Chapter 32
Xavier
The doors to the Skull & Serpent library are slammed closed by the dean, and I jolt up from my seat just from the way he waltzes in.
The noise instantly dies down between the Carusos, Riveras, Torres, Navarros, Reeds, Prestons, and Fletchers.
All the kids are gathered here, because it’s one of the very few places left where the cops don’t dare to march in unannounced.
But being inside the Skull & Serpent Society still gives me the creeps.
I fucking hate this place, though not as much as the Phantom Society.
“What the fuck is going on, Dad?” Silas says, scratching the back of his neck. “The cops have swarmed everywhere, and it’s all closed down now.”
“How am I supposed to visit my friends, huh?” Aspen asks.
“Why the fuck is the campus closed down?” Heath asks, putting up a smoke, but Silas rips it from his fingers and chucks it in the bin.
“Not inside.”
Normally, Silas wouldn’t care, but his dad is watching now, and he seems pissed the fuck off.
“Listen up, everyone,” Felix says. “I brought you all here because this is the only place we can still speak without being listened to. Detective Foley and his men have wiretapped and bugged pretty much every office in the goddamn building.”
Everyone gasps in shock.
“But why? We haven’t done anything. We’re just students,” Cecilia asks.
“Because there’s a goddamn murderer on the loose, and they’ve pinpointed their location at Spine Ridge University,” Felix growls back. “One of you”—he points—“is a fucking serial killer, and they’re endangering the rest of you.”
He grinds his teeth, visibly upset, as he paces the room, while everyone looks at him. The tension is palpable. “It has to end, now.”
“How do they know the killer is here?” Melody asks, with a sickly-sweet voice. “I haven’t seen any blood on anyone.”
“I don’t know. Foley refuses to give me any proof. Says he’s got it all. But he’s got a judge’s order, so I’m pretty sure it’s legit,” Dean Felix responds.
More gasps follow. The only quiet one is Sunny, and when his eyes settle on her, it feels like the temperature in the room suddenly drops five degrees.
“I cannot protect every single one of you if you keep having run-ins with the law.”
“Weren’t you a killer in your earlier days?” Sunny taunts. “Maybe it’s you.”
His eye begins to twitch. “Don’t test me, Sunny. Do you want me to bring in your mother?”
She shrugs. “Go ahead, I don’t care.” She jumps off the windowsill where she was sitting. “I’m bored. When are we going to do something about those damn cops, though? Can’t we just kill them and get it over with?”
“That is not an option, and you know it.”
“Maybe our dads can bust us out or something?” Levi suggests.
Apollo smashes his fist into his palm. “Or maybe we can just bust some jaws, give them a message.”
Felix rubs his forehead. “Shut up. All of you.”
He sighs out loud, audibly burdened by the responsibility of taking care of a bunch of psychos. “From now on, all of you stay on campus until I say so.”
We all collectively erupt into a protest.
“What?” Ivy gasps. “But that’s not fair. I don’t have anything to do with this.”
“Yeah, me neither,” Cecilia says.
Levi folds his arms. “Fuck that, that’s not an option.”
“But if one of us is in danger, we’re all in danger.” Max squeaks.
“Exactly,” Felix says. “And I don’t want any of you to go to jail.”
So we’re all just gonna be stuck here on campus?” Heath scoffs. “Boring.”
“How long?” Atlas asks.
“As long as needed,” Felix replies.
“Weeks? Months?” Cecilia asks, her voice fluctuating in tone from desperation.
Felix stares at Sunny. “That depends on whether the killings stop or the police catch their perp.” It’s almost as if he shoots lightning from his eyes.
“And it’s totally up to you which one it's going to be. But I can tell you one thing. Your parents aren’t going to bust you out of jail.
Not this time.” His hands are balled into fists.
“So where is the culprit?” Sunny asks.
The dean narrows his eyes. “Excuse me?”
“The cop that’s got this place locked down,” Orion fills in for her.
“In his newly made office directly below mine, on the second floor. Lord fucking knows what he’s planning.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have actual fucking work to do, and you’ve got your studies.
So stop trying to kill each other and stop playing midnight vigilante. It’s time to get to fucking work.”
He marches off and slams the door closed behind him, and the entire Skull & Serpent Society shakes like an earthquake just happened.
I swallow and stare at the rest of my extended family and all of our friends.
We’re only so close because our moms and dads are friends, but I can tell from the way everyone is looking at each other that another rift is forming.
