The classical music washed over me and I took another deep breath. And another. My morning ritual had been this way for as long as I could remember.
I waited for six am then I worked on rebuilding the carefully constructed walls I kept up around my heart and soul at all times.
As the song came to an end, I slipped out of bed, pulling on a pair of grey sweatpants as I moved toward the edge of the balcony.
Blake and Kyan had beds here too. Their rooms were downstairs, to the back of the building and they slept here unless they found a girl to fuck. Then they went somewhere else, anywhere else, I didn’t care where so long as my sanctuary stayed untarnished.
I leaned my forearms on the wooden bannister and looked down into the open living area below. The huge room was decorated in grey tones which screamed man cave. There wasn’t so much as a scatter cushion or scented candle in sight, and that was the way I liked it.
Kyan was sprawled out on the five seater couch like a fucking animal. His dark brown hair fell loose around his face and he’d pulled his shirt off to reveal the myriad of tattoos covering his skin. His black jeans were unbuckled and his hand was stuffed inside them, firmly cupping his junk as he slept.
I’d told him more times than I could count not to fall asleep on the fucking couch, but did he give a shit? Not one. Not even a fucking rabbit dropping of a shit. If I didn’t know he’d welcome a brawl, I’d kick his ass for it, but the dude lived to fight so I’d only be rewarding his behaviour by giving him a beat down.
I bit my tongue and looked down at the dark skin of my chest where the black ink of one of my two tattoos curved over my pecs in swirling script. The days are long, but the nights are dark. And didn’t I fucking know it.
My other tattoo lay on the back of my neck, a tribal arrow with feathers hanging from it to mark me out as a Night Keeper. Blake and Kyan had their own marks too, each of our arrows slightly different but similar enough to be clearly linked. And with them on show on the backs of our necks at all times, it was clear to everyone else exactly who and what we were. Brothers bound in ink and sworn to each other in blood. We may not have been related, but they were the only two people in this world who I actually gave a damn about and so help anyone who ever tried to come between us.
I padded down the curving staircase on bare feet, eyeing Kyan irritably as I went.
His heavy breaths came to me as I closed in on him and I crossed the huge space before the enormous stained glass window to stand over him.
The eighty inch TV on the exposed brick wall was still lit up with the pause screen for the zombie game he’d been playing on the Xbox last night and the headphones he’d been wearing now hung around his neck.
My toe nudged something sitting on the floor beside the grey couch and I glanced down at the bottle of Jack Daniels which was more than half empty.
He’d asked me to drink with him yesterday evening, but I hadn’t been in the mood. So apparently a party for one had been on the menu instead. He hadn’t been here when I’d headed up to bed last night and I guessed he’d appeared during one of the hours where my eyes had actually managed to stay closed.
Blake had been mysteriously absent too. Which meant Kyan had most likely headed into town.
He shifted in his sleep and I waited for the inevitable nonsense ramblings to spill from his lips.
“Wear the pink thong…looks best ona watermelon an’ you know it…”
I snorted a laugh as he shifted in his sleep, his free hand scratching at the skull he had inked on his ribs before falling still.
My gaze scanned his split knuckles and my suspicions about his location last night were confirmed.
A group of kids from the closest town, Murkwell, had taken him out to join a gambling ring who ran bets out of an old barn up near Sahale mountain last year. They liked to waste their hard earned dollars placing bets on illegal fight nights which were hosted up there every few weeks and Kyan had found himself an outlet for his monster.
He’d taken us up there once or twice, but it wasn’t my scene. A bunch of roughnecks swigging cheap liquor from the bottle and laying ten dollar bets on assholes beating the shit out of each other just didn’t appeal to me. The bets weren’t rich enough for my taste and the stench of body odour and damp straw turned my stomach.
But Kyan still liked to head down there and beat the shit out of mean fuckers with a chip on their shoulders about their lot in life. He had a thing for fucking the local girls too. Preferring to keep his specific preferences away from this place and the rumour mill of the rich and powerful. Though he claimed the reason was that rich girls didn’t like to fuck dirty enough for him.
When I went down to Murkwell, I stuck out like a sore thumb wrapped in a designer coat with a thick layer of pretentious asshole smothered on top. It was all they could see; money, privilege, entitlement. But somehow, Kyan slipped beneath their radar, managed to relate to them. They knew he had more money deposited into his trust fund monthly than most of them made in a year, but they acted like they didn’t.
And despite the fact that he shouldn’t have been any more able than me to mingle with the commoners, he made it look easy.
It wasn’t as if he was even likeable; Kyan’s monster was much more visible than mine. It was painted on his flesh and spoke without a filter. But maybe that was the key to it. People knew exactly why they should be afraid of him. Everything from the murderous look in his eyes to the permanent scowl etched on his face and the I-give-no-shits attitude he wore like armour screamed run the fuck away to any normal asshole. But with me it was harder to pinpoint exactly why you felt like shitting yourself in my presence. And in all honesty, Kyan might beat the shit out of you and leave you bleeding in the gutter in a puddle of your own piss. But if you became my enemy, you might just disappear altogether.
