Jewels came further into the room, her eyes going from the monitors to me. “You sure you’re really up for this?”
Wasn’t that a loaded fucking question?
I gave a non-verbal reply and took another sip from the bottle of rum loosely dangling from my right hand.
On candid camera, the sound of Dion throwing up half his stomach lining while Lana stood a few feet away from him with Mel, reverberated through the room. The two of them were talking quietly together, voices too low for whatever they were saying to be audible.
Lana’s hair had freed itself from the messy blob she’d initially put it in. The long tresses were half-way down her back--perfect length to pull on when I fucked her from behind.
She was doing a good job concealing whatever emotions she had simmering beneath the surface. I knew shit had to be a mess inside that pretty head of hers. The proverbial rug had been swept from beneath these girls’ feet.
There was still oh, so much for her to learn. So much more blood to spill. We hadn’t got to the fun parts yet. Not remotely close.
There’s always a method to the mania, though. If she thought for one second that she’d make it out of this in one piece or free herself from what we’d started, she was about to find out just how far I would go to ensure otherwise.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We burst through the front doors of the school and raced down the stairs, taking them two at a time. None of the masked figures were anywhere to be seen. That was both good and bad. I didn’t like not knowing where any of those assholes were.
“Which way?” Mel asked, maintaining her death grip on my hand.
“Wait,” Dion choked out.
He stumbled over to the lawn and fell drunkenly to his knees. With a violent spasm, his back muscles contracted and bile the color of melted Cheetos expelled from his mouth.
“What--?” he tried to speak, his words jumbling together with another spasm.
I rubbed my neck and did a quick scan of the street, giving him as much privacy as I could. Now that my adrenaline was waning the soreness from being put in a chokehold was setting in.
I wished I could say I was shocked Ciaran just choked the shit out of me, but I couldn’t. Besides, he’d proved my hunch correct. He was involved with the masked lunatics that’d been tormenting us since we stepped foot off our shuttle bus.
This was one area I wasn’t venturing too deeply into. I’d already been shoved headfirst down one rabbit hole. This thing with Ciaran would knock my ass right through another.
Looking Mel over from head to toe, I noticed that the unfamiliar tank top she was wearing had the same logo as my shirt did.
There was a slight bruise on her right arm from where she’d been grabbed by someone and her peacock-colored hair was a bit messy but that was to be expected. We weren’t here to look like runway models.
“How are you holding up?” I asked quietly.
“Honestly? I have no fuckin clue. Ask me that once we’re free.” She glanced at Dion with a frown. “And who is he?”
“That’s Dion. He said he and his girlfriend were taken by some guys in masks.”
“You believe him?”
“I think so. He claimed an ice-cream truck ran them off the road. I found him when I was walking through the woods. Actually, he found me.”
“Doesn’t seem like one of us.”
By that she meant he wasn’t a moral piranha.
He couldn’t see someone die in a hundred different ways without batting an eye. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with that, but we lacked whatever it was he had. Dion shouldn’t have been stuck in this living nightmare. He had a good heart. That would be what got him killed. Just like it did all the people back in Goetia. But him being a decent person didn’t explain what the reason was for him getting brought here in the first place was.
I told her just as much.
“I don’t entirely disagree with you, but can we get away from this building before having any deep discussions?”
“Yeah, we probably should.” I forcibly pulled my hand from hers and approached Dion as if he were a timid deer. His skin was still sweaty, his head bowed. The smell wafting from the puddle of orange goop now coating the blades of grass had me wrinkling my nose.
“Hey,” I spoke softly, mustering up a bit of sensitivity. “We’ve got to go.”
“What the fuck just happened?” he rasped. “She killed her. Why did she kill her?”
“That’s what they do here, bud. If you don’t get up and move your ass, we could be next,” Mel answered none too gently.
“Gimme a second.” He brushed across his mouth with the back of his hand, then wiped his glasses with a corner of his t-shirt before standing to face us. I could tell he was doing his best to remain composed.