Chapter 27
Bohnes
“I would love to never be shot or stabbed again,” I remark casually, smoking a cigarette at the entrance to Prescott High’s hideous gymnasium. I’m making sure that every Oak Valley, Fuller High, and Prescott brat who enters these doors knows the rules: keys left in their cars, no questions asked.
On the street in front of the school, there are two rows of slanted vehicles, parked like they’re being featured in a car show.
On one side, vintage beauties and shitboxes from Prescott.
On the other side, luxury vehicles worth six figures plus.
A sea of scantily clad women and cheaply tuxedo’d men pour into the building, decorated to the nines with items purchased via Oak Valley generosity.
No payment, no entry, and Prescott serves the best drugs, dick, and pussy around. Always has.
“That’s a nice thought,” Ash says, standing on my right side like a well-trained dog.
He wants to learn from me, and I suppose I don’t mind teaching him.
Ash’s skills keep Scarlett safe. The better he gets, the better off we all are.
I offer him the cigarette and he shakes his head. “But it’s a pipe dream.”
“No, it’s not. That’s what our future looks like.
” Alexei is on my other side, also declining to smoke with me.
Widow is at the curb with Scarlett and Bastian.
They’re all giving free lessons on how to change oil, how to fix a flat, how to get a stuck window to roll back up.
Scarlett doesn’t want to leave Prescott, but she knows she has to leave Prescott.
My jaw flexes as I try to process the thirty feet stretching between us.
Nearly dying has done something to me, tweaked the creature lurking inside.
But someone has to watch the door, and I’m not wasting my newly regained energy on teaching faceless NPCs how to change oil.
These are my classmates, too, and I know how dumb most of them are.
“Look at her wasting her time trying to help people who won’t even help themselves.” I tsk my tongue and ash the cigarette in an empty beer can. Pre-drinking is a very big deal around here. Half of the graduating class is sloshed already. “She really is too nice.”
Not us though. We are painfully sober and getting ready to test out my own personal Frankenstein.
Scarlett in the killdozer. I’ve cum to that thought dozens of times in the past. I’m ready to see it in the flesh.
It was always meant for her, the only type of chariot I could possibly provide.
An upside-down underworld prince with a death machine on wheels instead of a horse.
“God.” Alexei shrinks back from the people passing by, lip twitching with disgust, assailed at every turn by another hideous facet of Prescott culture.
Random hookups against the wall. Cocaine being done off the hoods of shiny cars.
Oil changes. People, breathing and sweating and drinking and bumping into him. “This place is a nightmare.”
“I like it here,” Ash replies cheerfully, tucking his hands into the pockets of his suit jacket.
He and Alexei are the only men in Prescott dressed in nice clothes like that.
I’ve got on a hoodie and joggers, so as not to confuse the populace.
I’m in charge of the Snow Day party and determined to make up for the failure of our wedding reception.
How could I do that to Scarlett? Get shot and then ruin the party like that? What a selfish man I am.
Widow is dressed like it’s a night at the track—only with more expensive jeans.
Too tight, but that’s how he likes them.
If he wants to lower his own sperm count, who am I to complain?
He sent his new boy crew out to buy those jeans for tonight.
Unfortunately for him, I’ve heard students gossiping about his crew and calling them POP, the Princes of Prescott.
Dreadful.
My entire body hurts, but I don’t show weakness in public. My scream of pain remains trapped inside, dulled by nicotine and adrenaline.
I take another drag on the cigarette, my eyes on Scarlett again.
She’s wearing denim overalls and a sexy red crop, dark hair twisted into a bun and covered with a red bandanna. A pair of heels on her feet, incongruous and tantalizing. Scarlett glances over, checking on me as much as I check on her. I grin back as she makes her way over to us with Widow in tow.
“I think we’re done here,” Scarlett remarks casually, swiping her dirty hands on the front of her overalls and freaking Alexei out.
He sighs heavily and draws several packets of wipes from his pocket, taking one of her hands.
The way he plays with her fingers screams of intimacy, familiarity, and affection. “Any interesting guests today?”
Scarlett is looking right at me, Widow hovering over her right shoulder. Him sharing his blood with me while I was at death’s doorway has made us brothers. He’s the reason I was able to allow Scarlett to get so far away from me tonight. Thirty whole feet. My God.
