My eyes lift to his, and he smiles.
“Todd being here, that doesn’t bother you?” he asks, but I shake my head. Each drop of blood that Todd sheds belongs to me. It’s penance, and it sinks into this hallowed ground like a blessing. The earth is thirsty, and I am hungry.
I’m owed the sweet taste of vengeance.
“Every name on my list becomes a sacrifice,” I say, taking two drags on the joint before passing it to Callum. Our fingers touch, sparking joy in my hands that travels straight to my heart. “It’s like an offering to the dark goddess that rests inside my heart.”
Callum throws his head back with a laugh, one that’s husky and broken and oh-so beautiful.
“You make pretty metaphors, Bernie,” he says, flashing teeth at me. The tattoos on his bare arms draw my attention, highlighting the thick, rounded curves of his biceps. In junior high, when Cal was thin and lean and angelic looking, I never would’ve believed he’d bulk up the way he did, or that he’d be covered in so much ink. Pain changes a person though, doesn’t it? “Don’t ever stop. Life was so much more boring without you.”
I smile as Cal hands the joint back. For a moment there, everything is easy and casual, just two teenagers hanging out on an abandoned lot.
Then Callum’s entire demeanor shifts, and he steps around me, like he’s protecting me from something. The sound of a car on the empty country road echoes to me just a few seconds later.
Eric is here.
I mean, we did send him an invitation.
The thing is, when I took Todd’s phone from Vic’s hand and put my lips near the speaker, I almost thought Eric would recognize my voice.
He didn’t.
“Your daddy says that if I’m a good girl, you’ll give me some money. I could really use some money to help with the rent.”
Gag.
The other thing I was worried about was that I might sound too old for his perverted tastes.
Guess not.
Cal and I stay where we are, hidden by the tree as Eric parks near the front porch, climbing out to look up at the house with a wary expression. I watch him from where I am, a lioness on the hunt.
He looks exactly as I remember him: like some sort of Ken doll with bleached-out skin and white-blond hair. When I was eleven, and we first met, I thought he was handsome. He skeeves me the fuck out now, even from all the way over here.
“He’s going to bolt,” I whisper to Cal, my eyes taking in Eric’s stiff form, his hand still resting on the door handle of his Mercedes.
“I think you’re right,” he agrees, his big body curled over mine, watching, protecting. I feel so goddamn safe with Callum Park at my back. Invincible. We exchange a look and he nods, slipping away and crouching low as he runs across the field on my left.
“Eric,” I call out as sweetly as I can, stepping out from behind the tree and pitching my voice high and clear. He turns around to look at me, face flashing with triumph … and then fear.
No … not fear, terror.
He’s terrified. Because he recognizes me as soon as he sees me. That much, I’m sure of.
When he spins around, desperately grabbing at the handle of his car, Callum is just there, crouching on the roof like a spider.
“Hello Eric,” he says, and then he grabs the back of Eric’s head and smashes his face into the side of the Mercedes, leaving him to crumple onto the ground in a heap.
I walk slowly over to my perpetrator as the other Havoc Boys come out the front door, slow and casual and fully confident in me and Cal to handle the situation.
“Let’s get him inside, shall we?” Oscar asks, slipping out of his jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his white button-down. His gray eyes meet mine, and I can tell that we’re about to take a step forward together. Not sure what that step will entail, but it’s coming.
And quick.
I asked the Havoc Boys to show me all their secrets.
Guess that’s why that old adage exists: be careful what you wish for.
Eric is on the floor bleeding, his eyes wide as he stares across the narrow space between him and his father. Between the two of them, he’s the most clearly fucked-up, his skin bloody and raw, his fingers broken, his shins smashed with a baseball bat.
I haven’t moved from my spot near the door, letting the boys do the work. This is, after all, my request. My reward. Eric molested my sister, tried to molest me. He rapes little girls. I feel nothing for him, nothing at all.
