Ghost Bird: The Academy Omnibus Part 1: Books One - Four

by C. L. Stone

  Rocky was beaming. “Looks like you’ll have to break up with her, Silas,” he said. “Didn’t know she was dirty.”

  “What the hell are you doing to her?” Silas bellowed at North.

  “They forced us in here,” North said, gesturing to the guys, who had fallen back behind Rocky and the others.

  “So? They do that all the time,” Rocky said. “Doesn’t mean you steal your friend’s girl. That’s harsh, dude.”

  Silas lunged forward, with enough fury in his face that if I wasn’t pressed to the wall already, I would have fallen back.

  Nathan pushed himself in front of Silas. “Stop, don’t,” he said, grabbing at Silas’s arm and hauling him back.

  Only when I peeked around North’s arm again, their eyes didn’t match their expressions at all. Silas looked annoyed. I knew for sure that despite Nathan’s strength, he wasn’t a match for Silas with his power and mass. Silas wasn’t really fighting. He was faking.

  North readied himself, his fists lifting. “Fuck off. She didn’t want to. They locked us in and said they wouldn’t let us out unless we did.”

  “Oh, is that all it took?” Jay quipped.

  “Shut the fuck up,” North said.

  The others who had forced us into the closet laughed, falling back and leaving the room.

  “Come on, Sang,” Silas said through his clenched teeth.

  Jay rolled his eyes. “Why bother?” he asked, glaring my way.

  Rocky was still looking too happy that this happened. “Let’s get out of here,” he told his friend. “Break up imminent.” Jay and Rocky ducked out of the bedroom.

  North grunted and sighed when it was just me, Nathan and Silas left. “Shit.”

  “What the hell were you doing?” Nathan said through his teeth. “Did you fucking kiss her in there?”

  “No,” North said. “Well kind of.”

  Nathan’s mouth gaped open and he slid a glance at me.

  I covered my mouth with my fingers in response. Nathan and Silas tilted their heads curiously for a moment, trying to connect what they’d seen to what I was expressing to them now. It took a moment but Nathan’s eyes finally lit up. “Oh ... oh. Like Luke did.”

  Silas blinked. “Ah. But what the hell? Why’d you go in anyway?”

  “It’s a long story,” North said.

  I stepped around North, tired of the closet. “What are we supposed to do now?”

  “I don’t know,” North said. “I wasn’t prepared for this.”

  I found my red cup on the dresser, held it in front of me while I turned around. “Maybe we should go home. Or are we still trying to get you guys to stay friends with the team?"

  “I don’t know if we can all leave together,” Silas said. “Or maybe we can sneak out. Maybe I should go in the closet with her. Nathan, you can tell them we’re fucking around or something.”

  “I don’t want to start that,” North said.

  “You didn’t leave me with much choice, did you?” Silas barked at him. “I’ve been trying to save her reputation all night and you just messed it up.”

  “What do you mean save?” I pressed. “What reputation?”

  Their mouths clamped shut and they glared at each other.

  I rolled my eyes. “Will you both stop? Please? Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “It’s nothing,” North said.

  I made a face, furious with them. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me what was really going on? They thought I had trust issues? They were just as bad. Angry, I pushed the cup to my lip. It was a replacement for my finger mostly, pinching my lip to my teeth.

  North frowned at me. “Don’t leave your damn cup out and then drink from it.”

  “It’s fine.” I wasn’t planning to drink from it, but his snapping at me had me firing off without thinking.

  He snatched the red cup from my hand and put it to his mouth, took a swing. He glared at me while he was doing it, but as he drank, his expression changed from annoyance to surprise. He pulled the cup from his mouth, spitting back out the liquid in his mouth into the cup.

  “What?” Silas asked. “Someone spit in it? Good. You deserve it.”

  North frowned, using the light from the closet to peek into the cup. “Someone put something in it.”

  Silas and Nathan’s eyes went wide. I glanced from them to North and back. “Why? What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” North said, his eyes swinging back and forth as if thinking. “I swallowed something. A pill, I think.”

