Jessie grimaced. “I can’t believe you went out with him in the first place, Chels. The guy creeps me out.”
Raquel giggled. “You should see who she’s dating—ow!” Chelsea had kicked her friend in the shin.
Jessie raised a questioning brow. Chelsea’s green eyes twinkled. “Raquel’s a teensy bit hung over still.”
The bell rang. Charles ghosted from the room before his classmates flooded the halls. He was ambushed the moment he took a seat in biology.
“Here. Get started.” Ash slid him a sheet of paper with a few illegible phrases scrawled in messy, lopsided cursive.
“Get started on what?” Charles gaped.
Ash jabbed him in the ribs. “My homework, freak.”
Charles groaned. Ash had named himself his lab partner a few months back with the less than articulate threat of “get me through this class or you’re dead.” He shook his head. How was Ash planning on getting through college? More carefully crafted threats? He stifled a snicker at the thought of Ash in a university classroom. Yo, professor. Give me an A or you’re dead.
“Sure.” Charles hid his amusement. Cooperating with the gang kept him on their radar but prevented a lot of pain.
“Have it done by the end of today,” Ash said and smirked, his hazel eyes gleaming with glee.
Charles’s mouth fell open. A flood of anxiety swept his humor aside. “It’s not due until Friday. I have classes. How am I supposed to finish this by then?”
“Not my problem. But I’d find a way if I were you. The guys and I have been bored lately.” He cracked his knuckles.
Charles threw him a withering look. Ash acted like a big shot but was only part of the gang because Alex owed Ash’s girlfriend. Charles sighed and skimmed what little notes Ash had written. The assignment required a five-page report on last week’s experiment. He was never going to finish it by the end of the day. He ground his jaw and imagined how great it would feel to send Ash hurtling through a wall with the snap of his fingers.
He researched in the library over lunch and scribbled in a feverish haze throughout his afternoon classes. He managed to knock out three pages and prayed it would appease Assassin’s Honor. He was not holding his breath.
He shuffled to last period in a swiftly narrowing funnel of doom. Should he leave now? Make a run for the bus? No, avoiding them would only make it worse later on. Maybe if he told someone, perhaps a teacher? Nope, he had tried that in fifth grade. Big mistake.
Three thirty arrived with the sick certainty that he was about to die. He headed for the exit with mounting dread. He was out of school, walking through the parking lot, almost at the corner.
“Banks.”
The single word sealed his death. He ran for it.
Alex caught him easily and threw him to the ground. Pavement scraped his palms. Several students ambled past on their way out of school, but none stopped to help. They had more important things on their minds than the well-being of a student they cared nothing about.
Alex held Charles still with inhuman strength as Nathan and Ash closed in on either side. Peter was nowhere to be seen. He avoided gang beatings as though they were a blot on his nonexistent honor.
Alex’s blue eyes burned with hate. He bared his teeth as they locked eyes. Darks took sadistic pleasure in others’ suffering, and Alex’s love of blood made him creepier than most.
Every Dark had an animal half and was able to transform into that animal at will. The type of animal they became partly defined their personalities. Alex shifted into a shark, which explained his thirst for blood and violence. Charles smirked. Would girls still find him attractive if they knew they were making out with a slimy sea creature?
Alex’s fist collided with Charles’s jaw. He had forgotten the Dark could read minds.
Eight
A CRASH OF thunder jolted Amy awake. She checked the time and groaned. Her alarm was going to blare in fifteen minutes. Monday mornings were never pleasant, and this one promised to be miserable. She had lost precious sleep and faced a rainy walk to school.
She seized the opportunity for self-care and indulged in a long hot shower. She left her blow-dried hair down to flow gently over her shoulders and dressed in formfitting jeans and a burgundy crop top sweater. Since moving to Toronto, her style had transitioned from imitation chic to comfy cute. This was partly because of the plunge in her family’s income and partly by choice. Amy no longer lived life to impress her peers. She was simply existing to survive.