“How many girls have you raped and killed, hmm?” Oscar asks, bending low and digging the barrel of his revolver into the front of Eric’s skull. “I’m sure you don’t know an exact number, but guess what?” Eric whimpers, closing his eyes as blood runs down the side of his face and into them. I hope it stings like hell. “I do. I’m very good with numbers, Mr. Kushner. I fucking love numbers.” Oscar grinds the weapon in until Eric lets out a scream, moving his arm back just enough to shut the man up. “Numbers don’t lie, but people do. In totality, Mr. Kushner, I’ve estimated that you’ve murdered thirteen underage girls.”
Oscar rises to his feet suddenly, moving the gun away from Eric and over to his father. Eric lets out a whimper of relief, but Todd begins to weep silently.
“I don’t think he’s killed anyone,” Oscar continues, gray eyes darkening to a near-black pitch behind his blood-spattered glasses. He gestures in Todd’s direction as the other boys look on in silence, letting the man I’d sort of written off as Havoc’s, uh, IT guy, elevate this shit to another level. “But he knows what you do, and he lets you do it.”
“He’s my son!” Todd screams, thrashing in his bindings. “I’d do anything for him.” He probably thinks he sounds strong as he struggles, eyes focused on his only child. He doesn’t. He sounds weak, and my stomach churns.
I’m still in the process of contemplating the whole scenario when Oscar lowers the weapon, so that it’s pointing directly at Todd’s head … and fires off a single round. The sound of it makes me jump, like a car backfiring in an enclosed parking garage. My ears are ringing so badly that it takes me a good two minutes to realize that Eric is screaming.
Havoc has just shot and killed Todd Kushner.
On the inside, my spirit writhes a bit. I don’t know how to process any of this.
After Don and Scott, I didn’t think … But then, I remember Oscar’s risk assessment. Three percent. Good odds for a killing.
Aaron sidles closer to me, putting his arm around my waist and dragging me close. His scent is so strong that when I bury myself against his chest for a moment, all I breathe in is rose and sandalwood. The sharp copper scent of blood disappears for the briefest of instances, but then I look up and see the body and time starts up all over again.
“Anything else you’d like to say Eric before I shoot him in the face?” Oscar asks mildly, unmoved by the situation. At least, on the outside. On the inside, a little boy with broken glasses and round-tipped scissors is screaming.
I stare at him for a moment before I push away from Aaron and move over to stand beside Eric. Crouching down, I reach out and swipe hair away from his bloodied forehead.
“Please,” he sobs, shaking, his hands bound behind his back, his ankles lashed together. “I don’t like to hurt people. I just have needs that can’t be met any other way.” I smile, but there’s no mirth in the expression. My fingers find the scar above Eric’s eye, where I hit him with the metal truck.
“You changed my life for the worst, Eric. Foster care was my escape, away from my mother, from my rapist stepfather. You stole that chance from me, from us.” Closing my eyes, I imagine a different world, one where Pen and Heather and I found a loving home, somewhere safe, and we all made it to adulthood without the marks of monsters on our skin.
I open my eyes.
I’m surrounded by my monsters now, but at least I hold the leash of some very pretty ones.
Shit, but did you really think they were just going to execute the Kushners? I didn’t. This is next lev
el. There must really be some sweetness left in me somewhere because it still hurts, in a weird way. If murder only sparked joy in me, I’d be worried. But also, I feel no regret.
“Please, please, Bernadette. Please. I’m sorry. I won’t do it anymore. I’ll stop. I’ll stop.” Eric is sobbing now, snot running out of his nose and over his lips. His spittle is foamy; he’s definitely hurting. Also … he must sense that he’s not walking out of here, right? Like I said, monsters always know to look for other monsters.
“Did you see what I did to your house?” I ask him and he nods, almost eagerly, like he thinks that admitting to this will please me. “Did it scare you?” He nods again, and I smile, standing up and moving back to stand next to Aaron again.
Oscar doesn’t ask me any questions, just steps forward and points his revolver at Eric again.
“No, please!” Eric screams, his voice shattering the still air.
