Queen of Quarantine

by Caroline Peckham

  QUEEN OF QUARANTINE

  Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep

  Book 4

  Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti

  Table of Contents

  Campus Map

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Author Note

  Sneak Peek

  Welcome to Everlake Preparatory School.

  This series is set in the fictional U.S. state of Sequoia and centres around a pandemic similar, but more extreme than the coronavirus.

  If you need a place to chat books and escape from the world, we’d love for you to come and join our reader group. It’s a great community who you can share your passion for books with as well as having a few laughs with!

  We hope to see you there :)

  Click the map to enlarge.

  This book is dedicated to Lord Squidington who’s been in quarantine because of Co-squid 19.

  We know it’s been a struggle, buddy, especially when your girl got squidnapped during the clamdemic. You went through so many em-oceans and had to really ink about how to save her. It was turtley stressful. Especially when you swam down to the seabed on a rescue mission, but when you saw the bottom of the ocean, you blushed. Life’s a beach like that. But you shore made it through anyway! You swam into that shark’s sea-cret hideaway and rescued your bay. It was inkredible.

  Hopefully next year won’t be so cra-sea!

  O f all the torturous moments I’d endured in this lab, nothing compared to when the earpiece died. Losing contact with the Night Keepers had driven fear into my heart and made me question for a few hopeless seconds whether I was ever going to be found.

  But then I’d replayed all of their promises in my mind. They were spending every day hunting for me and they wouldn’t stop until I was free. The problem was, I’d been hidden by a monster as calculating as his son. And I knew in my heart that if Saint had wanted to keep me locked away forever, he could have pulled it off. So why should I expect any less from his father?

  But Saint was still Saint. If anyone could find a way to the centre of his father’s labyrinth, it was him. I’d given him every scrap of information I could. Everything from the colour of the walls, to the details of each face I saw, even though they were always hidden behind masks and visors. They only wore name badges with their first names and the Night Keepers couldn’t track anyone down from that alone. So I had no substantial clues to my whereabouts. Nothing to go on at all. Just faith that my boys would somehow pull through for me.

  A hacking cough tore at my throat and I grasped my neck, wincing against the pain. I brought my knees to my chest, my back to the wall in the glass box of an isolation room which I spent all of my time in. It was cold and bare and smelled like chemicals.

  I may have been immune to the Hades Virus, but the amount of it that I was being exposed to regularly meant that I was sick all the same, my body being forced to create antibodies as fast and as much as possible just so that they could harvest them from my blood and create their own version of the vaccine.

  I scrunched my eyes up and thought of my boys, missing them with all my heart. They were going to find me. I had complete faith in them. If anyone could track this place down, it was Saint Memphis. And if there was an army fit to break down the doors of hell and face what lay in the hottest part of the fire, it was the Night Keepers. But it was on me to survive until then. Which I damn well would. I’d faced demons bigger than the Hades Virus. I’d gone up against the most ruthless of beasts and had them purring in my arms by the end of it. I would not be destroyed by this monster, even when it clawed its way deep inside me and built a home in my body. I would drive it out and be strong for when the time came to run.

  A shiver wracked through me and I clenched my jaw against the biting cold. Pills were waiting for me beside my bed. But the painkillers made me sleep, hours slipped by until I was disorientated and confused. That was when they took my blood, harvesting what they wanted from me. If they tried it when I wasn’t sedated, more than one of the nurses ended up injured from how hard I fought them. There were still scratches on one bitch’s arms that hadn’t healed yet, and I relished seeing them. It was a small blow to have struck against them, but I’d take each and every win I could get right now.

  Eventually, I would have to give in and take my meds. I needed to keep my temperature down and ensure I had every chance of surviving this. But I only ever took half of what they left for me. If I took nothing, they’d just inject me with it anyway. They weren’t going to let me die unless there was nothing they could do to stop it. I was their little vaccine farm after all.

  I pressed my face against my knees, picturing each of my Night Keepers as they hunted for me. Saint and his dark soul, plotting the cruellest of fates for my enemies; Kyan thirsting for blood with vengeance written into his flesh as if it were inked there alongside his tattoos; Blake preparing to fight for me with all the strength he’d built from his pain and suffering; Monroe waiting to charge in and save me like a dark knight with fury and justice in his heart.

  So help everyone in this building when they came for me. The four horsemen were going to collect their queen. And when they arrived, there would be blood to pay.

  I held out a while longer before I took half my pain meds and stuffed the rest under the mattress. I curled up beneath the blanket on the bed and shivered myself into sleep as the sedative dragged me away. It wasn’t all bad. In the darkness, I always seemed to return to one place. A time when life was simple and good and nothing bad ever happened. So at least there I could escape this agony, for a little while.