She looked in on her mom before waking Susan. Mrs. Evans lay curled on her side like a child, her careworn face restful in sleep and her wispy salt-and-pepper hair trailing gently across her pillow. Relief unraveled the knot of tension in Amy’s chest. Her mother was a full-time alcoholic and a part-time intravenous drug user. Amy constantly worried about her and the problems she created. What would she do if her mother disappeared one night or wound up unconscious in the morning after a drinking binge? She and Susan had no family to help them apart from a brother back in Vancouver. Foster care would be a genuine concern if anyone learned of her mother’s neglect. She pressed a palm to her forehead and closed her mom’s bedroom door. It was time to wake her sister.
The girls found Rex making a mess in the kitchen. He stood with his back to them in nothing but baggy crimson boxers and a too-tight orange T-shirt. He stirred something foul in a pan on the stove, while already burnt toast continued to char in the toaster.
Amy cleared her throat. Rex turned around with a dripping whisk in his meaty hand. Filmy droplets of uncooked egg white splattered the linoleum floor. “What do you want?” He shook his slimy whisk.
“My new sweater!” Susan squealed, ducking behind Amy to avoid the spray.
“We need to make breakfast before going to school,” Amy said, resisting the urge to pluck the whisk from his pudgy fingers and smack him on the nose with it.
“Wait your turn. Papa’s gotta eat.” He patted his bulging stomach. His T-shirt rode up to reveal a pale layer of flab.
Amy made a face and towed Susan from the kitchen. “Come on. We’ll go out for breakfast.”
“Really?” She clapped her hands in delight. “I’ll get ready super fast. Time me!” Susan careened upstairs to brush her hair and grab her schoolbooks.
Amy smiled to herself. “One, two, three,” she counted obediently.
They strolled into Starbucks a full half hour before they had to catch their bus. Susan ordered a breakfast sandwich and a double chocolatey chip Frappuccino, and Amy coaxed down a slice of whole wheat banana bread. They spent a soothing twenty minutes people-watching through the window.
The girls arrived at their bus stop with time to spare. A lone high school student was slumped beneath the shelter with his pretty blue eyes locked on his phone.
Susan perched on the bench and flashed him a bright smile. “I like your glasses.”
He shot her a perplexed look. “Thank you?”
The girls found seats near the front of the bus. Susan and Frank exchanged cheerful greetings and chatted away the ride. Amy settled into her seat and stared blankly out the window. Her sister had never used to be outgoing. It had all begun a few months ago at the beginning of fourth grade. Susan had wiped out on the merry-go-round during recess and scraped both her knees. Chris had played her knight in shining armor and helped her to the nurse’s office. The incident had sparked a fast friendship, and Chris had taken it upon himself to introduce her to everyone he knew. Amy smiled softly. Most cute boys made Susan giggly and awkward. Chris had turned her shy little sister into a chatterbox who never shut up. She had been happier, braver, and more confident since meeting him.
Amy bit her lip, her thoughts fixating on the Donnellson brothers. They had status, and with status came snobbery and entitlement. Did she really want Susan around people like them? Did she really have a choice? Even if she went all 1960s on her sister and forbade her to see him, the kids would still hang out at school. Amy would come off looking like an over
bearing helicopter parent and have absolutely nothing to show for her strictness.
Amy drifted through her day on autopilot. She was tired and cranky and wanted to be left alone. She departed through the school’s side exit in an effort to avoid the worst of the crowd.
A throng of students had bunched up near the sidewalk that led off school grounds. They trickled past three hulking guys who had surrounded a familiar-looking teen. He was the quiet guy from the bus stop, the one whose glasses Susan had complimented. Amy struggled to channel ignorance and made to walk away. She had a mountain of her own problems and didn’t need any more.
One of the hulks raised his fist and punched the kid in the face. They laughed as he raised his arms to protect his head.
A swift rush of anger sizzled through her veins and electrocuted her into action. Amy dropped her pack and sprinted toward the group. She was forty feet away. Thirty, twenty, ten.
