Home > Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #4)(13)

Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #4)(13)
Author: C.M. Stunich

She laughs at me as I struggle to get my bearings. To be honest, I have no idea where we are anymore. Somehow, during the fight, we’ve moved.

I keep crawling, slow and quiet, still twitching, my heart racing like crazy. The next time Kali speaks, calling out my name like a summoning spell spilling from the mouth of a witch, I unstrap the blade from my thigh and clutch it as tightly as I can with spasming fingers.

As soon as I hit the edge of the bushes, I shove up to my feet and start to run. A gunshot hits the tree to my right as I make a sudden left and sprint toward the edge of the cemetery. Fuck, shit, son of a bitch. She found her gun.

Of course this is where it would end—just as it did for Neil—in the darkness of a moonlit graveyard.

The graves here are old and utilitarian, nothing like they were at Our Lady of Mercy. There’s not much to hide behind. So I don’t bother. I just turn and watch Kali stalking across the grass toward me, gun in hand.

“Look,” I say, dropping the knife and holding my hands up in mock surrender. She keeps coming, so I fall to my knees, knowing that she’ll enjoy that, the exchange of power. “If you’re really carrying Neil’s baby …”

“Of course I am,” she says, pausing about six feet away from me. Close enough to get a shot, but far enough away that she doesn’t think I can surprise her. My fingers dig into the grass as I drop them to my sides. There’s a piece of broken headstone that I cling to, careful to keep my movements quiet. The knife I just dropped is too obvious, shining silver about a foot in front of my knees; this is better. “Neil loved me, Bernadette. He loved me.” She pauses and adjusts her grip on the weapon, two-handed and very steady.

You very well could die here, you idiot. Because you’re still clinging to morals you have no right to.

“Do you want to know where he is?” I ask quietly, keeping my eyes averted. If I look her dead in the face, she’ll know I hate her too much to ever let this go and she’ll have to kill me right here and now. But Kali wants to talk because she’s always loved an audience. There’s no point to my dying without anyone around to see it.

“You killed him,” Kali says, but she doesn’t seem quite so sure of herself which I like.

“He left,” I whisper, finally daring to look up at her. She’s standing against the moon, so I can’t see anything about her other than her silhouette. Since I’m bathed in silver moonlight, I bet she can see everything, right down to the finely painted bones on my skeleton mask. “When the boys and I confronted him. We couldn’t very well kill a cop and he knew it, so we gave him a choice …”

“You’re a liar!” Kali screams, stepping forward. Her hands are shaking now, not so sure of herself as she thinks. “He wouldn’t leave me here like that. We had something different; we understood each other. No, no, you killed him. You and those dirty, rotten Havoc boys.”

I smile at her, aware that in the next thirty seconds, one of us is going to die. I’m going to make sure of that.

“He ran away because he didn’t care about you, Kali. Nobody does.” I pause and shake my head, slurring my words a bit. Guess that’s what an electric shock will do to you. “Nobody but me. I loved you like a sister, too, like an equal to Penelope. But you fucked me over. And for what? A chance at a pageant you didn’t win? A jealousy that was unfounded because Aaron could never love you when he was made for me?” I pause and grasp fully onto the bit of stone. If I time this right, I can hit her with it. It’s hard to take a shot at someone when a brick of cement is being lobbed at your face. “You threw away my love for something cheap and replaceable. I hope that, wherever you go after this, you remember that.”

“Neil is dead,” Kali repeats, like it hasn’t quite hit her yet. Maybe she really did love him? Monsters can love other monsters. I know that because I am one, and I love as fiercely and deeply as the earth. “He’s dead and you killed him.”

I shove up to my feet, throwing the bit of broken headstone and hitting Kali with it. The gun goes off anyway, but it misses me by several feet as I make the split-second decision to leave my knife and charge her. If she keeps the gun, it’s over. That’s it. No more Bernadette Savannah Blackbird. No more Havoc Girl.

The boys might never be the same again. I don’t hold a ton of credit to my own worth, but … I think that they might.

Our bodies collide, and I manage to get the gun, putting it up to her forehead and staring down at her. This time, I don’t hesitate. I won’t, not anymore.

The barrel of the gun rests against Kali’s pale skin.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, because I am.

And then I pull the trigger.

But nothing happens.

With a scream, Kali takes advantage of my surprise and my blood loss to shove me off of her. I’m cold now, and shaking. Fuck, I’ll probably need a blood transfusion the way Aaron did, on a school nurse’s couch during the witching hour.

