Home > Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #4)(12)

Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #4)(12)
Author: C.M. Stunich

“Standing out here like you’ve got some moral high ground, spouting crap at me that’s as bad as your poetry.” She pauses and tilts her head to one side. Maybe she thinks I don’t see her reach into her purse? But I do. “The thing is, Bernadette, you’re just as bad as all the boogeymen you think you’re fighting against. You’re a monster, too.”

“Maybe,” I say, turning the knife in my hand, holding it the way Callum showed me. I look up at Kali as she pulls a second knife from her purse, tossing the hideous, gold thing aside. Guess we’re going to duke this out, hand-to-hand.

Lots of blood and pain. Like it always should’ve been. A gunshot between the eyes would’ve been too easy, too clinical.

I let Kali rush me, ducking as she swings the knife in an arc at my face. The blade digs into the trunk of the big tree behind me, buying me enough time to swing around and come at her from the back. Unfortunately, she’s not as dumb as she looks. Kali ducks and avoids my blade, yanking her own knife from the bark of the tree as she spins around to meet a second thrust.

She knocks my knife aside, but I cut her anyway. Blood wells over her pale hands. Not surprising. Knife fights are never clean. I’ll probably end up with a partially severed finger before the night is out.

Because I know Kali all too-well, when she starts to swing frantically, pushing me backward into the blackberries, I smell a trap. Not a second too early, I drop down and throw my bodyweight into her belly, narrowly avoiding falling down a small ravine into the icy waters of Mill Creek.

We hit the ground, blades flashing. I see my own cut to the bone on her arm, a scream raking from her throat as she swings at my chest. The lace of my dress splits open, an angry slash of red appearing across my breasts. I don’t feel the pain, however, too intent on my mission.

End this.

Kill Kali.

Bernie, this isn’t you, I tell myself, but that’s the old me, pre-Penelope’s death. All I wanted was to be good, to drink black coffee and write terrible poems. I wanted to be a poor artist in a studio with a leaky roof, and I wanted to create things. I wanted to plant an herb garden on the windowsill and squeal when I had enough basil to make spaghetti sauce with zucchini grated into it. Because that would mean I was creating things instead of destroying them.

That girl … she’s lived too long with people like Neil and Eric, Coraleigh and Kali. They have changed her, altered her irreparably.

The only way she’ll ever feel sane again, is to destroy them at their own game. It’s a thing she knows she can do, and do well. With Havoc by my side, I will rule this horrible town and all of the awful people in it.

Hell, I’m already well on my way. There have been delays. There have been metaphorical wildfires. But nothing is going to stop me. Nothing. Motherfucking nothing.

I stab the blade down as hard as I can, holding it with both hands, but Kali manages to turn her head at the last second. My knife severs the bun of green and black hair from her head, but that’s about it. She yowls at me like a frightened cat as she brandishes her own knife, slicing me across the shoulder.

With my knife buried in the dirt, I readjust my grip, until I’m holding onto Kali’s neck.

Just like Victor did to Kyler earlier, I lean forward with grim determination. Now that I’m in the same position, I can see why he did it. Why he knew he needed to do it. The dark will always play by its own rules. It’s all well and good to want a superhero, but it’s impossible to expect someone made of light to fight the shadows; they might disappear when there’s a ray of sunshine, but they’re not gone. They’ve just retreated. The night always returns, after all.

Kali drops her knife in her frenzy to get to my hands. That’s her mistake, losing that blade. Maybe, if she’d gotten lucky, she could’ve plunged it through my heart.

A gunshot echoes in the woods around me, a strange serenade mixed with the wicked metal music taking over the little ghost town. I barely hear it though. I’m too focused, too zoned-in. How could I not be, in that moment? A moment I’ve been waiting for, for what feels like forever.

Besides, there’s an intimacy to strangulation. I can see now why most murders carried out this way are between people who know one another. There’s a level of connection here that’s hard to explain.

My archenemy … her face, it turns red then blue. Her eyes bulge out of her skull, like two mean pits in the moonlight. She struggles fiercely and then starts to twitch.

I can’t do this.

The thought hits me so hard and so fast that I gasp like I’m the one being strangled.

I release Kali just as she begins to go still, and she pulls in this awful, choking breath. It’s wet and raspy, and it sounds like death incarnate. Shoving up to my feet, I stumble away and vomit into the bushes, bleeding everywhere and hating myself. You’re too weak, Bernadette, my mind hisses. You let Billie go, even though you shouldn’t have. And now, here, even knowing what she’s done to Aaron, you can’t finish it.

Am I too much the tortured, awful, self-righteous superhero? Are my morals tying my hands? Or is it something else?

I’ve talked a big game all night, to the boys, to myself … I promised and craved bloodshed. So why? Why? Fucking why?!

