Chapter Thirteen
“Yoooooo-hooooooo, are you in here?”
My eyelids tangled together as I struggled to open my eyes. White walls greeted me. Sunlight from an open window reflected off rows of trophies, splashing colorful prisms across the walls. Warm flesh pressed against mine. For a moment I didn’t remember where I was, and then it all came back to me in a rush – the performance, the pillar, Trey’s dad shooting at me even though I’d burned him good, sleeping in the cave, Ms. West’s confession, Ayaz in the infirmary, the god’s dream, falling into bed with Trey…
The last thing I remembered was talking about offering the god Trey’s parents as his children, and then I rested my head on his chest and we must’ve both fallen asleep. Between everything that happened in the auditorium, the cold cave, Ayaz’s uncomfortable hospital bed and the god invading my dreams, I couldn’t have slept much before. No wonder I’d crashed. But now…
“Wakey, wakey.” Quinn’s voice called from the living room.
“Mmmmph.” Trey threw his arm across my chest, pinning me to the bed. “If we ignore him, he’ll go away.”
“Have you met Quinn?” I slid out from under Trey’s arm and threw off the covers. “If we ignore him, he’ll get five times more annoying—”
As if on cue, Quinn kicked open the bedroom door. He brandished a large frying pan and a metal spatula, which he clanged together. “Rise and shine!”
CLANG CLANG CLANG.
Trey tossed a pillow at him. “Get the fuck out.”
“Not until you get up. We don’t want to be late for class.”
I rubbed my eyes. Fuck, why was that sun so bright? “I hate you, but you’re right. Whatever goes down in school today, we need to be there. How’s Ayaz?”
“Still crispy. Loretta is watching him while I get my groove on.” Quinn gave an exaggerated twirl. “Do I look like a King again, Hazy?”
For the first time since he walked in, I noticed Quinn had changed into a uniform, but it wasn’t that of Derleth Academy. The Miskatonic Prep crest with its five-pointed star stood in sharp relief over his breast.
Instead of the red and black of Derleth, the Miskatonic colors were a soft blush pink and a strange green that seemed to be many different shades at once. It reminded me of the glowing veins in the stone of the obelisk – of all the reasons I never wanted to step into a uniform again.
And yet, on Quinn, it made me ache with desire. It might’ve had to do with the way his shoulders filled out the blazer, or how the lapels and low double-breast accentuated his narrow waist, or how he’d taped together my gold tiara from the performance and wore that lopsided on his head, or how for the first time in too long his smile reached all the way to his eyes.
Quinn danced away from me, and I knew it was because he didn’t want to touch me. But he was here, he was trying. And I wished like hell I didn’t have to prove him right.
I was going to hurt him, only not with my fire.
“You don’t need a crown to be a King.” Trey went to his own closet and emerged a few moments later in his own Miskatonic Prep uniform. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of the two of them together. Trey was broader in the shoulders than Quinn, and when he stood with his legs slightly apart in his slacks – creased to a knife-edge, of course – and his wing-tips all shined up, he could melt panties at fifty paces. Trey smoothed the cuffs of his blazer, his eyes searing over my body.
That boy was King.
And he fucking knew it.
All he had to do was go out there and claim his crown. And damn if I didn’t want to—
Keep it in your pants, Hazel. You can’t be weak. You can’t let what just happened with Trey happen again, or you won’t be able to leave them. It’s better this way.
Quinn had brought my Derleth uniform from downstairs. I tugged that on in the bathroom and stuffed my textbooks into my satchel. I linked my arm through Trey’s and held my other out to Quinn. He hesitated, driving the breath from my lungs.
“Quinn, stop being a loser and take the damn woman’s hand so we can do this,” Trey barked.
Quinn’s arm slipped through mine, raising the hairs on my skin. His eyes met mine, and in those amber orbs was a pleading innocence. And I realized that for all Quinn had done and seen and experienced, for all he’d reveled in every wanton fantasy he could imagine, he’d closed himself off from this particular intimacy – from placing his life in someone else’s hands.
