by Vic Tyler
My teeth grind together.
For once, it’s a dilemma. Would my family be able to forgive me if I don’t avenge them? Or would they want me to let it go if it means I can save someone who doesn’t deserve to be in this life?
My heart sinks with dread, and I’m suddenly struck with regret, turmoil, and disgust at the singularly pointed question that pops into my head.
Is that someone Adriana or me?
chapter fifteen
The months fly by, and my time steadily gets filled up with either school or studying now.
Occasionally, I’ll go down to the basement and ask Mach to help me with my homework.
I found him scurrying in the halls in the east wing for some reason, and somehow, he roped me into working for him.
He’s kind of super stingy and hardly pays me anything, but it’s still more than anything else I can make. Plus, I don’t want to keep imposing on West.
The jobs are menial tasks like cleaning the tables of blood and vomit or taking inventory of the drug cabinet, which range from hallucinogens to antipsychotics to truth serums.
Mach keeps his Advil in the top drawer of his desk, which seems like a smart idea. And he is smart. Really smart. He’s ex–CIA and the only member of the Twelve who didn’t go through the Blood Trials.
I’m not sure what that is since no one will tell me, although I’ve heard the name mentioned over and over again.
Even the deviants that talk nonstop always zip into silence when my questions get too specific. Everyone brushes me off with vague answers like they have a manual on what they can and can’t talk about.
I’m sure Ubo is one person who wouldn’t hesitate to tell me everything, but I can’t help running away every time he’s near…
Meanwhile, I still visit with West, although it’s hard to see him regularly since he’s so busy.
I’ve cautiously been testing the bounds of what he’s comfortable with me doing. Like calling him ‘West’ or even giving him hugs.
He never reacts. Doesn’t tell me to stop, doesn’t seem pleased or displeased. He just acts like I’ve always been doing it.
Although I think I’m getting to him. He’s started to pat my back when I hug him. So it’s an improvement!
I still haven’t won a single game of chess, but I am getting better since I’ve been practicing playing with other people.
So far, Jura’s the only one who regularly plays with me. He’s really good too. Unlike West who prolongs the game so I can test more strategies, Jura likes to be efficient (and he’s a sore loser), so he ends the game as soon as he sees the chance. Mean, but I learn a lot from his playing style.
The other deviants have been trying to convince me to train with them and to join them during target practice.
But all the violence scares me — the sounds of gunshots, screams, and flesh and bone impacting against each other nauseates me. It dredges up horrible memories that I want to shovel into the deepest caverns of my mind, never to surface again.
So I always refuse when the deviants offer to teach me. I haven’t touched a gun or a knife yet.
They make fun of me and call me a spoiled little princess in my dresses, but I know they’re teasing and joking in good nature.
Maybe it’s strange that I see the deviants cleaning out their guns or hear about their latest raid or watch Mach electrocute a stubborn man who refuses to give up some vital piece of information, but the thought of reporting any of them doesn’t really come to mind.
Besides, I wouldn’t have anyone to report them to.
West enrolled me into a private school for the children of affluent families. If I thought I was going to be around normal kids, I was very wrong. The teens I’m around are still immature and inexperienced, but they carry themselves with an air of importance and haughtiness.
Their parents are filthy rich and powerful, and the few scholarship students usually try not to draw too much attention since they wouldn’t be able to afford making an enemy out of the other students.
So I’m pretty sure the school administration gets paid enough to turn a blind eye and cover deaf ears for the activity that goes on in all the family homes.
Even then, I don’t want to report everyone in the mansion. I think what they do is really bad, but I like all of them. They’re so used to being disliked that I can’t bring myself to do it.
Everyone expected me to cry and run away from them by now, but that only makes me more determined not to. I like seeing their surprise when I don’t. It makes them uncomfortable, and if I’m honest, I kind of like that too. It makes me feel more powerful.
But out of everyone, I spend the most time with Damien. Whenever I go out, he’s the one accompanying me like he’s my own bodyguard. Although he never fails to complain about it. I thought he used to be so cool and collected, but he’s kind of childish too.
Like now.
He’d been wandering around the mansion for the past fifteen minutes — circling aimlessly, ducking past corners, slipping through closing doors, and hiding from people like he’s playing hide–and–go–seek–tag by himself.
I’ve been following him, wondering what he’s doing, but it was only a minute ago that he finally stopped in the kitchen cellar and stole a bottle of wine.
Like, he actually stuck it under his shirt and ran away with it.
And he actually ran.
So I ran after him, of course.
To my surprise, he leaves the mansion, sprinting straightaway for the woods behind it and jumping over the low wooden fence in a single graceful leap like he’s a show horse or something.
I dart after him — hiding behind trees and bushes, treading carefully so I don’t make any noise.
He moves quickly like he’s being chased.
I guess he is, but I doubt he’s noticed I’m here.
Besides, I got the fastest hundred–yard dash score in my class, so I’m confident I can catch up.
