by Callie Hart
Thick, dark, matted hair.
Bones, bleached white.
I see a pair of black patent pumps on the ground, discarded by the wall, like someone just kicked them off there and forget about them. And I know.
Bile scorches the back of my throat.
My thoughts struggle to form, like they’re emerging through tar.
Mara.
She never made it to Los Angeles. She didn’t write me that letter. She never left academy grounds. This whole time, she’s been here, decaying, her skin sloughing off her bones, and I’ve been so angry at her for something she didn’t even do. I thought she’d left without saying goodbye. I thought she’d been reckless and gone off on another of her hairbrained adventures. I knew Fitz was an evil piece of shit, but never once did I consider this…
The altar bearing Mara’s bones is cold and wet. A spider creeps along the edge of the rough-hewn rock, and the only thought I can formulate clearly is: this isn’t right. Mara hated spiders. She hated the cold. She hated the dark. She’s been here, all alone, this whole goddamn time…
Behind me, Mercy and Elodie are talking. Their voices are raised. Wren’s staring at Fitz with horror on his face. I can’t focus on anything other than the bare bones on the altar. Months. Months and months, open to the elements. She’s been here this whole time…
“Wait. Why not just let Carina go with her? Carina’s got nothing to do with this. She doesn’t care about Wren. I’m the only one you have a problem with.”
I lift my head at the sound of my name. Elodie’s talking to Fitz. Mercy’s skirting around the edge of the cave, trying to make it back down the tunnel. I should have been paying attention. I’ve missed something, and now is not the time to be missing anything. Mara’s dead because of Fitz.
The English teacher flips the knife he’s brandishing over in his hand, shaking his head. “You guys are terrible actors. Mercy, I expected better of you. You’ve had actual training in this. You embarrass yourself. Get back with your brother. Go on, go.” He raises the knife, pointing it at Mercy, and she runs back to Wren’s side.
Fitz laughs. “We’ve arrived at an impasse, haven’t we, class? Wren, you’re unwilling to admit your true feelings. Mercy, you can’t be trusted, even though you should have your brother’s best interests at heart. Carina, you’re a victim of circumstance, and Elodie, well, Elodie just plain needs to die. So, where do we go from here?”
Victim of circumstance. He’s right, isn’t he? Since I was eleven years old, I’ve been a victim of circumstance, and now I’m here, trapped in a cave, about to die by Wesley Fitzpatrick’s hand. How does that make any sense?
“There are four of us.” Wren says. “And only one of you. The chances of you managing to hold us all off before we put you down are pretty slim.” How can he be so calm right now?
Fitz’s face falls. He looks hurt. “What are you talking about? I’d never kill you, Wren. I love you. It’s just all these girls that have to go.” He chuckles. “I’m not worried about three skinny little girls. And I don’t think you’re going to hurt me.” The man sounds crazy. Unhinged. His obsession with Wren is so out of control that I have no idea how we didn’t see it before. How he could have hidden it for even one second without someone noticing the depths of his insanity and calling the police?
Fitz jerks sideways, the knife held out in front of him…toward me. It isn’t me that he’s going for. He lunges for the person he considers to be his biggest competition; he perceived Mara as a threat to his relationship with Wren, so he killed her, and now he’s about to do the same thing to Elodie.
“NO!”
Wren; Mercy; Me: we all scream it at the same time, each of us terrified as Doctor Fitzpatrick hurls himself toward Elle. Wren tries to get to her, but I can see already that there’s too much space between them. Elodie will be dead before he can reach her.
It's remarkable, how a million thoughts can compress down into one instant. The last time I saw Mara, she was arguing with Mercy in the kitchen at Riot House. I left her because I wanted to be with Dash. I didn’t see the intricacies of a very fucked up situation unfolding right before my eyes. I should have. I should have seen. I should have protected my friend. Mara would still be here if I hadn’t been so distracted by a boy. I was mad at her. I didn’t look for her. I didn’t find her. She was alone.
The decision makes itself.
I will not be a victim of circumstance anymore.