  “What’s the point of this?” I huffed as I tried to climb up onto the lowest branch of a large tree. Jess was already high up in the canopy, her whoops of excitement occasionally carrying back to me.

  “It’s to make you strong,” Dad called from the ground as I managed to heave myself up onto the next branch. Jess was thirteen and had stronger arms than me. I still had beanstalks that could barely hold my weight, let alone drag me up a stupid tree.

  “Why do I have to be strong?” I groaned as my palm rubbed against a spiky knot and I gave up, dropping down to sit with my back to the trunk and pouting at my dad.


  He pushed his glasses up his nose before folding his muscular arms. “Because you never know what life is going to throw at you, Tater-tot. You need to prepare for every outcome so you can weather anything. You have to be ready to fight, just in case you ever need to.”

  “Well, if I didn’t climb trees then there wouldn’t be anything to weather. What if I fall?” I tossed at him. I was in a bad mood today. We were staying on a farm and there was a rooster who always made a horrible noise at stupid o’clock. I’d give him a cock-a-doodle-doo to remember if I got my hands on him.

  “What’s the alternative, kiddo? Are you gonna stay at home hiding from life forever?”

  “That’s the safest thing to do, isn’t it?” I insisted. Sometimes I got so tired of moving around the country, never staying anywhere too long, never having fun that didn’t involve being stuck in the middle of nowhere. I liked campfires and scavenger hunts, but I also liked sleeping ‘til noon and hanging out with Elle Tompkins.

  Okay, so maybe I wasn’t just mad about the rooster. Dad had made us move again. I’d known it was coming. But I’d really, really liked the last place in Virginia. And Elle had been cool. She enjoyed dancing and singing and had promised to teach me a routine we could do together. I’d been dumb enough to think I could convince Dad to finally stay in one place. But he’d said no again and again. I just hadn’t wanted to hear it. Now I was up a tree on a drizzly day in nowheresville and I’d never see Elle again. It sucked.

  “Life can’t be lived in one place, kiddo,” Dad said with a taut frown on his brow.

  “Why not? I liked the last town, why can’t we live there like normal people?” I pushed my lower lip out.

  “I don’t mean physically, I mean everything is always changing, you’ll always be moving forward, time will keep passing, stuff will forever happen to you. So you have to go out there and experience the world and make the most of it, because if you don’t, life will one day come knocking on your door and you won’t like what it has to say.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “But what if I do that and life is bad? Like falling out of a tree bad.”

  “Then you’ve gotta fight, kiddo,” he said fiercely. “Because life will be bad sometimes. It’ll test you and push you and you’ll want to give up, but if you do it’ll suck every drop of happiness out of you until there’s nothing left.”

  “I don’t want that,” I murmured.

  “So fight,” he growled, his eyes flaring. “Fight with the spirit of the warrior I know lives in you. Fight for the good days. Fight to be stronger than anything the world hurls at you, fight for what you want. Always, Tatum, always. Because no one but you can make your life what you want it to be.”

  “But how do I know what I want?” I asked in a small voice. The world felt too large sometimes, like there were too many doors and windows and I didn’t know which ones to go through.

  I liked the sun and the sea and playing with my sister. I liked burgers without pickles and silly emojis like squids and potatoes. But I didn’t know what I wanted from life. The question was too big. There were too many answers. And I didn’t have any.

  Dad gave me a knowing smile. “You’ll know it when you find it.”

  “But what if I don’t know it?” I asked sheepishly.

  His smile dropped away. “Then you’ll know it when you lose it.”

  “Oh,” I breathed.

  “But the world is full of second chances, kiddo,” he promised. “You can make things good. Any situation. No matter how bad. It can be good again. I swear it. You’ve just gotta be brave enough to give life hell. Don’t settle for less. You’re not here to bow to the world, beautiful girl, you’re here to make the world bow to you.”

  I woke like I was rising out of the deepest, darkest of waters. My eyelids were too heavy to lift and the familiar rattle of the air conditioning unit sounded as a wave of cool air gusted against my cheek. My lips were bone dry and I tried to move my tongue to wet them, but the sedatives still held me in their grip.

  A buzz sounded then the door opened and voices moved into the room.

  “I feel sorry for her,” a man muttered.

  “I don’t,” another replied. “The world has gone to shit, Alan, and I want it back. I want my damn life back.”

  “I know, I do too, Jonas. I just…” Alan sighed.

  “Don’t be an idiot, she’s just one girl. Thousands of people are dying every day because of the Hades Virus. What’s one more to save the whole world?”

  “I guess,” Alan gave in and my pulse beat out a grim tune. “How much longer do you think she’ll last?”

  “As long as we can make her live.” A thermometer was pushed into my mouth and the cold metal bit my tongue. A beep sounded a minute later. “Jesus. Get the heating up in here. Who the hell was on the last shift?” Jonas snarled.

