It wasn’t a hum or a chant, more like a dog baying with hunger – the kind of sound no human could make.
The invisible, malevolent force wrapped around me, dragging me toward the platform. I tried to cry out, but my lips froze shut. I scrambled for something to hold, but my hands clasped only air. My feet skidded across bare stone, tripping and kicking as the force dragged me up the wooden stairs.
I stood on the platform, staring down at a metal seal, covered with the same star symbol in the school crest. It looked like a manhole cover, made from whatever mysterious element was veined in the cavern walls, but sewers had nothing on whatever was underneath.
The force that held me… it came from below the platform. Whatever it was, was on the other side of that cover, and it was a thing of such overwhelming vileness that its dark energy could not be contained by any earthly metal.
The baying, keening sound of the robed figures rose higher, jamming my ears. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think. The great and terrible hand that was not a hand, the limb made of darkness and terror itself, dragged me closer, held me in place.
The lip opened and fear itself poured out. I stood on the edge, frozen in place, and stared down into a void – so dark that it was no longer darkness, so deep that it pierced space. It was as though all the malignance in all the universe had been poured into that void, and it now leered back at me, dragging me closer, pulling me down down down…
“Hazel!”
My vision wobbled. The void dragged me forward. My foot slid across the slippery wood, catching on the edge before my body toppled over the edge. I tore my lips open in a silent scream as the void reached up to swallow me…
“Wake up, Hazy.” A sultry voice called me back from the void. “You’re having a nightmare.”
My body jerked, the hand slithering over my skin as I was torn from its grasp. A room came into focus – not the stone cavern with the veins my eyes couldn’t quite see, but grey walls, trendy furniture, and a massive TV and sound system. A shirtless Quinn leaned over the bed, staring at me with wide, curious eyes.
I sat up, rubbing my throbbing head. “It felt so real.”
“Dreams usually do. Coffee?” Quinn held up a cup. “Ayaz has a new machine, specially flown in from Europe by Trey’s dad. A piece of advice, though – never ask a Turk to make you a coffee. They only like it when it has the taste and texture of dirt.”
“Yeah, sure, coffee sounds great.” I accepted the cup, flopping back against the pillows and taking a sip. Ah, warm liquid gold. Some of the fear from the dream slid from my shoulders.
Now I was awake, I could figure out what the fuck was going on with my reality.
I peered down at myself under the covers. I wore a large, oversized t-shirt with some heavy metal band logo on it, and my own underwear. Where are my clothes?
Quinn sat on the end of the bed with his own cup, grinning at me. Shit shit shit. What’s going on? What happened last night?
Snatches came back to me. I took a shortcut through the gymnasium. Something attacked me. Quinn carried me out, and the guys brought me back here. But what did it all mean, and why wasn’t I wearing my clothes?
Why can’t I remember?
My chest tightened. “Quinn, did we… do anything last night?”
“Nope. Not unless you count drooling all over Ayaz’s pillow and Trey kicking me in the face.” Quinn pointed to the sofa, which had been folded out into a bed. Trey and Ayaz topped and tailed on it, the sheets thrown over their body. There was a third space on the end with an indent of Quinn’s body. Muscled limbs poked out in all directions. I swallowed hard.
Have I died and gone to heaven?
And if so, why did my head hurt so much? Was I sick? Surely if God thought I deserved three semi-naked Kings, one of which was bringing me coffee in bed, he also saw fit to ensure I was well enough to enjoy it?
“We thought you wouldn’t be comfortable in your uniform,” Quinn said. “Ayaz undressed you and he was very gentlemanly. Trey and I didn’t look, although it was fucking tempting, let me tell you. I only resisted because I’m basically a saint.”
“What’s the time?” I muttered, rolling over and searching the nightstand for some kind of clock. There was a huge stack of books – I noticed biographies of famous artists and what looked like poetry books. Poetry? The mystery of Ayaz deepens.
Quinn glanced at an expensive gold watch on his wrist. “We’ve missed breakfast. But that’s fine. I’ll get Ayaz to make us something when he wakes up. He’s a halfway decent cook.”