My hands are still bound behind my back, but I’m not thinking. I run full tilt at Fitz, a monumental roar drowning out my thoughts.
I hit him as hard as I can.
I use my body, because it’s the only weapon I have.
And then, the world narrows down to two fractured points.
There is the knife.
There is the pain.
There is the knife.
There is the pain.
And then…eventually…there is the cold.
52
DASH
This is fucking stupid.
I should wait at the house. Someone will traipse back in through the front door at some point. Depending on who it is, I’ll be able to figure out a part of what the fuck is going on, at least. But there are at least a hundred people at Riot House right now, dancing, smoking, laughing, drinking all of the most expensive booze, and I can’t be around that kind of bullshit right now. If I have to see one more person run into the living room with one of those red flags tied around their foreheads like they’re fucking Rambo, then I am going to knock a hole in a wall.
The forest surrounding Riot House has a Brother’s Grimm vibe to it. All forests do, you might think, but this is especially true of our forest, and especially true tonight. A low-lying fog curls between the spindly, tightly packed tree trunks on the mountain at night. Moonlight cuts through the canopy overhead, casting shafts of silvery light onto the ever-present leaf litter. And somewhere on the mountain, a pack of wolves howl out a mournful chorus. I know these woods like the back of my hands, but if I didn’t, I’d be exceedingly creeped out right now.
It's past one in the morning. Nearly two, maybe? I swing the light on my cellphone from left to right through the thick darkness, hissing through my teeth every time a Wolf Hall student in a dumbass costume comes barreling out of the darkness clutching hold of a fistful of red flags. I grab Theo Barber by the scruff of his t-shirt as he tries to drunkenly careen past me, back in the direction of the house.
“Have you seen Carrie?”
He looks at me blankly. Fuck, he’s so wasted, his eyes aren’t even working in tandem. He’s gonna break his neck out here. “Carrie who?”
I drop him, disgusted.
I walk another twenty minutes, cursing and thinking violent, unhappy thoughts, only coming to a stop when my phone randomly chimes in my hand. I haven’t had service until now, but the rocky outcrop I’m standing on is apparently high enough for me to get one measly bar. I check the screen and—
What?
Mercy: 911. Fitz gone mad. Caves. Now!
I immediately unlock the phone and call her, holding the handset to my ear. The line connects, rings once, and then drops. I can’t even get it to connect when I try her again.
What caves? Caves on the mountain? What the fuck is she talking about?
This could be another one of Mercy’s cries for attention, but Wren’s sister isn’t known for her brevity. If this was an attention seeking text, wouldn’t she have used more words? Helpful fucking words that might have actually told me what’s going on, or where she wants me to go?
I have no choice but to treat this as a real cry for help. Working out how to provide that help is going to be difficult. I can’t even bring up a satellite map of—wait! WAIT! Can I bring up a satellite map? I might not have reliable internet out here, but I’ve opened maps a thousand times back at the house where the WIFI’s stellar. Will my phone have saved the data? Will it open on the mountain?
YES!
The app open
s, and the blue dot, demarcating my last location at the house has been saved. It’s a fucking miracle. It’s the street view, though. Roads and services marked on a plain white background. No details pertaining to the landscape itself. I’ll only get that once I hit the ‘satellite’ option, and there’s a chance…there’s a chance…
Thank fuck! I don’t lose the data. A sea of green populates the screen on my cellphone, interrupted by the grey slate roof of Riot House, seen from above. How much of the landscape has the app saved? How much of the mountain will I have to scour?
I get all the way up to the academy on the map before the image turns to pixelated, blank space. I swipe over every square inch of the map, pinching and zooming, trying to find anything that looks even faintly cave-like…but there’s nothing.
“Goddamnit!”
Massive waste of time.
I shove my phone into my back pocket and continue heading north, up the mountain, because I have to head somewhere. Every hundred feet or so, I check for signal, but the bar never reappears.
Where the fuck are these caves!
A sick, oily sensation writhes like a snake in the pit of my stomach. I can’t put my finger on it, but something about this feels off. Wrong, somehow. I need to find Mercy. That single statement repeats in my head, jumping and skipping like a scratched record…
You have to find Mercy. You have to.
