back room of some sort and reappeared, setting two bottles of nail polish—one lime green and one electric blue—onto the counter next to Sascha’s pastry and coffee.

Sascha eyed the bottles skeptically. “You’re awfully friendly, aren’t you?”

Seth shrugged. “It’s a small town, especially in the winter. Everyone’s friendly.”

That was true enough. But so far everyone had been treating Sascha with the vague, distant friendliness given to tourists. This was the first time he’d been treated like he actually lived here.

It made him vaguely uneasy. Like any second friendly Seth was going to pull a handgun out from behind the counter.

God, he was damaged.

His phone buzzed again. Almost like it knew .

Fuck it. Sascha grabbed the nail polish bottles, pocketing them both in his oversize coat. “Thanks. I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”

Seth smiled brightly. “No rush.”

Sascha paid for his goods. As he was walking out the door, Seth called out, “The restaurant down the street—Darcy’s—they make a killer cappuccino. And they’re open all winter.”

Sascha nodded his thanks and walked out the door to the sound of his phone buzzing again.

He yanked it out of his pocket. “ What ?”

A familiar cold voice was on the other end. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”

“My apologies, brother dearest. I just have so many social engagements here, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere. It’s hard to keep track.”

“You chose your own hiding spot,” Ivan reminded him.

He had, it was true. Ivan had given Sascha a choice: a bodyguard contingent or temporary exile. And when Sascha had picked exile—fuck no was he going to agree to being trailed twenty-four seven by any of Ivan’s goons—Ivan had told him to pick somewhere no one would expect. Sascha had pointed a finger on a random town on the map. Seacliff Harbor, Maine. Population: 11,000.

But it was Ivan’s stupid fault he’d needed to point to any town at all.

Sascha made a quick about-turn and headed down the path that left the small downtown to run along the cliffs.

He needed some dramatic ocean views in order to deal with his brother this morning.

“How’s the arm?” Ivan asked, sounding like he couldn’t care less about the answer.

Sascha winced, his pinky finger all pins and needles around the warmth of the coffee cup. He didn’t like thinking about his arm, or the lingering nerve damage. Thinking made him remember, and remembering made his stomach hurt. It was easier to pretend his pinky finger just…fell asleep sometimes. “It’s fine,” he grumbled.

“You’re doing your exercises?”

“Maybe.” Sascha did a little roll of his shoulders. There, did that count?

There was a long, dangerous silence. “You will answer when I call from now on.”

“Of course I will,” Sascha drawled, adding a cheeky, “Sir,” just to be a dick.

Ivan tsked at him. “Did you ever think I might worry?”

“The thought never even crossed my mind,” Sascha answered truthfully.

Ivan’s sigh was heavy, like he had the whole weight of the world on his shoulders. “Everything I do for you is in your best interest.”

Sascha rolled his eyes as dramatically as possible, almost wishing Ivan was there just so he could see him do it. “You wouldn’t even let me tell Alexei I’d been stabbed.”

“Because he would have come to coddle you, and then I would have had to kill him. And then you would have sulked endlessly. So, as I said—in your best interest.”

“When can I come home, then?”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t you already know who ordered it? Can’t you just…deal with it already?”

“I believe I know who ordered it,” Ivan corrected him, in the same tone beleaguered adults used with overly curious children. “And the man who stabbed you has been dealt with. But he was a disposable pawn—he didn’t have the intel about the cameras in the elevator. I doubt they expected him to escape. It’s the person giving the orders we need to worry about, and I can’t just start a mob war because you’re getting antsy in your rustic paradise, zaychik.”

Sascha suppressed a shiver. He knew he’d been the one to lead the conversation in this direction, but he didn’t like thinking about people being “dealt with,” even if they were assholes who’d stuck a knife in him. He didn’t like thinking about the family business at all, if he could help it. And why should he? Their father had made it clear from the beginning Sascha wasn’t expected to participate. Too delicate.

Too weak was what he meant.

But Ivan, in his rampage after Alexei had tanked a business deal and fled into the night, costing them millions, had apparently pissed some other family businesses off, and now Sascha was caught in the crossfire.

Someone was trying to make a message out of him.

He, who had never even held a gun. Some mistaken asshole seemed to think his death would actually put a damper on Ivan’s day. And now he was stuck in this town until Ivan deemed it safe to return. He was concerned he had a mole in his operation, someone who’d spilled the beans on the timing of Sascha’s arrival to his office.

Of course, Ivan could always decide he was better off with Sascha out of the picture entirely and keep him there indefinitely.

And would that be so bad? Alexei escaped it all, and he’s happy enough .

But Alexei had found love and purpose and all that jazz. All Sascha had found so far was a too-large house desperately in need of renovation and an overly friendly teenager who thought cross-country skiing was a legitimate pastime.

He sighed loudly into the phone. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Pick up next time.”

“Ta-ta.” He slid his phone back into his pocket and sipped his coffee. It was surprisingly good—dark and rich. What was a fetus doing making such good coffee?

Sascha stared out at the restless ocean, shivering as a breeze hit him. The joggers he’d thrown on were too thin for the changing weather.

But they were comfortable.

Sascha grinned as he took another sip. That was one thing a life in hiding had going for it, he supposed.

No fucking suits.

Sascha took his time returning to his house, a shabby number in the Queen Anne Victorian style—two whole stories, not including the attic, all of it shaded by the enormous trees surrounding it.

He wasn’t sure why Ivan had insisted on paying cash for a whole-ass house, rather than just renting him a place, especially since Sascha was without his usual maid service to keep the damn thing clean. It no doubt fit into his nefarious schemes somehow, in some way Sascha wasn’t privy to. It had come fully furnished, and Sascha was fairly certain the former owner had died in there, but he tried not to think about that part too hard.