I threw the sheets off, panic rising in my throat. “I can’t stay here! What if Courtney sees me? I have to get to rehearsal…”
“Don’t worry.” Quinn climbed up on the bed beside me. I finished the rest of my coffee. Oh, god, that’s amazing. “You’ve got a bit of time before rehearsal, and we’ve got ways to sneak you around without anyone seeing. How do you feel?”
I rubbed my temple. “Like I was run over by a truck.”
“And you haven’t even had any alcohol,” Quinn grinned. “I wonder what you’d be like with a few drinks in you. I bet you’re wild.”
“Nope. I fall asleep and then I vomit on your shoes.” I remembered a night Dante and I had stolen a bottle of vodka from his foster dad and got drunk in the park together. For once, the memory didn’t sting as bad as usual.
“You didn’t vomit last night.”
“Give me time.” I took another sip of coffee. My stomach grumbled.
The pile of hotness on the sofa stirred. Trey raised his arms above his head, stretching his body like a cat. He turned his head toward me and his face lit up in a most un-Treylike smile. God, he was beautiful when he smiled – a whole different person. I could almost imagine him as a kid, running free without a care in the world.
“She’s up.”
There was a knock on the door. The black woman who I’d first encountered the day I arrived at Derleth was on the other side, bearing a pile of fresh laundry. Her eyes flicked over me with suspicion, but she didn’t say a word as she slipped out again.
Quinn kicked Ayaz’s sleeping figure. “Get up. Hazy needs breakfast. And so do I.”
“All right, all right,” Ayaz grumbled, tossing his pillow at Quinn. As he lifted his arm, I noticed a tattoo on his wrist. A rune, identical to Quinn’s and Trey’s. “Hazel, do you like eggs? I’ll make you my special menemen.”
“Take him up on that,” Trey said, standing up and buttoning his white uniform shirt. “It’s like scrambled eggs on acid.”
Okay, now they’re making me breakfast. This is insane. I needed to step out of the room for a moment. I needed to think. Also, I needed to pee.
I slid out of bed, tugging the hem of the t-shirt down so it covered my ass. “I need the bathroom.”
“It’s right through there.” Ayaz pointed to a door beside the kitchen.
I shut the door and sat down on the toilet, staring at the crisp marble tiles on the walls and admiring the gleaming shower with its multiple heads. Don’t imagine Ayaz standing in that shower, the jets spraying his body as he lathers up and…
I groaned and looked away, which was just as well, because I realized there was no toilet paper on the holder. Boys. Dante never used to replace it, either. I pulled open the door under the vanity to hunt for more paper. Something large and heavy fell out.
A book.
Curious, I picked it up and slid it onto my lap. The cover was some weird material, like leather, but more irregular and dry. The texture felt familiar, but I couldn’t describe it. I flipped open the cover to reveal yellowed pages covered in handwritten text in some weird foreign language, strange symbols, and dark illustrations of skulls and constellations and eviscerated corpses.
As I turned the page, a series of loose papers slid out into my hand. They were files. The first showed a picture of a young girl, about my age, with frizzy brown hair and glasses. Sadie Lancaster. Scholarship student. No parental details listed, only the address of a
CPS case worker. The file was from nineteen years ago. Sadie’s picture had a giant cross slashed through it.
My chest tightened as I flipped to the next file. Another scholarship student, another ugly cross slashed through his face. I scanned his file, recoiling in horror from all the personal information it contained – newspaper clippings about his parents’ death, psychiatric reports, his eulogy from their funeral. All over the files, someone had scribbled notes, underlined sections, and made crude drawings – strange symbols, little maps, a hangman’s noose.
It was Ayaz’s handwriting. I recognized it from our history project. And the drawings bore his distinctive style, too. Frantic now, I flipped page after page – all scholarship students from the last twenty years, all orphans, all with their private files exposed and their faces crossed out.
What is this?
