Ricky

Ricky heard the blade slice through Melanie’s stomach, cutting through the fabric of her top and sliding into the delicate flesh of her abdomen. He hated himself for it, loathed the pain he’d inflicted on her, but Ricky needed to wound her so he might be able to break the succubus’s hold on him. Derek pointed the gun in his direction as Katherine chided him.

“I meant for you to kill her, Richard. Why can you not follow a simple direction without deviating?”

Derek’s bark of laughter startled him as his buddy grinned. “You picked the wrong person, Katherine, if you wanted an obedient slave. I’ve been giving him orders for going on seven years, and he still doesn’t fucking listen.”

“And,” Ricky grunted, “if you weren’t such a piss-poor succubus and knew how to word things correctly, this might have gone your way. Today, I’m afraid, you're shit outta luck, doll.”

Ricky winced as Melanie pulled the blade from her stomach, and her eyes widened as her flesh started to knit back together. Her sexy little fangs had come out after being wounded. She studied Ricky for a minute, and he nodded at her, his eyes drifting down to the bloody knife in her hands, hoping Melanie understood what he needed her to do. Derek, on the other hand, seemed oblivious as to the secret conversation between Melanie and himself.

“Now,” Derek said to Katherine, “let my friend go, and let me escort you to your lovely cell on Spike Island. The view is amazing.”

“Richard, let go of your control on the magic. Take this whole building down around us.”

Ricky felt the command surge through his entire body, each and every cell igniting as the magic that he had buried inside him bucked for control. His blood felt as if it were on fire. His skin itched and burned, steam rising from the tortured flesh. Ricky let free a whimper.

“Derek,” he groaned, “get her out of here. Now. I’m about to go nuclear on this place, and I ain’t taking no prisoners.”

Katherine made to go around him, to slip from the room, but Ricky called his magic to the palm of his hand and fired a warning shot in her direction.

“I’m not leaving you, Ricky.”

“My friend, I do not think you understand the complexity of what’s about to go down. The magic is going to rip me apart and engulf this whole place into a burning ball of blue until it’s nothing but ash. I need you to take Lanie, get as many people out of the hotel as possible, and run like fucking hell away from here.”

“Ricky…” Derek began as he wrapped his arm around Melanie’s shoulder. The blood at least had stopped gushing from her wound, he noticed. The building started to shake under the pulse of Ricky’s magic, bits of plaster beginning to crumble from the walls. Splinters began to appear under his feet, and Ricky looked at his best friend once again.

“D, c’mon man. Take me seriously. Get her out of here before I take you to hell with me. Plus, I’m pretty sure my clothes are gonna burn off me in a few seconds and I’m gonna be naked. Just go.”

The magic began to leak from his skin, burning the fabric on his body in short little bursts. He held Derek’s gaze for a moment longer, and his friend gave a short bob of his head. No words needed between them. Actions spoke volumes, and over the years, Derek’s actions had made it clear how he felt about Ricky. And the feeling was mutual.

Ricky’s gaze wandered over to his Lanie. Tears streaked down her face as she regarded him. He winked at her as his control wavered, and Ricky struggled to pull the magic back inside. He shut his eyes as he cried out, his knees knocking together in an almost agony of pain.

His body jerked as he began to count down from five hundred. Five hundred seconds for Derek to get as many people out of here before The Crown of Midnight became rubble and dust.

“Stop now, Richard. You’ve made your point.”

His eyes snapping open, Ricky turned around with an almost feral grin on his face. “Ah, you let the genie out of the box. He wants to have his fun. I’m afraid you’re gonna burn, baby, burn… right along with me.”

Ricky heard the metal door slide closed across its hinge, pausing as Melanie called his name. He turned around as the blade he had driven into Melanie’s abdomen streaked through the air and embedded itself in his thigh where he’d been shot just weeks before. The pain was excruciating, but he could feel the magic leak out with some of his blood, lessening its pressure within him and hopefully giving his friends a bit more time to escape. ‘Atta girl, Lanie, he thought with a smile.

As he lost count due to blood loss and slipping concentration, Ricky hoped Derek had cleared the hotel in time. While he considered his mortality, Ricky thought to himself, I wish I’d had more time. I wish I’d seen the world. I wish I’d had someone call me Dad. I wish I’d lived more.

The hold he had on his magic slipped, and there was no going back now. To Ricky, it felt as if the fire that burned inside him recoiled, and for just a moment, there was no trace of magic. He felt empty and alone, powerless and weak, and he wanted the power back, needed it.

Snapping like an elastic band, his magic burst from him, engulfing the room in a ball of fire that sent the building up in a blaze of blue flames, taking no prisoners as the entire building came down on him and Katherine.

Ironically, though Ricky tasted the fire on his tongue, smelled it on his skin, felt it pulse in his ears, saw it flicker and devour concrete and stone, and listened to it crackle around him; he no longer felt any pain. It was nirvana and bliss and heaven all rolled into one. He was power, and it was glorious.