It feels like something truly terrible will happen if I don’t, and I’m not ready to unpack this overpowering sense of foreboding just yet. Another minute ticks by, and then another ten. And then, up ahead, there’s a pale flash of white amongst the trees. “HEY!” I holler at the top of my lungs. “Hold on! Who’s up there?”
No response.
I quicken my pace, hurrying toward the patch of forest where I saw the glimpse of white and the movement. I don’t see the source of the disturbance amidst the trees until I’m almost right on top of it. Which means I don’t see the knife until it’s too late, either.
“rrraaaaAAAAAAAGHHH!”
A bright, dazzling explosion goes off in my skull. I drop down to one knee, reeling, trying to get away from the pain, but it follows me. There’s no escaping it.
Above me…deranged laughter. “Oh, this is just too good. I got to take care of one annoyance, and now I get to dispose of another? Y’know, I’ve never believed in manifestation before, but—” A hand grabs at my hair, wrenching my head back. Towering over me, Doctor Fitzpatrick is shirtless and covered in blood. There’s a truly demented look on his face that sets alarm bells ringing in my head. “I’ve recently discovered that, if you ask the universe for something and really believe it’ll happen, then guess what? It fucking does!”
I dive to the right, wrestling myself free of his hold, just in time to avoid a right hook aimed at my jaw. “Fitz! What the fuck!”
“What the fuck! What the fuck!” he parrots. “I never could understand why Wren chose to surround himself with such idiots. You and Pax are like…” His mouth turns down into a frown. “Like fucking lemmings, following him around, basking in his intellect and his looks—”
“Steady now. He hears you talking about him like that and he’ll be unbearable.” The joke’s meant to distract him, but Fitz snarls like a rabid dog.
“You and that smart mouth of yours. You think you’re fucking untouchable. Smashing up the den with that neanderthal friend of yours. Backtalking and giving me shit during class. Hinting at things that were none of your fucking business. Well, you aren’t the only person at Wolf Hall who knew something they shouldn’t. Like Little Miss Mendoza? You did a great job hiding that, didn’t you, fuckhead. The whole school—” He abruptly stops talking, his eyes rolling back into his head.
Whoa.
He staggers sideways, steadying himself against a tree.
What the fuck is wrong with him?
I see the blood trickling down the side of his face and along his jawline, then. The matted section of hair on the side of his head, shining wet and black in the moonlight. Did Mercy take a stiletto to the fucker’s head? I wouldn’t put it past her. If that is the case, then I’m sorry I missed it.
“Is this because no one invited you to the party this time, Fitz? ’Cause we voted on it, y’know, and all three of us decided that it was a hard pass.” I shouldn’t antagonize him, but it’s hard not to when he’s been such a grade A motherfucker since the day I met him. There are very few people I hate in this world. I’d go so far as to say there are only two people that have earned that title, and Doctor Wesley Fitzpatrick is one of them.
He laughs again, and the wet rasping sound of it makes my skin break out in goosebumps. “You just don’t know when to stop, do you? There’s just no off switch. Well, don’t worry, Lord Lovett. I’m good at finding people’s off switches. Let’s see if I can’t find yours.”
The blade flashes out of nowhere, blood-tinged and cruel. I barely have time to jump back before Fitz lashes out with it, swinging it at my stomach. He looks disappointed that he didn’t eviscerate me on the first try. Disappointed but not deterred.
Forward, he comes.
Unarmed, I retreat at first, ducking, dodging, evading each slash of the sharp steel, but then he says something that changes everything.
“You’re quick on your feet, Lovett. Good for you. Shame your little girlfriend didn’t have your sense of self-preservation just now. She actually ran onto the blade.”
I halt, the humid night air thick and suffocating in my lungs. “What did you say?”
“Carina.” Fitz licks his lips. “Fucking busy body. I’ve never really given a shit about her, but…” He shrugs, spinning the knife over in his hand. “She interfered. She read Mara’s diary. She was always glued to that stupid bitch who’s been following Wren around like a bad smell. And she charged me tonight. She got what she had coming.”