I turned away from one of the only two people in the world who truly knew me and headed past the kitchenette, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge before taking the stairs down to the old crypt.
I flicked the lights on as I descended, the cold concrete beneath my bare feet reminding me of the original reason for this building’s existence.
The space directly beneath the old church had been emptied out and fitted with gym equipment. The stone chamber was always cold, but I never bothered to try and heat it. By the time the room even began to warm, my workout would be complete anyway so there was little point.
At the far end of the room stood a stone archway which led into the catacombs where the dead remained in their coffins, sleeping more peacefully than I ever managed. There was a gate further along the passageway to keep out anyone who found their way in from the caves at the far end of the tunnels down by Sycamore Beach.
I had the only key to that gate and I’d headed down into the dark with Blake and Kyan on more than one occasion. The underground passages crisscrossed beneath the ground surrounding The Temple but there was only one other exit which led out to the secluded cove by the lake. Another locked gate barred that exit and frankly, it was a total maze down there anyway so I rarely made any use of it. Though it didn’t hurt to have an escape route no one knew about.
I tapped a console on the wall and Mozart’s Requiem started up, pouring from the speakers which hung in the corners of the room like a promise of all the things I ached for. I cranked the volume so that the stone walls sang with the perfection of the orchestra as I fell into a set of pull ups.
Nothing banished my demons like music. Real music. I could listen to modern trash easily enough when I had to, but there was nothing in the world like losing myself in the purity of classical music.
I pushed myself as hard as I could then forced myself on after that too. My muscles sang with power that bordered on pain and sweat glistened against my dark skin as my rage finally stilled and the calm I craved fell over me.
I did this every day. Twice a day. Last thing at night and first thing in the morning. The only time I made an exception for that was if I got mys
elf wasted enough to pass out without it. It was my habit, my routine, my ritual. I needed it to function just as I needed air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat. Sometimes I needed it more than that.
The heavy thump of the deadweight hitting the floor drew my attention and I opened my eyes to find Blake starting up his own set. He didn’t say anything; he knew better than to tempt the beast in me before I was ready to interact. But his presence was a balm on my soul.
I got to my feet as I finished my push ups and crossed the stone chamber towards him.
“First day back,” I commented, moving to the weight rack and dropping down to start my set.
“This is the year, Saint,” Blake said, moving to spot me. “I can feel it.”
“The year for what?” I asked.
“For us. It’s all going to happen for us this year.” He grinned down at me over the bar as I heaved it skyward. I didn’t know how he managed to look so damn happy all the time, especially since his mom had died at the start of the summer.
His grief had consisted of three weeks of total silence and then poof Blake was back. Just the same as always. Big smile on his face, girls begging to suck his cock every other day, partying harder than any other motherfucker I knew. He just switched it off. Or so it seemed. But I knew him well enough to know that wasn’t the end of it. There was a hardness in him that hadn’t been there before. He had rage in him too now. He just hadn’t figured out where to aim it yet.
“Is everything ready for the party?” I asked between lifts.
Every year we threw a party to mark the start of term. But it was more than that. It was an initiation. Every fucker who wanted to be in with us came and we decided who made the cut and who didn’t through various tests and challenges. Sometimes they didn’t even realise they were being tested. But if you wanted in with the Night Keepers – which everyone did – then you had to make it past our initiation.
“It’s ready,” Blake confirmed. “This will be the biggest year yet. And better than that, we’ve got fresh meat attending.”
“New kids?” I asked. Every year we always had some new faces join the school, though they’d left it pretty late to transfer if they’d only be here for senior year.
“One.”
“Why do you look so pleased about that?” I asked, racking the weight and sitting up. “Is she hot?”
“Fucking volcanic, dude. Like magma hot. And I’m planning on getting burned real good,” he smirked at me and I stood, folding my arms.
“We’ll see,” I said in a tone aimed to piss him off and his gaze darkened predictably at the hint of a challenge.
He pushed his tongue into his cheek but refused to be baited beyond that, shrugging at me as he turned back to his deadlifts.
I left him to it and headed upstairs, chugging the bottle of water as I went. I grabbed another bottle from the fridge as I reached the living room and started on it as I headed back towards Kyan.
He was still sleeping with an ease that made my jaw tick. The bastard could literally fall asleep anywhere. Nothing haunted his dreams. Hell, nothing haunted him when he was awake either despite the fact that he’d witnessed and experienced plenty of messed up shit that should have.
Outwardly he was intense, dark, brutal, but I knew the truth of him. Inside, he didn’t feel any of it. Nothing. And every fucked up thing he did was with the aim of rectifying that. He was just trying to experience something, feel something on a real level.
I moved to stand over him and a dark smile pulled at my lips as I tipped the bottle up, pouring the contents straight over his head.
A bellow of rage burst from his lips as he leapt to his feet, tackling me before he’d even opened his damn eyes.
My back hit the carpet and I grunted as the air was driven from my lungs and all two hundred pounds of Kyan’s muscular body crushed me to the floor.
His fist drove into my side a moment later and I cursed as I punched him back, my knuckles slamming into his ribs several times in quick succession.
