by Nicole Thorn
Burning Willow Press, LLC
3724 Cowpens Pacolet Rd.
Spartanburg, South Carolina 29307
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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The persons, places, and events of this novel are works of fiction. Any coincidence with the individual’s past or present is merely that, coincidence.
-First Edition-
Burning Willow Press, Publisher, Spartanburg, South Carolina 2019
Copyright © Nicole Thorn, author, 2019
Copyright © Sarah Hall, author, 2019
Edited by Allyson Buchanan
Interior Designed by Mayhem Designs
Cover art designed by Sarah Hall
books by Nicole Thorn & Sarah Michelle Hall
Nicole Thorn:
The Lost Ones
A Lament for the Lost
A Requiem for the Found
An Elegy for the Unfaithful
A Hope for the Broken
Paperdolls
The Dollhouse
The Dreamhouse
What Lies Beneath
Your Heart Is Mine
Bring Me To Life
Happier Without You
Sarah Michelle Hall:
Legions
Dark Days
Dark Ties
With The Teeth
Home
Reflected Insanity
Together:
Way Down Below
Way Down Below
Follow Me Down
We All Fall Down
Down We Go
Seers & Demigods
We Will Gain Our Fury
We Will Change Our Stars
We Will Heal These Wounds
We Will Bleed
They Will Not Be Silenced
We Will Rend
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
About the Authors
About the Publisher
Chapter One
One or the Other
Becket
The teacher snapped a ruler against her desk, and I looked up from my notebook. I had thought that only teachers on television shows did that kind of thing but apparently not. The plastic ruler had broken in half, and that seemed to enrage her even more. Mrs. Knott dumped the two halves into the trashcan and straightened out her clothing.
“Stop talking,” she said.
I scanned the classroom but most people seemed unconcerned with her. I went back to drawing on my notebook.
“Becket?” she called.
I looked up without lifting my head. She stood in front of her desk; her arms crossed over her chest. Artificially blond hair spilled over one shoulder, and her dark eyes pinched at the corners. “Yes?” I said.
“Would you like to answer the question?”
I had no idea what the question was, and found myself not caring either. “Not particularly,” I said.
Although my tone had been even, her eyes narrowed, and the other students snickered. I glanced around, not entirely sure what the joke was. “Answer the question,” Mrs. Knott ordered. She stared at me, and I thought there was a distinct lack of empathy in that stare. My father would suggest that her home life wasn’t all it could be, and that she took it out on us students.
I set my pencil down, and tried to remember what we had been talking about. Nothing immediately came to mind because she seemed to flit from one topic to another with little to no leeway. So, I shrugged. “I wasn’t paying attention to you.” Honesty was supposed to be the best policy.
I rarely found that to be the case, and today was no different. “Really?” she asked. “What was more important than graduating, if I may ask?” She punctuated the question with a sharp smile. Each of her teeth gleamed in the light, and it disturbed me. I could just picture them being coated with red, and that dark color dripping down her chin and onto her chest.
My eyes flitted back to my notebook, and then to her. “I’d rather you didn’t,” I said, voice flat.
Everyone in the class snickered again, and her eyes narrowed. “Do you think this is a fun game?” she asked. “If you don’t pass this class, then you won’t have enough credits to graduate. Is that what you would like?” There was a gleam in her eye that suggested this was somehow fun for her.
I didn’t understand that gleam, so I answered her honestly. “I couldn’t care less, actually,” I said. “All these classes are pointless, and just somewhere for us to go for a few hours because society believes that there’s a way to live. Like leveling up in a game.”
She did not care for that answer one bit. “Becket, if you cannot answer my question, then leave the classroom, and I’ll mark you as absent for the day.”
“But I’m not absent. I’m here,” I countered. “My being here does not mean that I’ll learn anything or remember it.” The argument was sound but it seemed to only upset her more. I didn’t understand why.
“Answer the question.”
“I do not know what it was,” I admitted.
“Then leave.” Her eyes held no room for debate, so I gathered my things quite calmly. She thought that this was somehow a punishment but it wasn’t. There were worse things that she could do. She smoothed her skirt as I walked past her. The other students all watched me with mixed emotions. All but one, who had her head down. Her pencil was gripped tightly in her hand, and her eyes looked anywhere but at me.
It didn’t matter, though. This could not be considered public humiliation if I refused to be humiliated. I didn’t have the energy to work on it today, so I left the classroom. The halls were empty when I stepped out but that didn’t last for long. I had walked to my locker before the security guard found me.