  “Roofies?” Nathan asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so,” North said. He shook his head. “I need to get out of here before whatever it is starts working.”

  Nathan nodded, turning to me. “Sang, follow North out to the car. Silas and I are going to make one more round as if we’re leaving, but we’re going to look for whoever might have done this to see if we can figure out what it was.” He dipped his hand into his pocket, pulling out his keys and handing them over. “Get in the car. If he falls down or something before he gets there, stay with him.”

  “Let’s go,” North said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’ll hit soon. It was partially softened by the water.” He made a fist, punching at the dresser. “I hate fucking parties.”

  NORTH UNLEASHED

  I followed North out of the party house. I was terrified that whatever someone had given him could be dangerous. Should we make him throw it up? He didn’t seem too concerned about it possibly being poisonous.

  I didn’t know much about parties or drugs at all. I knew what weed smelled like, thanks to high school bathrooms. Other than that, I didn’t know what to expect. Was he going to start hallucinating?

  What was worse was it felt like my fault, too. For that reason, I walked behind him instead of next to him.

  When we got out into the sea of cars in the yard, though, North slowed, turning and pulling me along. He wrapped an arm around my head, covering my eyes. “Don’t look,” he said, and he started forward, keeping my eyes covered and pushing me along.

  “What? Why?”

  “Will you shut up and trust me for once tonight?” he asked.

  “Why can’t I see?” I didn’t understand and I was stumbling next to him. Was this the drugs talking to him already? Was he doing something crazy?

  “There’s teenagers fucking in their cars. Do you really want to watch?”

  I gasped. Was he serious?

  “That’s what I thought. Just hang on to me,” he said.

  I tripped along next to him. The way he did it made me think there was a couple in every car along the way.

  When the noise from the house died down, North’s hand slipped away from my eyes to rest around my shoulders.

  We closed in on the car. I looked through the group of keys for one I thought belonged to Silas and unlocked the door. North fell into the back seat, I slipped in next to him, scared to leave him alone.

  North slumped in the seat, putting a palm on his forehead. “When they get here, you should sit up front,” he said. “If we can’t figure out what this is, you probably don’t want to be next to me when it hits.”

  “Should we go to the hospital? Should we call Dr. Green?”

  “We’ll call if we can’t figure out what it is and if I start doing something really stupid.”

  I hated this. We were finally going home, which I was grateful for, but this was much worse. I was angry at everyone on the football team for this, and at everyone at the party. They were all awful. No wonder Kota didn’t want me to go. I kicked my sandals off, picked my feet up off the floor, wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my head into my knees. I just wanted to hide my anger.

  “Don’t, Sang Baby,” North said. I sensed him shifting and he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me to lean against him. “Don’t fall apart on me now.”

  I collapsed into him, relieved to have him so close. It was only minutes since we were in the closet together and he was kissing me, but no
w it felt like a million years ago, another person. My cheek pressed to his chest. “I don’t think I want to go to another party.”

  He cupped my head, pressing his nose to my hair. “Never?”

  “Not one where they’re trying to poison you, North.”

  He frowned against my head. “You do realize that they were trying to poison you, right? It was your cup.”

  I fell quiet, unsure how to respond. He was right.

  “Next time, will you listen to me? Please?”

  “I did listen to you.”

  “You were about to drink the water.”

  I sucked in a breath, pulling back from him. “I wasn’t! I just said it was probably fine.”

  “You had it at your mouth.”

  “I was just pressing it there,” I said. “I wasn’t going to drink it.”

  He grunted. “How was I supposed to know? And I was still right. If you did take a chance on it ...” He stopped, rolled his eyes, falling away to sit back against the seat. “I can’t believe this. I can’t take you anywhere without someone else trying to fuck things up.”

  “What else am I supposed to do?” I fired back at him. “Lock myself up in the closet?”

  He sat up, his hands reaching out to grip me by the shoulders. “Shut up. Don’t you ever fucking say that again. Don’t talk like that.”