My stomach twisted. Pain slashed at my chest as the full horror of what I held in my hands dawned on me. My hands shook as I flipped through files for Loretta, Andre, Greg, and myself. My vision blurred, and I couldn’t focus on the words. I wouldn’t.
I leaned over and threw up in the sink. My undigested coffee swirled down the plughole.
“Hazy, are you okay?” Quinn banged on the door.
“No.” I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair stuck straight up, rumpled from sleep. Ayaz’s t-shirt clung to my curves. My eyes were hollow, ringed in red. I looked like shit, like the gutter whore they said I was.
I reached up to touch the bruises on my neck left by Trey, exposing the burn scar on my wrist. As soon as I saw that scar, the reality of my situation came flooding back to me.
One act of kindness and I’ve forgotten who they are and what they’ve done to me. My hand gripped the lumpy spine of the book so hard my knuckles turned white. I’ll not forget again.
I flushed the toilet, yanked the door open, and stormed into the room. Ayaz looked up from the kitchen, where he was stirring a bowl of eggs. “What the—”
I threw the book down on the bench. Ayaz stiffened, his whisk hand frozen. Trey’s face darkened, and Quinn… Quinn’s lower lip trembled. The Kings stared at the book, then at each other, then finally at me.
I broke the deafening silence. “Well?”
“It’s not what it looks like—” Ayaz started.
I held up a hand. “Don’t even fucking pull that shit. What I’m looking at here – is it some kind of torture guide passed down from one generation of bullies to the next? I can’t even fathom how malicious you have to be in order to pull something like this, year after year after year. So go on, out with it, is this why you were being nice to me? Because you wanted me to find this?”
Quinn beamed, but his smile was all crooked and broken. “I was always nice to you, Hazy.”
“No, you weren’t!” My voice rose. I was in serious danger of becoming hysterical. “I don’t think you did any of the really mean things, like the maggots or tearing up my journal, but you liked making me uncomfortable. Even when you took me to that party, it wasn’t you trying to get to know me as a person. You just wanted to be with someone who was unique, a challenge.”
Quinn looked hurt. “That wasn’t—”
“Yes, it was. But at least you never hated me.” I jabbed a finger at Trey’s stomach. “You wanted me gone from the minute I walked out of the car.”
“You don’t know the whole story,” Trey said, his jaw tightening.
“Yeah? Well, the Reader’s Digest version you’ve given me doesn’t exactly paint a flattering portrait. And you,” I jabbed a finger at the folder, then turned my gaze to Ayaz. “You didn’t even know me. You saw yourself reflected back at you, and it made you ashamed.”
“You think you got us all figured out, Meat,” Ayaz hissed. “You have no idea what we’ve done for you.”
I folded my arms. “No offense, but you’ve done nothing this year that makes me able to trust you. You give me your points, and you take me back here and give me medicine and coffee, and you expect me to believe all this isn’t some elaborate prank you’re setting up? Forget it. You destroyed the most precious thing I owned, so this psychological game you’re playing doesn’t even come close to measuring up to that.”
“What precious thing?” Quinn looked genuinely confused. “You guys melt down her dead mother’s jewelry or something?”
“Dante’s journal!” I cried.
“That shitty book of scribbles?” Trey laughed. “If that’s your most prized possession, then you really are more pathetic than we thought.”
“We can buy a new notebook for you to scribble on,” Quinn said. “Headmistress West won’t even question it if it came from us.”
“You don’t understand.” My hands balled into fists. I whirled around and stalked out of the room. “You never even tried to understand.”
“Well, fuck you very much!” Trey called after me as I slammed the door so hard the wall rattled. In the hallway, students turned in surprise.
What the fuck are you doing in Ayaz’s room?” Tillie cried out. I shoved past her without answering, barreling through kids in my desperation to reach the stairs.
No more Kings. No more flirting. No more entertaining the idea that they might be half-decent guys under all that privilege and bullshit. No more hoping that those stolen moments with Quinn and Trey could be more than they were.
I’m done.