“Where’s your pass?” he asked.
“I do not have one,” I told him.
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to head back to class,” he informed me. The bulky man waved down the hall, and I followed his line of sight. He was tall and stared with very little care to my plight.
“I can’t. Mrs. Knott told me to leave because I did not know what her question was,” I said. I read the name stitched onto the man’s chest. Angler. I wasn’t sure if that was a last name or a first, nor did I particularly care. Not when he stared at me like he believed that I lied to him.
“Go back to
class,” he said.
I started rotating the lock, figuring that I would collect my things and leave the way that Mrs. Knott told me to. Power rippled out from behind me, and I watched as all the locker doors shivered, and then dented. For a brief second, that was all but then they popped back into their normal shape.
Angler said, “I gave you an order, son.”
He was a metal worker. Only aluminum, it seemed but that was still prestigious enough that his working here was curious. He could’ve been making two or three times his current salary anywhere else. I didn’t say that to him. I looked over my shoulder, and met his threatening stare with my own.
Blood flowed just under his skin, and it called to me. Prickling along my arm, and filling my mouth with power. It’d be so easy to pull all that blood out, and have it leaking down his face. Through his nose, and eyes, and mouth. It’d be easy but I didn’t do it. Meeting him power for power wouldn’t get him in trouble. It would only get me in trouble.
I finished twisting the lock, and the door popped open. My bag rested at the bottom, and I pulled it out, flung it over my shoulder. Angler grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise. The locker door slammed shut without either one of us touching it. “Are you listening to me?”
“No,” I said. Then I reached into him, and started making the blood rush to his head. His heart pounded hard enough that it had to feel like cardiac arrest. He let me go as his face turned a dark, mottled color. I walked away from him then, letting the last of the power wash away.
I stepped outside, into an overcast day. The chill February wind cleared my head somewhat, and I could admit that I overreacted. Still, he wouldn’t say anything because then he’d have to admit that he couldn’t handle one teenager. I took the steps down the school two at a time, and started walking along the sidewalk.
Everything was green, despite the winter chill. I had to stand out in my dark clothing. I stood two inches over six feet, and that didn’t help. My black hair fell just past my ears, and it only added to the dark spot I made on the landscape. I turned my bluish green eyes down to my shoes and made eye contact with no one as I walked home.
The streets were mostly empty around this time of day, anyway.
After about ten minutes, I turned into my neighborhood. My feet came to a stop when I looked at my house. My father’s car sat in the driveway, alone. He didn’t have any clients right now, and that made my stomach turn around inside me. I didn’t doubt that the school had called him by now. Especially with how I had treated the guard.
That was my own fault, though, so I needed to face the consequences. I started moving again. One of the neighbors flicked the curtain aside, to stare at me. I watched her for a moment before she disappeared inside again, pulling the curtains closed a little harder than maybe was necessary.
I stood on my porch, staring at the door for a few minutes. It would be much easier to turn around and start walking. I had turned eighteen a few months ago, so no one could drag me back. I would never have to see this house again but I wasn’t sure that was what I wanted. I didn’t like coming home but I didn’t like going out either. Maybe it would be easier if I didn’t worry so much.
It would be easier if I had paid attention in class and answered the questions. Lots of things would have made this easier.
I pushed the door open, and stepped inside. The house wasn’t large but wasn’t small either. Two stories, with a warm color scheme. Everything was made of polished wood from the staircase, to the flooring, to all the furniture. We had a rug in the living room but that was the only relief of the dark, reddish wood.
My backpack got dumped on the floor next to the front door, and I looked around the house. It only took me a handful of seconds to spot my father. He sat in the living room. The couch sat sideways to the front door, and he had slumped down in it so that he wasn’t immediately noticeable.
“Hello,” I said.
He rose to his feet in one fluid motion. My father was an inch taller than me, and had the same black hair that I did. But his eyes were brown. I had gotten mine from my mother. She was long gone, though, so they only served as a reminder of what we had lost.
“The school called,” Dad said.
“Are you upset?” I asked, coming into the room. Everything about the house was impeccably clean. We had maids that came in twice a week to neaten everything up, until the house looked hardly lived in.
“No,” Dad said. His shoulders were much broader than mine, so when he stepped up to me, I felt dwarfed, even only being an inch shorter than him. He put a hand on one of my shoulders, and said, “You need to learn to hold your tongue, Becket. You’re going to get yourself in trouble one day.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I was just trying to be honest.”
