In the Arms of the Elite

by Stunich, C. M.

  “Isn’t the hospital due west from here?” I’m not exactly an expert on the terrain, but I can tell based on the mountains and the road that we are most definitely not heading back toward town. What the hell? The sirens aren’t on anymore either which is weird. And worrying. Very, very worrying.

  “We’ll get you there, don’t worry,” the officer in the passenger seat tells me, but he doesn’t sound very reassuring. The longer we drive, the more concerned I get.

  That’s when I see the abandoned casino up ahead, and my heart leaps into my throat.

  The car’s wheels crunch across the gravel as I feel the first waves of true panic clawing at my throat. It’s not midnight yet, nowhere near it. I could still die today. I could fucking die.

  “What are we doing here?” I whisper, my voice hoarse with worry for Charlie, and now, for myself, too. I can’t help my dad if I’m dead, now can I? The officers ignore me and climb out, opening the back door and yanking me forcefully out. They shove me hard to the gravel, and I stumble, my hands going out to catch myself.

  I grit my teeth against the pain of the rocks, stabbing into my flesh and embedding themselves into my palms. Pushing up to my knees, I glance over my shoulder just in time to see the officers climb back in their car and take off.

  Shit.

  Two uniformed police officers with badges in an official cruiser have just driven me out to an Infinity Club-owned casino smackdab in the middle of a Native American reservation. It’s completely surrounded by miles and miles of untouched forest, vast swathes of protected national and state parks as far as the eye can see.

  The sound of feet scuffing across gravel draws my attention around.

  And there she is, Harper du Pont with John Hannibal and Gregory Van Horn on either side of her.

  She’s at least had time to clean the shit off, but her face is still as ugly as ever.

  “Hello, Marnye Reed,” Harper says, her lips curving up into a smile. John is carrying a baseball bat, and Greg is holding a thick coil of rope.

  I don’t have a good feeling about this.

  I fight to get to my feet as fast as I can, backing up a few steps as Harper saunters toward me, clearly still channeling the fury from this afternoon.

  “Infinity Club rules,” she states, smiling. “Your friends did a nice job of making sure we couldn’t hire out your punishment. Marnye Elizabeth Reed can only suffer at the hands of a student …” Harper tapers off with a resigned sigh, tossing some of her bloodred extensions over one shoulder. “And so suffer at the hands of a student, she shall.” She gestures at me with her chin, and her two boytoys start forward.

  They seem pretty shocked to see me run straight toward and between them, heading for the casino with my ruined graduation gown flapping behind me. My wrist is killing me from the fall off the dais, and there’s hot, wet blood streaming down my palm.

  There is no way in hell I’m letting the Infinity Club win, not when I’m so close. So freaking close.

  I skid around the corner and fly up the steps, through the back door …

  Only to run into a nest of Bluebloods.

  And when I say Bluebloods, I mean the original Bluebloods, the ones from my revenge list.

  “Marnye,” Tristan says, turning around to look at me. He smiles, and my heart turns to ice and shatters in my chest.

  What the fuck is he doing here?

  The thing is, he already tried this on me once before, this pretend to be the bad guy thing. I trust him too much now to believe that he’s up to anything but trying to save my ass. Our eyes meet, and I can see the fear buried deep inside his.

  He opens that beautiful mouth of his and says just one word.

  “Run.”

  I don’t hesitate for even half a second before I do, catching the briefest glimpse of Tristan taking the baseball bat in his hand and swinging it at John’s face as he comes in the backdoor.

  “Fucking traitor!” Greg screams as the bat connects with the horrific sound of crunching bone. There’s a struggle as Greg slams into Tristan, and the two of them fall to the floor, fists flailing. I stop running and skid to a halt behind a counter full of dead-eyed video screens, their patrons long-gone, dead leaves and pine needles taking their place.

  It’s just Tristan against a dozen Bluebloods.

  I don’t know why or how he got here, but … I can’t leave him.

