by Jayla Kane
It was grotesque. Truly. Jake is a fucking psycho. He didn’t even talk to the girl when we left the locker room together; he forgot about the whole thing as soon as it was done.
Jake is a monster, in a lot of ways. Not flawed—monstrous.
But smart. Smart, loyal, good in a fight—angry, like I said. Most of the time, in a way I understood, Jake actually chose not to be shit, the way most people did. He didn’t have anyone to impress, I guess. Nothing to lose, either.
Jake would not be my friend any more if I kidnapped Baby.
Even if he hated Raven until the day he died—and I’d seen them together, and doubted he could keep his fucking hands off of her for much longer than an hour, let alone a day—he would never forgive me for taking Baby because of what happened to his brother.
Because someone made Tristan Warfield disappear, the same way I was about to make Baby disappear.
Was it possible the Society abducted Tristan? If they’d done this once, they could’ve done it dozens of times, right?
Why was this my only job with them? Because she realized she couldn’t control me? That they could only push me so far before I started murdering any Society members I could find? She said she’d under-estimated me, but I don’t know if that meant my character or my powers. I didn’t know what any of it meant.
Except for the very simple fact that they would kill Molly if I didn’t do this.
Right now.
I watched her after school, my gut twisting in my belly. Got there early to pick up Molly and sat in the parking lot in my truck, positioned perfectly to keep one eye on the cheerleaders parading around in the big field out back. No one would bother me; I was designated on a list as someone who was allowed to do this, to be here, to linger like a fucking creep in a parking lot and watch young women from afar. Everything about it made my skin crawl.
I did nothing else. I just drove off with Molly when the time came.
The next day I arrived early, took the same parking space. Watched. Hated myself. And then I saw a dark head split off from the rest of the girls, an unmistakable figure made of more curves than a mountain highway. Baby walked right towards me, trailing her fingers along the chain link fence as she slowly stalked along the length of it towards the gate. We stared at one another for a long moment when she reached it, and I got a good look at her. Too far away to see more than a glint of the caramel in her eyes, the dark tendrils that framed her perfect face, the shape of her.
Jesus. I could barely take a breath.
I like women, but I know I’ll be spending my life alone. I’ve made my peace with it—honestly, I prefer it. I choose it. But Artemis Keller…
I would probably trade my left hand for one more kiss. Just one.
Nothing like her in the world.
And now I was supposed to steal her away—to procure her for the Society, for god-knows-what unforgiveable reasons. And I’ll be honest, when I saw her watching me from across that fence, every inch of my skin pulled tight, a storm in my soul that I knew was named after her… I mourned. I mourned who I was going to become once I took her, and I mourned what I would never have, never in a million years—I would never, ever kiss her again. Never.
I didn’t have to pick up Molly that day. She was still standing at the fence, the wind stirring her dark curls as I drove away, fingers pushed through the fence as she watched me go.
I had to do it that night. I only had three days.
I didn’t go in before dark, at least. I didn’t want to stalk her at school again, or take too long—I couldn’t. I was sick with disgust; only my love for my sister could make me go through with it. Baby hated me, sure, but I didn’t hate her with the same ferocity, not a bit. If someone was fucking with Molly at school for any reason—and I bet Baby had no idea Raven killed Tristan, and given what I knew about her after our little encounter, she might not even care—I would do the same thing she had: use my arsenal to destroy them. I sympathized, really; not with Raven, but with Baby. She was a viper, a vixen with sharp fucking teeth, but no one deserved this. Nobody.
Too fucking bad.
I jumped, over and over—I’d done it before now, and strangely enough into the same house. That’s how I got Raven’s things without anybody noticing; even if I was used to being able to go where I wanted without attracting a lot of notice, it was another thing entirely to walk up a narrow staircase in the back of a private residence in the middle of the night. So I jumped; if anything it was easier this time. I knew where I was going, and that made me faster—one jump into the house, crouched down behind the counter in the main room. One jump to the corner, where I listened to see who was awake. One jump to the top of the stairs, a quick inhale as I heard someone below me making a cup of tea in the kitchen; one more jump to Baby’s door.
