Page 16 of Evil King

It wasn’t difficult to get through the crowd of students because they parted when they saw me coming. All of them stood to one side and pointed as I stormed my way down the hallway, but I ignored all of that and turned the corner where Sicily had backed up. Nikita and Jaxon had backed him up against one of the walls and were looming over him, all while he cowered and held his hands up.

“I didn’t do nothing. It was just someone who wanted to know how to get some booze. I was just sharing some friendly advice,” Sicily begged.

“Nothing happens in this school without it going through the king,” Nikita hissed. “Why don’t you just tell Jaxon who procured your services, and we’ll be on our way.” She closed in on Sicily with her blade out. It looked like a regular pocket knife, but the tip had to have been altered in some way because it had shark-tooth edges that looked razor-sharp. “Hurry up.”

I walked up the corridor until I was behind Nikita and the other kid that she’d called Jaxon and crossed my arms. They both stood several centimeters below me, so when I cleared my throat and they both whipped around, it required them to look up.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“This doesn’t concern you,” Nikita growled at me. “Walk away.”

Nikita may have more brass than she had earned in her lifetime, but Jaxon was sizing me up with a considerate look on his face. I pulled my left hand up into my right one and cracked my knuckles, saying, “I’ve decided it concerns me.”

A group of kids was already forming around the four of us as I engaged them, and Nikita flashed her blade in my face. “Are you sure this is a fight you want?”

With lightning-fast reflexes, I reached out and snatched Nikita’s blade from her before snapping it in half and chucking the pieces in opposite directions down the hallway. The sharp edge on her blade sliced my hand as I did so, but compared to what I’d experienced, that was nothing. I reached around and grabbed the edge of my black t-shirt, pulling at the seam of the left shoulder to rip the sleeve off. I laced the strip around my bleeding left hand and then looked back at Nikita with a bored expression.

“At your most dangerous, you’re barely the scariest person in North Postings. I grew up in the hood and spent the last four years in a cell block.” I leaned in so that my face was hovering just a few centimeters above hers. “It’d be years before you even frightened my left pinky toe.” My gaze shifted toward Jaxon. “Maybe you’d like to try?”

Jaxon looked me up and down one more time and then turned and sauntered off down the hallway. Nikita put all of her weight into shoving me backward, which, to her credit, did put some space between us, but then she turned her back to Sicily and started off after Jaxon.

“You’ll regret this,” she hissed as she passed.

“People keep saying that,” I responded. “I’ll wait until I see it.”

She didn’t respond, only continued on, stopping just briefly enough to pick up the blade part of her broken knife, and then she carried on out of sight.

I turned and looked back at Sicily. “You should stand up for yourself.”

Sicily tugged at his jacket to straighten it out. “Easy for you to say. You’re six and a half feet tall and all muscle. I’m five-foot-eight and a hundred and fifteen pounds, soaking wet.” He shook his hands and then held one out. “But, uh, thanks.”

Unlike our more torrid interaction from the day before, I took Sicily’s hand and shook it. All things considered, he was the only person in the school other than Cherri who wasn’t treating me like the monster under the bed. “You’re welcome. I’m Deon.”

He smiled. “Hey, there we go! Sicily.” He snaked his hands into his pocket and started walking in the direction of the lunchroom, so I followed. “Listen. I’m kind of the go-to guy for stuff around here. Drugs, booze, sex, you name it, man. Normally, I charge a healthy fee, but since you scratched my back, I’ll scratch yours, huh? You just tell ol’ Sicily what you want, and I’ll get it for you.”

Sicily reminded me of a few of the guys I was on the inside with. Some of the smaller guys, ones who knew they couldn’t defend themselves through traditional means, had to make themselves useful in other ways. It probably should have alarmed me how like prison school was, but I decided not to think too much about it.

“What about information?” I asked.

Sicily jumped up and down. “Information is my bread and butter, my friend! I’m nothin’ without it! There ain’t a soul in this school I couldn’t tell you all about.”

“Can you tell me about The Royal Court?”

A hollow whistle escaped Sicily’s lips. “The big ‘un, huh? Yeah, guy. I can tell you. Let’s get our food and find a table first, though. Away from the fray. You saw how they had me strung up.”

There was no reason to argue, so I didn’t. We got our food, all while Sicily prattled on about a bunch of insignificant things, and when we came out of the lunch line on the other side, Sicily led me to a table way in the back of the cafeteria, near one of the doors that led in and out.

We sat, and after Sicily took a few bites, he slapped the table and pointed at me. “All right. What do you wanna know?”

“Everything,” I replied. “Can you tell me about all the members? What do they do around here? Why were those two bullying you?”

“I like to call it a tense conversation,” Sicily replied. “Being a bully victim isn’t good for business.”

I shrugged. “Whatever. Just tell me what you know.”

“All right,” he replied. “Well, the basics first. The court’s got nine members.”

Nine was a much larger number than I was expecting. Obviously, Nathan was in it, along with Cherri and Nikita. I recognized Avery, but back when Cherri and I used to mock The Royal Court, it only had four members, and Cherri wasn’t one of them back then. Nathan’s numbers had grown, not that it made me any more or less comfortable.

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