  “Did you really think we’d let a peasant ruin our lives and not come back swinging?” Kiara asks, panting heavily. She has a knife in her hand. A knife. I imagine they don’t intend to let me walk out of here alive. “I mean the senior Infinity Club members want you dead. Period. They don’t care how or why.” Lizzie’s words echo in my head as adrenaline surges through me in a violent wave.

  The pieces of shit are getting in between me and my dad.

  Don’t die, Charlie, I breathe, don’t die. I need to be there. I need to get out of here.

  The girls on the other side of the counter exchange looks, and then two of them come around the counter on either side—Ebony and Mayleen, to be exact—while Kiara and Anna start to climb over the counter itself. I rush Mayleen, shoving her so hard that she stumbles back and hits one of the other counters, flipping up and right over it to the other side.

  I grab John’s discarded bat and swing it at Greg, knocking him off of Tristan. It’s a temporary measure though. It looks like there are plenty of them … and only two of us.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Harper snaps, pulling a gun out of her purse. “I know Lizzie spilled the beans, so screw this no long-range weapons shit. You know, I only let you put that clause in there because I knew one of you would inevitably tell her. After I shoot her, you can blame yourself for her death.” She levels the gun on me as Tristan scrambles to his feet, grabbing my hand and yanking me forward as Harper takes her first shot. It goes wide, but that doesn’t mean she’s the only person with a gun. Or that she’ll miss again.

  Tristan takes me into the dance hall and looks around frantically, the pulse in the side of his throat thundering like crazy.

  “We need to get outside,” I whisper, and he glances down at me, gray eyes wide.

  “There are thirteen of them here, some outside. We need to be careful.” He pulls me forward again, and we head for an employee access door as Harper enters the room, taking another couple shots in our direction. As we run, Tristan’s jacket opens up, and I see that he’s got a gun, too.

  Holy shit.

  We head outside into the rapidly cooling air of evening, and I realize with a start of fear that it’s going to get dark out here soon. Darkness, woods, endless possibilities for cruelty.

  They really do want to kill me, don’t they?

  I don’t think I honestly and truly believed it until just now.

  Our feet skid on the gravel as we double back around the building, heading past the brick walls and the opening that leads to the racetrack. Once we get past that, it’s all thick foliage and blackberry thorns. It’s impossible to move and still be quiet at the same time.

  We opt for speed.

  When we stumble out of the bushes on the other side, I see a mostly dry swimming pool. There’s just a bit of brown water on the very bottom, probably full of mosquito larvae. I don’t know why I notice such a small, stupid detail in that moment.

  It must be the shock of seeing Charlie collapse.

  Of wondering if he might be dead.

  Of finding myself trapped in a nightmare.

  That original list for revenge is burned into my brain: Harper, Becky, Anna, Ebony, Greg, Abigail, John, Valentina, Sai, Mayleen and Jalen. Kiara and Ileana were added later, but they’re here too. The few injured parties—Abigail, Valentina, and Jalen—seem to have added some of their new male friends to the game. Pretty sure I recognized Jason What’s-His-Face back there. This is insane.

  Greg and Sai come charging out of the bushes nearest us, knocking into Tristan’s shoulder and sending him tumbling into the dry swimming pool. His gr
ip slips from mine, and I scream, just before Sai clamps his hand over my mouth. I bite down hard, and he shoves me forward, too. My feet slip on the edge of the swimming pool, but he grabs a handful of my short hair and yanks me back.

  “If you hurt her, I’ll fucking shoot you, and I won’t care if the Club kills me for it!” Tristan screams, pushing up to his knees. He cringes and grabs his right arm, like the pain is almost too much to bear.

  “Take your best shot!” Greg screams back, his laughter ringing through the golden afternoon light. Birds scatter, but they’re the only witnesses out here. “I told Harper you were full of shit, that you’d never take her back. Why the fuck she let you come out with us is beyond me.”

