Elemental Reverse Harem Quartet (part 1: Earth)

Chapter 8

I might be dead, but the men around here are dead fucking crazy

Malka Selby

The ascent from hell was via a steep, narrow, winding staircase.

The men insisted I led the way, which I suspect had something to do with whoever followed would be at eye level with, and inches from, my backside. The guys jostled for that position.

The endless staircase went on and on. If I'd counted the steps, I'm sure they far exceeded the few hundred which Varu had mentioned. I couldn't believe we'd fallen so deep into the ground. We had to be making our way up to heaven via the inside of a skyscraper.

Gasping for breath like an asthmatic, I paused to rest on a half-landing where the staircase wrapped around on itself, and there was a door to god knows what.

"Do you think this is the stairway to heaven? And if so, are we nearly there yet? Because if we have to go much further, I'll need hooking up to pure oxygen," I said with gasps for breath as punctuation.

Haydn also breathed heavily. "It's taking us up to Varu's house. No, I wouldn't call that heaven."

Varu wasn't breathless at all. The man must've been super fit. "Come now, Fire, you've heard stories. Some visitors have found a little bit of heaven in my home, and that's why they continue to return time and time again." He winked suggestively.

Haydn huffed, crossed his arms over his broad chest, and glared hard at Varu. "Heaven, huh? That's not what I'd call it." Momentarily I envisioned Varu going up in flames, as if Haydn's anger alone could do that.

"I can see you guys have some bad history. But it doesn't matter. All history's in the past. We're in this boat together, and we've got to get along with each other."

"I've done all I can for that vampire," Haydn grumbled.

I raised my hand. "Don't call each other names. I'm not listening to another critical word against Varu, who has done nothing wrong. It wasn't him who just killed a couple of women in the park." Before either of them said another word, I turned away and started the ascent again. I noticed Varu snickered as they followed.

It only took a few more bends in the stairwell, and we ran out of stairs.

Unfortunately, four blank walls and no door surrounded the top landing. I silently wept inside at the possibility we'd climbed all those stairs for nothing. We'd passed many doors on our way up, so it wasn't as if we'd have to go all the way back down again.

Varu came and stood alongside me. He pushed on the flat white wall. It moved, gliding away from him as if it were on wheels.

"Nice concealed door," I commented in surprise.

"Thank you. Glad you like it." Varu led the way through, and we found ourselves standing in the very ordinary hallway of a house. The front door was just a few feet away, and a blurred street light and the inky night sky were visible through a frosted-glass panel. For the first time in hours, things appeared normal.

"Welcome to my twenty-first-century home. I wasn't expecting company, but you're welcome to stay."

"We'll not stay. I can take it from here, vampire." Haydn went for the door. Poor guy didn't seem to realize we were dead. It wasn't my place to tell him. I had enough trouble coming to terms with my untimely and tragic demise. "Thank you for bringing us back to civilization, Varu. I want to take Malka home."

Clearly expecting me to follow Haydn, Varu stood aside to let me pass.

I placed my fisted hands on my hips, feet fixed squarely in place. "If you think I'm going to follow you blindly into the street, think again. Why should I go anywhere with either of you? I don't know where the fuck I am, but of the two of you, I'd rather stay with him." I indicated Varu with my thumb. "At least, so far as I know, he hasn't killed anyone."

Haydn's face was a picture; it looked as if I had slapped him with a wet herring.

Varu's eyes widened, and he swallowed hard. His shoulders jerked up and down, and his hand went to his lips as if trying to stifle a laugh.

"All I know about you is that you look like a red-headed Viking, you bring trouble with you, and despite it being illegal, you walk around London carrying knives. I'm staying with Varu."

Orange flecks appeared in Haydn's storm-cloud eyes, and more than ever, he looked like Thor, the god of thunder. "Malka, I'm Haydn Bryne. Does that name mean anything to you?"

It did.

"The Haydn Byrne?"

It hadn't occurred to me that this stranger was Haydn Byrne.

I'd imagined the person who bore that name to be much older, grayer, and altogether less fit than the Haydn standing before me.

"Haydn Byrne. My uncle?" I hadn't seen him since I was a child.

"I'm not exactly your uncle. I'm your legal guardian, or I was when you were younger. You were on your way to see me when we took that diversion, weren't you?"

As far as I was concerned, this unexpected piece of information fitted the pattern of the unexpected events that happened that day. It had all been fucking crazy. "Diversion? You just killed two women out there, and now we're dead. You call that a diversion?"

Haydn's brow furrowed, and he looked at Varu, who shrugged his shoulders and smiled back at him.

"We're not dead, Malka," he said after a minute of silence. "I live in your house, which is across the street from here. Your mom made me the trustee of your estate before she went on her mission. Come home with me now, and I'll explain."

"Wait one minute. Mission? Do you mean that killing spree? My mom called it a mission? And you knew about it?" Dread, fear, or anger seeped through my veins—I wasn't sure which, but a lump formed at the back of my throat to go with the rock sitting in my stomach.

"When you were seven, and I was eighteen, we put all the paperwork in place so that I'd look after the estate."

Varu soon watched, looking mildly amused and as if none of this sounded like alarming news to him. These two men were both crazy. Dead crazy. It was the only explanation. The worst thing was that they both stood between me and the front door, and I didn't want to run back down those stairs.

I weighed up my position. Haydn appeared the more menacing of the two men, and he stood poised to leave. He was in denial about the death thing. I understood that. But he was unhinged and unpredictable, with a fiery temperament. It seemed lucky I found out his true colors sooner rather than later and hadn't turned up at the house alone when I was still alive.

"Guardian, uncle or not... I see what's happened since I met the two of you, and I'm staying here for now, with Varu."

"With a vampire!" Holding his hands out to the sides, Haydn looked aghast. He hadn't expected rejection. With his handsome features, I doubted he experienced it often.

"Stop calling him names."

The two men exchanged knowing looks, as if they had an unspoken conversation.

Varu shrugged. "You're welcome to stay too. Talk here."

Haydn took one more look at my face before addressing Varu. "Take care of her until the morning." He opened the door. "I'm trusting you, Varujan. Bite her, and our truce is off. You know I'll kill you."

Varu laughed. "You can try, but it's too late for that."

At least he acknowledged our death. Haydn seemed to believe life would continue as normal.

Haydn's comment only confirmed the wisdom of my decision to stay put. He was one crazy fucked-up piece of work. And a murderer. Perhaps he was cut from the same cloth as my murderous mother. Together they conspired to give him control of my well-being just before she was locked away for being mad, bad, and dangerous to know.

"I don't understand how you've lived this long," Varu said to me once the door had closed behind Haydn.

"What do you mean? You know we're all dead, right?" I must have banged my head, but I had no idea what killed these guys. They followed me so quickly. It could have been those punks, the friends of the girls Haydn killed.

"Whilst I certainly am and have been for hundreds of years, the two of you are very much alive."