Kyan wasn’t as fast as me, but his blows fell like those of a sledgehammer as he reared over me and drove his fist into my gut. We had one golden rule when we fought like this. Not the face. We couldn’t exactly turn up to classes with busted lips and black eyes every other week. Besides, my face was a work of goddamn art, I didn’t need the canvas damaged.
“Next time just kick me, motherfucker,” Kyan snarled, his wet hair hanging down over his forehead and dripping all over me.
I started laughing and he cracked a smile too, moving to get off of me.
As he made it to his knees I kicked out, catching him in the gut and knocking back on his ass. “Suggestion noted.” I got to my feet and offered him a hand up.
He grunted a curse at me as he stood, pushing his hair out of his face as he turned to hunt for an elastic to tie it in a topknot.
I left him to destroy the couch in his hunt as he tossed cushions everywhere and headed back upstairs to my en-suite to have a shower.
The huge glass cubicle stood open for me and I moved inside, cranking the volume on some Beethoven, using the control panel on the wall so I could still hear it as I scalded myself clean in the hot water.
Steam billowed around me as I scrubbed the sweat from my skin and I felt my tension running away with the water down the drain as I completed my ritual. My demons never retreated fully, but I could cage them most of the time so long as I made it through my routine.
I headed to my closet when I was done, pulling out my dark green Everlake Prep uniform and dressing carefully. I knotted the tie perfectly, adjusting it at my collar before buttoning my blazer and smoothing out the creases. I tugged my shirt sleeves down so that they emerged from beneath the blazer, the platinum cufflinks I’d matched with the uniform catching the light as I made sure it all sat perfectly.
My tightly curling hair was cropped short enough to be low maintenance, but I still ran some product into it as I made sure it sat just right. Not a hair out of place.
Memphis men always turn out at their best.
By the time I re-emerged downstairs, Blake was waiting for me. He took pride in his appearance too, though he always styled his black hair in a way that looked like he hadn’t bothered at all. But I knew for a fact that casual, I-didn’t-even-make-an-effort look took him the best part of fifteen minutes with a hairdryer and half a can of hairspray to perfect.
Kyan was nowhere to be seen, which wasn’t a surprise. He turned up late for everything if he even turned up at all. Everything aside from football practice anyway. Coach Monroe would have his balls and his spot on the team if he pulled that shit with him. He was about the only fucker in this school who held any real sway over us. Mostly because he gave no shits if we pissed money or were born to be the next leaders of this world. He only cared about one thing. The game. And if we did anything to negatively affect that, he’d cut us without so much as a blink of concern for what revenge we might cast his way. And I could respect that. Especially because his hard ass ways meant we were the best damn team in the high school league.
We headed out of the huge oak door which fronted The Temple and I fell into step with Blake as we walked up the hill towards the dining hall. Though calling it that was kinda like calling my family yacht a boat.
We had a classically trained chef running the kitchen and we sent over our meal orders via the school app in advance.
We walked through the trees up the steep hill towards the stone building which housed the Redwood Dining Hall and one of the Unspeakables darted ahead of us to open the door. I didn’t thank him, didn’t even offer him a smile like Blake did. What was the point? But I would have beaten his ass if he hadn’t done it.
Our table sat waiting at the head of the room, positioned horizontally so that we could look out over the rest of the students like we were sitting at the top table at a wedding. I cut a path around the gathering masses and headed to the centre of it as Blake paused to talk to people.
I wasn
’t a mingler. It took a lot more effort than I had to waste and at least ninety eight percent of people weren’t worth the bother.
The room was huge, big enough to hold the entire student body of two thousand people beneath its high ceiling. To the right of the dining hall, the entire wall was made up of glass windows which looked out over the lake and the mountains beyond. In the summer, the windows would be thrown open and we could eat out on the terrace, but it rained here more often than not so those days were few and far between.
No sooner had my ass hit the padded cushion on the mahogany chair than a member of the kitchen staff arrived with my breakfast. Two slices of whole wheat toast, crisp but not burned, creamy scrambled egg with crushed avocado and just a hint of seasoning. Even an idiot could cook that right, but if they’d managed to fuck it up they’d be hearing about it in their letter of employment termination. I’d only had to get three assholes fired before they’d figured out how to get it right. My mom ran the school board, so pissing me off was a pretty stupid mistake for a member of staff to make.
A triple shot espresso and a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice appeared before me in the next breath and I turned my attention to my food as the rest of the tables filled.
The chair to my left scraped across the wooden floor as Kyan arrived and he dropped down into his chair, spreading his legs wide and slinging an arm over the empty seat on his other side.
“Your balls are just that big, huh?” I asked as his knee knocked against my thigh.
“You know it,” he replied cockily, his gaze skimming the room. “Where’s the new girl then?”
I looked up too, scanning the sea of familiar faces for a moment before shrugging. “If she makes a habit of running later than you then there’s no hope for her anyway,” I said dismissively.
“The way Blake told it last night, she could be later than the devil to a church service and you still wouldn’t kick her out of bed,” he replied and I gave him more of my attention at that. Blake had had more than his fair share of girls and if he’d rated her that highly then she was undoubtedly worthy of notice.
Kings of Quarantine: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 1) Page 3