“You’ve burned your leg,” she said, pointing.
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I hadn’t noticed. And I didn’t burn it, Courtney did.”
“She a blonde bitch with green eyes?” I nodded. The woman pointed back down the way I’d come. “I saw her here last night. She must’ve set a trap for you. There’s a sigil low on the walls over there. As soon as you walked into this tunnel the creature was summoned to come and feed. Good thing you had your firepower, or I might not have got to you in time.”
I opened my mouth to tell her again that I didn’t start that fire, but then I remembered that I was in the middle of a cave and this strange woman had just saved my life and ruined her leggings in the process. I probably owed her a passing attempt at an explanation.
I rubbed my palms together, trying to staunch the heat flaring across my skin. “Yeah. I don’t know how I did that. It just happens sometimes, usually when I’m afraid or really fucking angry. It’s only happened a few times in my life.”
I was being more honest with this stranger than I’d ever been with myself. Nearly being eaten by a slithering shadow had that affect on me.
“Well, good thing you made it happen today.” She nodded toward the sigil. When I didn’t move to follow her, she tilted her head to the side, studying me with those piercing – and eerily familiar – dark eyes. “If it helps any, my brother would tell you to trust me.”
“Your brother?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him with you. He’s one of your boyfriends, although why he’d let them dump you this far from the school, I don’t know. Maybe you pissed him off with your sunny personality?”
Ayaz. I realized where I recognized her – she had the same intense eyes and dark hair as Ayaz, only her hair hung in matted clumps around her face from the mud on the cave surface. She shone a flashlight toward the end of the tunnel and slid an arm under my shoulder again, providing me with additional support as I hobbled along the wall, trying not to lose my footing on the slope.
“He never told me he had a sister at this school,” I said. “Only a younger sister…”
My voice trailed off as I started to put the pieces together. A name floated on the tip of my tongue.
“You’re Zehra?”
“That’s me.” Her smile was brilliant – a flash of white teeth and full lips. I imagined that was what Ayaz’s smile looked like if he ever bothered to use it.
“Why are you here, in a cave? Are you dead like your brother?”
“I’m very much alive, and I aim to keep it that way. Which is why I need you to talk less and move more.” The beam of her flashlight shone on the sigil I’d seen. “Did you see that glowing just before your fire started?”
“I think so.” My temples throbbed. “I’m not sure what I saw, to be honest. One moment something slithered over my foot and the next my body and the whole cave was on fire.”
“Interesting. You know how to read sigils?”
I nodded. “Your brother taught me.”
“Good.” She traced a line that ran toward the center of the sigil. “Then you’ll see how to get back to the school from here. The easiest way is to follow the ridge until you reach the road, then walk through the front gates. You’re going to have to hurry, though.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said sarcastically as my burn screamed. “I didn’t already know that.”
“That girl – Courtney – she intended that creature to kill you. The Eldritch Club doesn’t expect you to return.”
“Then they’re going to get a big shock,” I grunted as I pulled myself around a large boulder. Across the top of the cave, a faint slash of light and a whoosh of fresh air signaled an exit. “But why are you helping me?”
Zehra beamed that brilliant smile of hers again. “Because you’re Hazel – you stole my brother’s heart and you have fire in your veins. You’re the first one who’s made me believe I might be able to get my brother back. Watch your step here.”
“Thanks.” She fell in behind me as I scrambled up the last steep slope. Fresh moonlight kissed my skin. I turned around to offer a hand to Zehra, but she’d disappeared.
“Where’d you go?” I called out, but the only answer was the hoot of a lonesome owl. “Zehra?”
I had so many questions, but she didn’t want to stick around to answer them, and I had somewhere important to be.
Or did I?
I turned my gaze downhill, where faint pinpricks of light peeked through the trees – the town of Arkham at the base of the peninsula, lit up like a Christmas tree. None of the edimmu could cross the borders of the school, but I could. All I had to do was run down that hill to the safety of those lights, hotwire a car, and drive as fast and as hard as I could in the opposite direction.
