The sound of a baying crowd grew deafening as we crested the hill and ran past Aspen Halls, the scent of smoke filling the air.
My heart stuttered at the sight before me.
We had to slow as the throng of students and outsiders clashed together before the gates. The football team were leading a charge against them, shoving as many people out of the gates as they could, but the outsiders were fighting back hard.
“Let’s save our school, brothers,” Saint barked and he, Kyan, Blake and Monroe rushed into the fray.
Kyan swung his bat with a roar to announce his arrival and the crowd scattered around him in terror. He whacked it against a guy’s ass and he yelped before running for the gate. Saint threw violent punches that cracked noses and spilled blood down his knuckles. Monroe raised his hammer with a yell of fury and that was enough to make a bunch of them run for their fucking lives. He was as wild as the Night Keepers, and as fearless too.
Blake was pointing the gun at anyone who got too close, making them piss their pants before he threw punches and sent them running for the gate.
Screams carried into the sky as the chaos descended and a primal urge made me want to dive in and join my men. No, shit. They weren’t mine. But hell, right then I felt like I belonged in the fight at their sides. And there was too much insanity in the air tonight to question it.
I darted forward, shoving and kicking people towards the gate and I soon fell into the rhythm of the fight. Shove, kick, push, punch.
With every blow I landed, my mind felt freer. It was a fierce distraction from the blood I’d just spilled and I relished the wildness in me as it unfolded.
I wheeled through the crowd with all the skills I’d honed my entire life, enjoying having real opponents to land my attacks on and my veins hummed as I unleashed my inner beast.
A scream caught my ear and I whirled around, spotting a couple of the Unspeakables guarding a pile of toilet paper and hand sanitiser on the ground. They’d formed a circle around it, but the outsiders were swooping in like vultures and I darted toward them to help.
A woman dove at Freeloader and I grabbed hold of her black hair, yanking her backwards before she could get near her. My heart jolted as I recognised Denise from the bar with her tattooed tits and pissed off eyes. The second she realised it was me, she raked her nails down my arms with a shriek of hate.
I shoved her back then threw a hard punch into her mouth, making her yell in pain as blood spilled over her lips. I kept rushing at her, landing kicks and punches as she fought to keep me back, but she wasn’t trained like me.
“Fuck you, you little slut!” she snarled, throwing a fist that landed against my tit and I gasped at the low blow.
I shoved my weight into her with a growl and she hit the gravel, her eyes widening in fright as I loomed over her. “Where’s your fucking girl code?” I demanded, rubbing my sore boob.
She pursed her lips then hurried to her feet and ran away from me. I cursed as I realised she wasn’t running for the gate. A bunch of them weren’t.
I turned back to help the Unspeakables, watching as Deepthroat held onto a roll of toilet paper with bloody fingernails. What the hell has happened to the world?
I ran forward, shoving a guy away from her as he tried to take the frayed roll, throwing a hard punch to his solid gut.
He lurched backwards, clearly not looking for a fight as he raised his hands in innocence and darted away again. Kyan came swinging with his bat, taking out the final three assholes who were attacking the Unspeakables in a single freaking blow.
He tossed me a wink before darting back off into the crowd and man I almost fucking liked the guy sometimes.
“Thank you,” Freeloader gasped as she and the others gathered up the supplies and made a run for it.
The Night Keepers and Monroe were driving more and more of the outsiders toward the gate and my heart lifted with hope.
Someone grabbed my wrist and I jerked around, ready to fight, but relaxed at the sight of Bait standing there.
“Come on,” he demanded. “We’ve gotta run with them. Let’s go. This is our chance!”
He started tugging me toward the gate and I could see that he was right. We could run, escape this place and never look back. But a tug in my gut made me hesitate for a second as I looked toward the four men fighting valiantly in the crowd. They’d saved me tonight. Wet their hands in blood for me. How could I run now? Surely things would be different after tonight? But was it insane to think that?
I should have been running.
“Come on Tatum, I did this for us! And it’s gone even better than expected,” Bait exclaimed, excitement darting through his eyes. “I just had to lift the gate key off the janitor – couldn’t believe I did it as first but then-”
I yanked him to a halt, my blood turning icily cold. “You did this? You let them in?” I breathed, horror rushing through me.
He nodded, tugging my hand again and I yanked it free of his grip.
“I almost died!” I shouted at him, starting to shake. “People have been hurt. How could you do this?”
Bait gaped at me, opening and closing his mouth as he hunted for an answer. “I didn’t…I mean, no one was supposed to get hurt. I just…”
“What did you think was gonna happen?” I demanded.
Bait turned pale, shaking his head then ran off into the crowd without another word.
My throat thickened as I stood there, torn between running and staying. Unsure why I couldn’t simply make myself go.
People shoved their way past me and a huge hairy guy suddenly slammed into me full force. I was knocked to the ground as he leaned over me, clutching his gut and coughing heavily, seemingly unaware I was even there as he hacked his fucking lungs up.
“Stop!” I screamed in disgust, throwing up a hand to cover my mouth and nose.