Only time will tell if it’ll end up in another explosive war we’ll barely survive, or if we’re going to lose another member of our family.
Sunny is the first to walk out the door. “What are you all waiting for? These killings won’t make themselves stop,” she says, all cheerful like nothing’s going on.
But the way everyone looks at her is making my heart race. They must be one comment away from physically attacking her and pinning her down.
“No?” Sunny says with a smile. “Alright then, suit yourselves. TTYL.”
The door slams shut, leaving an air of arrogance and heat that I’m not willing to take. I jump off the table I was sitting on and walk out the door too, leaving the rest of them to fume among themselves.
I don’t care anymore if this burns bridges.
All I care about is seeing whatever vengeance Sunny wants to enact come to a crescendo. Because with every dark step we take further into hell, the bigger the smile on her face becomes.
And that’s the only reason I exist.
Sunny
I wait until nightfall before I make my move.
I pull down my mask and head out the window of my sorority, making sure to wait on the balcony for the lone cop to pass on the streets before I climb down.
They’ve got a guard stationed at every door, but I’m not dumb enough to use those.
I’ll take the fucking scenic route if I need to.
No one will stop me from going where I want to go.
I crawl down the vines and jump down onto the streets, then zigzag past the trees and houses toward the main campus building, where I sneak in through a side door that leads to the auditorium.
I had a spare key made after I found Aspen last year, just so I could potentially use this spot as a place to commit murder. Or have kinky sex.
Either way, the key comes in great use now, and I run past the seats and down the steps toward the exit, which leads straight into one of the many sprawling hallways in this old university.
Footsteps are audible, and I slip into the men’s bathroom to wait until he’s passed before I sneak out again and bolt right behind him up toward the main staircase.
The man up there is picking his nose while staring at a phone screen, and I grab a big rock from one of the many potted plants and chuck it into the hallway on my right.
He looks up and scans the room, then gets up and tucks his phone back into his pocket. “Someone there?”
He walks around and heads into the hallway, precisely as planned, so I can make a beeline toward the next set of stairs. I’ll be long gone before he comes looking.
On the second floor, I walk past all the doors until I arrive at the one Dean Felix marked as where Atreus would be staying, and I pull out my trusty knives and knock on the door while standing beside it so he won’t see me.
The moment the door opens, I spin on my heels and thrust my knife, but my wrist is caught midair.
“Back for more already?” The familiar hum of his low voice makes goose bumps scatter on my skin, and the image of him penetrating my throat crosses my mind in an instant.
Fuck.
I rip my knife back right through his firm grip, unlatching and quickly thrusting again after I caught the knife with my other hand. But every jab is countered with a new move, a fist to my arm, and a groan that makes me suffocate as he punches me in the stomach.
I refuse to yield, and I raise my foot and kick him in the balls so hard he’s knocked back onto the floor. I march inside and slam the door shut behind me.
“Open the fucking school,” I growl.
He slowly gets up from the floor and suddenly swipes me off my feet, catching me off guard. “Thought you’d come with demands. The answer is no.”
I crawl up. “You needing your cop buddies to contain us is pathetic.” I thrust my knife at his arm, but he lunges out of the way. “I’m not going to let you contain me here.”
“Why?” He punches my arm so the knife is knocked out of my hand again. “Are you scared someone’s going to catch you in the act? I don’t need anyone. I can take you down myself.”
Grinding my teeth, I snatch the knife off the floor and swipe at his feet, but he jumps back and steps on it instead. “Fine, keep the knife. I have plenty more.”
I pull another one out from between my breasts and try to stab him so I can finally pin him down, but he refuses to give up the fight. He grabs me and swings me to the wall behind him, knocking the air out of my lungs, and I temporarily lose all focus.
His hand grips my throat, fingers tightly latching around, and I struggle to breathe.
“Violent fucking bunny,” he says. “Leaving lipstick stains all over the corpses you bled out.”
My eyes widen as he leans in to lick my cheek like a rabid animal. And fuck, it’s so hot it almost makes me not want to stab him for daring to restrain me.
“Why are you killing them? What do you gain?” he rasps into my ear. “I know it’s you. I’ve always known.”
Atreus
Seeing her pupils dilate is all I need to know the truth.
I have found my little stone-cold killer.
And my God, death has never looked hotter.
“Admit it. Admit you are the killer, and I might go easy on you,” I hiss into her ear, licking the rim, because her taste is still so intoxicating I can’t stop myself.
