Page 8 of Of Heathens & Havoc

It can’t be.

I can’t breathe. I’ve forgotten all about the giant and his crew of clones with their murderous steel dagger eyes. My fingers have gone numb. I can’t swallow, and I think I’d choke on air if I could get any into my lungs.

And then I see him. The boy that goes with the voice, the one I haven’t heard in four years. He’s taller and broader, filled out in all the right ways as he moved from the sixteen-year-old boy I remember into a man. His hair is bleached blond now, spiked up in careless disarray, and tattoos peek out from theneck of his black shirt. His face is more angular, more masculine, but his eyes are the same color of the churning sea I remember, crinkled at the corners as he makes big gestures with his arms in that way boys do, like they’re entitled to all the space they can occupy.

Meanwhile I shrink, my heart ceasing to beat as I pray that I’ll wake from this nightmare and find myself in a cold sweat in my bed at my aunt’s, where I’ve slept since the night I escaped Faulkner.

Behind Heath are two more boys I never wanted to see again, both grown into men in the four years since I’ve seen them. Angel’s attention lasers in on me, his pale jade eyes locking on mine, his serpentine gaze snapping closed on me like the jaws of a snake, rendering me immobile. I strain to draw a breath, but he holds me pinned, tightening his grip like a boa constrictor.

“The Hellhounds,” breathes a girl beside me, sounding halfway terrified and halfway to being condemned to hell for the strength of her sinful thoughts alone.

For a second, Heath is too busy checking out the attractive girls in the crowd to notice an invisible one like me. Later, I’ll wonder why the Sinners singled me out, since I dressed to be as unimpressive and unnoticeable as possible. Right now, though, all I feel is terror and a ridiculous, irrational stab of jealousy that Heath is still as shameless as he was growing up, always the ladies man even before temptations of the flesh entered the equation. He was the boy picking wild clover and dandelions at the edge of the playground and giving them to the girl he liked in kindergarten.

And then his gaze lands on me, and his ocean eyes turn arctic storm. They don’t go dead like Angel’s. Behind their sparkling depth is a wild, feral hunger that demands to be fed, as if he’d devour me whole if given half a chance.

I finally manage to swallow, dropping my gaze to the curved lines of ink sinking into his shirt like a tease, inviting curiosity and exploration. I want to follow the path those tattoos map out, where they lead, what secrets he’s inked onto his skin since the days when he whispered them to me.

I wonder if he got them in juvie.

That thought jars me back to reality, back to his accusatory gaze. Back to the present moment where, for the first time in four years, I’m facing the boys I grew up with, boys I never expected to see again. Not like this, together in a group, looking at me like my demons come to extract their pound of flesh one slow torment at a time.

“Back off, Bain,” Saint says, breaking the crackling charge in the silent hallway. He steps forward and grips the back of my neck like I’m a dog. “This girl’s an innocent. She doesn’t get on her knees for anyone but God. Isn’t that right, little sister?”

four

The Heathen

“What the fuck is she doing here?” I demand, wheeling on Saint as soon as we’re back in his room. Of course the smug bastard has a single, and from the looks of it, one that was meant for a rich prick like him.

“Fuck if I know,” he says, his fists balled like he’s going to punch through the wall.

“Relax,” Angel says, lounging back on Saint’s bed. “It’s not so bad. We can keep an eye on her this way.”

“No,” Saint says flatly, turning to Angel. “She doesn’t belong here.”

“What are you going to do about her?” I demand. I’m about ready to deck Saint if he doesn’t deal with this shit. Then again, I could deal with it my way, which would be a lot more fun. But she’s his sister, so he gets final say.

Too bad. She grew up so well.

“Don’t worry about it,” Saint says, a cruel smile turning up the corners of his lips. “I’ll get rid of her. Mercy’s a scared little rabbit. She won’t put up a fight.”

His words put unwelcome images in my head. “Run, Rabbit,” I mutter under my breath, my pulse quickening at the thought of chasing the girl through the crypt and into the tunnels under the school. I wouldn’t just catch her. I’d make her pay.

“Your dad didn’t tell you she was going to be here?” Angel asks, interrupting my fantasy. “Asshole move.”

“What other kind would he know?” Saint asks, his smile turning to a grimace.

“Still,” Angel says, since he’s got functioning parents and shit. “You’d think he’d give you a heads up. You haven’t seen her since…”

“The trial,” I grit out. My thoughts descend to an even darker place, one I found in juvie at the hands of a particularly sadistic guard. One I can push through to find my own sadistic joy on the other side. I catch my friends exchanging worried glances, and I straighten my face.

“Shit, sorry,” Angel says, sitting up on the bed. “That’s right. That’s when we all saw her last. Not just you, little heathen.”

“Maybe we should have a little fun with her before she goes,” I say, unable to keep from bouncing on my toes at the thought of running those tunnels I know by heart. We all do. But the game is my obsession, a sickness that burns hotter in my veins than the usual thrill of the chase that electrifies the others, more deadly than the car I race through the dead streets of Faulkner after midnight.

“No,” Saint says flatly, glaring at me with those crazy-clear eyes that can turn from whiskey to amber depending on the light, the color always shifting like a flame. “She’s too fucking innocent.”

“How would you know?” Angel asks. “You haven’t seen her in four years.”

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