“There are smarter ways to go about it,” my father told me. He leaned back on his heels, and examined me from head to toe. My heart sank because I knew that I wasn’t what he wanted. He never said as much but he made it clear with little things here and there.
“Come on,” he said, nodding to his office door. He started towards it, and it felt like my feet were glued to the ground for a few seconds. Then I peeled them up and started to follow him. His office was exactly like the rest of the house. Lots of wood, and warm and dark colors. His diploma and therapy license were hung up on the wall behind the desk, and those were the only, aside from the picture of my mother on his desk. She had the same blue-green eyes as me but she was thin, willowy, and blond. She smiled at the camera but her eyes were empty.
Sitting on his desk were two glasses. One was filled with water, and the other was filled with blood. It hummed at me, quietly. I looked at my father as he sat behind his desk. “Please. Sit,” he said.
I did as he asked, hesitantly. He laced his fingers together, and leaned his elbows against the desk. “I thought we’d play a game. You’re going to drink one of these glasses down to the last sip. You get to choose which one but you can’t change your mind. You either have to trust that whatever is in the water won’t kill you, or go with something that you know intimately.” At the last, he waved to the glass of blood.
My eyes darted between the two. He had proven in the past that he could get very dangerous products with very little effort. The water looked safer, and would certainly make me feel better but could I really trust something like that? The blood wouldn’t hurt me because I was a blood worker. It would feel wrong drinking it but I would survive the outcome.
My father watched me; his pen poised over a notebook resting on the table.
I reached for the glass of blood.
Chapter Two
One Second
Manny
My father slammed his hand down on the counter, and my body went rigid. I closed my eyes, taking a second. One second because there was always one to spare. No matter what situation I was in, there was always a moment I could take just for myself. One moment to breathe, or think, or pretend I wasn’t there.
It left as quickly as it came. Always.
Mom leaned against the wall, her dark eyes on my father’s, listening like he was the pinnacle of wisdom and structure. My brother, Lane, sat next to me at the kitchen table, waiting for this to pass.
“It’s not that hard, Lane,” Dad said through his teeth. “I told you to take the money to the bank before it closed. Now we have to wait until the morning. Do you know how unsafe it is to have that kind of money in the house?”
Lane’s light brown eyes wouldn’t quite meet our father’s. “I’m sorry. I ran into friends... I didn’t realize it was so...”
“I don’t care! You had one job to do, and you blew it off. I might as well have asked Manny. At least she would have made an effort while fucking up.”
I didn’t flinch, and I was proud of myself for that.
Our family owned a jewelry store with another family. As metalworkers, my family was... I didn’t know a nice way to say it. Privileged. Dad had friends in high places, and my mother knew how to min
gle with who she needed good favor with. Both of my parents and my brother worked metal. And then there was me.
The skin on my brother’s knuckles tightened as he clenched his hands into fists under the table. I felt it moving over the bone, and I could have done anything I liked with it. Skin was mine to manipulate. But I did not because I would never hurt my family.
“I’m sorry,” Lane said again. “I’ll take care of it before my first class tomorrow morning. You don’t have to worry about a thing.” He nervously pulled a hand through dark blond hair on his head, still not looking at Dad. It would only set him off if he thought he was being challenged.
“You better,” Dad threatened. “Or maybe I’ll make you pay for your last two years of college on your own. We earn our keep here, Lane. If you want to be lazy and good for nothing, then you can live somewhere else.”
My brother nodded, and I plotted out an escape.
Dad looked done for now but it always came back around. He would be in a mood for the rest of the night, and that meant I needed to hide. Dad liked looking for things to get pissed off about, and I didn’t like being the target. If I stayed in my room, I was far less likely to get picked out. Best he forgot I existed for a bit. I was just unlucky enough to be in the kitchen when Dad got home and asked Lane about the money.
Dad huffed but he didn’t move from his spot. If I got up and left, he may have taken it the wrong way. My stomach gurgled, making me nauseous from hunger. I really should have eaten lunch at school but I would have had to ask the group of people to move out of my way so I could get in line. Not worth it.
“Manny,” my mom said as she popped open a bottle of water. “Can you go put the money bag in the driver’s seat of your brother’s car so that he doesn’t forget?” She said it flatly, while glaring at my brother.
I nodded and got the fuck out of there.