“What do you want?” The leader loomed over the kid with his chunky fist raised.
“Leave him the hell alone.” Amy stood with her back ramrod straight, her shoulders squared, and her mouth pressed in a firm line.
They looked at her and laughed. She stood her ground. She had been raised in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Vancouver and knew how to hold her own.
“Leave him alone?” A brown-haired guy chuckled softly. The sound raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “Who’s going to make us?”
“I am,” Amy declared with more bravado than real confidence. She reached into her purse and grasped the first object her fingers found. Her iPhone 6S. She brandished it like a weapon having no idea what else to do. “See this?”
“You gonna attack us with texts?” The leader’s mouth curved into a smirk.
Amy narrowed her eyes. “I will call nine-one-one right this second and have you arrested for violence on city property.”
Their gazes traveled from Amy, to her phone, to the kid on the ground, and back again. Their dumbfounded expressions would have been comical if the standoff had been less tense.
“You have five seconds.” Amy stabbed the nine. “Five, four, three.”
They scattered before she got to two. Elation whizzed through her like a breath of spring air. She, Amy Evans, had done something right.
The short kid leapt to his feet and brushed dirt off his jeans. He avoided meeting her eyes.
“You okay?” she asked gently, her voice laced with concern.
His pale cheeks flushed crimson. “I’m fine. I don’t need help from a girl.” He rushed away without a single backward glance.
Amy clenched her jaw against a shock wave of blistering anger. “Fine.” The anger crumbled into something worse. Her eyes burned. “Fine. You’re welcome.” A single hot tear rolled down her freezing cheek. Furious with herself for the outward sign of weakness, she brushed her sleeve across her burning eyes and marched to Parsons Elementary. How did she always manage to mess everything up? She had been cursed with the gift of total destruction. Everything she touched went catastrophically wrong. Tight bands of loneliness constricted her chest.
She rushed to her room the second they got home, threw herself onto her pillow-top mattress, and fell apart in a sea of tears. Amy had never dealt well with rejection. It had always been a trigger for self-hate and the toxic guilt that lived like a parasite within her. Her breathing accelerated as hot tears stained her face.
She pulled a knife out from under her mattress and rolled up her long sleeves. Her world was out of control. Cutting was her only escape. Cloying fingers of shame tangled around her soul as sharp needles of regret pierced her bleeding heart. Life was a suffocating nightmare from which she would never wake.
Amy lost herself in the physical sting and let it numb her emotional torment. Her sobs subsided; her breathing slowed. The world narrowed to the rhythmic certainty of the blade against her wrist. She let her pain crystallize into calm. This control was all she had left. No one was going to save her because she was always alone.
Nine
ZACK WADED THROUGH the chaos of THS’s lunch line, his spirits in the toilet at the demise of his too-short weekend.
“You seriously don’t remember anything from Friday night?” Ken asked as they purchased the cafeteria special, some sort of mystery meat.
Zack made a face. He vaguely recalled the ambulance’s flashing lights and Amy’s pissed-off looks. “Not a thing,” he lied. Friday night made no sense. He’d had two, maybe three, beers. That was it. How had he wound up in the emergency room? “The doctor said I was drugged,” he said in an undertone.
Ken’s blue eyes widened in shock. “That’s messed up.”
“What’s worse is the drugs they found in my system were similar to ones used for date rape.”
“Some crazy girl date-raped you?” Ken gasped way too loud. A group of sophomores in the lunch line behind them turned to stare.
“No!” Zack cringed, his cheeks heating. “I said the drugs were similar, not identical.” This conversation had become catastrophically embarrassing. Zack blurted the first new topic that popped into his head. “Did you go to Dominic’s party Saturday night?” He squeezed his eyes shut, painfully aware of how obviously desperate his attempt at changing the subject had been.
Ken failed to notice. “Yeah, but it was tame compared to yours. Too bad you missed it.”
Zack shrugged. “I thought I’d better give my liver a little break.”
