Mr. Williams’ body still had yet to be found in the ash and rubble of his house at the edge of the city, though officials had been searching since the flames and embers died out early this morning. Soon, they’d find him. But for now, Thorn Valley seemed to collectively be holding its breath, waiting for good news.
All except for Layla Hopkins, who we found in the cafeteria at breakfast, staring up at the news channel on the widescreen television, her food untouched. Subtitles flashed across the bottom of the screen, telling the general public that so far, there was no evidence of arson or any form of foul play. For now, at least, they were treating this as an accident and the authorities suspected the fire came from a burner that was left on in the kitchen.
Which was exactly the story Corvus had fed to the fire chief along with a wad of bills and a cliff-notes version of what we’d found in his house in case the chief decided the bribe wasn’t worth the man’s life.
So far, everything was going to plan, and I couldn’t help a smug smirk as I slid into the serving line, piling a plate high with scrambled eggs and bacon while the guys wandered to our table. I gave Grey a strange look, but he didn’t see, his stare fixed to the screen over Layla’s head.
Apparently, I was the only one eating this morning.
I mean, the sooty, acrid smell of Williams still clogging my nose would probably taint it all with a funny taste, but with enough hot sauce…
Yeah, it’d be fine.
The metal spoon clattered against my tray as I scooped some fruit into a bowl and set it on my tray. Layla twisted in her seat, doing a double take when she saw me. Her first reaction was fear, but I held her there, captive in my stare for a moment, waiting for it to sink in.
I nodded, and she slumped at my wordless admission, a breath puffing from her lips, eyes watering. There it was. The relief.
It solidified that we’d done the right thing.
Layla Hopkins should fear me, but she should fear for the real monsters more.
Better the evil you know than the evil you don’t.
“Hey, Angel.”
My fingers tightened on the tray, and I turned, finding a very familiar six foot tall frame also piling a tray high with breakfast.
“Drake?”
He peered up at me from the corner of his eye. “Yes?”
I looked to the guys, who were all staring at Drake’s back with varying looks of unease.
Drake nudged me out of his way, reaching past my arm to grab some fruit for himself as though this was entirely natural.
“Um, what are you doing here?”
Behind him, I thought I saw another King entering the cafeteria, a girl from my English lit class on his arm, blushing as she bit her lower lip.
Drake tossed his light hair back from his face and lifted a strip of fatty bacon to his mouth, tearing off half the strip with his teeth. “Part of the deal with Dies,” he said once he’d swallowed. “Apparently,” he pointed to the ketchup behind me, “do you mind?”
I moved out of the way for him to grab it. He loaded it onto the mountain of eggs on his plate.
“Apparently, what?”
“Apparently,” Drake repeated, plopping the ketchup back down. “The Aces have resurfaced further south. They may or may not have cut a deal with the, uh, Skeletons?”
“Skeletons?”
“No, fuck, that’s not it. The Dead Men. That’s them.”
I lifted a brow. I hadn’t heard of them.
“You wouldn’t know them,” Drake said, reading my mind. “They’re little league. Barely a blimp on the map, but together with what remains of the Aces…”
“Why weren’t we briefed on this?” I found myself asking, as though Drake would know.
He started toward the table, our table, pausing to look back over his shoulder at me. “You coming?”
Drake slid in easily across from Corvus, setting his tray down with another piece of bacon hanging from his mouth. He caught Corvus staring and lifted the lip of his plate, tipping it in his direction. “Want some?”
Corvus’ phone rang, and he lifted it to his ear. “Yeah?”
He listened for a minute to whoever was on the other end, eyeing Drake as I slid in next to him and he made some space for me.
“What’s our move?” Corvus asked over the receiver, and I assumed it was Diesel calling to explain just what the fuck was happening.
“Got it,” Corvus said and hung up, setting his phone down on the table.
“Pops?” Drake asked between mouthfuls of egg.
Rook tapped a coin on the table, sitting up straighter to peer over at Corvus. “Want to fill us in?”
“We got word that the Aces were cutting a deal with the Dead Men,” Drake said before Corvus could.
“And apparently Diesel thought it might be a good idea to increase gang presence at Briar Hall in case they try anything,” Corvus added.
“Surprise,” Drake said sarcastically, an easy smile gracing his full lips. “We’re homeroom buddies now.”
Rook’s dark gaze zeroed in on the other Kings entering the cafeteria. I spied the creepy looking fucker from fight night, the one that matched Becca’s description, and wished she was down here eating with us so I could point him out. He hovered near the rear exit to the cafeteria, sipping something from a paper cup.
There looked to be a total of five new students at Briar Hall. Two of whom looked far too old to be here.