“Has it been so hard for you?” she asks. “To stop thinking about me?”
Her eyes connect with mine sideways, as we fight for control.
Her lips part, breath escaping her. “Kiss me.”
This woman is insane.
Absolutely fucking deranged.
A psycho killer who’s wormed his way into my goddamn mind so badly that my lips instinctively veer closer to hers.
And I slam them on top of hers, kissing her with greed so palpable, it makes my heart quake behind my rib cage. I steal whatever breath she had left with my tongue slipping inside, rolling around hers, staking my claim on her goddamn filthy body.
What has she done to me?
She snatches a knife from my own damn pocket and cuts me in the arm. I retract, bleeding, and she kicks me in the stomach.
“I know you still want me,” she says. “But you’ve been a very bad boy. And I don’t think you deserve these lips.”
She wipes her stained lipstick all over her own cheeks and laughs like a maniac. “Now come on, pretty boy, let’s fight. For real this time.”
She drops the knives one by one, even the ones from her pocket and her chest, and she even sneaks out a knife from her boot, dropping all of them to the ground as if she’s inviting me to fisticuffs. And fuck me, I might as well engage, because this is my only goddamn shot at nailing this woman.
“Alright then,” I say, dropping my knife on the floor as well, then placing my gun on the desk behind me. “Have it your way.”
I raise my fists, and we spin around each other, throwing hooks left and right.
“You only kill men.”
She smirks and throws me a jab, but it misses. “Astute observation. It seems only men have died so far. Deserved, if you ask me. But I never said I was the killer.”
She throws out another punch, right on the side of my jaw, and I flinch, then grab her fist, and punch back, same place. I miss.
“Am I your next victim?” I ask.
She pauses, curiosity flashing in her eyes. “Now, why would you ask that?”
I throw out another punch, but she sidesteps. “You’ve been stalking me since the moment my face appeared on the news.”
She giggles. “I just think your face is pretty.” She swipes at me again, but I avoid a direct hit. “Shame I’ll have to rearrange it.”
We’re both excellent at dodging each other’s attacks, to the point where this almost looks more like a dance than a brawl.
“How do you choose your victims, then? Humor me.”
She licks her sultry lips. “I thought you were the cop who already knows everything?”
Always trying to get under my skin.
Suddenly, she knocks me off balance and shoves me up against the desk, pinning me down by the throat. “Tell me you’ve done your research, Detective Foley.”
“They’re all perps,” I reply between ragged breaths because her sharp nails are squeezing off what little oxygen I can suck in.
“Exactly. They are perps. Bad men. And you want them gone from this world too, don’t you?” she asks, frowning, like she doesn’t understand why I don’t agree with her methods.
I grab her wrist, struggling to breathe properly, but her nails only further dig into my flesh.
“Killing is never the way to go about things.”
She leans in, hissing. “Killing is the only way to get real revenge.”
My eyes narrow. “Is that what you’re after? Revenge?”
There’s an intoxicating smile on her lips, and it turns me mad with lust. My cock springs up the moment she presses down on my chest. She’s so close I can taste her breath on my lips.
“The taste is so sweet, I can’t ever have enough,” she whispers, and she slams her lips on mine so violently I actually fucking moan.
She grabs my package, rubbing my hard-on right through the fabric of my pants, and I’m actually fucking moaning while kissing her back.
Fuck.
“They deserve to rot in jail,” I say between her delicious kisses.
She bites down on my lip, and I hiss in pain as the metallic taste of blood hits my tongue.
“Then you and I disagree fundamentally.”
She pulls back, and it almost—almost—makes me fucking regret that I said anything at all. Fuck, I hate how badly she's made me want her.
She kicks me in the balls, and I buckle over and heave in pain as I slither to the floor while she walks away to gather all of her knives again, tucking them all into her waistband.
As I come up for air and my hand slips toward the desk, her heels click-clack on the floor toward me, and she snatches the gun away before I manage to reach it.
“I’m not going to let you win this, Foley,” she says. “But I think you already knew that. As for your little killer, good luck trying to contain vengeance. It’s going to be bittersweet. TTYL.”
She presses another obsessive kiss to my cheeks with the same kind of lipstick that’s left on all of the bodies and then bolts off through the door, like she fulfilled her goal.
But a wicked smile still forms on my face because I’m pretty sure she just invited me to a chase, and I’ll gladly oblige in catching her.