The blood on the whetted edge of Fitz’s knife takes on a whole new meaning. The splatter across his chest, which was just a red spray a second ago, suddenly takes on a far more macabre meaning. My body stills. Everything slows. I force my racing thoughts to quiet. It’s vital that I concentrate now. “Where is she, Fitz?” I whisper.
“How the fuck should I know? That Stillwater bitch knocked me out. They tied me up, but I can’t have been out long. My hands hadn’t even gone numb when I woke up. They can’t have gotten far. Doesn’t change anything, pretty boy. Wherever they are, the upshot’s still the same. Your precious Carrie’s dead. And you will be too, as soon as you stop asking so many infernal questions.”
Carrie’s dead.
Carrie’s dead.
Carrie’s…
No. Carrie is not dead. I won’t believe it until I see it with my own two eyes. And I’m not letting Fitz end me in a fucking forest, either. If I get shanked and bleed to death, it’ll be on a council estate in London to spite my father and not fucking here.
“Give me the knife, Fitz.”
He points the tip of it at me, grinning at me like I’m the crazy one. “Only way you’re getting this thing is if it lodges in your ribs, or you take it from me.”
“Suit yourself.” I’m not trained in martial arts but living with Pax has taught me more about warfare than I thought I’d ever need to know. Right now, I am so glad for all of the times my asshole roommate has tried to get the jump on me and take me to the ground.
Fitz comes in hot. The way he holds the bowie knife, spine resting flat against his forearm, blade projected out, is a warning. He knows how to fight with that thing. He doesn’t have a clue what I’m capable of, though. This time, I don’t give him any ground. He lunges. Swings. I block his arm while bringing in my left fist in a powerful hook, clipping him on the jaw.
Dazed, he shakes his head, face split open in a mad grin. “Ohhh. Not just a pretty face, then. I’m surprised. I thought you—”
I smash my fist into his face again, growling out my satisfaction when he stumbles back a step. His mouth is bleeding; I’ve split his bottom lip wide ope
n. “And you say I don’t have an off switch?”
Fitz comes for me. Looks like I’ve kicked the hornet’s nest, but I don’t have time for this. I have to get back to the house. I have to find Carrie. The knife snakes out, faster, slicker, more unpredictable this time. I’m still way ahead of him. I bring my knee up, blocking and attacking at the same time again. Fitz reels back but throws his arm out in a wild attempt at hitting me. The cold kiss of pain blossoms over my right thigh. He’s nicked me, though I have no idea how bad. The pain isn’t so bad. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it motivates the living shit out of me.
I’m burning time with this fool. Every second I spend here with him is a second wasted, that ought to be spent finding Carina. I dart forward, grappling with him, trying to grab hold of his arm, but I miscalculate the distance in my haste, and…
I’m spinning.
Fuck, I—ow!
I hit the ground hard. Fitz is on me in a second. His left hand closes around my throat, his right pulling back, the knife flashing savagely in the yellow glow of the flashlight on my cellphone, which is half buried in the leaf-litter right next to my head. If he brings that thing down on me, it’s game over. If I give him half a chance, I’m fucking de—
What happens next is surreal. One minute, Wesley Fitzpatrick is straddling me, about to stab me right through the fucking heart, and the next he’s reeling sideways, knocked off me by—
What the hell?
A streak of grey.
A blur of black fur.
A silver-tinged muzzle, exposing bone-white fangs.
Rasputin.
I let out a stunned, wordless cry, too surprised to do anything else, as the old, limping wolf snarls, stalking toward Fitz. The English teacher’s lying on his back, groping around in the leaves for his knife. He finds it and turns it on Rasputin, but the wolf does not back down. His hackles raised and standing on end, he releases a low, threatening rumble that fills even me with fear.
“Fucking mutt.” Fitz rocks forward, the point of his weapon aimed right at Rasputin’s chest, but the sly wolf has life in him yet. He dances out of way and strikes quicker than a cobra, sinking dripping teeth around Fitz’s shoulder.