I spotted a reddened rash of rose shaped marks on his skin peeking out from his collar and horror and fear consumed me as I tried to scramble away. No fuck, no!
I threw a kick at his calf and he stumbled back, blinking down at me through bloodshot eyes like he’d just realised I was there. A baseball bat suddenly slammed into his arm and he jerked sideways, hurrying away with a yelp of pain as Kyan took his place.
He leaned down to take my hand but I shook my head, needing to keep the hell away from him as I scrambled back.
“Don’t touch me!” I yelled. “He was infected.”
Fear took root in my chest. Sixty percent of people died from this virus within a week. A fucking week. Was I gonna be just another statistic? Was the virus already snaking its way into my body and sliding its teeth into my life force?
Kyan’s lips parted in horror as I got to my feet. He yanked his shirt off, rushing forward and I raised my hands to try and stop him. “Keep still!” he barked, giving me no choice as he used it to wipe over my face, my clothes, any part of me he feared the virus had touched. It was beautifully sweet and painfully pointless.
“Get back, Kyan,” I urged, my voice cracking as I stepped away from him.
He gave me an intense look, tossing the shirt on the floor. “Follow me,” he barked with no room for dispute and I hurried after him as he cut a path through the crowd towards Aspen Halls. A fire caught my eye on the bottom floor and my heart thrashed at the sight of the flames licking their way out of the window of the room, reaching toward the red Ford Mustang parked in front of the building. Holy shit.
Kyan veered towards the Unspeakables who were carrying armfuls of supplies away from the fight.
“Hey!” he snapped and they all turned around at the single word. “I need hand sanitiser – now!”
One of them hurried toward him with a box in his arms, bowing low as he laid it at his feet. Kyan took out a bottle of the hand sanitiser, squirting it all over his hands before turning to me and rubbing it all over me, smothering my face, my neck, arms, even rubbing it into my hair.
“Kyan, it’s too late,” I breathed as his brow pi
nched and he continued to rub it all over my body.
When he was done, he clenched his jaw, fixing me with a fierce stare. “You won’t get sick, baby,” he commanded like I could really obey that order. But I could see the desperation in him, the need for me to assure him that I wouldn’t.
I nodded, trying to fight back the cloying fear taking hold of me and making an oath I could only pray that I could keep. “I won’t get sick.”
The air echoed and hummed with the cries of the students who backed us and the screams of the fuckers who’d come to try and take what was ours.
Everywhere I looked there were more and more kids and staff running to help us, grouping together as they followed our lead and fought to defend our school.
We might have been a bunch of entitled rich kids, but that entitlement came from a position of power. And every single student here knew that power was a fleeting and fragile thing if you didn’t nurture it. If we wanted to keep hold of it, we had to reinforce it, make sure that those who had come to test it ran from here with their hands empty and their pride shattered.
They needed to fear us. To flee from here with nothing at all but the knowledge that coming against us would only earn them pain and failure.
Miss Pontus was wielding an umbrella like a fucking javelin and the Geography teacher Mr Hilex was smacking the outsiders with a heavy book on volcanoes.
The Night Keepers and Monroe held the front line with me, the footballers and more of the inner circle with a few of the faculty taking up position at our backs. The rest of the student body created a solid wall of flesh beyond that which ensured none of our attackers could head back onto campus.
My knuckles were torn and bloody, my flesh bruised and aching and my corrupted soul singing with an endless kind of energy that set me alight from the inside out. I was surrounded by chaos and carnage, havoc spilling forth all around me and shattering any false sense of security that could have been claimed by my usual routines. But instead of burning in the flames of the chaos, I was blossoming, free falling into the oblivion of the carnage which surrounded us and letting my inner demon do its worst.
I gripped a huge guy by the back of his neck, tearing the packet of toilet paper from his hands before forcing him out through the gate with a cry of rage and a kick to his spine. He fell sprawling in the gravel and as I swung back to look for another opponent, I suddenly found myself face to face with the wrong end of a shotgun.
Everything seemed to fade away from me apart from the view down that barrel and the curled lip of the asshole holding it.
His finger twitched on the trigger and my cold heart leapt as I saw my death coming for me.
A roar of defiance caught my ear just as he pulled the trigger and before death could find me, the gun was knocked aside.
The blast of the gunshot cut through the air with a finality which should have ended me, but it didn’t.
Monroe bellowed like a Viking warrior as he tore the shotgun from the asshole’s grip and turned it on him like a bat, slamming it into his face and breaking bones with every strike he delivered.
A savage smile tore at my lips as I moved forward to help him drag the guy through the gate.
Monroe caught my eye for a moment and I didn’t see a teacher looking back at me. I saw an equal, a beast just like me, a Night Keeper. I tossed him a smirk which acknowledged him saving my ass then turned away from him as I looked for any more of the thieving fuckers who had come to test themselves against the monsters who owned this school.
I leapt up onto the roof of the old Ford Mustang as the crowd of students and staff surged closer and I failed to spot any more of the townsfolk amongst the crowd.
Brown’s office was still burning behind me despite the toilet paper prank seeming like it belonged in a different lifetime. The orange glow of the flames flickered over the crowd and the warmth of the fire brushed along my spine as I looked out over everyone.