It took longer for me to go inside.
I couldn’t wait; someone would see me, and then what would happen to Molly? I’d go to jail—I’d deserve to—but she’d be out here, and I’d have failed. Would they punish me by punishing her?
I never wanted to find out.
I pushed open the door. Her bedroom was dark and quiet. I’d never been inside; I only knew where it was because of my first bumbling attempt to find Raven’s room and get her books. I stood for a minute and listened, finding her quiet breath in the darkest corner, away from the window. It took a minute for me to figure out how to make my eyes become more of my animal self’s, so I could see in the dark—I got a glimpse of her black hair spilling over the blanket before I realized I’d given myself claws, too, and gave it up. It took me a minute to make them retract, and then I peeled my t-shirt off and used the back to wipe up the drops of blood on her floor. It stuck to my spine when I put it on, but at least it wouldn’t touch her, and hopefully wouldn’t scare anybody that came in here. The last thing I wanted was for her sisters to wander in and find a blood stain. I made sure to close the door behind me and walked as slowly and quietly as I could, then kneeled by her bed.
I hadn’t seen her in months before the other day. I hadn’t been this close to her since she threatened me, since that ripe mouth had been raw with my kisses, since she brought my whole body to life with two words. Touch me.
Baby Keller. My fucking archnemesis, the most beautiful girl in entire goddamn world.
She looked like an angel. She was older now, only a little bit; I could see it in the set of her mouth, though, as if she worried while she was asleep. I reached out and pulled the blanket back inch by inch, and in spite of how sick I felt—my whole stomach rocked with nausea—I couldn’t help but blink when the covers were all the way down. Those long, gold legs. Gold arms. Hips and ass, Jesus—those tits… I squeezed my eyes shut, disgusted with myself, and then forced them open. She hadn’t woken up yet, but her body tightened up into a little ball, as if she were getting cold. I slid my arms beneath her—and it hurt, it hurt like hell that I only got to touch her because I was hurting her—and stood up in one smooth movement, her head rocking against my chest. My breath froze for one instant when her eyes sleepily drifted open and her gaze locked on me, boring into me… And then she snuggled back into my arms and sighed, like there was no place in the world she’d rather be.
It broke my fucking heart.
I jumped, all the way back. I’d never done that before—jumped so many times in succession, so fast or so recklessly. If anyone was watching they would’ve seen something that seemed impossible. I slowed down when I got to the trees in the Commons, but she was still tight against me, her head on my chest, her fingers wrapped in my collar. It made me breathless, the dreamy look on that beautiful face, tilted in the moonlight… I jumped again and landed at the base of Thorn Tower, and carried her upstairs. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. The office looked different; they’d gotten rid of the chairs, the carpet I’d shredded. The desk was shoved against a wall, the leg I’d broken stacked on some bricks; I smirked at how tacky it looked, then felt my face freeze when I took in the deep gashes
I’d left in the walls, the floor. It looked like a tiger’s cage—like something wild had been trapped and tried to claw their way out. And I hadn’t gotten out at all.
The door was right in front of me. I couldn’t jump now, I realized; I didn’t know where I was going. I shut the office door behind me and carried Baby over to the second door, cradling her against me as I opened it, stepped onto the landing, and closed it behind me. The stairs were lit with old fashioned lamps, heading down into the dark. I was quiet the whole way down, still too afraid to try and use my power; I didn’t want Baby to wake up and see me like that. Instead we slowly descended, the air musky and damp as we went lower and lower into the ground. It occurred to me when we reached the bottom that this whole thing must be obscured the same way the real office was, because Thorn Tower wasn’t big enough to hold this many rooms, this many stairwells. At least from the outside.
The cells looked like fucking cells, like something out of a goddamn history channel special on the middle ages.