Chapter Thirty-One
I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling. Confused thoughts rolled around in my head. All day I’d been avoiding the Kings. I managed to fake a sore throat and was excused from singing at rehearsals, and at breakfast and lunch I grabbed fruit from the bowl and ate it in between classes, which wasn’t allowed, but no one stopped me. I managed to completely avoid Greg and Andre. Between activities, I crawled back into my bed with only the company of rats and tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.
The shadows in the gym, the glowing star, the infernal rats in the walls, that horrible, horrible folder of faces, all crossed out…
But I also hadn’t mistaken the conversation I’d overheard when they thought I was asleep. All that stuff they talked about, it sounded like some weird secret club. Did it have anything to do with the teachers going down to the gym in their academic gowns? And Loretta’s sudden re-appearance?
I know from watching Gilmore Girls that the children of privilege loved a good secret society, but was one in force here at Derleth? I was guessing so, based on those tattoos I saw on their wrists. But did it have something to do with the fire that killed all those students?
What sick prank were the Kings and their secret club cooking up next? Why were they so interested in me? Why did they care about what happened to Mum and Dante? Panic circled in my gut as I though back to the day I’d made that statement to the police, my hands wrapped in bandages, how they’d glared at me with a mixture of horror and suspicion, but didn’t have enough evidence to charge me.
There had to be a prank, a design of some sort. Because there was no way those guys were being nice to me out of the goodness of their hearts. Especially not after I said all that stuff… I cringed as I recalled my words, how I’d taken those tiny nuggets of realness they’d given me and thrown it back in their faces. They deserved it, but I still didn’t feel good about it.
Dante, I wish you were here now. I wish I could curl up in your arms and hear you tell me that everything is going to be okay.
The rats in the walls circled around my head. Above the steady scritch-scritch, I could hear thumps and shouts as the rich students returned to their dorms after dinner. My stomach rumbled. I hoped I didn’t miss roast beef. I just couldn’t face everyone’s eyes on me today, the awkward dance of figuring out where to sit, especially after they’d all seen me coming out of Ayaz’s room, my hair all rumpled, wearing his t-shirt.
Footsteps sounded in the hall. “Hazel?” It was Greg. “You missed dinner two nights in a row. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I stared at the wardrobe I’d pu
lled in front of the door to keep out Courtney. “I’m just tired.”
“You didn’t come back for dinner last night, and you’ve been avoiding me all day.” There was a pause. “I heard you were in Ayaz’s dorm. Care to explain, honey?”
“Not really.”
“Hazel, can you open the door?” Greg sounded really upset. “I’d really like to talk to you. We could even go for a walk. The teachers are all at a faculty meeting tonight, so the place is pretty quiet.”
“Not right now.”
Greg stayed outside my door for a couple of minutes, then I heard his footsteps retreating down the hall to his room. The sun dipped below my window. I stared at the books stacked on my desk. I still had to write up the conclusion for the history assignment. Ayaz had given me the job once he acknowledged I was the superior writer. I shuddered at the memory of how my skin glowed from his praise. I was sick, chasing after the approval of those guys who were plotting something so terrible they needed a whole secret society in on the joke.
A fist pounded on my door, startling me from my stupor. I rubbed my eyes. I’d fallen asleep still wearing my skirt and Ayaz’s t-shirt. A whiff of his spicy scent wafted off it and caught me under the nose, causing an ache to tear through my chest. “Greg, I mean it. What part of ‘fuck off’ don’t you understand?”
“Hazel.”
I knew that voice anywhere. Ayaz. I sat up, noticing the time on Loretta’s ancient alarm clock, which for some reason had remained behind when she moved into her upstairs dorm. 1:22AM. Why would Ayaz be knocking on my door in the middle of the night?
Why would he use my name like that, his voice rising with fear?
I sat up, hugging my knees to my chest. My heart thudded. “What do you want?”
“Open the door. You have to come with me. Now.”
“You didn’t say please.”
“Hazel, this isn’t a joke.”
Shunned: a reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 1) Page 20