  “Well what do you want me to do, North?” I asked. I wasn’t really angry with him, just at the situation and at people I couldn’t yell at. I knew I should have kept it to myself but I couldn’t stop. “I can either go out and do things and try to pretend to be normal or I’m stuck not going anywhere. Which is it? Where do you want me?”

  His mouth fell open, moving like words wanted to form but he couldn’t figure out which ones. He scowled, shoving me.

  I fell onto my elbows in the seat, backing up slightly against the door. He dropped on top of me. I trembled. I’d gone too far. I’d made him mad.

  He shoved my hand toward my mouth. He brought his mouth down hard against my fingers.

  The moment of panic slipped away the instant I realized he was kissing me. The heat I felt with hate and anger inside of me turned into something I didn’t recognize. All I knew was I cared about North and he was right there in front of me. I wanted to forget everything about tonight and be happy again, and he was the only thing there that could save me. The heat of his body was warming against the chill of the evening. His power was overwhelming, but I surrendered to him. Trust him, he’d told me. They knew what they were doing. Let go and let them take over for a while. I willed myself to stop worrying about everything, and it was much easier to do when he was directing.

  My free hand drifted up, and I clutched at his chest over his heart.

  He kept his lips over my hand, but gripped at my hips, sliding me down further into the seat. The hoodie slid up at my back, exposing part of my belly.

  When his fingertips traced against the softness at my bare side, I trembled.

  “Baby,” he pleaded against my fingers as his mouth seemed to want to slip through my hand to kiss me. “Sang ...”

  His knee knocked against mine, shifting up along my thigh. He pushed, parting my legs. He gripped at my hips again, readjusting me where he wanted me against the seat and he pushed his body down on top of me. I felt his hip bones biting into my inner thighs and his groin pressed up against mine. His rough hands slid up my sides, dragging the material of Kota’s hoodie and my shirt up along with it to expose more of my stomach.

  I gasped against my fingers at my mouth. I didn’t understand what he was doing. My mind was wild, wondering if I’d gone too far. The heat of him was suddenly overpowering. I gently nudged at his chest with my hand, unsure of how to tell him. At the same time, I didn’t want to stop.

  He hovered over me, and let go of my sides. His hand found mine at his chest and he squeezed it, pulling it from his body and pushing it up against the door over my head. He pinned it there at the wrist.

  He broke from kissing my fingers, his dark eyes like deep shadows. His heavy breath fell against my face.

  I looked back at him, tempted, afraid, warm, wanting. The will to let him take over again overtook me. I wanted to connect with him and this felt like the answer, only I was scared, too. It was like being this close would make him see who I really was and that I was probably nothing like he imagined.

  His other hand clutched my wrist, drawing my fingers away from my mouth. He pinned that one, too, against the door over my head.

  His eyes zeroed in on my mouth.

  The door behind him flung open. North’s face turned from heavy hunger to surprise.

  “Get off of her!”

  There was a grunt and North sailed away from me. He fell backward, spilling out onto the grass through the open door.

  I scrambled to get up, terrified and confused.

  Nathan loomed in the open door. He ducked his head in. “Sang,” he said. He held out a hand. “Come on.”

  I don’t know how I managed to hang on to him, I was shaking so badly. Nathan collected me tenderly, pulling me from the car.

  Out in the yard, Silas had a foot on North’s chest, keeping him pinned to the ground.

  “Get the fuck off of me,” North said, his eyes wild. He gripped at Silas, clawing at his foot. This wasn’t the fake fighting I’d seen earlier with them in the closet. This was real. “Let me go,” he shouted.

  “You’ll thank me later,” Silas said, putting more pressure onto his foot.

  “Stop,” I called out to Silas. “Don’t hurt him.”

  “Fuck you,” North yelled at Silas. Even while North scrambled, his body seemed incapable of gathering enough strength to get Silas off of him. “Give her back. I’m not done with her.”