Drake, though, even with the evidence of a hard life carved into the weathered lines of his face, somehow managed to give off the aura of someone young and full of life. He fit in. The others really didn’t.
Grey’s foot slid into mine under the table, hard, and when I looked up, I found him watching me.
Watching me watch Drake.
Had I been staring that long?
I cleared my throat, my appetite suddenly gone. “I think I’m going to take this up to Becca. See if she’s up to eating anything.”
“Becca?” Drake asked, lifting a brow.
“My roommate,” I explained. “She wasn’t feeling well this morning. She’s still in bed.”
“Ah,” he said, stabbing another forkful of eggs. “Want me to go with you?”
“We’re good here,” Grey said. “Why don’t you go and sit with your guys, yeah? We’ll let you know if we need you.”
I pressed my lips together, holding back a grin.
Drake, unperturbed, stood, scooping up his tray. “Whatever you say, man.” He flashed me another quick grin. “Later, Angel.”
“I don’t like him,” Grey muttered, his hand curling into a fist on the table.
“If he looks anywhere below your neckline again, I’ll have to carve out his eyes,” Corvus added, the new skin forming over the puckered scar on his cheek, catching the fluorescent lighting. We’d taken the stitches out last night and it was looking a lot better.
“He saved your life,” I reminded him.
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
Rook sat back in his chair, letting his coin roll over his tatted fingers as he watched Drake walk away. “I kind of like him,” he said, making Corvus and Grey balk.
“Don’t you, Ghost?” he asked me with a knowing gleam in his eyes.
I lifted my tray from the table, heat rushing up my neck. “I’m going to see Becks,” I said, dodging the question. “I’ll be back by the bell.”
I heard Grey hiss something nasty at Rook that I didn’t catch and listened to the throaty sound of Rook’s laugh as I left the cafeteria, feeling the itch for a good long run.
“Oh my god, did you get this?” A girl by the elevator asked the guy standing next to her, and I hesitated when the doors pinged opened. “Check your school emails. There’s no way this is real, right?”
“I got it, too! They don’t mean Corvus like the Corvus, right?” the guy asked, and I dropped my tray, breakfast forgotten.
The girl looked up at the clattering sound of the tray hitting the tile and startled when she saw me coming, cringing back into the wall, sinking low into a ball, her phone outstretched to me.
“Hey, whoa,” the guy next to her said, lifting his hands, getting in my way.
I decked him in the jaw, sucking in a breath at the sting in my still-bruised knuckles as he careened to the right, tripping to keep his footing.
“What the fuck,” he groaned, his mouth sounding like it was full of marbles.
I took the phone from the girl’s hand and lifted it to my face, scrolling back up to the top of the email on the screen.
“What is this shit?” I asked, nudging her with the toe of my boot.
“I don’t know!” she wailed. “I swear, it just came to my phone.”
The email was a photocopy of an old newspaper. Almost twelve years old.
The headline jumped out on the screen in bold text.
CULT KILLINGS: FIVE DEAD IN BRUTAL SLAUGHTER
What the fuck was this?
All around me, students paused on their way to breakfast and classes, their devices pinging as the email was circulated.
I scrolled lower on the screen, my pulse racing as the gruesome image of a crime scene devoid of bodies but not of blood screamed at me in black and white. It was a child’s bedroom. Complete with train-patterned sheets, tiny toy cars, and a starscape nightlight. The entire thing was coated in blood. It puddled on the mattress, soaked into the carpet. Splashed over the wallpaper. A tiny dark handprint was left on the floor near the base of the bed. A child’s handprint.
My stomach turned.
I scrolled lower, reading the first few lines before I had to force myself to stop.
It was a brutal scene in east Lennox this morning when the bodies of married couple Francine and Douglas Adler were found in their home along with Douglas’ brother, Chris Adler, and their eight month old son, Emmanuelle. They are survived by their eldest son, who was admitted to Lennox General this morning with only minor injuries. Authorities suspect the killings were part of a cult ritual due to the nature of the deaths and the—
I couldn’t bring myself to read any more.
Bile rose up the back of my throat.
Emmanuelle.
The tattoo on Corvus’ chest.
Everyone in the state knew about the cult murders. The Adler family was only the first to go. After them, the Finches and the Hayes were found dead in their homes in similar ways. It was later learned that they were all in the cult together. That Douglas Adler was their leader.
I glanced back down at the text in my hand, seeing where the photocopy of the newspaper had been altered. A piece of paper cut into a thin rectangle covered a line of text that seemed to be saying how the surviving boy’s identity would be kept confidential. On it were the words: CORVUS JAMES ADLER.
Fingers shaking, I tapped on the sender’s email at the top of the screen.
My heart lurched in my chest, heat sizzling down my spine.