I let the idea sit with me for a few moments, the tantalizing taste of freedom pooling on my tongue. Then, with a sigh, I turned away from Arkham.
I scrambled over the scattered rocks, sucking in gulps of fresh, chilled air. I pulled my tired body from the muck, dusted as much of the grit and mud off my body as I could, and took off in a hobbling run down the ridgeline.
With every step, pain jolted up my leg, sending waves of nausea through me, mingled with garbled visions from the injured god. In the same way that Greg now had horrible dreams because he’d been in the god’s presence, I and it were now somehow connected. I could tell when it was hurting by the way it lashed out at my mind, which could be something I could use to my advantage.
But right now, I needed to focus. I forced myself to ignore the pain and the god and keep going. After a while, the pain became background noise to the wild thoughts and theories swirling in my head. Why was Ayaz’s sister waiting for me in that cave? If she isn’t a student at the school, then what’s she doing here? What was that creature Courtney sent after me? Could I somehow get her in trouble for breaking the rules of the initiation?
How did I make that fire?
I had no answers to any of it.
My chest was heaving by the time I reached the road. Sweat poured down my back, soaking through my ruined dress, but I didn’t slow down. I had no way of knowing how much time I had left. My ankles rolled as I pounded along the gravel road toward the school.
The tall iron gates came into view – the same ones I’d passed through on my first day in this hellhole. When I reached them, they were locked. No, no. I ran at them, slammed my body into the metal. They didn’t budge. My lungs screamed. My body begged to lie down in the trees and forget about the whole thing. I lifted the chain and found that the lock hadn’t been bolted. I unlooped the chain, shoved the gate open, and ran through, tearing along the drive toward the athletic fields, where the initiation ceremony was to end.
Lights flickered in the lacrosse field. A circle of students carried torches, counting down in loud voices. “…nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…”
I poured on speed. My body had gone numb from the waist down.
“…fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”
I tore across the field, barreling through their ranks and collapsing in a heap on the pitch. Tillie scrunched up her nose. “She looks like a swamp creature.”
I grinned up at Courtney, waving a hand. “Hi!”
The look of rage on Courtney’s face as it dawned on her I had escaped her monstrous trap and was now part of her secret club made every agonizing moment worth it.
“Fuck, Hazy.” Quinn sank to his knees, cradling me in his arms. “You made it.”
“I knew you could do it,” Ayaz said. Behind his shoulder, Trey’s ice eyes swept over my body, but he didn’t say anything.
“No thanks to Courtney,” I growled, rolling my leg over to show off the burn on my calf.
“That was an accident. I can’t help it if you were thrashing around like a dead fish,” Courtney snapped.
“Hazel, you made it!” Greg crawled toward me. He fell into my arms, the two of us rolling on the turf, smearing mud all over each other.
“Of course I did.
And you? They didn’t make you saw your own arm off to get a key?”
“Nope.” Greg shuddered. “It was scary enough down there as it was. I kept thinking I heard things…”
“You’re fine, that’s what matters. Where’s Andre?” I searched the field for him.
Greg shook his head. His face darkened. “I haven’t seen him. I don’t think he made it.”
Chapter Thirteen
No. It can’t be.
Andre was bigger and stronger and smarter than the two of us combined. He was much closer to the school than I had been. How could he not be here?
What have they done to him?
“Andre?” I sat up, shoving Quinn’s arm off my chest. The burn blazed with pain, but I ignored it as I staggered to my feet and shoved aside one of Courtney’s minions. “Andre!”
“Hey!” The minion – I remembered her name was Amber – yelled. John stepped toward me, his hands balled into fists. Beside me, Greg stiffened.
A hand slid around my face, clamping over my eyes. I screamed and kicked out, trying to knee the bastard in the balls as I shook my glass shard out of my sleeve. No fucking way am I going back in a hole.