  “Come on, Sang,” Nathan said, pulling me away and walking me around the car. “Don’t look at him.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Nathan opened the front passenger door for me. “It’s the Ecstasy talking, Sang. He’s high. I don’t know how much he got.”

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  “We’ll have to watch him until this gets out of his system.”

  “Should we call Dr. Green?”

  “Maybe,” Nathan said, nudging me toward the car. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  I relented, and fell into the seat.

  Nathan shut the door. He ran around the car. Silas removed his foot and picked up North. North’s body slumped against Silas, like he was a little unstable. It looked like he was dizzy.

  Nathan held North up while Silas slipped into the car. Silas reached back for North as Nathan pushed him onto the seat. When North was inside, his head rolled back against the headrest. “Fuck you all. Fuck.”

  Nathan opened the driver’s side door. He patted his pockets and looked over at me. “Keys?”

  “Got them,” Silas said, fishing them off of the floor and passing them over.

  Nathan selected one and started up the car.

  North rolled around in the back seat, cackling. “Oh god. I love parties.”

  I glanced over at Nathan, but he was focusing on turning around to go back down the road.

  “You okay, Sang?” Silas asked from the back seat. He slipped a hand over, putting it on my shoulder.

  I glanced back at his concerned face. “Yes, I think so,” I said. I wasn’t really sure I was okay. At what point exactly did the drugs in North’s system take over? He seemed almost normal before. Now he was rolling around and looked crazy.

  “Of course she’s okay. She was with me. We were doing fine. We could do it some more.” North’s voice teetered on being throaty, almost a growl. “Fucking Christ. Oh that closet. Heh. Fuck me. God no, fuck her. Her mouth … I was right there. Fuck you guys. Give her back.” North lurched forward, making a grab for my arm.

  “Shut up,” Silas said, shoving his arm back. “And don’t touch her or I’m going to sit on you.”

  “Fuck you, Silas. You were a prick for
bringing her out here. Getting her to perch on your lap like she’s some kind of toy.”

  “Ignore him, Sang,” Nathan said. He hit the gas pedal, speeding down the road. “Don’t listen to him.”

  “What’s going to happen?” I asked.

  North laughed.

  “He can’t control what he’s saying,” Nathan said. He leaned his elbow against the sill of the window as he drove, brushing fingers through his reddish hair. “It’s stuff you shouldn’t hear.”

  I collected my knees again, drawing them to my chest and off the floor. My arms wrapped around them and I curled up into myself. I sighed into my legs. A comforting large hand from Silas landed on my shoulder again, holding on to me. I might have crawled back there with him if it wasn’t for North.

  “Fuck you, too, Nathan. Chewing on her fingers. Her gorgeous damn fingers. And fuck you, she could call me honey if she wanted. She can call me what she wants. You don’t get to ...” He laughed again, at a pitch higher than I was used to hearing from him, nearly barking. “Fuck kissing her fingers. It’s close enough. It counts. Oh yeah. No. I’m not sharing. I don’t want to share her. Put her on a boat back to France with me. Fuck her parents. I’ll kill them if they touch her again.” He laughed again. “God, she thought I wanted that damn bitch back there. Taking a bitch over Sang. Fucking cunt almost fucked me over. Fuck her. No. Sang. That’s what I mean. That’s what I want. Those thighs. Rip those apart and ...”

  Silas leaned over, shoving his palms against my ears. “I don’t think I can take this the whole way back,” he said.

  “We need to listen,” Nathan gripped the steering wheel. “We need to hear in case he starts complaining about being too hot or something internally wrong. If he passes out, we need to call Doc.”

  We raced through the night. North sputtered nonsense. Silas tried sitting forward and cupping my ears for me, but he occasionally had to wrestle with North as he took turns lunging at each of us.

  The road was mostly empty. We zoomed past trailer parks and the occasional house set up on an acre of land and neighbors a mile apart. Nathan tried blaring music to drown out North’s talking. It didn’t help. North would try singing along and when he missed the words, he’d curse at us all.