Page 19 of Virgin Sacrifice

As I wrenched the door open, I was immediately overwhelmed by the distinctive copper scent of blood, and I half expected to find a dead body at my feet.

It was somehow worse.

Chapter nine

Alister

“I’ll admit, I’ve done some twisted fucking things in my life . . .” my twin said with a contemplative swing of his beer. It was barely nine in the morning. “But I’ve never nailed a heart to someone’s door before.”

This morning we woke up to the news that a bloody human heart had been found nailed to the door of a student in Jackson College House.

Initially, I assumed it had to be the work of my older brother’s pet serial killer, only to learn that he claimed to have nothing to do with the incident. Everest “Ever” Collins was many things—violent murderer, deranged psychopath, heartless monster—but he wasn’t a liar. Not about his “art,” not to my brother.

Which meant that we had an outsider running amuck on our watch.

“I think it’s incredibly romantic,” the devil himself piped up from the corner of our sitting room where he had made himself at home. Ever was without a doubt the most twisted fuck I knew, so I wasn’t surprised he saw it that way.

Nixon rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t meant as a declaration of love.”

“But, why else would someone give her a heart?” Ever asked, looking sincerely confused.

I ignored the two of them in favor of mulling over what I had been able to learn about the incident so far. Of particular interest to me was the girl whose door the heart had been nailed to.

Luz Torres was a freshman at Hollow Oak and a largely unremarkable scholarship student with a cute face and a generous ass. Hailing from a small suburb outside Houston, Texas, she graduated with a 4.0 unweighted GPA despite having to change schools often for her mother’s work. She was doing a double major in economics and global languages. I knew that she spoke English, French, Spanish, and German, and was studying Japanese.

The girl was disciplined, I would give her that. But so were all the scholarship students who came here. It was the price of not having money or influence.

I’ll admit, I was intrigued when I caught her lurking outside the door at the party last night, staring at my brother and his fuck of the night.

I recognized her immediately from the first day of classes. Nix and I had been attending one of the many frat parties that dominated the beginning of the school year.

We were hanging out on the steps of Lambda Chi Alpha, watching a bunch of assholes getting drunk before classes had even started. The girls were huddled in clusters—gossiping and tossing suggestive glances our way. It was all so fucking mundane.

That was when I saw her, marching down the main walkway on campus, practically ablaze with studious determination. Even without looking up her records, I knew immediately that she must have been here on a scholarship. She looked fucking adorable in her white sneakers, knee-high socks, and pleated camel skirt. I was immediately struck by the sharp need to tarnish the pretty little vignette she made.

Then that prick on an electric scooter crashed into her. I was expecting her to cry, maybe even scream at him, and the thought of what that pretty face might look like with tears running down instantly had me hard. Instead, all I could see in her was steely fury as she picked herself up and kept storming down the cobblestone path as if nothing could stop her.

How boring. I would have preferred it if she had cried.

“What do you think, Ali?” Nix’s voice broke through to me.

Of the two of us, he was always the more . . . present one. I’d always been most at home alone with my thoughts.

“We need to find the message behind the heart,” I finally said, not bothering to look at either of them.

It couldn’t have been random that it was nailed to her door.

Obtaining a human heart is no small thing. If you outsource it, you’re looking at spending some decent money to steal one or find a “donor.” If you go the DIY route, it’s a bloody fucking mess, and it’s physically demanding to crack a rib cage wide open enough to remove a heart. Even more so without surgical tools.

“Someone wanted to make sure that girl received it.”

Nix considered what I’d said, quietly nodding along in agreement while Ever continued playing with his knife, tossing it up and down in the air without a care in the world.

“What are the chances that it’s related to the disappearances on campus?” Nix asked.

It was an interesting thought, although a premature one. We didn’t know enough about either incident to determine whether they were related.

“Disappearances began last spring. Why start now?” I wondered out loud.

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