Page 53 of Soulless Rivalry

“Why are you here? I thought you were scared of the dark.”

“Hence the flashlight.” I nodded to the object sitting on the back of the couch I had been resting on. “Now give me back my book.”

“You can’t come here alone.”

I huffed, my shoulders falling in annoyance. “What’s up with you and thinking you can tell me what to do?”

“What’s up with you having no survival instinct?”

I gasped, “Fuck you! I’ll have you know I came prepared this time.”

“Oh, yes, real prepared. A bag of chips and a little sweater. No charger in case your phone battery died, no one knowing where you are in case the door doesn’t open back up… a real champ.”

Again, I opened my mouth to respond but ultimately decided to snap it shut. He was right. I was being stupid.

“What’s up with you and this journal anyway?” He opened it at the page where I’d stopped, his eyes quickly scanning the lines.

“I think whoever wrote it was a member of an ancient brotherhood,” I sighed.

When he frowned at me but said nothing, I took it as a sign to continue.

“According to Greek mythology, Tyche was a goddess, the goddess of good fortune?—”

“Obviously, I knew that,” he rolled his eyes, cutting me off.

I ignored his arrogant ass and went on, “I tried looking up the name on this journal, but I couldn’t find anything. But I found an old blog that said that back in Ancient Greece, a group of men from all backgrounds had teamed up to build a temple for Tyche. They became the guardians of this temple, hoping that worshiping her would grant them good fortune and success.”

“And you think somebody decided to randomly start that brotherhood again this year?”

“No.” I shook my head, sitting back down. “I think the brotherhood never died. I think they have been using women as sacrifices for centuries.”

Konstantin sat next to me, looking perplexed.

“Are you… are you saying you believe in that bullshit? That the more blood they shed, the stronger they get? Like… magic?”

“Of course not. I think… I think it’s more like leverage. The blog said that the brotherhood was started by the seventh son of some aristocrat from Athens who didn’t have much chance of inheriting his father’s fortune. He recruited men from all backgrounds, and promised to help them achieve their dreams if they helped him get rid of his brothers.”

Making myself more comfortable, I put my leg under me and leaned towards Konstantin.

“Did they do it?” he asked, clearly invested in the story. I nodded.

“They did, but before that, they each had to prove their loyalty.”

“By sacrificing someone,” he concluded, relaxing into the cushions. I beamed, not because of the nature of the story, but because I loved how all the pieces fit in together.

“Women. I guess we’re easy targets. Always paying the price for men’s greed.” The words tasted bitter in my mouth, but that didn’t make them any less true.

“Fuck, that could work. That would explain the weird marks on the girl’s body in the woods.”

I nodded. “I wonder if they found the second missing girl. Or the third. When we went to town, an old friend said there had been another disappearance.”

“Shit, then… what? It means this little brotherhood has three members.”

“Or more. We have no idea when they’ll stop killing.”

His hand gripped his hair and I could hear his mind running a hundred miles an hour.

“And I know it happened before. You saw that newspaper.” I leaned over his lap and grabbed it from the side table on his side of the couch. “It’s happened before and I think the Academy tried hiding it back then too. There’s nothing on the internet about these murders. Just like there’s no news about the missing girls either. They haven’t even been officially reported missing to the police.”

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