I chucked the phone at the wall, and it smashed into tiny bits, raining down onto the tile to the backdrop of gasps from the students in the atrium.
I stalked to the nearest student and knocked the phone from their hand. “Don’t fucking read that.” I seethed, staring at all the other students as they stared back at me.
In the cafeteria, a chair scraped back from a table, and I heard Grey shout.
“You fucking heard her,” someone yelled and I turned to find Brianna fucking Moore on the bottom of the stairs. “Put your goddamn phones down.”
She knocked two phones from the hands of the students nearest to her.
From the corner of my eye, I saw movement and a face flashed clear in the daylight before it vanished around the corner of the west hall.
A face I recognized.
I drew a blade, and the students around me all screamed like little bitches, falling back, their phones suddenly forgotten in the face of something far more interesting: a girl on the edge of her fucking rope.
“Hey!” I bellowed after the King, giving chase as I sped through the atrium and down the hall, catching the flip of his jacket as he pushed through the exit doors at the end and went outside.
“AJ!” I heard Grey shout somewhere behind me, but I wasn’t stopping.
It was him.
That creepy fucker from fight night. I was sure of it. Why lurk around the corner watching like that if he had nothing to do with it.
Why run?
Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.
“It’s him!” I called back over my shoulder before I shoved through the heavy metal doors, bursting into the humid morning, squinting as the sun stabbed into my eyes.
I raced forward, lifting a hand to shield my eyes as I scanned the front lot for him, seeing nothing.
“Hey!” I screamed, rushing ahead to vault over the low hedges in front of the parking lot. “Come out, you fucking coward!”
I dropped to my knees and bent low, peering under the vehicles in the parking lot, searching for feet, for movement, for anything.
“AJ,” Grey shouted from behind me as I rose back to my feet, storming around an SUV to peer into the bed of a truck.
Grey caught up to me, his gun at the end of his extended hands, aimed low as he looked over all the cars. “Where is he?”
I growled my frustration, my skin tingling with rage. “I fucking lost him.”
I kicked the nearest tire, kicked it again. Again.
“Fuck!”
“Hey,” Grey said, brushing a soothing hand down my back, but I didn’t want to be soothed right now. I wanted fucking blood. I shrugged him off, putting my hands to my hips as I paced the narrow space between two cars, my chest and back slick with cold sweat, my head spinning from the aftereffects of too much adrenaline and not enough fuel in the fucking tank.
“We’ll find him, AJ,” Grey promised as I hunched over, hands braced on knees to pinch my eyes closed, trying to clear the spots from my vision. “But right now we need to get to the Nest.”
“What?” I asked, and the reality of what’d happened before I saw the King fleeing the scene of his crime hit me. “Corvus.”
Grey nodded gravely. “He took off.”
My heart squeezed. “Alone?”
His jaw locked. “Rook went after him, but Corvus is faster than any of us. He looked like he was heading for the Nest though, so…”
I took one last long look over the cars in the parking lot, praying for even the slightest indication that the fucker was still here, but I really had lost him. He was gone.
But I knew who it was, and I would get answers from him. That was if Maverick still wanted to keep his fucking alliance with the Saints. I wanted him on a fucking platter, and I would have him one way or another.
Drake came rushing from the front entrance a second later, just the person I wanted to see.
“What just happened back there?” he asked, jabbing a thumb back toward Briar Hall. “Your guy just lost his fucking shit. Something about an email?”
“It was your man,” I said, looking at Drake in a new light now, knowing we couldn’t afford to waste much time here. I didn’t like the idea of Corvus alone in the woods, even if it was only a few miles between here and the Nest. It could be exactly what the fucker expected. He could be waiting.
Drake’s brows lowered over his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
I cleared the few steps between us and pointed my blade at him, bringing it to within an inch of his chest. To his credit, he didn’t budge at my advance, only stiffened. “That creepy fuck from fight night. The one you said was your one-man clean-up crew.”
“Aries?”
“I saw him lurking in the atrium when that mass email was sent out to the entire school. And when I pursued him, he fucking ran.”
This seemed to surprise Drake, but not as much as it should’ve. “Maybe he was just running because you were chasing him, Angel,” he said with a shrug, but the tension in his jaw said it all. He didn’t trust Aries, either. “I mean, he saw you fight. I’d run, too.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be having a little chat with Diesel about this,” I warned. “If you and your leader want to keep this alliance, I want Aries served to me on a silver fucking platter. You hear me?”
Drake recoiled from the sting of my words but nodded. “It’s probably just a misunderstanding.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Grey said.
Drake nodded. “Understood.”
I let my gaze rest heavy on Drake’s for another moment before inclining my head to the Rover parked a few rows down. “Let’s go, Grey.”