  “I knew he was full of crap,” Harper says, appearing with her gun tucked in her right hand. She moves up to the edge of the swimming pool, glaring down at Tristan who’s also pulled out his weapon. It’s all he can do, trapped down there like that with an injured arm. The steps that lead out of the pool have crumbled away to nothing. “He’s been obsessed with this peasant bitch since moment one. The thing is,” Harper bends down, putting her hands on her knees, “that your legacy is over, Vanderbilt. Your father doesn’t care about you one way or another. And now that you’ve brought a gun to a knife fight, well, it’ll be easy enough for me to explain your death.”

  Tristan pulls the trigger on his weapon, and a shot tears through Harper’s shoulder, making her scream. He goes to take another shot, but Greg is grabbing the pool ledge and dropping down beside him. The two end up in a struggle over the weapon while I push to my feet and swing at Sai’s face. My fist connects and he grunts, but he hardly matters. The rest of the group is appearing from the thick foliage.

  There are just too many of them, and far too few of us.

  “Jesus,” Harper screams, touching her hand to her shoulder and staring at the crimson color of her blood with a mixture of shock and disgust. “I’ve had enough of this shit.” She turns toward me and raises her weapon while I watch in horror as Greg shoves Tristan and sends him stumbling. Pretty sure the latter is fighting with a broken arm right now, blood pouring down the side of his head from when he fell into the pool initially.

  “No!” I scream, but Ileana and Becky grab hold of my arms and yank me back, Jason and Anna stepping in to assist them.

  “Get her to the maintenance shed by the pond,” Harper instructs, and the ex-Bluebloods drag me down the path while I scream and flail, leaving Tristan behind.

  Harper unlocks a door with a ring of keys and ushers the group inside. They set me down on the ground near a floor-to-ceiling beam, and Ebony ties me up with the help of some of the guys.

  “Harper, there are people here,” one of the bulky, faceless dudes says, and she curses under her breath.

  “Go deal with it; I’m almost done here anyway,” she snaps, and the others take off, leaving Harper, Becky, and Ileana behind.

  “You can still come back from this,” I tell her, breathing hard, my shoulders burning from having my arms tied back around the post. “You haven’t lost all redeemability, Harper.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” she tells me, hitting me across the face with the gun so hard that I see stars. “I’m just trying to decide if I should put a bullet in your head first, or watch you burn alive.”

  “Are we really doing this?” Becky asks, glancing over at me with a slightly unsure expression on her face. “I mean … killing somebody is kind of a big deal.”

  “We have Club permission to do it,” Ileana snaps, and either her bra is stuffed or else she’s already gotten a new implant. “It’s not like we’re going to get in trouble. Who cares about some random scholarship girl anyway? Doesn’t her dad have cancer or something? Like he’ll be around long enough to make noise about this.”

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” Becky starts, and then Harper just loses it.

  “You want to be a pussy?” she screams, and in the back of my mind, I know that if Miranda were here, she’d give a lecture about using the term pussy in such a derogatory way. It’s funny what the brain comes up with in times of extreme duress and shock. I almost feel like I’m floating outside of my body, watching this whole scenario take place in a different dimension. “Then get the hell out! Ileana and I will take care of it.”

  Becky races out of the shed with tears streaming down her face, but she doesn’t try to stop them.

  Instead, I watch in horror as Harper hands the gun to Ileana and then picks up a red gasoline tank. She starts pouring it in a circle around me, and then leaves a trail that peters out near the door. I’m surprised she doesn’t splash me in it, but then I realize she probably wants to see me suffer as much as possible first.

  Harper du Pont is most definitely a psychopath.

  No doubt about that.

  “Do you have the matches?” she asks, holding out her hand toward Ileana.

  I struggle against my bonds, panting with the effort.

  “Harper, you don’t want to do this,” I tell her, but she ignores me, smiling as she strikes a match and the stink of sulfur fills the air. She blows it out with pretty lips and then backs away toward the door with Ileana tagging along behind her.

  “Goodbye, Working Girl. It was nice knowing you.” Harper lights another match, and then Creed appears, grabbing her wrist and jerking her back so hard that the flame goes out.

