Page 92 of Virgin Sacrifice

He stilled behind me for a moment, as I stared out at the falling snow, before removing his hands from my hips and placing them on my shoulders. He started rubbing softly up and down my arms, and when he finally spoke it was with an unsettling tenderness. “It’s cause you’re fucking those Blackwell psychos, aren’t you?”

A shiver of ill omen ran through me, settling in my stomach with a heavy weight. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not fucking anyone, Aaron.”

His strokes grew ever so slightly rougher, more agitated. “Are you a virgin, Luz?”

“Again, none of your business,” I replied sharply.

Aaron stopped caressing me, his grip now frozen tightly in place, and the beats in my heart started counting down solemnly toward the inevitable conclusion of our discussion.

“I’m afraid it is, baby girl. Now I will only ask you one more time—‍”

His first strike caught me completely off guard as he suddenly threw me hard into the futon midsentence, slamming my ribs into the metal frame with such force that it knocked the wind out of me and made me cry out in pain.

“Are you a virgin, Luz?”

I wheezed painfully against the tightness of my lungs as I scrambled to get away from him and catch my breath. He stalked ominously after me, climbing on the mattress to bear down on me before he grabbed me by the throat and shoved my head roughly back up against the wall.

Tears welled in my eyes as Aaron’s drilled into mine with a chaotic intensity. The puppy-dog eyes, the boy next door charm was all suddenly gone, ripped away like a cheap veneer, and all that was left was this pathetic excuse for a villain.

“You’re . . . going . . . to regret this,” I choked out, refusing to back down in the face of the monster in front of me.

He snorted and thumped my head harshly against the wall again in retaliation. It landed with a crack that reverberated through us and the hand at my throat shook. He was bigger than me and running on rage and madness, but he had also been deeply ill in a way he couldn’t hide. At least not from me.

When I first began slowly poisoning Aaron after Halloween, I didn’t quite have an endgame. Part of me was convinced he was one of the sheep. The other part of me was just tired of having him around.

It never hurt to have a deserving victim at the ready.

I just had to hope that the elderberry and nightshade toxins I had been hiding in his smoothies had made him sick enough that his strength would fail him soon and my trap would be sprung.

Still, I couldn’t deny the fear building inside me, like a pressure cooker about to explode. How many times had I died with my father’s hands around my throat?

Aaron’s pupils were almost completely dilated now, and he tightened his hold on me even as his arm started to shake. My head began to spin from the lack of oxygen.

“Last chance, Luz. Are you a virgin? Or are you mine?”

It wasn’t much of a choice.

So instead, I chose to let go of all of my fear, and I filled my mind with all the girls who had suffered at the hands of monsters like him.

I thought about the girls who were missing. The ones who had been found. I thought about Sandra and Rachel and what they must have suffered at the hands of the killer. I thought about the third girl, whose name I didn’t know, who had been drugged and raped, most likely using the GHB I had found at Aaron’s place.

I thought about Penelope . . .

I thought about my very own club of dead girls and let a vicious smile creep across my face.

“I’d rather die.”

Chapter forty-one

Everest

I didn’t recognize the music thumping loudly through the party, although the various students grinding up on each other seemed to be enjoying it enough. It wasn’t for me. And if I could find the source of this inferior beat, I’d happily teach these kids something about real music.

Prowling through the crowds, I began whistling to myself the opening bars of the seminal noughties’ classic “Get Low” by Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz. The few partygoers who crossed my path were quick to scurry away from me before I got too close. Like itty-bitty mice-ies.

I started singing loudly about windows, walls, and balls as I poked my head in and out of different rooms, causing the various partygoers to look at me with horror and confusion.

I may not have been known on campus like the twins or Locke, but I’d been told I had the sort of natural charm that made people want to run for the hills screaming.

---