Page 36 of Virgin Sacrifice

As I turned down the final stretch toward Jackson College House, I wasn’t surprised to see a familiar figure leaning against one of the glowing lampposts that lined the walkway. His face was obscured by the shadows, but even from a distance, I knew who it was.

I refused to slow my pace as the winding path drew me nearer and instead headed straight for the man not so subtly watching me. Most of the time I ignored the twins’ looming presence, but today I found myself unusually irritated by it.

Killers or not, they were getting on my last nerve.

I kept my gaze narrowed as I slowed to a stop in front of him before planting my feet and crossing my arms to make my stand.

“What do you want, Alister?”

I wasn’t expecting a reaction and I didn’t get one. Still, part of me took smug satisfaction in being able to easily tell the twins apart, despite their clear efforts to appear identical in every way, from their clothes to their matching tattoos. Ridiculous, really, if you thought about it.

While physically the twins appeared identical on the surface, there were several small differences between the two of them. The first and most obvious one being the tiny scar on Nixon’s lip. It was barely noticeable, but once I latched on to that detail it was easier to see more of their individual quirks.

For example, while the black-and-grayscale tattoos covering the backs of their hands were identical, the way the ink had faded over time wasn’t. Human hands took a lot of wear and tear, and tattoos there tended to fade quickly. Nixon cracked his knuckles a lot, and the Gothic letters that decorated them, spelling out pure and pain, were worn down and faded in comparison to Alister’s.

The biggest difference between the twins, however, was their personalities.

I had yet to hear Alister utter a single word, while Nixon was almost obnoxiously verbose. It was as though he couldn’t help himself when confronted with silence, all too delighted to fill it with the sound of his own voice. It wasn’t necessarily charming, but it was distracting. I could see how easy it would be to give in to that distraction and forget how dangerous he and his brother really were.

The two of us remained facing off under the sickly orange glow of the streetlight, staring each other down in some sort of silent war of wills.

As I stared up into his eyes without hesitation, I was struck by the complete lack of anything that might resemble compassion or empathy in them. It was as if whatever spark of life that awoke humanity within the rest of us had failed to light inside him.

More and more, I was beginning to understand just how dangerous the Blackwells were.

It should have scared me. It would have scared a saner person. Instead, it simply fed the rage that had smoldered inside me since I was a child. I supposed, with everything that had happened to me since arriving at Hollow Oak, it was a miracle I hadn’t snapped sooner.

Then again, until now, I hadn’t had such a well-deserving target of my anger right in front of me.

Haunting me.

Taunting me.

Which was how I found myself rushing toward the Alister Blackwell, rumored professional killer, in a haze of adrenaline and ill-formed rage. Blind to rhyme or reason, I flew into the shadows at him, furiously and ineffectually attempting to shove him in the chest.

He disarmed me before I could even get close, snatching up my wrists and yanking them up above my head with a single hand, a move which forced my body nearer to his while simultaneously keeping us at a controlled distance.

Up close, for the first time, I could see something written in his cold eyes.

It wasn’t good.

Chapter seventeen

Alister

Luz’s whiskey eyes turned golden under the lamp light, and they were ablaze with a righteous fury despite the slight tremor in her plump lower lip. Even still, this tiny thing, with her delicate wrists strung up in my grasp, like a rabbit caught in a snare, had more steel in her spine than 99.9 percent of the population.

I was used to being attacked. Men who lived with violence in their lives rarely met death peacefully, and my family brought a lot of violent men to their deaths. I knew all too well what it was like to go head-to-head with another killer. The rush that came from looking each other in the eye and knowing only one of you would walk away alive.

It might be my favorite feeling on earth.

Or at the very least, it was one of the few things I felt.

But here at Hollow Oak? No one on this campus would so much as dare to raise a hand to me, never mind flying at me in a rage.

And Luz Torres wasn’t just any student, she was a scholarship student. A straitlaced, high-achieving, brown noser, determined to capitalize off the university’s wealth and good name.

Yet here she stood, looking at me with death in her eyes, as seriously as any seasoned killer despite being completely at my mercy.

---