Chapter 12
12
H eath took our new arrangement seriously. Too seriously. Rather than leaving our fake dating to start on Monday, he dragged over a chair and made himself comfortable opposite me at my study table. When I asked what the fuck he was doing, he just shrugged and told me all about his homework, which almost bored me to tears.
It definitely made me too cautious to continue my Devil’s Backbone Society research, though, and I reluctantly swapped to my own classwork, which also needed my attention.
When I was done, Heath insisted on walking me back to my dorm with his arm slung around my shoulders.
“I get the feeling you’re enjoying this,” I muttered as we approached my building.
He glanced down at me with a smirk. “I am.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m still not going to sleep with you. This is purely to stop the gossip…and piss Nate off.”
Heath chuckled. “And I’m totally fine with those reasons. But maybe you’ll change your mind when you get to know me. I’ll have you know, I’m very good in bed.”
That claim made me scoff. “Anyone who needs to announce they’re good in bed…is not. But it’s cute that someone clearly cared enough to lie to you.”
I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and started to walk away since we were only a few paces from the main entrance of my dorm, but Heath grabbed my hand and hauled me back with an abrupt move.
“What—”
My startled protest was cut short as his lips met mine and my whole brain turned to static. Holy fuck . It was exactly as hot as I’d remembered, kissing Heath. A pathetic little moan escaped me as I melted into his grip, his mouth engulfing me as his hand splayed across my lower back to hold me tight. All sense fled my brain and I kissed him back, letting our tongues dance in the sexiest kind of way.
Eventually—far too slowly—better sense prevailed, and I peeled myself away with my palms against his chest.
“Heath,” I gasped, short of breath and more than a little dizzy. “What the fuck was that?”
His lips curved in a sly grin that did unspeakable things to my insides. “Just selling the story, babe. I’ll catch you later.” He released me, then smacked my ass before swaggering away.
I stood there a moment, blinking stupidly in shock, then pulled my shit together and turned back to my dorm. That was when I spotted Jade peering out of a window on the first floor. So…Heath was just making sure she spread the word about us dating? Maybe?
Ugh, what was I thinking? This was an awful idea.
The damage was done now, though, I had no doubt Jade probably already spread the word. She seemed like the type.
With a sigh, I climbed the three flights of stairs to my room and opted to stay in for the rest of my Sunday. At least in my own room I could Google the crap out of everything Abigail had outlined in her diary, without anyone around to interrupt with their sultry, dark-lashed eyes and broad shoulders.
Trouble was, without the diary to refer to I needed to rely on my memory for the finer details and names mentioned. In some cases, my search keywords were so vague it gave me absolutely nothing but in other cases—like the death of Sarah Black—it generated actual news articles. Finer details weren’t included, they never were, but there was enough fact to support Abigail’s version of events. A girl had “jumped” to her death off Cat’s Peak, the lookout near the top of Prosper Mountain. Several students had served as eyewitness to the “suicide” and given statements, but their names weren’t released.
It gave me chills. It’d only happened three years ago. Was Heath a part of the Devil’s Backbone that year? Had he been one of the witnesses?
I desperately wanted to know more, but every part of me screamed that it was a bad idea. That I needed to stay far, far away from the whole society. If they were killing students then, what about previous years? Surely it wouldn’t be an isolated incident?
What about this year? Wasn’t Cat’s Peak something that Nate had spoken about in the woods while I eavesdropped? Holy shit, my new stepbrother might be a murderer.
My research took a deep dive into all the Nevaeh University student fatalities in the past ten years and found countless suspicious deaths. All of them were either suicide or accidental. It was way too many to be a coincidence.
Once again, my search ventured back onto the society as a whole, but the results were limited. Suspiciously limited.
Eventually I needed to stop and close my laptop because my head was spinning and my stomach ached from anxiety.
Thanks to all the conspiracy theories buzzing through my brain, I found it harder than usual to fall asleep which was probably why I woke so easily when my door clicked open…despite me having locked it.
My eyes opened, adrenaline surging through my chest as a large figure slipped into my room and crossed the floor in two strides.