“Hazel, stop,” Greg yelled.
The hand left my mouth and my captor spun me around. I found myself face-to-face with Andre. A wild grin spread over his face.
I grabbed his collar and shook him. “You bastard! I might’ve cut you.”
Andre’s mouth opened in a silent laugh. Greg fell into my arms. The three of us clung to each other, our bodies covered in the marks of our ordeal. Their strength gave me hope.
Behind Andre’s head, a dark face watched us, the mouth set in a firm line. Loretta. I started at the sight of her – what initiation had she endured in order to become part of this secret club? Had Courtney left her in a cave in the dead of night, without a single friend to give her strength? How much of who she was had been obliterated when the god took her life?
Loretta caught my eye and stepped back behind Tillie, turning her face away as if she couldn’t bear to look at us.
Is she upset that she no longer identifies as one of us, or is she angry that we survived and infiltrated her new circle?
All thoughts of Loretta flew from my mind as the circle of students closed in around us. Trey and Courtney glared at each other. John cracked his knuckles. A palpable tension crackled in the air.
I stepped back, sliding away from Greg and Andre. If this got ugly, they’d be safer the further they were from me. I palmed my shard and rolled up my sleeve.
“I’m one of you now.” I flashed my wrist at Courtney. The Elder Sign shimmered in the moonlight. “We all are.”
“You’ll never be one of us,” Courtney glared. “You’ve ruined everything. The Club is supposed to be for only for the elite, the children of this country’s leaders. Now it means nothing. We won’t stand for it.”
“Oh, poor princess,” I cooed. “Have the big bad weirdos come to crash your little club?”
“Look at them,” Courtney smirked. “A fag, a dunce, and a whore strutting around like they’re the shit. No way are they the equals of anyone in this circle. So why are they being allowed to act as though they have power here? Why haven’t they been put back where they belong? It seems our noble leader—” she glared at Trey, who stared back with a detached arrogance that made it clear just why he was the leader “—has fallen from grace. One taste of a gutter whore’s pussy and he’s willing to throw away everything we’ve worked to create here.”
“Maybe this stuffy school needs a bit of shaking up,” I said sweetly. “This is your last warning. We beat your initiation. We’ve earned immunity. Turn your hatred to the people who actually deserve it – your parents.”
Courtney tossed her hair over her shoulder. “No one deserves punishment more than a whore who won’t learn her place.” She tugged at one of her cat ears, as if she intended to throw it at me. Her eyes widened as the ear refused to come off in her hand.
“What’s wrong, Courts?” Tillie stared at her friend.
“My ears won’t come off.” Courtney tugged at both ears, her eyes widening. “Ow. It hurts!”
“Let me try.” Tillie grabbed one of the sparkly ears and pulled. Courtney’s shriek could have broken glass.
“You’re scalping me, you bitch!”
Tillie forced Courtney’s head down, parting her hair and peering at the ears. “It looks like they’re glued on.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense. I just used that spirit gum from the drama department, the same stuff we always use. It can’t—” Courtney paused as she caught sight of the smirk spreading across my face.
“What did you do?” she screeched.
“Nothing,” I smiled sweetly. “I was just thinking how tragic it would be if someone accidentally swapped the spirit gum with superglue.”
“Superglue?” Tillie grabbed one of her devil horns and tugged. The horn stayed exactly where it was. She screamed. All around me, Courtney’s friends yanked and pulled at their slutty costumes, but everywhere they’d used gum to stick down a seam or hold on a prosthetic was now glued firmly to their skin.
“But… I put that on my pasties…” Courtney tried to dig her fingernails under the glittery red cups that covered her nipples, but they wouldn’t budge.
“Did you have something to do with this, Hazy?” Quinn gasped, his whole body shaking with laughter. Behind him, Ayaz and Trey exchanged a glance, but neither of them laughed. My body rumbled with glee, the laughter bubbling up inside me and spilling over with joyful hysterics. Beside me, Greg chuckled and Andre clutched his stomach and did his silent laugh.