I didn’t want to leave Baby here. I halted and stared around at my options; we were underground, now, in some kind of central chamber, and there were four cells altogether, one door in the center of each wall. I slowly walked around and looked in all of them, and they were the same: grim, dark chamber lit by a single lamp, straw-tick bedding stuffed inside a mattress covered by a single sheet, toilet and sink in the corner. At least those looked modern. The floors were made of the same stone as the rest of the tower, the walls plastered over; the cells were dryer than the entry chamber and the stairs. The doors had a single small window in the very top. Baby wouldn’t even be tall enough to look out of it once I closed her inside.
I stopped in my tracks at that thought.
Once I closed her in—once I locked her in a goddamn cell.
And left her to god knows what fate, at the mercy of these savages.
She stirred in my arms, as if she could feel the panic rising in me, and I held her tighter, my heart racing. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it. And then something clicked—they hadn’t said I had to leave her. My job was to… To procure her, and to tend her. Wasn’t that what the Rose said? To procure and tend.
Fine, I thought, nestling Baby under my chin; she tucked in deeper, tighter, her cheek right over my heart. I held her close, nudged the cell door shut, and went over and sat down on the bed. It groaned beneath my weight, but I didn’t put her down, didn’t move at all, just held her, close and tight.
It was the last time, I was pretty damn sure, I would ever get to touch her.
So I settled in to wait.
Chapter Seven
Baby
I was hot. Way too hot—damp with sweat, sticky feeling. And… Horny.
I’d been dreaming about him again—that fucking redneck that went to school with Rae, best buddies with Jacob Warfield, the socio. Nice. I hated how my body still remembered everything about the ten minutes I spent in the cab of that truck with him, how hard it’d been to rip myself off and walk away in the heat of the moment. Listen, Missy Keller is not a nice girl; I’m not above making out with a dude I think is hot and ditching when it gets a little too spicy in the kitchen. I have my V-card, technically, I guess, but mostly just so I can say I do. Gives me a little more leverage when I need it—idiots love a hot virgin. But I seriously almost threw all that away for another five seconds with that big, sloppy, scary… Sexy, ungodly sexy hunk of trailer trash.
He’d surprised me, was the thing. I know guys like him. Our whole county is exclusively populated with them. Even the meatheads that wind up at the Institute are basically just driving with their dicks, you know? You know. Everybody knows. But Hunter Black, best friends with the local psychopath and proud owner of not one but three trailers in the middle of god-forsaken-nowhere was, in this order: firstly, way fucking hotter than he had any right to be; secondly, way fucking hotter than I possibly could’ve expected him to be; thirdly… A gentleman. I don’t know how else to say it. All that old world courtesy guys usually leave in the garbage as soon as you wink at them? His was the real deal. It made me hate him more, for some reason, but it also made it harder to go through with the whole thing.
But I wasn’t going to throw away a chance to get him off Raven’s back.
Mom only ever went to Roddy. Our car is a true piece, but we can’t afford a better one yet—we don’t really go anywhere that warrants a new car, and the new bills that would remind us of it. So our ancient, piece-of-crap Toyota—reliable as all hell, thank goodness—was Roddy’s to fix when things went wrong. And Hunter Black’s, I guess, now that I saw how things worked. My mom would take it to Roddy’s shop and walk the five minutes back to our house when she needed something done; she’d just assumed it was Roddy fixing the Toyota. I have a feeling it wasn’t. It was a six foot plus man-beast with girl eyes, but she didn’t know that. So when I took the car—I wasn’t supposed to take it to Philly, but neither of my sisters were around and the only advantage to having a really questionable parent is that you can do things and no one knows because they’re never there—and it started smoking, I headed back to the Black place. I knew where it was because Mom took it there once or twice when I was little, and it’s not hard to find. There’s nothing else there.
