Yawning, I stumble through the hallway looking for the bathroom. It’s the middle of the night, and my throat is dry. But the darkness makes it hard to see, so I touch the walls, looking around for the door. Light spills from the room to the left a few feet ahead of me.
My brother’s room.
But it’s so late at night. He can’t still be awake, right?
I creep up to the door, yawning into my hand. I wonder what he’s doing.
Some squeaky noises and a definite groaning sound are coming from up ahead.
What is it?
When I push the door open and peek inside, I notice a big lump on his bed. Like a monster growing inside the blanket, pushing, shoving, moving around.
But I don’t believe in monsters.
I frown and call out my brother’s name. “Felix?”
The lump abruptly stops and then moves up, the blanket slowly lowering. Two eyes connect with mine.
But they aren’t my brother’s.
Even though I can definitely tell two people are in that bed.
I swallow, but the dryness in my throat doesn’t go away.
“Mom?”
Shrieking, I sit straight up while drenched in sweat, breathing heavily.
I gather my bearings for a moment and check the time. 1:00 a.m.
Jesus Christ. I haven’t even slept two hours and already that fucking nightmare came to visit me again.
I throw myself back on the bed and relax on the pillow, trying to get the memory out of my head, but nothing I do works.
Nothing ever works to quell the rage inside my heart.
Mother.
A word I despise so much even though I used to love it so much.
Before I knew how twisted that word could become.
Now all that’s left is a remnant of my family.
Broken. Shattered into pieces.
I turn around in bed, squeezing my pillow like I’m choking someone, but nothing will eliminate this anger.
So I throw my blanket off, groaning with annoyance, and get up.
Sleep is not going to work tonight, and only one other thing can calm my raging heart.
Violence.
So I go on to the laptop and check the same website as before, the one I’ve visited so many times, to see if I’ve got my next bait.
A smile forms on my face when I find out multiple people have replied to my posts.
All of those people are abhorrent, vicious monsters who deserve to die.
Just like my mother did.
I grab my outfit and my bag filled with tools and weapons, and I make my way out of the door and the sorority building, ready for my knives to meet my next victim’s blood.
When I finally get to the shoddy place in the middle of the city, I park my motorcycle out front and check out the neighborhood before I put on my mask and head toward the house. A big yard in front is filled with all kinds of bushes and trees tightly cramped together like a mini jungle. It looks like a pretty piece of nature, but a wretched monster hides within this place.
I head toward the door clutching my backpack filled with tools and weapons.
My heart’s racing in my throat because I know what’s about to happen—the thrill of the chase, the hunt, the kill.
It drives me, pushing me to go beyond my limits.
And to me, it’s a moment of bliss.
A little sliver of heaven as evil people are punished and cut from this world for their crimes.
As I walk onto the porch, I hear noise inside.
My ears perk up as I listen.
Two—no, three voices. And they sound awfully young.
But my target isn’t young at all. He told me he was fifty, so who the fuck are these people?
I’m definitely not alone even though the message the man sent me clearly said he would be.
What the fuck is going on?
I creep up to the window and look through.
Three guys wearing white masks just like the ones at the Phantom Society party are beating a dude with a bat and a pair of nunchucks. The hits are slow and painful, and I can’t help but focus on their faces hidden behind those damn masks. All that’s visible are their smiles and tongues as they dip out to lick the seam of their lips as they torture him.
My heart skips a beat.
I’m fascinated by their obvious delight in violence.
I’m watching way too long, but I can’t look away.
That was supposed to be my victim. Instead, he’s become theirs.
And I find myself oddly mesmerized by how they seem to enjoy dishing out pain just as much as I do.
One of them grabs his shoulder, pulls him close, and whispers something into his ear.
With a trembling hand, the man points at the closet to the left, and the guy storms at it, opening it up to find a safe, which he easily unlocks.
So they were beating him to make him say the code?
The guy pulls money from the safe and stuffs it into a bag. But when he turns, his piercing blue eyes suddenly flick to the window, and I duck. I crawl across the porch and hear footsteps coming toward the door.
Fuck.
I inhale a sharp breath and run back to the biggest tree to hide behind just as the door opens up, and three guys come barging out.
CLING CLANG!
Some coins drop to the stone pavement below the steps.
“Hey, don’t drop any. We need all of it,” someone says.
That voice … It sounds so, so familiar, but I can’t place it.
“Sorry, it’s just a lot. Man, that dude was so happy to part ways with that fucking cash,” another guy says, snorting.
Again, a voice I can’t place but definitely recognize from somewhere.
Could it be them? Are these the same guys who I met before in that grimy house?
Are they following me, or is it another coincidence?
I swallow away the nerves as they approach. I don’t dare to look.
“Hold on,” the first guy says. “We forgot some equipment. Let’s go back inside.”
“You go up ahead to start the car.”
“Okay, okay,” the guy says.
The door opens up again, and I can hear two guys walk back in again.