He used humor to keep people at arm’s length because he didn’t trust. He couldn’t. Not when his father – the very person who should protect him and love him and nurture him – raised his fists and broke his spirit. Not when his own mother let it happen, let the blows rain down on her son so she would be spared.
I gave Quinn’s arm a little squeeze. “Wait until you hear my news, straight from the mouth of the god.”
“You haven’t told him yet?” Trey looked surprised.
“Tell me what?”
“I was going to,” I said quickly. “But then we—”
Quinn waved a hand dramatically, as if it was no big deal. He didn’t want Trey to know he’d told me he was afraid of me. “Tell me now.”
“When I drifted off in Ayaz’s bed, the god drew me into a dream. He told me that the pillar is so old he doesn’t know what it is anymore. But the important thing is that he’ll take away the gifts his spirit gives you – the immortality, the fast healing, all the stuff that makes you not human – but only if you can find other children for him to bestow those gifts and continue his race.”
“Our lovely girlfriend thinks our parents would make the perfect candidates,” Trey added.
Quinn’s mouth froze in a hard line. “Give our parents immortality?”
“They’ve worked so hard. I think they deserve this. Don’t you?” I explained my plan to him as we checked ourselves one last time in Trey’s mirror. Quinn’s crown slid down over his eye, and I reached up to adjust it. He didn’t flinch when my fingers brushed his face.
Yes,” he whispered. “Yes, I think they will get exactly what they deserve.”
Chapter Fourteen
“This feels like the worst idea ever.” I smoothed down the front of my Derleth uniform. The red-trim on the blazer swam in my vision, the same red as blood.
On either side of me, Trey and Quinn looked resplendent. The pink of the tie brought warmth to Trey’s icicle eyes, while the green blazer and crest gave Quinn’s savage expression an otherworldly glow.
Behind them, Andre and Loretta wore their Derleth uniforms. Sadie wore Loretta’s spare uniform – they were about the same size. Andre had insisted she be part of whatever happened today, and I agreed. This was as much her decision and her battle as anyone else. For the first time since I’d met silent, angry Sadie, I could picture her as a student here. Young and fierce and naive and innocent – until Derleth Academy had taken everything from her.
Edimmu. Scholarship students. Maintenance staff. All the people who’d been wronged by the Eldritch Club and faculty.
A united front.
A recruitment drive for the damned.
I squared my shoulders. “Let’s do this.”
We’d deliberately ignored the first bell in order to make an entrance. Homeroom was in session, so the dormitory was empty of students as we headed toward the main classroom wing. The place looked like a tornado had blown through. Doors hung open, and rubbish had been flung all over. My shoes scuffed papers littering the hall.
Every noticeboard stood empty – strips of paper hung from bent thumbtacks. Every last student photograph and memento had been torn down and trampled underfoot. Memories too painful to bear after I’d shown them the truth.
We shoved our way through the double doors and across the sky bridge into the classroom wing. The bell sounded. Students poured into the hall, their conversations rising through the high rafters and bouncing off the rows of lockers.
They saw us. They stopped dead, freezing like statues. Conver
sations cut off like someone had hit a mute button. Even though some of them had already seen me in the dorm earlier, I still inspired enough fear to render them silent.
I folded my arms, moving my head to meet each and every single pair of eyes. Many of them looked away. At the front of the crowd, Courtney fixed me with her panther-stare, but she didn’t intimidate me anymore.
The last person I locked eyes with was Ayaz, who shuffled out of Dexter’s classroom on crutches. The sight of him shuddered through my body like an earthquake. His eyes swept across my Derleth uniform, and I felt like I was wearing nothing at all.
You’re mine again, Ayaz Demir. At least, for now.
I stepped back and nodded once. “Glad to see you’ve all missed me.”
“How are you back, gutter whore?” Amber demanded. “You died in the Dunwich fire.”
I breezed past her without answering the question. They were smart enough to figure out that fire wasn’t my enemy.