The entire hotel fell around him, the foundation trembling under the sheer strength of his magic. But despite coming down hard around him, not a single piece of the building touched Ricky. It didn’t dare. Ricky was the magic, and the magic was him. In that moment, he was destruction in a mortal shell.

With a roar, the last of his pent-up aggression and magic flared and vanished as Ricky crumbled to the ground among the rubble. Darkness took hold of him, and Ricky more than welcomed it. Smoke tickled his nose as he inhaled, coughing slightly, but he could not open his eyes.

Not sure how long he lay there in the rubble, Ricky regained consciousness as he heard the shifting of rocks and concrete nearby, the sounds of someone frantically trying to reach him. His energy was zapped, so all he could do was lie there and wait for someone to get to him.

If he were still alive, that was. Because if he opened his eyes and the smoke meant he’d died and gone to hell, well, he’d be leaving a scathing review on Trip Advisor.

“Ricky!”

He shivered, though he wasn’t cold, and tried to open his eyes as he felt himself being lifted. The person cursed as Ricky’s still-hot skin singed them as they carried him like a baby.

“Soz,” Ricky managed to murmur under his breath. Someone threw a fire-retardant blanket over him, and then he was lowered onto something soft. He cracked his peepers open and winced as a light was shone in his eyes, quickly closing them again. “Are you trying to burn out my corneas or what? I think I’ve done enough burning for today, man.”

He heard Derek chuckle and managed to open his eyes again. Glancing over Derek’s shoulder, he groaned at the sight of the fairly new hotel in ruins behind them. Guilt washed over him as Derek nudged him.

“Hey, don’t worry about that. Once you're good, that’s all that matters. Here, drink this.”

Ice-cold water was lifted to his lips and he drank greedily, not caring when it dribbled down his chin. Sitting up, he adjusted the blanket to shield his modesty—not that he had any, but hell, he’d just crispy-creamed a building; nobody needed a peek at his naked ass, too.

“Hey, on a positive note, you manged not to burn all your hair off, which is good. Like, I’m not sure Melanie would go for it.”

“I have it on good authority she loves her some Captain Picard. I could totally rock it,” Ricky answered with a grin and a cough.

Sarge came bouldering through the crowd, shoving people out of the way. When he laid eyes on the building behind his agents, his mouth just about hit the ground.

“What in the blue blazes happened?” the bear asked, his words making Ricky laugh hysterically.

“Ricky kinda set the hotel on fire,” Melanie said quietly as she held on tightly to a bottle of blood. The only evidence she had been stabbed was the lingering bloodstain on her T-shirt.

“Technically,” Ricky coughed, “it wasn’t on fire.”

The bear’s face turned a brilliant shade of purple. “Of course it wasn’t on fire. You completely blew it up!”

“Yeah, um… sorry?”

“Sorry… sorry! I leave you alone for one bloody night and you all lose your goddamn minds. Are you on drugs?” Sarge narrowed his gaze and stared Ricky down.

“You and I both know that you don’t pay me enough to have a drug problem, Sarge.”

Ricky leaned back on the gurney and listened as Derek got Sarge up to speed on what had gone down, from Ricky being under Katherine Smyth’s command to kidnapping Erika and the events that led to him turning The Crown of Midnight into a demolition site. Both physically and mentally exhausted, Ricky shut his eyes and tried to drown out the buzz of noise around him. Even the medic, inspecting and dressing his thigh wound didn’t rouse him.

You are power.

We are power.

Need to feel the power again.

And now he was taking a trip to crazy town. But Ricky couldn’t deny the hunger inside him for magic. He’d thought it was gone, but Ricky sensed the magic begin to build up again. And it both feared and excited him.

“Hey mate, got you some clothes. Let me help you into ‘em.”

Hearing Donnie’s voice dragged Ricky from his thoughts. “How’s Erika?”

“I’m not going to lie, she’s taken one hell of a beating. But once she regained consciousness, she snarled that she was fine. Apparently, she’s been a cage fighter or something in a previous life because she claims to have been hit harder. I wasn’t going to argue with her. She did, however, agree to let Derek drive her back to Ever’s once this is all over.”

Ricky pulled the hoodie over his head, and then manged to put his legs into the track pants without showing off his assets to the world. He swung his legs over the gurney and made to stand, but his legs buckled immediately. Had Donnie not grabbed him under the arm, he would have faceplanted on the tarmac for sure.

“And where do you think you’re going?” his fiery little redhead asked, getting right up in his face, her hands on her hips and a scowl marring her beautiful face.

“I thought I’d go for a jog. Maybe run a marathon or some shit. But then I decided to hang back, keep Donnie company.”

“Stop being a smartass.”

“I can’t,” Ricky admitted. “It’s who I am.”

“Uh, can you not be serious for a minute?”

“Okay, maybe just for a minute.”

Donnie perched him at the edge of the gurney and walked away, squeezing Melanie on the shoulder. She waited while a medic came over and gave him another once-over. When they were alone, Melanie sat down on the gurney beside him, almost near enough to touch. He brushed his hair from his eyes and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Hey, I’m sorry about how things went down in there.”

