Page 13 of Bloodmoon Ritual

I pedaled still faster, my hands clenched tight on the handlebars, wishing I could cover my ears.

The last thing I heard before I went past a noisy construction site was,

I won’t stop

Fuck. Rhyder might be built like a goddamn refrigerator, but he was also smart and when he thought he was doing what was right, he was absolutely ruthless and inflexible.

Where the fuck should I go?

Where would I be safe?

Where in the entire goddamn city would I be safe from my brother?

For a moment, I thought that maybe I was overreacting. Maybe all these fears were unfounded. After all, Rhyder didn’t know my new name. He didn’t know where I lived.

It was all very logical. But Iknewmy twin. And I knew he’d burn the whole goddamn city down to find me.

In a cult full of zealots, Rhyder is the most zealous one of all, a holy warrior from childhood, inflexible, stern, convinced of his own righteousness.

Ever since I could remember, his same refrain had run through me like the beat of a drum

You were made for me

Made for me

Mine

I gave a little shiver and headed to my apartment.

Once I made it to my apartment complex, an unimpressive and probably illegally built collection of buildings stacked on top of and beside each other, next to a couple of overflowing dumpsters, I stowed the stolen bike guiltily and hurried into my small apartment, looking nervously around me as if my brother could have somehow gotten here before me. I tried to force my breath to slow down.

The blinking light of a community warning board caught my eye.

STAY CALM

DO NOT APPROACH THEM

IF APPROACHED, STAY SUBMISSIVE

It had a blurry picture of some Congregants on their motorcycles below the warnings.

As I hurried inside, my cellphone buzzed. It was Craig.

Come over early

You can give me a bj before my grandma gets here

I gritted my teeth and ignored the message.

Because I had grown up in the Congregation, I had had to learn some painful lessons about how men in the cities sometimes behaved. Craig’s inability to decide on if he actually wanted to date me had been a sore spot during the majority of our vaguely-defined situationship, but now that we were actually boyfriend and girlfriend, I felt apathetic.

Sex in general was not as exciting as I had hoped from the dire pronouncements from our Prophet growing up. It wasn’t that it was unpleasant, exactly.

More like incredibly boring and overrated.

Craig was talking about moving in together at some indeterminate date in the future, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care anymore. Maybe we should break up.

That was what you were supposed to do in the cities if you were bored of your boyfriend, right? I sighed. Sometimes I thought I would never get the hang of living here.

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