Page 4 of The Vipers and Their Vendetta

I glance down at my arm in response to his words and gasp.

How did I manage not to even feel the pain from this? A long, tattered line of crimson dotted material flaps around my skin, framing a deep gash.

The creepy room seems to recede, the faintness returning to me once more.

“That looks bad,” I say quietly.

“You are bleeding. I can dress it and clean it. Then I can make sure you’re all right before I help you back to your dorm.”

“You could just take me back now, and I’ll go to the infirmary at the college.” I’m not above begging if it might save me.

“I could,” he replies, “but I’m not going to. I’ll patch you up here, and in return you will give me something.”

“Give you something?” His words alarm me more than anything else that’s happened so far, and that’s saying a lot. “I don’t have anything to give you.”

“Oh,” he says with a smile that stretches his mask again, “but you do.”

CHAPTER 2

Lex

I reachSaint’s room at the same time as Zane. He stares at me as I bang on the door, his eyes dark and angry. Zane looks wild, and he’s shaved the back of his head more, so I can see more of the ink crawling up his thick neck. If you saw him in an alleyway, you’d run a mile in the other direction.

Saint opens the door yawning, half in and half out of his jeans, hopping on one leg as he pulls at the waistband.

“I was asleep,” he mutters. “What the fuck is going on?”

I shove past my twin brother, almost causing him to topple over.

“Vani is gone. I heard her bike. She found out that Reagan killed herself, and I think that bitch Angelica hinted that it was to do with us three.”

Saint rights himself again. “Putain de merde,” he curses.Fucking hell.

Zane nudges me.We need to take care of that bitch, she’s trouble, he signs.

“Agreed,” Saint says, “but first we have to find Vani. We can drive to the gate and ask security which direction she went.”

Zane signs again.Cameras.

He’s right. There are cameras, and they extend beyond the boundary of the college grounds and cover the roads out of here and some of the woodland too. They should show us which direction she went. God, if she’s halfway back to her father’s gang by now, we might have already lost her.

I want to break something. Zane looks like he already has. Hands busted as usual, knuckles spotted with fresh blood and broken skin. The man is a walking unexploded landmine. I eye him warily, but for now, he seems to be holding his shit together.

“Let’s go and see if the guards at the gate know anything,” Saint says as he shrugs on his fancy jacket and then grabs his watch. He shoves his feet into some slip-on shoes—they look like crocodile skin—and then runs his fingers through his dark hair.

“If the damn world was ending, you’d still deck yourself out like a peacock,” I mutter.

Sometimes my twin pisses me the fuck off.

He merely grins at me as if my words wash off his back.

“Bah oui, and you’d look no different than you do now if we were ten years into the end of the world. I think your style could be called Dystopian Chic.”

Knock it off, Zane signs and glares at us both.

Saint blows him a kiss.

“You ready now?” I ask.

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