Kali dances away as I sit in the grass, panting, my hand on my side, trying and failing to stop anymore of that awful bleeding.

“You’re not so clever as you think, bitch.” Kali moves over to something in the grass. It’s too dark for me to have seen it, but she seems to know exactly what she’s looking for. I watch in horror as she turns and, bathed once again in moonlight, slams the magazine back into the pistol. Fuck. That was a clever, move, I have to admit. “Goodnight, Bernadette,” she tells me, lifting the weapon up and putting her finger on the trigger.

I see her hand flex and tense as she goes to pull it, and I close my eyes at the sound of a gunshot. We’re out in the open now, so the boom rings sharp and clear, scaring away a murder of crows that were nesting in the trees.

When nothing happens, no sharp slice of fire and pain, no flood of darkness, I open my eyes and find Kali on her knees. She doesn’t stay there for long, shaking and bleeding and staring down at her chest like she’s as unsure as I am as to where that shot just came from.

“Bernadette,” a voice says. The sound is dark with pain, but clear and sharp and oh so familiar that I want to cry.

Aaron. Aaron. It’s fucking Aaron!

I look up as he appears at the break in the stone fence, holding his weapon on Kali but his eyes on me.

I’ve never seen anything so beautiful as that, as Aaron Fadler with blood on his face and hands, a grim frown spread across his full lips. He’s as dark as he is light, the perfect dichotomy. Moonlight streams over him in a silver blanket, making his chestnut hair shine.

“She said that she raped you, that she killed you,” I whisper, hardly recognizing my own voice. Even though the pain of my knife wound is making the world seem small and dark, I can see Aaron as clear as if this were a summer day.

“She tried, but like in everything else, she’s a fuck-up.” Aaron pauses beside Kali as she turns her head to look up at him, gun lost in the grass, a scared and pained expression on her small face. “You should’ve killed me when you had the chance,” he informs her grimly, shaking his head and leveling the weapon on her face. “Before I release you from this misery, I need you to understand something.”

“Please,” Kali whispers. No … more like she stutters. She’s having trouble talking. “I’m not ready to die.”

“Havoc never served you. We thought we could use your request to scare Bernie off, to give her a different, better life. Now, we’re going to give her the best one we know how.” Aaron’s finger tightens on the trigger, the moonlight on his hair making it look like he’s wearing a halo. An avenging angel, my avenging angel.

“Aaron, listen—” Kali starts, but then the sound of a second gunshot startles even the most stubborn of crows into the starry sky, and her body slumps over into the grass.

For a moment, there’s nothing but silence, blood, and gravestones.

“Is she dead?” I choke out, and Aaron fires again. And again. And again. He empties the magazine into Kali’s body and then turns to look at me. And fuck, he’s beautiful. Beautiful, but also … death warmed over. Something is clearly wrong with his right hand.

“She’s dead,” he whispers back, and then he’s stumbling over to me and falling to his knees. We manage to put our foreheads together, both of us shaking, both of us bleeding.

“I had a chance to kill her, and I couldn’t do it,” I whisper, tears coming even though I don’t want them. I’ve barely cried over anything since Pen died. I can’t start now, not when Kali is finally dead and gone.

“You’re my moonlight, Bernadette,” Aaron whispers back, voice ragged and tired and full of a tempering relief. “I live to walk in your light. Don’t ever question that.” He leans forward and captures my lips; even though I’m sure I taste like blood, I kiss him back, pressing my fingers against the back of his neck.

Sparks of pure feeling wind through me, curving like shooting stars inside my heart. Kissing Aaron would be an okay way for my twisted fairy tale to end. If I died right now, right here, then it would be with few regrets. That’s how powerful a kiss is; it speaks in long-dead languages and transcribes the impossible. It’s love, in a simple, single action.

“Well, well,” a deep voice says, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I could live a thousand lives and I’d never forget the sound of that voice. Victor. “Looks like the star-crossed lovers found each other.” He sounds as confident as always, but to me, somebody whose ears are trained to listen to their soul mate’s every nuance, I can tell that he’s freaking out on the inside.

He’s good at pretending, though. They all are. Because people who share their emotions too freely are punished by an unforgiving world.

“You’re in need of a spanking, too,” Hael says, pointing at me as I turn my head to look at him. He’s standing nearby, and his hand is shaking, even if he does his best to control it. “Maybe a dozen of them. Naked. And then we’re having our way with you. Girl, what the fuck?”

   
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