I should’ve been more careful though, because the whole thing looked like the intro to an Eli Roth film. The Hills Have Eyes. Cabin Fever. All that kind of shit. I pulled past the gate—with two mounted wildcat skulls, one on each post, real frickin’ inviting—and drove down the long driveway through the woods to Camp Crystal Lake. Just kidding. But not. I went over a hill and headed down into a little valley in the middle of all these trees and saw the trailers, and an ocean, not even exaggerating, of dead cars. Just a sea of them. So I knew I was in the right place. I slowed the car down and straightened my shirt—unbuttoned the top two buttons, you know, reapplied the lipstick, standard shit for when you need a guy to do something—tucked my mace in my pocket, and got out of the car.
I looked around; it was dead quiet. Nothing for miles. I was officially the star of Saw 19, or whatever sequel they’re on now. I was about two seconds from scrambling back into the car when I heard a screen door slam.
And there he was.
In the movies, he wouldn’t be hot. He’d have a face like that dude in the Goonies and a beer gut and he’d do whatever I wanted when I let him peek at my cleavage. In the movies, and even real life, he’d just be a regular guy, thinking like a regular guy and acting like a regular guy.
But Hunter Black is not a regular guy.
He is at least six and a half feet tall. Most of the varsity starters on our basketball team were shorter than him. And he was ripped. Looked like somebody tore him out of a damn anatomy textbook. And all the sweat and dirt in the world couldn’t hide the fact that he was also handsome—not in some cheesy boy-band way; he didn’t look like he had any sweet moves he was waiting to bust out on the dance floor. He looked… Like an old movie star. Like the villain, actually, in an old movie, the kind that made your panties wet when he twirled his mustache and tied you to the train tracks—except for his eyes.
His eyes are dark, so dark I couldn’t tell what color they were until I contrived a way to look at them in the right light, angling around him in the driveway. They’re grey—the darkest grey I’ve ever seen, so dark they seem black. Opaque. But they’re not; they’re grey. And wide, and almond shaped, with the thickest, longest black lashes you’ve ever seen in your life.
I grew up around the hottest boys in Ashwood, probably the hottest boys in our whole country; Jake, of course, grew up to become the kind of person you were just waiting to make a mugshot collage of, but Tristan—sweet, dead Tristan—and his lovely face were MIA, and Morgan—sweet, genetically doomed Morgan—went to some boarding school that probably specialized in douchery. But none of them, in my mind, could even compare.
Hunter Black took my breath away, and that made me furious.
How dare he?
H
ow dare he look like this? How dare he stand there so still and quiet—how dare he deliberately avoid looking down my shirt? How dare he take a step back from me, how dare he dodge my manipulations, how dare he require the truth?
As much of it as I could give, I ended up having to give. It was a tightrope walk; I wasn’t good at it. I’m not an especially skilled manipulator, really—my bag of tricks is about six inches deep. Ha-ha. Seriously though, I realized he was expecting me to lie, that he’d watched the way I moved in the first ten seconds and clocked my usual game, and he wasn’t buying it. No interest. And he didn’t even act like that because he suspected anything—no… Hunter Black just didn’t act like that. He just didn’t care about those kinds of games, those kinds of girls. So I had to reel him in with the way I really felt, and that made me so. Fucking. Angry.
Because fuck him.
Fuck him for standing there while my sister cried herself to sleep at night, fuck him for locking her out of the library, fuck him for her busted tires and her ruined papers and her tired face and her hopeless fucking approach to everything—just fuck him. I couldn’t get to Jake. Jake has money, and he just didn’t care; there was nothing to blackmail him with.
But I could get to Hunter. So I did.
And it hurt. Way, way more than it should’ve.
Because I couldn’t reconcile the way he spoke to me with a person that would do that shit to my sister. I couldn’t imagine the guy who wouldn’t touch me with his hands until I put mine on his thick, muscled palms and placed them on my body calling my sister a Creepy Keller and telling her to go to hell. I couldn’t imagine the guy who opened my door for me—twice—making her cry.