“It’s not really your fault, is it? I mean, Katherine forced you to do it.”

“Yeah, but I should have been stronger. I should have resisted,” he argued. His magic fluttered under his skin at that. Next time he would be stronger—he would never be anyone’s puppet again.

“So,” Melanie began a little tentatively, “I was thinking. After all this is done, how ‘bout you and me catch a movie or a drink? Just us. I think it would be good to figure out this thing between us.”

“No.”

The word surprised him as much as it seemed to surprise her. She lurched forward to glare at him. He held up a hand and simply sighed. “Hear me out.”

As she blinked back what he hoped weren’t tears, Ricky began to explain to the one woman he never wanted to make cry why he was a fucking idiot and wouldn’t agree to see her, not just yet.

“Lanie, you know how I feel for you. You gotta, right? But this is new for both of us. I mean, the girl I was beginning to fall for died. You died, and I was powerless to stop it.”

Melanie opened her mouth to speak, but Ricky interrupted her.

“No, let me finish. There’s an attraction between us, for sure. But the girl that was in love with me was terribly human, and I admired that about her. She sparked with vitality and grit, but she’s dead.”

“Ricky, I’m standing right here. I died, yeah, but I wanted you then, and I want you now.”

Damn, she was making this so bloody hard. Maybe being subtle wasn’t working.

“You don’t love me, she did. Melanie the tech girl was in love with the bad-boy warlock who had magic and was intriguing. The man who brought her closer to the fringes of what she really wanted—to not be normal. Congrats, you died. You are now top of the food chain. What I need is for Melanie the vampire to be in love with me, dark parts and all. The human girl who loved me is dead, and I have to give the vampire girl time to figure out if the memory of the love she had is enough for her.”

Ricky sucked in a breath before he continued. “I won’t survive it if you decide that I’m not for you. I let it happen to me once, and I told myself I would never be second best again. I will grey, Melanie, and I will die, many, many years before you. I need you to fall in love with the real me instead of the idea of me.”

Melanie’s lip quivered and goddamn him, he wanted to kiss the sadness out of her. He could see her holding back tears as Ricky stood once more, his legs less shaky this time. He began to walk away from her, unsure if he could actually do it.

“But nothing has changed for me, Ricky. I want to be the girl who makes your bad days better. The girl that makes you say ‘my life has been better since I met her.’ I want to be with you.”

“And once you’ve been a vampire for more than five seconds, we can revisit things. I’m not about to have you rush into something you’re not ready for.”

He had managed to walk a few hundred meters, dragging his injured leg behind him, when Derek caught up with him. “What the hell did you say to Melanie? She’s bawling.”

“Christ, Derek, I feel bad enough about what I said without you sticking your oar in. Can I just go home now? I feel like a sack of shit.”

They walked, slowly, to Derek’s car, and Ricky groaned as he sat down in the passenger’s seat. Derek started the engine, and off they headed towards his home. Derek tried to drag the conversation with Melanie out of him, but Ricky pretended he’d dozed off, knowing full well the werewolf was under no illusion that he was actually asleep.

A short time later, they pulled up outside Ricky’s house. Derek insisted on coming in with him, but Ricky refused his friend’s offer. His mood had darkened during the car ride over as he’d replayed what had happened over and over in his mind. All he wanted was a beer and to be left alone.

Derek relented, telling Ricky he’d be over first thing to check on him. He finally only reversed out of his drive after Ricky had promised to call if Derek was needed and closed the front door behind him.

As soon as the car vanished from view, Ricky grabbed the house phone and called Draven’s number. His warlock buddy had helped him with his powers before, but now Ricky could feel it building and building inside him again, and he was terrified.

Draven listened to Ricky’s request, and when Ricky had finished speaking, Draven asked him if he were sure he wanted to do this. Ricky told him he was.

Half an hour later, Draven showed up at his door. The warlock had dreads as long as his body and facial hair that covered most of his face. But he was one of the realest people Ricky knew and would tell it to him straight.

“These are not a permanent fix, my friend. They will subdue the overwhelming nature of your magic, but it comes with a cost. They can be addictive. I will give you a month’s supply. After that, we must speak again about helping you control your magic. Promise me, Ricardo. I do not wish to attend your funeral.”

Ricky assured his friend that he just needed to learn how to control the magic at his own pace. Draven directed him to take one tablet each morning with plenty to drink. Ricky took one under Draven’s supervision, but once the warlock left, Ricky downed another one for safe measure.

The reaction was instant. The magic receded to a dull whisper, still there but controllable. Ricky made his way into his front room via the kitchen, grabbing a beer before he sank down onto his recliner.

It was there in the darkness that Ricky broke, curled his legs up to his chest, silent tears cascading down his face as he mourned the sudden loss of power and the intense new craving to lay waste to the world.

He felt like the loneliest person on the planet.