I crouch behind trees and bushes, crawl over logs, jump over streams, and dip this way and that with only glimpses of Damien’s dark clothing as a hint to where he’s going.
He’s been keeping up the same fast pace for the past ten minutes, and the regret starts setting in as I pant heavily and struggle to keep up.
I’m in way over my head. I should’ve stopped when he entered the woods.
But I can’t help my curiosity. Why is he being so shady, and where is he going?
He disappears behind some foliage, and when I dart after him, I burst into a large clearing.
A babbling brook tinkles ahead. Small boulders and rocks line the water, and some of them are placed randomly on the dirt ground — dark brown and bare of much grass except for a few wisps here and there.
The whole scene is a picture of clear water, grey rocks, brown dirt, green leaves.
And that’s it.
No Damien.
I swear I saw him come through here. But all around me, there are only trees and leaves with the sound of birds, wind, and water.
My body bristles as panic starts to set in.
I have no idea where I am. I’m lost and alone.
“Damien?” I call out. “Damien?”
There’s no response, and my chest seizes as tears suddenly brim my eyes.
Should I go back? I don’t even know where I am or how I got here.
I should’ve left a trail of something. Like breadcrumbs. But I don’t have any bread on me. Why didn’t I bring any bread??
What if I can’t find my way out?
Is anyone going to come looking for me?
What if I came too far, and I’m lost forever?
Am I going to die here?
When the first tear drops and I angrily wipe away at it, something lands on my head.
“Hey, hey, don’t cry.” Damien sounds alarmed.
I’m sobbing when I turn around and wrap my arms around his waist, burying my tear–stricken face into his hard chest.
“That was mean,” I
wail. “You can’t leave me like that.”
I was terrified. I thought I was going to die out here!
He chuckles as his body stiffens and tries to lean away as far as possible.
I let go. Everything about this hug is terribly uncomfortable and awkward and not easing my panic at all.
“I just wanted to give you a little scare,” he says sheepishly. “I thought you’d stop following me a long time ago, but damn, you’re persistent.”
“You knew?” I thought I was being so quiet and sneaky too.
His lips quirk into a grin. “It was obvious.”
I pout, and he laughs, walking to one of the larger rocks and sitting on it.
I stay in place, watching as he pops the cork on the wine bottle. My eyes widen when he takes a swig straight from the bottle.
“You’re too young to drink,” I scold, putting my hands on my hips.
“So are you,” he snorts.
He drinks again and stares off into the distance before looking down and dumping the wine onto the ground. And then he stops to take another swig before setting the bottle down.
What a waste of wine. I know wine is expensive. Mama and papa always kept their bottles in their own cabinet and said they were for special occasions.
Some of the men I’ve been… around… talked about spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on one bottle. One bottle! I’m sure West wouldn’t buy anything cheap, and yet, here’s Damien just pouring it out like it’s no big deal.
“Why did you do that?” I finally ask.
“Do what?” he says nonchalantly.
“Pour the wine on the ground.”
He raises the bottle to his mouth again and doesn’t answer. My legs are getting sore, so I sit on the small boulder next to his.
We sit in silence, and I’m trying to make a song from the birds chirping and singing when Damien speaks.
“I’m toasting to old… classmates.”
“Classmates?” For some reason, I can’t imagine him sitting in class, raising his hand, taking notes, and throwing wadded paper at girls’ heads. “For school?”
Damien’s lips press together. “Something like that.”
“Oh.” I kick my heels against the rock. “But they aren’t old enough to drink either.”
Suddenly, he bursts out into laughter, holding his stomach as he doubles over.
“You’re right,” he finally says when he stops. “Now, you’re making me feel bad for giving them some.”
I glance at the spot he poured the wine, and the dirt there is black and wet now.
I scoff. “Why’d you pour it then? Did you go to school with badgers and moles and armadillos? Are they underground?”
Raising the bottle to his lips, he lets out a clipped, wry “yupp.”
He tosses the bottle back, taking large gulps. His Adam’s apple bobs like it’s escorting the wine down to his stomach.
‘Yupp’?
I study the ground, and my feet itch as an uneasiness settles over me.
What does he mean by that? It’s not like he actually went to school with animals…
So are his classmates… literally underground?
My mouth dries. Are they… buried here?
“Don’t worry.” Damien’s gaze is lost somewhere in the distance. “You aren’t stepping on a grave.”
It’s the tiniest bit of comfort knowing I’m not desecrating any bodies with my sneakers, but it’s a hundred times worse confirming what I feared.
“What happened to them?”
“They died.” He gives a dry chuckle.
“How did they die?”
Damien’s long silences after my questions make me feel like I should stop asking them, but I can’t.
How could I after finding out we’re in a forest with his old classmates buried where we’re sitting?
His voice is emotionless when he speaks. “They died because they were weak.”
Damien keeps drinking and drinking, the angle of the bottle steepening more and more vertically with each gulp.
Finally, he sets it down and lies back with a sigh, staring up at the sky, which is a darker shade of blue now.
