Page 6 of Unleashing Mayhem
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—andhimat 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 longnow, 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 washis. 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 calledLighthouses of the World: A Beginner’s Guideon 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.