“Happy Halloween,” I grinned at Courtney. I linked arms with Greg and Andre, and we headed off in the direction of the school. “We’ll see you bitches at the after party.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Halloween party was scheduled to rage all night. While part of me was desperate to return to school to shower, dress my wounds, crawl into bed, and think about everything I’d seen and heard tonight, I knew that leaving now would only be a sign of weakness. Courtney and her posse slunk back to the school in an attempt to find some way to remove their various appendages, which meant we could make a show of power to the rest of the school if we got there first.
Trey must have had the same idea, because he stalked off toward the forest without waiting for anyone else. The rest of us hurried after him. Nancy and Paul pressured Greg for details about his ordeal, and he launched into a dramatic retelling of how he escaped the cave, complete with a song he made up on the spot. Andre even passed a couple of notes to the others. I realized that neither Nancy, Paul, or any of the other monarchs and monarch-adjacents in our group had made any derogatory comments about his muteness or Greg’s flamboyance. They were all right.
Were they still on my revenge list? Did tolerance make up for their past transgressions? Probably not. I hadn’t realized when I started thinking about it that this punishment thing was hard. I couldn’t get past the fact that I wanted to hurt people I was sort of, sometimes, occasionally, maybe starting to like.
I’ve got to find a way to get over that, and soon.
As we neared the steps down to the pleasure garden, Quinn yanked me off the path.
“Argh, what are you doing?” I rubbed my shoulder.
“I bought something for you,” Quinn riffled around in the folds of his toga. He shoved a bottle of gin into my arms. “I knew you’d get all dirty in the caves so… hold that for a moment while I find… wait, I think I’ve got it.”
I tried to peer into his toga. He pulled out another bottle and dumped it in my arms. “What do you have in there, an entire bar?”
“While I’m excited that you want to see what’s under my toga, that will just have to wait until I’ve found… ah hah!” From the depths of his outfit, Quinn whisked out a hanger, upon which hung a red dress my mom wouldn’t have worn to work on account it was too slutty.
I snickered. “Ar
e you sure you’re the spaghetti straps kind of guy?”
“It’s not for me, Hazy. It’s for you.”
“I’m not wearing that.”
“Yes, you are. You want to show Courtney who rules this school? You gotta look the part. Besides,” Quinn cracked his trademark grin. “You wear this dress, and you make this poor dead boy’s every dream come true.”
“This may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t live to fulfill your spank fantasies.” I fingered the hem of the dress.
“Aw, come on, Hazy. You know you’re all covered in mud.”
He had a point. I snatched the dress out of his hands, fingering the sparkling embroidery along the sweetheart neckline. “Where did you get this from?”
“I got my mom to bring it for me. She gave it to me at the party tonight. She thinks it’s a gift for Courtney.”
I remembered seeing Quinn’s mother as we left the alumni party. “Are you allowed to have your parents bring you expensive gifts?”
“Not really. The faculty and the Eldritch Club frown on it. They think it’s unhealthy if we get too much stimulus from the outside world.” Quinn gestured to the dress. “Some of us have parents who are more understanding than others.”
I filled in the blanks of what Quinn didn’t say. The senior Eldritch Club members wanted to keep the student body focused inward on tormenting the newcomers so they wouldn’t join together to rise up against the Eldritch Club. It was so glaringly obvious I couldn’t believe clever people like Quinn and Trey and Ayaz (okay, mostly Trey and Ayaz) didn’t see right through it. “Why don’t you just stand up to them? There are over two hundred students at this school, and only what, five-dozen active senior club members? Why don’t you all just tell them, ‘no, actually, we don’t want to sacrifice orphans any longer’?”
“You think it’s that easy?” Quinn’s smile had frozen.
“To do the right thing? Yeah, it’s that easy.”
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