“Interesting guests?” I look over at Ash, wearing a suit with his hair slicked back.
Not incognito tonight. A Kelly brat. The spitting image of his brother.
I think part of him enjoys the idea of being hunted through the halls and subdued while looking like that.
The final conquest of Aspen or something.
“Nothing. Nobody. Your standard brain-dead teen zombies.”
“Nisha and Hype have danced to every single song,” Ash offers, noticing a detail that I’d pushed aside as unimportant.
Other people’s romantic connections are only of interest if they relate directly back to the job at hand.
I put a palm to my side, exhaling suddenly as a wave of fatigue washes over me.
Scarlett’s eyes narrow. Shit. Having a Nightmare is fucking intense, isn’t it?
“Don’t do that. I’m fine. It’s Snow Day.
” I tuck my hands into my hoodie pocket, pleased to see the mix of students and the limitless phones in the air, recording everything.
Posting everything. It’s much harder to murder someone on livestream and get away with it.
Not impossible though. “An iconic night in every Prescott student’s career.
” I give Ash a sharp look. “Except for this creep, hanging around a high school party.”
“Not only that, but with his grotesquely high body count (not the kill kind), he needs to be careful.” Scarlett points at Ash with a freshly scrubbed finger, courtesy of Alexei. “When it comes time for you to run tonight, boy, you better run.”
Ash reaches up to adjust his tie, slicking his tongue over his teeth like the naughty rich boy he’s so used to playing.
“Whoever catches me can have me,” Ash says, languid and inky, like the demon he is. He’s a lovely househusband. He’s very tame for Scarlett. He’s also a maniac. A maniac who saved my life.
In my lowest moment, a family to find me and care for me and bring me home.
“So if I catch you, feel free to bend you over a desk?” Widow asks dryly and Ash shrugs.
“I didn’t want a safe word for a reason. I don’t even want one with you.” Ash gives Widow a look, then Alexei, and me last. He raises his brows and waltzes into the gym with his hands in his pockets, ignoring the Oak Valley students who shrink away from him because they still think he’s Aspen.
“What a fucking idiot,” Widow growls, stalking after him, like he’s Ash’s personal security.
He doesn’t bother to change out of his oil-stained clothes, and I know that Scarlett has no intention of doing that either.
She doesn’t need to, as attractive in overalls as she was in her wedding dress. The perfect woman.
“I have some party tricks saved up for tonight.” I step forward as Alexei drops Scarlett’s hand, tossing the used cleaning supplies into the nearest trash can with a shudder.
I’m glad he turned out to be an asset instead of simply an extra step between my wife and me and our money.
My wife. The privilege of having Scarlett as both a wife and a Nightmare is like an explosion beneath my rib cage every day.
I won’t have to live in the shadows alone.
“Playing with the power in the building and all that. Just some games.”
“Are you not worried about an assassination attempt?” Scarlett asks, hands on her hips. Someone in the street is blasting metal music. Inside the gym, it’s hip-hop. If KMZI 66.6 were still around, the music would match.
The crowd is far from sober and having a very good time.
This high school party is going to morph into something bigger, like a zombie horde, pouring from the gym and into the streets. To start off, we’re having a school dance. To end it, a block party.
Scarlett, sitting in the killdozer that I built. The thought is building an obsessive hunger in my brain, the psycho who got everything he ever wanted when he expected precisely none of it.
“Ehh.” I shrug both shoulders, flashing another grin.
Scarlett reaches out to knock my hood back with a sigh, cupping the side of my face.
The sensation of her fingers on my jaw calms me in a way I hadn’t imagined possible.
I grab her wrist so tight that she flinches, and then I press a rough, horny kiss to her palm.
Scarlett shivers. “If Kelly and Archer want to come for me tonight, it’ll only make the sex more interesting. ”
“I highly disagree.” Alexei straightens his navy suit, eyes cold as he zones in on the next set of students to come too close to him.
His needles are in his gloved hands, knuckles flexing beneath the black latex.
“Having sex in this place does not sound appealing to me. It’s filthy.
How much bodily fluid is splashed across these halls?
Across these desks? I’ve seen no less than four sets of students having sex sans condoms—and that’s just outside. ”
Scarlett laughs, twisting out of my grip by using the injury to my arm against me.