Even though I’m expecting it, even though I want it, I still jump when Oscar pulls the trigger.
Two years earlier …
Oscar Montauk
It’s not as if I enjoy doing violent things. No, it’s that violent things are necessary. You can’t create order without a little chaos. You can’t stir Havoc without a little pain.
Bernadette is sitting at a café across the street, a black coffee in front of her, blond hair hanging around her face. She doesn’t want to go to school today.
Because of us.
I put my elbow on the table and rest my chin in my hand, watching her. She probably thinks that only happens now, her being under the eyes of Havoc. But that’s not the case at all. The five of us were as fucked-up as children as we are now. We’ve always watched Bernadette Blackbird.
At first, we thought of her as a lost, little bird, someone that needed protecting because they were too weak and too soft to defend themselves. Life proved to us that we couldn’t save her, no matter how hard we tried. We couldn’t save her from her abusive mother, or her pedophile stepfather.
All of that because we didn’t have the power.
We do now. And the reason we have that power is because of the violence.
“Anything new to report?” Hael asks, flopping into the chair across from me. When he looks at Bernadette, I can see it in his eyes. He’s in love with her, but in a different way than I am. The love I have for her hurts. It stings. I grit my teeth against the sensation while Hael isn’t looking, but by the time he turns back to me, the emotion is gone. I keep it locked away in a silver chest inside my heart, and I always make sure to toss away the key.
I smile.
“Nothing. She hasn’t touched her coffee or checked her phone.”
Hael nods and sighs. He doesn’t like this plan, but there isn’t much more we can do. We watch Bernadette, but Bernadette will not stop watching us. There’s no goddamn place for her here. Like I said, Havoc is violence. Violence is not fun. I just want Bernadette to leave.
She doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, unfortunately. And I really hate doing this under the guise of helping Kali Rose-Kennedy. She’s an opportunist and a silver-tongued liar with an inferiority complex; I’d never hurt Bernadette just to please her, regardless of her calling Havoc.
Above all, Havoc means two things: loyalty and family.
It doesn’t feel like we’re being very loyal to Bernadette right now.
“Shit, I hate this,” Hael says, chewing at his lip for a moment. He shakes his head again, but he does nothing to change her fate. None of us do. Hael knows he has a mother who lives inside her own head, a murderer for a father, and very poor prospects for the future if he doesn’t help Havoc build something better. We could all very easily get stuck living our parents’ lives on repeat—and we could doom Bernadette along with us.
“If it weren’t difficult, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do,” I say, shoving up from my seat and heading down the sidewalk toward Prescott High. If Bernadette doesn’t show up today, we’ll have to go and find her tomorrow, drag her from her cozy bed, make her fear the only people in the world she shouldn’t have to be afraid of.
I curse under my breath, exhaling sharply and then reaching down to fix the cufflinks on my jacket.
I tell myself not to look back at her, but I do anyway. Our eyes meet and something inside of me shifts and breaks; lava appears in those cracks, scalding and dangerous. Bernadette lifts her coffee to her lips and drinks, watching me like I said she would be, like always.
For two years, I regret that moment because that’s the moment I could’ve put a stop to it.
And I don’t mean by being nicer to Bernadette; I mean by becoming her worst nightmare.
Then she could have left, then she could have avoided all of this.
She could’ve missed me, shooting her would-be rapists in the head. It still had to be done—after all, they’d touched her in ways that only I or one of the other Havoc Boys should touch her—but I wouldn’t have ever told her about it. She wouldn’t have had to see.
Our eyes meet over the blood-stained floor, and I have to wonder why, after they all treated her so badly, she lets them touch her, kiss her, fuck her. Victor, especially. He’s the worst of all, the one who nailed her coffin shut by bringing her into Havoc. She should spit in his face, not suck his dick.
I lower the weapon.
“Bernie,” Aaron whispers, holding her in the way I wish I could. I watch him tuck her close, and my fingers twitch on the revolver. I would never hurt Aaron, but hell if I don’t want him to back off of her a bit. “Do you want to go home now?”