I gasped, drawing a breath in preparation for a scream but before I could get it out, the intruder clapped a hand over my mouth. A gloved hand, giving nothing away, and I found myself staring into a full-face, metallic, skull-like mask. Whoever had broken into my room was hooded, the shadows concealing his eye color while the mask concealed everything else.
“Shhhh,” he ordered, then a moment later removed his gloved hand only long enough to stuff a wad of fabric into my mouth. Stupid me, I was shocked enough that I didn’t think to clench my teeth until it was too late. “That’s better,” he murmured, and his voice flickered recognition despite how quietly he’d spoken.
Nate?!
I lashed out, trying to fight back as he used a belt to hold the gag in my mouth but I was all tangled up in my sheet and he by far held the upper hand in strength. Unless I wanted to get seriously hurt, he was going to win this round.
Moments later he dragged me out of my bed with an unnecessarily firm grip on my upper arm, bound my hands, then deposited a black hood over my head to totally obliterate sight and yanked a cord to tighten it just this side of choking me. Overkill, in my opinion, but all of a sudden the chill of familiarity ran down my spine.
Was this what Abigail had talked about? The initiation she went through? Surely not, Nate had been absolutely adamant that I was a Layne and not an Essex, therefore had no place in his dumb shit secret society. So why would he have changed his mind so quickly? That conversation had only been two nights ago.
Unable to speak or see, and with my wrists bound tightly at my back, I stumbled as he pushed me forward and braced for impact with my door. It never came, though, and the change of carpet texture told me when we crossed into the hallway.
Rather than pushing me down the three flights of stairs—like I halfway expected—Nate muttered some curses, then picked me up in a fireman’s hold to carry me down to ground level.
If I’d been able to speak, I would be taunting him and tossing insults. But as it was I could do nothing more than silently hope this was all an elaborate hazing ritual rather than the more sinister option of Devil’s Backbone initiation.
When he finally let me down, it was less of a gentle set down and more of a sack of potatoes being tossed into the back of a truck. It hurt and all my pent-up frustration and rage bubbled out as muffled noises from behind my gag. What a dick. I’d known he was capable of bullying, but this was a whole step further.
The rumble of a car starting confirmed my suspicion that he was driving me somewhere, but the cold and wind indicated I was in an open tray. So now I needed to hope and pray he didn’t drive like a lunatic en route to wherever we were going and kill me in a car crash.
I passed the time by counting seconds in my head, counting them into minutes. It wasn’t the most precise way to keep time, but by the time I reached twenty-three the car slowed to a stop.
A car door slammed, boots crunched on gravel, then the metallic clunk of the tailgate lowering indicated it was time to get out.
I didn’t move.
“For fuck’s sake,” Nate muttered, sounding all kinds of irritated. The audacity of him, as though he’d been abducted from his bed? “Layne, don’t be a bitch. Get out.”
Eat a dick , Essex .
Huh. Maybe this was payback for the junk punch?
When my only movement was to shuffle further away from his voice, he gave an angry grunt. The tray beneath me dipped with his weight as he climbed up, then wrapped a gloved hand around my ankle and yanked .
I let out a strangled yelp—totally muffled of course—as my head smacked against the metal truck bed and Nate hauled me out by my ankle. Like a hunting prize.
“Fucking get on your feet and walk, Layne, or I swear to god I will drag you up this path by your hair,” he growled as I tumbled out of the truck and onto the gravel. I’d been sleeping in just a T-shirt and panties, so there was nothing to prevent the grazes on my legs as I hit hard.
I wanted to tell him to kiss my ass, but the fear had taken root in my chest already. Nate wasn’t messing around as payback for a nut punch, he was dead serious. He also gave zero fucks if I got hurt along the way, so for my own safety, I got cautiously to my feet.
“Finally,” he snapped. “Nice to see you can be trained, after all.”
Ugh. Insufferable prick .
He gave me a rough push, and I stumbled to keep from falling again. I could already feel blood dripping down my shin from where my knee had kissed the gravel, and the burn of multiple grazes heated me through.
We walked up what seemed like a steep incline, with sharp stones cutting into my feet on each step, for what seemed like a couple of minutes. Then as we approached more voices, chilling wind whipped at my T-shirt and hood.
“Here he is!” someone said as we approached, Nate still prodding my back to keep me moving. “What took so long?”