Either way, it was…a lot. Sascha’s apartment in New York had been nothing to sneeze at, but this was a whole goddamn house . One that made a lot of noises. Which he’d been assured—by both Ivan and the plumber who’d come to fix the pipes—was just the sound of the house’s bones settling with the changing weather.

Although, frankly, Sascha didn’t like to think of his humble abode as having bones at all. It made him think too much of the house as a monster, ready to devour him.

Not that he was scared, or anything. He was almost thirty, for fuck’s sake. He just didn’t like old, weird houses that seemed to talk.

Like now.

Sascha paused, bottles of nail polish in hand. He’d been setting up a station for himself—sheets of newspaper on the coffee table in case he made a mess—but he’d just heard a strange rustling sound, maybe coming from the attic room in the front turret (because, yes, his house had a turret ).

There it was again.

Sascha frowned up at the ceiling. “If you’re a ghost up there,” he called out, shaking the bottles vaguely in the direction of the attic, “I’m asking you kindly to get the fuck out of my house.”

There was no answer, only the same strange noise again. It was probably the old owner, wasn’t it, come to tell him to fuck off back to New York?

Or, even worse…

Sascha stood in a hurry, setting the bottles on the table. “Oh, fuck no. There better not be rats up there.”

If there were rats in that goddamn attic, he was moving out, no matter what Ivan said.

He headed upstairs, turning on each light as he went, no matter that it wasn’t dark yet outside. He wasn’t facing a ghost or rats in anything less than complete brightness.

He climbed up the ladder into the attic room, pulling the cord to turn the one pathetic light bulb on once he got up there.

He was met with a few pieces of dusty furniture and a whole stack of boxes. And…more boxes, more than he had the energy to get into anytime soon. Couldn’t the house’s seller have cleared it of any of the previous owner’s junk?

He paused. There was that rustling sound again.

Sascha peered around the boxes, barely daring to breathe. There were scattered books on the ground, dusty and a little water damaged. Had they been knocked over?

But he didn’t see any droppings or—actually, Sascha had no clue what other signs to look for when it came to rats. A ratlike smell, maybe?

But the attic smelled just fine. A bit musty, but not rank or anything. Sascha bent down and picked up one of the books. It was a real fancy number, leather-bound, with intricate designs etched into the cover. Skinny though. Barely a hundred pages.

He flipped it open. What words there were, were written in a language he didn’t recognize. It almost looked like it could be Latin. But Sascha knew Latin—one of the takeaways of boarding school, along with how to give and receive furtive blow jobs after hours—and this wasn’t it.

The book was mostly illustration, with pretty designs on almost every page. They looked like runes of some kind. Huh.

Sascha held on to the book while he did one more cursory look around the room. He didn’t find anything worth freaking out over. The noise must’ve been the house’s old, creepy bones after all.

He took the book down with him—it would give him something to stare at while he painted his nails. Six weeks in this tiny town and he was sick to death of trash TV.

And he’d never thought he’d see the day when he could claim that .

Sascha set the book on the coffee table and perched on the edge of the couch, ready to get to work. He’d decided to go with the electric blue—Seth seemed nice and all, but Sascha didn’t know him well enough to get all matchy-matchy with him when it came to nail colors.

He painted his left hand as best he could and studied the results, which weren’t half-bad. Although it did make his clothes—his beige sweatshirt and black joggers—look a bit boring in comparison.

Maybe he should get something a little more fun to wear, just for at home. Some looser pants, maybe. Something flowy and…pretty.

Bright.

After all, what Ivan didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

Sascha flipped through the book he’d found while he waited for his left hand to dry enough to start the other. There was one pattern in particular that kept catching his eye, a swirly blue number that almost seemed to move when he stared too hard.

He set one of the newspaper pages he’d been using to catch any stray drops next to the book, using the nail polish brush to copy the design. It looked pretty nice, actually. The thing had seemed complicated when looked at as a whole, but each individual part was easy enough.

When he’d finished his doodle, Sascha leaned back to compare the two. The only difference was the stanza of poetry or whatever under the design in the book.

Sascha tried sounding it out phonetically. “Too-ah-thun fay-mon…”

He continued mumbling while he traced the pattern over again with a second coat of polish. When he got to the end of the little poem, he flipped the page to see if there was any more.

Fuck .

Sascha hissed and flinched back, a familiar burning on his index finger. “Ouch.”

He’d gotten a paper cut.

Sascha’s stomach turned over, and he looked to the side as quick as he could, holding his finger out of sight. A paper cut alone probably wouldn’t be enough to make him faint, but he didn’t want to risk it. He could feel the drops welling up, dripping onto the newspaper.

Gross.

He’d wait for the bleeding to stop, then put a paper towel over it. He could wash it in the sink without looking and then—

BOOM.

Sascha startled, a yelp escaping his lips. What the fuck?

BOOM.

He straightened in his seat. The noise—and this was no subtle rustling anymore—seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

BOOM.

Sascha stood, bleeding finger forgotten. That definitely wasn’t rats. And if it was a ghost, it was a goddamn poltergeist.

He made to exit the living room, to see if maybe there was some construction going on outside, but the noise sounded again, this time accompanied by a thick blue smoke filling the room, obscuring Sascha’s vision completely.

Oh God, was he under attack? Had Ivan’s stupid enemies found him and now instead of stabbing him they were going to give him a heart attack via haunted house special effects? Should he run? Hide? Throw a bottle of nail polish into their eyes?

But before he could decide, the smoke cleared in an instant, like it had never been there at all. It might have been reassuring—the unnatural speed of it all aside—if not for what the cleared smoke revealed.

Oh. Oh fuck.

There was a goddamn monster standing in Sascha’s living room.