“I’ll go home,” she says, almost absentmindedly. She’s clearly still struggling with all of this, despite her bravado. Vic nods, like this is the acceptable answer, and sends Callum back to Aaron’s house with them.
My eyes drift back down to the pair of bodies. The world is a safer place today, even if the cost was high. I put the gun back in the holster under my jacket.
“Since you fucked-up with the video of Neil and Pen, you can clean this mess,” Victor tells me, and I just lift my gaze to stare at him. He stares right back, like I need a reminder that I messed that up, too.
“Yes, boss,” I tell him, grabbing the edge of one of the tarps and helping Hael roll up the bodies. Victor knows I won’t argue with his orders … not much anyway. Any well-functioning organization needs a leader, and we both know that’s not my thing.
Despite outward appearances, Victor has a much, much longer fuse than I do.
“Bernadette,” he calls out, just before she disappears out of view down the stairs. “Don’t go home anymore, okay? You and Heather stay with Aaron now.” She pauses for a long moment, and even from here, it’s impossible to miss how much she wants that to be true.
She takes out a wrinkled envelope from the pocket of her leather jacket, unfolds it against the side of the newel post at the top of the stairs, and then uses a tube of red lipstick to make a slash across it.
I don’t have to see the paper up close to know that it’s her list.
You’re welcome, Bernadette, I think, hiding my smile as I bend down and start the laborious task of scrubbing up blood.
November seventeenth, Now …
Bernadette Blackbird
I sit up, shrouded in darkness, my face covered by something. For a minute there, I start to panic, but then I remember that Cal gave me his hoodie in the Bronco on the way home.
“Pretend it’s me, holding you so tight you can’t breathe,” he’d whispered, and even though that statement should’ve come across as creepy, it didn’t. Not at all. Sitting up now, I push the hood of the sweatshirt back from my face and exhale sharply.
I wish I could say that I was surprised by what happened last night, but I’m not.
The Havoc Boys have hard limits, but their lines are drawn far further down the road of depravity than most would dare dance. They don’t rape; they don’t hurt kids. But they do shoot pedophiles in the face and not lose any sleep over it.
A
aron is breathing softly beside me, shirtless and beautiful in the starlight trickling in through the sliding glass door opposite the bed. It’s cracked just slightly, and I can hear birdsong. Must be early morning rather than late night.
I yawn and stretch my arms above my head, my eyes drifting over to Aaron again. He has both of his girls’ names tattooed on his back. My lips twitch into a small smile, and I reach out with two fingers to brush across the ink. He stirs and groans but doesn’t wake up.
To be honest, I barely remember climbing into bed with him. He drove me home; Callum asked to stop at Wayback Burgers on the way. That’s all I remember.
A rush of hot liquid between my thighs makes me curse, and I shove the covers aside. As I stand up, I squeeze my legs together against the rush of blood, cursing myself for not dumping my menstrual cup last night.
On my mad sprint to the bathroom, I leave red splatters on the floor, like a morbid little nod to Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs. Only … if I were in the tale, I’d probably be the witch, so maybe that’s not an apt metaphor?
With a groan, I sit down on the toilet and try my best to remedy the situation.
When Oscar opens the door, I’m sitting there with my fingers and legs covered in blood.
It’s a weird situation, I’ll be the first to admit. Oscar Montauk … watching me deal with period stuff? Not even remotely okay.
“Get the fuck out,” I snap at him, hating this damn bathroom lock and all the bullshit it brings me. First day I get off work—meaning, a day in which corpses and guns are not regular parts of my schedule—I’m going to the hardware store to get a new knob. Might even get a chain-lock while I’m at it.
Oscar stands there far longer than propriety’s sake would indicate. His eyes are unreadable behind his glasses, his shirtless body lean and painted like a canvas. Looking at him, it’s impossible to forget the sight of him with a gun in his hand, red spattered across the lenses of his glasses.
Chaos at Prescott High Page 28
