Nightfall (Devil's Night 4)

“Fuck him.” I fisted the steering wheel. “What the hell’s he going to do to me?”

No one said anything more as we pulled up the drive and through the open gates of the cemetery. My interest in Emory Scott had nothing to do with her brother, sadly. I wish it were that easy.

But I wasn’t averse to killing two birds with one stone, either. How much would he lose his mind if he couldn’t find her one night, and then found her with me?

The thought made me smile.

Winding around the avenues, I spotted cars ahead and flashlights and headed toward them, pulling up behind Bryce’s black Camaro.

We hopped out of the truck, Michael and Kai grabbing a cooler out of the back and all of us walking over the grass, past trees and hedges, and up to the rest of the team already gathered around the grave.

“Hey, man,” I greeted Simon and tipped my chin at the others.

More “heys” went off around the circle, and Michael and Kai set down the cooler, some of the team immediately digging in for a beer.

I looked down. “What the hell?”

Marker flags were stuck in the ground, lining the grass-covered gravesite, making a rectangle the width and length of a casket.

“They’re digging him up,” Bryce said, cracking a beer. “They’re actually doing it.”

I glanced over my shoulder, frowning at the newly finished, brand-new, piece of shit McClanahan tomb, complete with the arrogant columns and pompous stained-glass windows.

“He wouldn’t want this,” Damon said.

I looked back down at Edward McClanahan’s grave, the old marble headstone green with age, rain, and snow, the years of his life barely visible anymore. But we knew his age. Nineteen thirty-six to nineteen fifty-four.

Eighteen. Young, just like us.

He’d be eighteen forever.

His surviving relatives wanted his legend to die, and the notoriety of the family name with it, so they built themselves a tomb, thinking they were going to hide him behind stone walls and a gate.

“They’re not moving him anywhere,” I said.

Michael caught my eye, a knowing smile curling his lips. Pulling the cell phone out of my pocket, I turned it on and started recording, documenting our annual pilgrimage to McClanahan’s grave every year since freshman year.

Damon threw me a beer, and the rest of us cracked ours open.

“To McClanahan,” Michael called out.

“McClanahan,” everyone joined in, raising our cans in the air.

“The first Horseman,” Damon chimed in.

“Give us the season,” another said.

Michael, our team’s captain, looked around. “Offerings?” he teased.

Jeremy Owens reached behind him on the ground and whipped out a pink tulle dress with a cheap silky bodice. It looked like a ballet costume.

“Close enough.” He tossed a replica of McClanahan’s girlfriend’s Homecoming dress on the grave.

Simon took a swig of his beer. “All I want to know is what that bitch looked like splattered all over the rocks.”

“We’ll never know,” Michael told him. “Only that when push came to shove, he did what he had to do. He sacrificed for the good of the team. For the family. When it comes down to it, would any of us do the same? He was a king.”

Not was a fucking king. Is a fucking king, because to us, he was a living, breathing part of this town.