You’re better than Kali, that’s why, something inside of me says, and I stand up straight, turning to look at her. Kali is struggling to her feet, but I can’t let her get ahold of either knife so I move quickly back over and clock her in the face as hard as I can.

She falls to her ass in the bed of wet dirt and pine needles while I collect both knives from the forest floor.

“Where is Aaron?” I ask, standing above her and wishing she were smart enough to tell me. She won’t. I’ll have to keep her here; Havoc will show; she’ll die a horrible, gruesome death of her own orchestration. And I’ll let them do it because, as much as they’ve become my pets, I am truly and wholly theirs. “I will not ask you again.”

Kali laughs at me, turning over so that she’s on all fours. I allow her such an undignified fucking position. Her panties are showing. They’re red, a thong, crotchless. They don’t go with her dress at all. Not that lingerie needs to, but … it’s just a show of trying too hard. Desperation, that’s what they look like on her. A different girl could wear the same panties and look fierce. But not Kali.

“Aaron is dead, you moron,” she scoffs, each word like gravel as it slithers past her snake-like lips. “You really think I’d keep him around?” Kali uses a tree to get to her feet, still gasping and wheezing in such an awful way that I wish I’d just killed her when I had the chance. “A big-dicked pet? I raped him once and finished him—which is more than Neil ever did for Penelope, huh?”

Red flashes across my eyes, and I know that she’s just done it, pushed a button that can’t be undone. I’m going to kill her, and this time, I’m not going to stop. I go for Kali, but when she turns, she has a tube of lipstick that doesn’t look quite right.

Fuck my life, it’s a stun gun, isn’t it? They make those, you know, for women’s self-defense. They hurt, sure, but they’re not nearly as powerful as say, a TASER. I should be fine. Should, being the key word.

The air crackles with electricity as Kali shoves that gold tube into the stab wound on my side as hard as she can. My body revolts, my fingers tightening around the knife blades and then releasing. I end up on my back on the forest floor, biting my own tongue and convulsing.

The price for my pity.

Like I said, the universe doesn’t play fair deals. Villains are not killed with kindness.

And even a cheap stun gun hurts when it’s pressed into raw, bloody flesh.

“You stupid goddamn bitch,” Kali laughs, choking again as she stumbles over to me, looking down on her handiwork with an awful smile. It doesn’t quite fit her face, like it was designed for somebody else and plastered there against her will. She kneels down beside me as I struggle to pull myself together enough to stand up.

Jesus Christ, where the fuck was she hiding that?! Not in her teeny, tiny panties, that’s for fucking sure.

“Since this is the last time we’ll ever talk, I just want you to know that I didn’t hate you at first. You drove me to it. Bernadette, I loved you like a sister in the beginning.” Kali scoots a little closer to me, reaching out to brush some hair from my forehead. I try to slap her away, but my hands and arms are too twitchy, and I can’t seem to make my body do what I want it to.

Plus, I’m still bleeding. Bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.

Maybe I’ll always be bleeding, both physically and metaphorically. Maybe that’s the price of my fate.

“You think you’re so high and mighty, Bernie. I used to look up to you, but then I realized that you’re too deep inside your head to care about anyone but yourself.” Kali grabs my hair and jerks my head up, putting one of the abandoned knives to my throat. “And there’s only room for one queen in this city. Listen to me good, Bernie: it isn’t going to be you.”

My fingers dig into the dirt, and I manage to get myself together enough to fling it into Kali’s eyes. She cries out as I roll away, but I’m still stumbling and struggling to make my body work the way it’s supposed to.

So I do what I can, crawling into the blackberry bushes as Kali struggles to clear her eyes and locate me in the dark. It isn’t so easy to see out here. City assholes always gripe about the dark, but you haven’t seen shit until you’ve been out on a country night.

“Bernadette,” Kali calls sweetly, like we’re playing hide and seek, like she’s truly Neil Pence’s awful, little soul mate. “I always knew you didn’t have the ovaries to actually do it, to hurt me like that. You’re pathetic.” Kali moves away, back in the direction of the playground. Or … what I think is the playground. “Think about it,” she calls out, voice ringing in the dark. “You called Havoc for nothing. You’re out here bleeding alone in the dark.”

   
Most Popular
» Magical Midlife Meeting (Leveling Up #5)
» Magical Midlife Love (Leveling Up #4)
» The ​Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash
» Lover Unveiled (Black Dagger Brotherhood #1
» A Warm Heart in Winter (Black Dagger Brothe
» Meant to Be Immortal (Argeneau #32)
» Shadowed Steel (Heirs of Chicagoland #3)
» Wicked Hour (Heirs of Chicagoland #2)
» Wild Hunger (Heirs of Chicagoland #1)
» The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club
» Crazy Stupid Bromance (Bromance Book Club #
» Undercover Bromance (Bromance Book Club #2)
romance.readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024