I don’t know how long we’ve been sitting here, but it feels like it’s been a while.
There’s a light pink tinge across Damien’s cheeks that looks like it could be from the cold wind, except there isn’t any. In fact, it’s kind of warm today.
“Most of those who go through the Trials don’t survive,” he says, watching the sky. “And no one comes looking for them. Abandoned or lost kids who have nowhere to go, who don’t belong anywhere, to anyone, who’ll eventually die in an alley somewhere or under a bridge or something all take the test.”
“The test?”
He turns to me, smiling faintly. “It’s more like a boot camp than a test. They’re trained to be strong, resourceful, and capable. And if they’re not…” His words fade as he looks up again. His shoulders rise in a half–hearted shrug. “They don’t make it.”
My heart sinks. “Are they killed?”
“No,” he responds. “Not directly. But there’s only so much you can put a kid through until they break.”
“What about you?”
His gaze glazes over as he drinks from the bottle again.
Damien is silent, but his silence is a thousand times more telling than West’s.
West’s silence absorbs. It’s the kind of disarming quiet that draws you into yourself, spinning you in your own tangle of thoughts and emotions that by the time you realize it happened, you’ve lost a few minutes and some part of yourself. Whether it’s your resolve or your sanity.
But Damien’s silence is loud with all the things he can’t say. It’s heavy and stifling and makes you want to scream, hoping it’d lift some of the pressure from the inside.
But that’s like saying you want to cough up cancer. It isn’t an agony lodged in your throat. It’s devastation threaded through your bones, seeping into your veins, contaminating every inch of who you were and metamorphosing who you are to become.
Maybe you’ll come out stronger and beautiful like a butterfly. Or as a mere husk of yourself. Or as something out of a nightmare. If it doesn’t kill you, it changes you.
I know how that feels because my own pain drove me to end my own life.
“What about your family?” I ask softly. “Didn’t you have any relatives to take you in after…” My words fade.
Damien chuckles. “No. None of us have family.” His gaze drifts away. “None that survive.”
In general, knowledge of the deviants’ lives are on either extreme of the spectrum. It’s either kept under lock and key and no one knows anything about them, or everyone knows.
And the story of what happened to Damien — to the Costa family — is something of a legend.
I don’t know many of the details, but I don’t think anyone really does. At least no one who talks about it.
The older deviants talk about how Griffin Zephyrus, the Tyrant of the Twelve, was a ruthless and fearless leader, demanding complete obedience and loyalty from all the lieutenants and deviants. He was West’s most trusted man and possibly the biggest threat to West’s position. Maybe even his rival.
It shocked me to find out that’s how any of them rise in rank within the organization. By killing each other.
I can’t even imagine how you could do that to someone you live, fight, eat, and spend all your time with.
It must be a formality to discourage fighting. The deviants said an ‘Assassination’ must be officially sanctioned, but I haven’t seen or heard about any while I’ve been here, so it probably isn’t actually done in practice.
But apparently, Griffin Zephyrus was the last person the deviants thought could fight for the Westlake name until he supposedly died in a brutal bombing.
It wasn’t until he was found dead and charred with his wife in their suburban house that they discovered he had survived and escaped.
The devi
ants seem to have mixed feelings about it, even as they spout curses about wanting to have killed him themselves.
They accuse him of going soft one second, and the next, they seem bitter that he left without telling any of them. It seems like they’re lashing out, confused by their own mourning.
His father is probably why the deviants are harsh on Damien, even though they seem to respect him. They expect to see Griffin Zephyrus in him, wanting him to take up the reins of his father.
But they’re different, as some of them seemed disappointed to point out.
They saw Griffin as standing beside West, whereas they see Damien always in front of West — protecting him — chained to a leash as he takes orders without question. Which is why they call him the ‘Dog.’ It’s a cruel name.
Damien suddenly bolts onto his feet and walks straight ahead in the clearing.
He kicks at the fallen leaves littering the ground, and I see light reflecting off something metallic at his feet.
Curious, I run to him.
Propped up against the tree are a soda can and a game console.
It’s weird to see them out here. It doesn’t look like they were just lost or forgotten. It’s like they were meant for someone to find them.
Crouching down, I pick up the Gameboy. It’s the latest model, and the newest Pokémon game is inside. Other than a little scuffing and weather–wear, it looks new.
Damien studies the sky, which is getting more crimson by the second. “Time to head back now.”
The forest darkens around us, and there’s a slight breeze coming through.
When I stand up, Damien glances at me. “Leave the Gameboy back where you found it.”
“But…” I frown, confused. “Isn’t it a waste if we leave it here? Someone can use it.” I perk up. “Oh, maybe Jura will want it.”
The Spider seems gloomy and antisocial, but he hasn’t stopped me from visiting him every so often.
We usually just play games and things like that. He plays Pokémon too, although it’s on his computer with a hacked version that doesn’t take nearly as long to clear (‘Do you think I have that much time to waste?’ he said wryly as he caught an Entei).