“Is that all of them?” I roared and every face in the crowd turned to look at me standing above them.
Some of the footballers started cheering and whooping in victory as I swept my gaze over the masses.
Monroe climbed up beside me, his T-shirt torn and blood splattering his face. He wore a savage expression which dared our attackers to try again, his chest heaving with exertion as his dark gaze took in the crowd.
“Who made the mistake of thinking we’d be easy prey?” I roared and the students screamed their approval. “Who dared to come and challenge the Night Keepers?”
Blake leapt up onto the trunk of the red Mustang with Tatum’s gun in his hand, pushing his fingers through his black hair as he surveyed the crowd just as keenly as I was.
“Did they think we’d just bow down and let them steal from us?” I bellowed and a chorus of nos tumbled over me.
Kyan moved in front of the car, dragging Bait by the scruff of his neck and throwing him in the dirt by the wheels like some kind of sacrificial offering.
“Caught one trying to run,” he snarled.
Tatum followed him, her eyes wild and fierce as she looked up at me, Blake and Monroe on top of the car. My heart pounded as I dragged my eyes over her. This strange and beautiful creature who’d cast a spell on all of us. She might just be my undoing. Or even my salvation. The only thing I knew for sure was that she was my obsession and I wouldn’t be relinquishing my claim on her for any man or beast.
Kyan leapt up onto the hood of the car. He’d lost his shirt somewhere and his tattoos glistened with blood as he swung his baseball bat over his shoulders and roared his victory to the moon.
The gathered staff and students howled with him, clamouring and cheering the four of us for coming to their rescue. We might have been tyrants in our rule over them, but true leaders always protected their flock. And if that meant we had to step up and fight to keep this school safe from the savages beyond our gates, then it was clear that we would.
The crowd before me parted and suddenly Headmaster Brown appeared, pushing his way between the raucous students and staff members in his pristine suit and tie.
“Get down from there now!” he shouted, pointing up at me like he truly believed he had some authority to tout after hiding throughout that war.
I looked at him for a long moment, a sneer curling back my lip.
“Who here is grateful to Headmaster Brown for stepping in to protect you when shit got bad?” I cried, pointing an accusatory finger at him.
The crowd booed and hissed at him, causing colour to rise along his thick neck and crawl right up over his bald head.
“We need to maintain order, Mr Memphis!” Brown shouted. “Get down from there right now! Monroe, would you kindly assist in-”
“Where were you?” Monroe demanded in a voice colder than ice as he glared down at his boss. “Where were you when the students you vowed to protect needed your help?”
The crowd jeered and booed again, screaming out for the same answer.
“I was taking stock of the situation and-”
“Not good enough!” Kyan bellowed, swinging his baseball bat into the windscreen of the car and shattering the glass so that it flew over Brown and he was forced to scurry back.
Tatum had backed away, standing by Bait to our left but her heated gaze burned me as she continued to watch us, her eyes drinking in the sight of the Night Keepers showing the full extent of our power. We ruled this school completely. Not some washed up, ex-army douchebag who’d clearly left his courage behind with his balls when he’d quit the military.
“I’m the head of this school! I’m in charge here!” Brown bellowed. “If you don’t get down from there this second, I’ll-”
Blake fired a bullet into the air and Brown fell back onto his ass as screams tore out all around us before the crowd fell deathly silent.
“You’re not in charge of me,” Blake snarled.
“Or me,” Kyan echoed.
“Me neither,” I agreed in a deadly voice, not even needing to shout now that the
crowd were holding their breath like they thought we really might kill the son of a bitch.
I turned my head slowly, looking at Monroe beside me, his face a stony mask of rage as he glared down at the man who should have been here to protect the students from all that had happened to them and hadn’t been.
“I think what we need around here is new blood,” I said loudly. “A real leader to take up the role of Headmaster while we fight to stay alive throughout the spread of the Hades Virus. A man who came and fought on the front line for us. Who put himself between all of you and those who’d come to hurt you!”
The crowd roared again as they realised what I was saying and Monroe frowned as he met my gaze.
“You can’t just allocate things like that,” he growled, but the hunger in his eyes said he wanted it.
“Like fuck I can’t,” I scoffed. “I’m Saint Memphis. My father is the Governor of the state. My mother runs the school board and they’re already in the process of voting Brown out. If I tell her you’re the man for the job then it’s done. So what’s it to be, Monroe? Are you with me?”
I held out a hand to him and he eyed it like it was the cloven hoof of the devil. Which in all honesty, it might as well have been. Because he knew as well as I did that this was so much more than a job opportunity. It was a commitment to a life as one of us. But in reality, he’d already made that commitment when he slid that knife into the rapist in the catacombs. He was one of us already. And something about that seemed right. Like he’d always been destined to become a Night Keeper anyway and tonight had just confirmed it. The legend said there should be four of us after all and I was willing to put my faith in that even if others might have thought I was insane for it. But that was the thing about faith. So long as you believed something was real, it was. That was all there was to it. And I believed in the Night Keepers more than anything else in this world.
Kings of Quarantine: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep Book 1) Page 50