Trey and Quinn edged forward, escorting me toward my locker. Students parted for us to pass – like I was a plague victim they were afraid to touch. I slammed my locker open and grabbed a stack of textbooks at random, hugging them to my chest as I grinned at Courtney. “It turns out I’m only slightly dead. Like you.”
Courtney’s eyes blazed, but there was no real fury there. We faced off across the corridor. Tillie stood behind her, flicking her gaze from me, back to Trey and Quinn and the others, then back to me again. She looked like she didn’t know where she wanted to stand. Behind them, Ayaz looked on with intense interest. Everyone wanted to know how this was going to go down.
“It was you on stage,” Tillie said in a small voice. “I thought maybe it was just a trick.”
I nodded. “I was really me, alive and with my soul intact. And apart from a few projector tricks, the rest of it was real, too. The fire. The pillar. The truth about what your parents did.”
Tillie flashed me a tentative smile – a smile as a peace offering, as an olive branch. She’d been the first one to start to believe me during the performance. She and Trey had suspected the parents for years. Not only did she believe me, she wanted to be a part of putting it right. I wasn’t ready to trust her, but I was ready to make an attempt to try.
It took every effort to return it. I didn’t make a habit out of smiling at my ex-bullies, but I needed as many people on my side as I could get.
Silence again. Courtney cleared her throat. “My parents had told me the fire had been a horrible accident. They really agreed to this… mass sacrifice?”
“Yes. Everyone’s parents did. I have a list they made at a club meeting where they each volunteered a child, and I’ve heard it confirmed from Ms. West and from the god himself. I think your mother agreeing was a condition of her joining the Eldritch Club.”
Courtney stood back, her face pale. “I hate you for ruining everything,” she whispered, but her words had no venom. We both knew she wasn’t talking to me.
“You’re a cold-hearted bitch, Courtney Haynes. But you don’t deserve this. None of you do.”
Around the room, students nodded. They may have tormented me, hated me even, but they believed me. Right now, that was all that mattered.
“You’ve all been complicit in this plot your parents cooked up,” I said. “You tortured scholarship students because you enjoyed it. You knew what would happen to them at the end of each quarter, and yet you let it continue. You’ll have to do your own penance for your part in those crimes, but right now you’re also victims. You’ve been trapped here for too long and deprived of a piece of yourselves – a piece that might have urged you to act more humanely. It’s time for the lies to stop and the truth to set you free.”
That old feline fury flickered in Courtney’s eyes. Only this time, it wasn’t for me. “I don’t know what you’re planning for them, Hazel Waite, but you can count me in.”
My grin widened. I held out my hand. Courtney stared at it for a moment, like she thought it might burst into flame at any moment. Which I guess is true. Then she reached out and gave it a firm shake.
“I can’t believe it. I’m gone, like, five minutes and you’re making friends with the Queen Bee.”
My heart soared at the sound of that familiar voice. I must be imagining it. I can’t…
I turned my head, slowly, because I still wasn’t at a point where I wanted to take my eyes off Courtney, to see a hand running through sandy blond hair.
Greg grinned up at me like a cat who’d just caught one of those catnip mice and never intended to let it go.
“Greg?” I threw my arms around him. “It’s really you.”
He nodded, then winced as if the very act of moving his neck gave him pain. “She let me out,” he whispered. “A good-faith gesture to make sure you guys held up your part of the plan.”
“What about Zehra?”
Greg shook his head. He tucked something into the pocket of my blazer. “She gave me this. She said you’d know what to do with it.”
I didn’t dare open my pocket in the hallway, fearing what Zehra might have given me. Instead, I hugged Greg harder. He felt so good, so alive.
“What’s going on?” Amber asked. “Wasn’t that queer guy sacrificed?”
“‘That Queer Guy’ has a name.” Greg extended a hand to her. “Hi, I’m Greg.”
She looked confused for a moment, then reached out to shake. Greg grabbed her arm and folded her into a hug. Students laughed – not cruelly, just releasing tension. Amber’s face burned red with shock and embarrassment before she succumbed to the charm that was Greg and crumpled into his arms.
