Page 35 of The Lies We Steal

One of them had grabbed the man by his hair, dangling him out in front of everyone like a sacrificial lamb. His neck was exposed to the light, his Adam's apple that was coated in drops of blood protruded outward as they held his head back. Exposing him to the group.

I held my breath.

I watched in slow motion as the hooded figure lifted a blade that caught the glare of the moon, shimmering for a moment. My breath hung in the air, the seconds seeming to pass by in hours.

The knife ran across the man's windpipe, the thick crimson liquid began to leak out like a dam that had just released its floodgates. In an act of survival, he raised both hands to his neck, trying to hold pressure, attempting to prevent more blood loss but it was no use.

He gurgled, frothing up even more blood from his mouth as he fought for his life. Withering and spurting. The last few moments of life leaving his body.

The blood had drenched the front of his clothing, pouring out of him at an unnatural speed and there was simply no stopping it.

My hand raised to my mouth, fingers trembling against my skin as scorching hot tears collected in my eyes. They fell on their own accord, and I had no intention of stopping them. Fear shrouded me. Unlike a shadow that just follows, fear infested my body. An infection that spread within milliseconds. It was consuming every fiber, every thought, every fleeting piece of hope until there was nothing left between me and the shroud.

Only darkness.

Something else inside of me switched on. When asked about this moment years from now, hours from now maybe, I wouldn’t know what to say. Because I was not in my own body.

My humanity had cut all ties to my soul. I felt no remorse. No sorrow. No pain. Like my brain had commanded my body to stop feeling entirely. Its sole purpose now was to get me out of this alive.

Seizing myself to move, I grabbed Lyra’s arm hauling her towards the campus, only to be met with her resistance.

“H…e, he’s de…dead.” She mutters, “Really, dead. Like really, really—” Her eyes are glazed over. Possessed by something that is rooting her in place, something that’s making her watch. If I wasn’t there, I’d be afraid that she would stay here, watching them until they’d left.

“Dead, Lyra. I know. Now come on we need to get out of here, please.” I beg jerking her arm.

The shaking in my voice must wake her up, finally turning her gaze from the scene and back to me. She nods once seeing my face and we both begin to pick up the pace in our exit.

I let Lyra go in front of me because she knows the way better than I do, but without flashlights, it’s a guessing game.

You only see flashes of the moon's light between the trees, irregular and not enough to illuminate the ground in front of you. Which makes navigating through a forest a lot more difficult.

I think we are making headway. I think we might get out of this unharmed but my shoelace gets caught on something, the abrupt tug at my leg makes me tumble to the ground with a heavy thud and light scream that I can’t control.

My body hits the wet ground, my palms stinging with the impact and I knew I’d cut myself from the blistering pain I felt. But the pain felt trivial. An afterthought honestly.

Because when my eyes look up at Lyra, she wasn’t looking down at me. She was staring beyond me towards the group of people who’d just murdered someone in cold blood.

Her mouth was slightly open and her eyes lustrous with tears. She was afraid.

And as my head shifted to look behind me, I understood why.

Like a pack of famished wolves who’d just inhaled fresh meat, all four of their heads were turned in our direction. Each one was locked onto us. Their hoods were still up, and I couldn’t make out their faces in the dark, but I knew they were looking at us. At me.

A rush of adrenaline flew through my veins, my chest tightened and a strong wave of dizziness hit me. I was sure this time I was having an out-of-body experience.

Everything felt the necessity to work in overdrive and I knew, this was my body triggering my fight or flight. And when it came down to which one is selected, I thought it best not to argue.

I swung around to my friend, who still wasn’t watching me,

“Lyra,” I said calmly, “Run.”

Alistair

Everything was going according to plan. Everything was going fucking perfectly and I should have been prepared for it to go to shit.

Silas and Thatcher had grabbed Chris in the parking lot after he’d left late, the sun had set and the chloroform worked like a charm. He’d been unconscious in seconds.

They’d met me out here miles beyond the school, Thatcher caring his body over his shoulder. After Silas went through his phone, finding nothing useful besides Chris’s anime porn search history we tossed the phone into the car, so that it wouldn’t be tracked back to us. While Rook dumped his car off the side of Devils Highway, a hundred-foot drop into the Pacific Ocean. They wouldn’t find it for months and by that time, they’d never be able to find his body.

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