  Zack shows up next, sacking Ileana like she’s the wide receiver on an opposing football team. She goes flying, not, unfortunately into the pond, but she does end up slamming into that Jason guy as he comes around the corner. The two go down in a heap as John follows after, still bleeding, but carrying his baseball bat again. He swings it at Zack, but my football player boyfriend manages to grab hold of the weapon to keep it from making contact.

  A car’s headlights sweep across the scene as it pauses just outside the ring of trees and Zayd and Wind hop out. Windsor’s behind the wheel which, if you think about it, is pretty surprising. Until … well, until today he was terrified of driving.

  I guess that means … he was willing to overcome his fear to rescue me?

  “Back the shit off my girlfriend,” Zayd says, his graduation gown long since discarded, his tattooed arms bright in the light from the car’s headlights.

  “Get fucked,” Harper sneers, elbowing Creed in the face. She runs toward the shed, but he’s right behind her, knocking her into the gasoline while the two of them struggle over the matches.

  Windsor and Zayd help Zack off the ground, and the three of them fend off the surge of Bluebloods as Creed finally throws Harper against the wall, pocketing the matches and running over to me. He pulls what looks like a kitchen knife from the bookbag hanging over his shoulder, and saws at the ropes.

  “Seriously? You think you’re going to get out of here with this bitch?” Harper asks, pulling a lighter from her pocket. Creed ignores her, freeing me from my bindings and yanking me to my feet. He pulls me over to one of the broken windows as Harper lights the flame.

  “You’ll burn, too!” Creed screams back at her, and then since he’s covered in gas, I shove him out the window before he can make me go first. He trips and falls over the edge as Harper tosses the lighter to the floor, and the entire place goes up like an inferno.

  I choke at the sudden rush of heat, but Creed is already grabbing me by the arms and yanking me out into a tumble on the grass.

  “We need to get out of here,” Zack says, panting as he pauses next to us and helps us both to stand.

  “Not without Tristan,” I snap, and then I turn and take off into the trees, back in the direction of the swimming pool.

  The scene we stumble on is awful: Tristan on his knees, bleeding from his head, his eyes closed. Greg has the gun pointed at his forehead.

  We have seconds, maybe, to save him. Seconds.

  Without thinking, I jump off the edge and slam into Greg. A shot goes off, but I don’t know if it hit Tristan or not. I didn’t see.

  The other bo
ys are down in the pool in an instant, dragging Greg off of me.

  Zayd and Zack hold him still while Windsor pulls back and punches the asshole in the face as hard as he can, dropping the bully like a bag of stones.

  Creed helps me stand out of the murky water, and I glance over to see Tristan struggling to get to his feet. There’s a bullet buried in the wall just behind his head, but he’s alive. Alive. He’s fucking alive. We both are.

  “We need to get out of here and over to the Maserati,” Windsor instructs, and I have to think for a moment before I remember that it wasn’t my rose-gold convertible that pulled up near the pond, it was Zayd’s blue Jaguar. “We brought two cars, just in case. I imagine they’ve already slashed the tires of the other one.”

  Windsor and Zack help Tristan out of the pool, while Creed and Zayd do the same for me.

  Then we’re running full-out, toward the old-growth tree that’s such a landmark, we can see it painted against the orange and yellow sky. If it didn’t tower so far above everything else, we might not even know how to get out of there.

  Fire is now sweeping from the maintenance shed and through the trees, taking advantage of the dry summer heat to sear the world with flames. Before long, it’ll probably be a full-blown forest fire.

  Goddamn it, Harper!

  We hit the parking lot only to find several of the Bluebloods waiting for us—including John Hannibal.

  “You’re not getting out of here that easy,” he says, lifting Harper’s gun in our direction. He pulls the trigger, and a shot hits the gravel near our feet.

  “No, I think we are,” Windsor corrects, pulling a revolver out from under his own jacket. “I will shoot you. Just know that. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, isn’t it? I bet the Club would forget all about you if I paid them enough. You’re just not that important, John Hannibal.”