Trust Greg to slay them with his charms.
“I was never sacrificed.” Greg ran a hand through his hair. “But I’ve been locked in a room beside the gym, inhaling that foul rotting meat smell all day and night while our headmistress took vials of my blood for her experiments.”
“I thought you were into meat, fag,” Derek jeered, grabbing his crotch. For the first time, no one laughed. He stared at his friends before quickly dropping his hands.
“This shit stops now.” I raised a hand, palm out in an obvious threat.
Silence fell.
Quinn stepped away from me, his eyes wide. “Hazy, you shouldn’t…”
“No, I should. These bastards have done so much worse. If I burned them all now, they’d heal overnight, like Ayaz. But the scars from what you’ve all done to the scholarship students over twenty years – those will never go away.”
I looked to Sadie for confirmation. She nodded fiercely.
“But I won’t.” I lowered my arm. Derek let out a sigh of relief. “I won’t, because we’ve got a bigger goal in mind that requires us all to work together. You’re welcome to stick with your belief that faggots and gutter whores and people who aren’t white are beneath you, but that’s your loss. You can stay here and rot, because we’re the ones with the plan to get your lives back.”
“What?”
I gestured to my friends standing around me. “You’ve been trapped here for twenty years, and you’ve done what exactly to save yourselves? You’ve been so distracted with petty vendettas and bullying people you consider less than yourselves that you haven’t considered how you came to be here or how you might get your lives back. Well, those very people you tormented are standing here before you with the beginning of an answer. We could have run away and left you to your fate, and I’ll admit, it’s fucking tempting. But I don’t believe in running, so here we are with a plan, if you want to hear it.”
I didn’t really have a plan, yet. But that little fact was on a need-to-know basis.
Students exchanged glances. Amber’s eyebrows lifted so high they practically crawled off her face. They wanted to believe me, but I wasn’t going to give them the option until they asked nicely.
“Cut the dramatics, Waite.” Courtney flipped her hair over her shoulder. “We want to hear your plan.”
Well, as nicely as a monarch was capable of. She didn�
��t call me ‘gutter whore,’ I guess?
I smiled. “Good. The first thing you need to know is that whatever the faculty want you to believe, Ms. West has her own agenda. On the surface, we’re playing along, but we’re not their pawns. We’re hosting a party in true Miskatonic Prep fashion on Friday night, down at the pleasure garden, no teachers allowed. I’ll reveal the details then. Bring the last of your drugs and your booze and be prepared to burn your inhibitions, because this is your farewell party. At the end of this quarter, you’ll be saying goodbye to this hellhole forever.”
A cheer rose up from the students – the sound resonating through the vaulted corridor, bouncing off the marble floor and the shiny lockers to feed back into itself, growing in power and intensity until it became a bugle calling us to war.
A black cloud swirled through the crowd, knocking aside students. My heart plummeted, thinking it was the shadows. But it couldn’t be – I controlled the god’s shadows now.
Ms. West stormed through the students, her black gown flapping around her and her eyes narrowed to slits. Teachers in their black academic gowns tore after her, struggling to keep up with her determined step. Of course, we all turned tail to follow them.
Voices bounced off the walls as students poured into the atrium, crowding the staircases and blocking the exits in flagrant disregard for fire safety protocol. Ms. West strode through the assembled students, flanked by Dr. Atwood and Dr. Halsey. They reached the Derleth Academy crest hanging above the stairs. Ms. West snapped her fingers.
Dr. Atwood and Dr. Halsey lifted the wooden crest from the wall, revealing another underneath. A crest familiar to me now, even though I’d never worn the uniform.
Miskatonic Prep.
CRASH.
They tossed the Derleth crest over the balustrade. It flipped once before smashing into the marble. Students leaped out of the way as splinters flew in all directions.
Ignited: a reverse harem bully romance (Kings of Miskatonic Prep Book 4) Page 9