  The air conditioning soon switched to a warm rush of air and I realised how numb I was as my fingers began to tingle with sensation again.

  “I bet it was fucking Gary, he couldn’t keep a goldfish alive for an hour, let alone a girl,” Alan muttered.

  “He’ll be fired before noon,” Jonas said under his breath, taking hold of my arm then a needle slid firmly into my skin.

  More strength began to curl through my body, and I managed to crack my eyes open and take in the guy whose face was hidden behind a visor and a face mask beneath it. His attention was on the needle in my arm as he drew out a vial of blood. Alan was across the room gathering more vials and I clenched my jaw determinedly as I saw a small window of opportunity.

  I flexed my toes, assessing the strength in my right leg as I glared at this asswipe of a human being beside me. Dad had taught me to fight no matter what. Fight for the good. Make it good, Tatum.

  I lifted my leg fast and slammed the heel of my bare foot into Jonas’s groin, knocking his arm away from the syringe in the same movement. He roared in pain, stumbling back and clutching his junk.

  I shoved myself up, my head spinning as I tugged the needle out of my arm then I lunged at him with the last of my strength, grabbing his white coat in my fist and knocking his visor aside as I fought to see the face of one of my captors. I coughed heavily and he shoved me to the ground with a panicked yell and my head impacted with the floor, making my skull ring like a gong.

  “Stupid bitch,” Jonas spat, slamming his visor back into place while Alan looked between us in alarm, two empty glass vials still clutched in his grip.

  “I’ll get the doctor.” Alan ran for the door, but Jonas caught his arm to stop him, his dark eyes swirling.

  “No. We have a job to do.” He took a syringe from a tray beside him and stalked forward with murder in his eyes.

  I coughed again, scrambling backwards as my strength failed me. My coughing grew heavier and I tasted blood in my mouth, swilling over my tongue like poison. Fear pulled at my heart and whispered deadly promises in my ear. I dabbed my lips with shaking fingers, my death staring back at me more keenly than ever before as they came away wet and red.

  “She’s in the final stages,” Alan gasped.

  “Then we’d better take what we can get.” Jonas sneered, dropping down and jamming the needle into my thigh. The sedative washed through my veins fast and my eyes locked with Jonas’s as darkness grabbed me and tried to pull me into oblivion.

  Spots of blood speckled the mask he wore beneath his visor and I managed to paint on a mocking smile, aware it might be my last. If I was going to die soon, I wouldn’t let these motherfuckers see my spirit break.

  “It looks like you’re coming with me to hell, Jonas,” I rasped and terror swirled in his eyes before I fell away into an endless abyss.

  F our weeks. Four fucking hellish, unbearable weeks without my baby in my arms and her soul in my keeping.

  I crouched behind a parked car a block away from the private research lab we were all focused on, flexing my busted knuckles and relishing the twinge of pain as the scabs cracked open across them. I probably w
ould have broken my hand punching that damn wall if Saint hadn't stopped me, though he was sporting the mother of all bruises on his ribs in thanks for his help. I was enough of an asshole that I hadn't even apologised for that move and he was enough of a man to understand that I was sorry all the same.

  I didn't deserve him. Didn't deserve any of them. But they were stuck with me and I'd do whatever I could to make my place amongst them count.

  I owed Saint an apology for smacking him, I just didn't have enough good in me right now to give him one. I was blinded by the loss of our girl, just like we all were. Until she was back in our arms, I knew this violence, this tension, this unrelenting anger wouldn't do anything other than fester and spread like rot.

  It was hard to feel anything other than fury and fear right now. And I hadn't felt fear in a long damn time. I'd even begun to believe that I wasn't capable of feeling it anymore. But then Tatum Rivers had made me feel a lot of things I'd never thought I could feel.

  She was the light to my dark, the hope in a world without any, the reason for my shackled soul to crave freedom. She'd given me dreams of a life with something more. So much fucking more. It was beyond anything I ever could have claimed to deserve but she'd given it to me anyway. Even after all the things we'd put her through when she'd first fallen into our lives.

  But I should have known then what I did now. She was never just some girl, never a victim or a means to an end. She was the centre of us. The heart we never believed we had. She'd drawn four lost and hopeless souls into her orbit and claimed each and every one of us as her own, despite the dark and depraved beasts she knew us to be. Without her, we were nothing. I was nothing. Cast adrift without purpose or meaning. But that wasn't going to be my fate, because I refused to even consider the idea of it being hers.

  I was terrified at the thought of her being taken from this world and while that could have been crippling, it was actually liberating. I had no limits left on me now. There were no depths I wouldn't stoop to. Nothing I wouldn't do and nothing I wouldn't sacrifice for her. So now that fear was my fuel, I was going to use every last drop of it in the quest for her safe return to us.