Amy entered the cafeteria with several books under her arm. She looked unusually cute, all ass-hugging jeans and soft ebony hair. He flashed her a smile. He liked her hair down.
Ken elbowed him in the ribs. “You checking out loner chick?”
“What? No.” He hurriedly averted his eyes.
Chelsea scooted along the bench and snuggled against his shoulder the instant they joined the girls at their table. She snaked an arm around his back and rested a hand on his thigh. He narrowed his eyes. She was trying too hard.
The group spent their lunch period discussing the eclipse scheduled for Friday and making plans to watch it together. The eclipse looked super cool. It turned the full moon red. Bloodred.
“So, Zack. How’s life as a single dad?” Jessie giggled as they composted their lunch scraps.
“Horrible. I have to find Chris a sitter for tonight, and I don’t even know where to start.”
Jessie lifted one sculpted brow. “You’re cutting it kind of close.”
“Oh, come on. Babysitters are twelve-year-old girls with no lives. I just need to figure out how to find them.”
“Let’s see how well that works out for you.” She blew Ken a kiss as they went their separate ways.
Zack texted his mom on his way to class. Hey, sorry if this wakes you up, no clue what time it is there. What’s the number for the sitter? I have a game tonight for some stupid reason.
His phone buzzed a few minutes later. He hid it behind his textbook to read her message undetected. A football game on a Monday? Strange. Her skepticism was obvious even over text. I’ve attached the sitter’s contact info, but we’ve never had to have her watch Chris before. She was recommended by a friend. Zack rolled his eyes. His mother disliked inviting strangers into their home unless they were as wealthy, or wealthier, than they were.
Thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure she doesn’t run off with the good china. ;)
Ok. And Zack, you might not know what time it is in China, but even halfway across the world, I am well aware of when you are in class. Put away your phone and pay attention.
Zack stifled a chuckle. All right, disturbingly psychic mother. Good night or good morning or good whatever word best fits your time zone.
He called the sitter between sixth and seventh period. She answered on the second ring. “Hello?” Her words were barely audible above a background of clamoring voices.
“Hey. You babysit, right? I need someone to watch my brother tonight.”
“Can’t help you.” Her tone was clipped.
&
nbsp; He was distracted by Amy hurtling toward him at speed. She was also talking on her phone and ignored him as she passed. He returned his attention to his call. “But it’s important. I have a football game.”
Amy screeched to a halt and whirled to face him with her gray eyes blazing. “Because high school football games trump everything else in the world,” she said, both in person and in his ear.
He lowered his iPhone, his jaw going slack. “You’re the sitter?”
“No!” She scowled and folded her arms. She looked impossibly cute, like a fluffy-tailed squirrel squaring up to an angry bulldog. “I can’t watch Chris. I’m working tonight.”
“Oh.” He deflated. “Okay, I’ll find someone else.”
“I’m sure you will,” she huffed, disappearing into a classroom to his right.
The babysitter saga continued as Zack ran through a list of names in his head. Jessie would’ve been his first choice, but she had gymnastics Monday evenings. Chelsea was free, but he refused to inflict her upon Chris. She was notoriously terrible with children, and his brother hated her guts. Zack finally texted Chris himself to see if he had any ideas. His brother would do anything to avoid an evening with Chelsea.
Chris responded within seconds. I’ll hang out at Jake’s, no worries. Good luck tonight. Rose Lake won’t know what hit ‘em.
Zack typed a speedy reply. You’re the best, bro. I’ll pick you up afterward.
Zack and Ken trudged to detention the moment the last bell rang. Their homeroom teacher, Mr. Fields, had caught them whispering during class and sentenced them to an agonizing hour of staring at the wall.
Mr. Fields had no interest in decorating, or no life, or both. His office reminded Zack of a hospital room with its off-white walls and its disturbing lack of personal effects. The only thing worth looking at was the clock above his fastidiously organized desk.
Blood Moon's Fury: A Young Adult Fantasy Thriller (Curse of the Blood Moon Book 1) Page 6