“Shut the fuck up,” someone else hissed. “You don’t talk to him like that.”
Nate said nothing, just kept pushing me every time I paused until he abruptly grabbed my arm and jerked me to a stop.
“Why is she bleeding?” Heath demanded in a furious whisper, his gentle hand skimming my leg where the grazes hurt the most. “This isn’t?—”
“Calm down,” Nate drawled, sounding bored. “She tripped getting out of my car, that’s all. Stubborn bitch didn’t want my help.”
Bullshit. But of course I was gagged and couldn’t correct his lies.
“Ash, are you okay? You’ll be okay, I pr?—”
“Cut it out,” Nate growled, cutting off Heath’s apology. “Let’s just get on with this shit.”
This time when he urged me forward, it was with his fingers around my upper arm rather than just shoving me. Fake fuck, even to his friends.
“Take this one,” Nate said, handing me over to someone else in leather gloves. “Get her in line.”
Whoever took over was considerably less rough and gently guided me to wherever the fuck they wanted me, quietly telling me to shuffle forward another inch, then tapping my wrist to indicate that was enough. In bare feet, I could feel my toes on the lip of something.
My guts flipped. I knew where we were. Why the wind was so vicious.
“Can anyone tell me where we are this evening?” Nate called out in a deep, booming voice. “You’re all smart people. Surely one of you knows.”
Cat’s Peak . We’re on Cat’s Peak.
“Cat’s Peak,” a girl spoke up, making me realize that I was likely the only one gagged.
Great. Thanks a fucking lot, Nate.
“Is this our initiation?” The excitement in her voice was undeniable. She wasn’t scared of dying at all. Didn’t she know what’d happened in previous years?
“That’s right,” Nate confirmed. “Right now, all eight of you are standing on the very edge of Cat’s Peak lookout. Below you is a sheer drop of fifty-three feet onto jagged rocks at the base.” His voice grew louder as he spoke, like he was pacing along behind us and had just drawn closer to where I stood. “Your task…is to jump.”
“You’ll catch us, though,” a different voice said, this one a man. “Right?”
“Maybe. Some of you.” Nate didn’t sound human. Pure ice. “The test is to see how badly you want this. Not everyone will survive… People have died during this task in the past. But one thing is certain—if you don’t jump, you’ll never be given a second chance.”
Holy shit. He was just outright admitting it? That their society had killed students in the past? How was the university okay with this going on?
“Enough stalling,” another familiar voice drawled. Royce. “On the count of three, you jump and join the DBS or you fuck off back to your bed and forget this ever happened.”
Terror swept through me so hard my whole body broke out in sweat, but ultimately I knew I had the choice. Simply don’t jump.
It was my choice, right? And I didn’t want to be in their society, so I would just not jump .
“One…” Royce called out, “Two… Three .”
Screams rang out through the night, and a boot kissed my spine, propelling me forward. Someone—I’d put my money on Nate—had just kicked me off the ledge.
I screamed, despite the gag muffling most of the noise. I didn’t care, and I was too terrified of my impending death, except I hit the ground way too fast and rolled.
Wait. What?
That was grass. And I didn’t fall anywhere near hard enough to be from Cat’s Peak. Hell, it’d hurt more getting dragged out of Nate’s truck.
Laughter filled the air around me, and someone yanked the hood off my head.
We were on grass. A quick glance up told me we’d barely jumped six feet and the actual Cat’s Peak ledge was a hundred feet away at least.
“What the fuck?” Carter grunted, grabbing my chin. “Why are you gagged?”
I glared absolute death as best I could and his brows hitched.
“Whoa, Spark, simmer down. Nothing to do with me.” He loosened the belt and released the fabric from my mouth, frowning at it before pocketing the evidence. “You okay?”
I was far from okay, but a quick look around told me everyone else was riding their adrenaline rush with smiles and laughter, enjoying the ruse. Tears pricked at my eyes, and I bit back all the venom I wanted to spit.
Carter was still staring with a concerned intensity that made my chest hurt, though, so I jerked a nod. “Fine,” I muttered.
He frowned, then circled behind me to untie my hands. A low mutter about the knots reached my ears, but a high-pitched ringing had started up and everything else was starting to sound dull.
Fuck. Was I about to faint?