Now it’s just me and that one dude who’s going to the car.
His whole face hides underneath a hoodie, so I can’t tell who it is. He casually strolls down the pavement, whistling a happy tune, but I can smell the stench of fresh blood, like an odor drifting through the wind. Right as he passed the tree, I make myself as small as possible, hoping he doesn’t see me. But I know they’ll find the motorcycle outside eventually.
What do I do?
I lean in to see where he’s going, but suddenly, I’m face-to-face with him.
“Well, hello there,” he says. “Nice to see you again.”
What the fuck? How did he find me here?
I immediately go for the attack, and I punch him in the face, but he catches my hand with ease.
“Now, that’s not very nice of you.”
I try to punch him again from the side, but he dodges that too expertly, along with all my other swings. It’s almost as if he can see every one of my attacks coming before it lands.
Who the fuck is this guy?
“That’s not gonna work,” he says.
“How the fuck did you find me here?” I growl back, and I kick him in the nuts.
He groans in pain but swiftly recuperates and knocks me to the ground with a swift body grab and slam. The air is knocked out of my lungs.
“I already saw you the second you tried to make a beeline for this tree,” he says. “Lana.”
My eyes widen.
How does he know my name?
I slam my arm into his neck, making him choke, and I spin him around until I’m right on top of him.
“You have some moves,” he muses. “I’m impressed.”
“I’ll give you something to be impressed about,” I growl back, and I punch him in the gut so hard he groans out loud. But the groan is immediately followed by a smile. “Fuck. That almost hit the spot.”
My brows furrow, confused as to why he’d say that, but then he suddenly wraps his legs around my body and flips me over with ease as though he’s done this plenty of times before. And now I’ve lost the upper hand.
“My friends will be here any second now,” he says. “And I can’t wait to show them the kitty I caught.”
“Over my dead body.” I lean in and bite his arm until it bleeds.
He yelps and retracts his arm far enough for me to slip out underneath him. My hands curl around the mask around his face, and I rip it up as I crawl to my feet.
I kick him and stomp on his chest with my sharp heels, staring down at the face of one of the three men who have haunted my life ever since I came in contact with them.
I know this dude.
He’s one of the Phantom Society guys.
The scrawny one with the lanky frame, the long hands, an upside-down cross dangling from his ear, short curtain red hair, obviously dyed. And that wretched grin is still on his face.
Yeah, it’s definitely one of them.
Didn’t Brooke say his name was … Milo?
I grasp his collar and make him look at me. “Did you follow me?”
His hands lock around my ankle. “No. Did you?”
I flick my knife out of my pocket and hold it over his throat.
My nostrils flare. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave my name out of your fucking mouth, and you won’t show your face to me again. Got it?”
He practically melts underneath my hand. “Oh …”
I don’t know what’s wrong with this dude, so I quickly release him from my grip, pouncing onto his chest once more for good measure. But it only makes him groan with a slight hint of arousal.
What the fu—
The door opens up again, and my head rises to meet the gaze of the other two hidden behind the same familiar white masks.
Shit.
I push him aside and bolt off through the yard, running back to my motorcycle, and hop on without putting on my helmet. It rolls off the passenger’s seat and falls to the street as I race off, the two remaining guys chasing me down the road.
Too late.
Milo
“Goddammit, that was her, wasn’t it?” Nathan yells as he and Kai come back into the yard.
“Yup,” I say as I lean up.
“Fuck, she got away again,” Nathan growls, and he kicks the tree. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” He turns toward me, grabs me by the collar, and lifts me off the ground. “Tell me you saw her. Who is she?”
Kai stares me down, the look on his face murderous.
I don’t like choosing between the two of them.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “But she knows who I am now.” I can still feel her feet prodding me in the chest, and fuck me, the mere memory already makes me want to touch myself where she pounced on me. “But she clearly knew how to throw some punches.”
Nathan furrows his brows, clearly confused.
But I’m not.
That woman was violent and deranged.
Blood still drips from the bite mark in my arm onto the pavement, and all I can think of is …
Wow. What a woman.
Now I definitely understand what Kai sees in her.
Kai snorts. “You’re trained in jujitsu, and you let a random girl beat your ass?”
“You’re the one to talk,” I spit back.
“You’d let that girl walk all over you,” he retorts.
A smirk forms on my face. “I’d fucking beg her to.”
“Jesus.” Nathan grunts in frustration and releases me. “She is not your accomplice. She’s a liability we can’t afford.”
“What is she going to do? Tell on us?” I say as I get up from the ground and pat down my shirt. “Expose herself in the process?”
Nathan throws the bag at me. “Fuck, never mind. We’re done here anyway.” He turns around and walks off.
“If she saw Milo, she’ll know within no time we’re part of the Phantom Society,” Kai says.
Nathan stops in his tracks.
“She’ll probably come after us.”
Nathan glances at us over his shoulder. “Then we’ll give her a warm welcome.”
