Chapter 10
Royal
I leave the door hanging open and stalk down the hallway, boots silent on concrete. The common room is empty, lit by a single lamp over the bar, revealing a mess the bunnies haven’t attended to yet. Everything smells like bourbon, grease, and a faint underlayer of fear that no one will admit to.
The Kings pretend we fear nothing. But this town’s been swallowing girls whole.
A sound catches my ear. A metallic click. Soft, but sharp. The sound of a door. It comes from the far end of the hallway, where the exit opens into darkness.
My spine stiffens.
I take two steps at a time until I find her. Moonlight slices through the darkness, casting Becki in silver. She stands barefoot on cold concrete, wearing nothing but the tank top and shorts I gave her. Her dark hair stands up straight on her head like she crawled straight out of a nightmare.
Her wrist is still raw from the cuff.
In her hand, something small. Metallic. Familiar. A key.
Not the one that freed her.
She sees me. Her eyes go wide. She runs. She doesn’t make it three steps. I catch her by the arm and slam her into a tree with enough power to shake leaves down. She gasps, palms flat against the bark as she twists, breath hot against my throat.
The key hits the ground without a sound.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I hiss.
She jerks her chin up, defiant. “Let go of me.”
“Not a chance.”
Her chest rises and falls against my forearm where I pin her. Her throat arches, soft skin offered up like a dare. She smells like adrenaline and stubbornness and the ghost of that night in the forest when she whispered someone else’s name against my skin.
No.
Not going there.
“You think you can sneak out?” I growl.
She lifts her chin higher. “I was looking for answers,” she snaps back, voice shaking but steady enough to piss me off.
“Someone has to.”
“You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“My dad or the club?”
“Both.”
“Better that than being locked up like an animal.”
My hand tightens on instinct. Her reaction ain’t fear. Not entirely. There’s a tremble, but not the kind she wants me to think it is. A tremor that whispers want under her skin.
“What do you think is out here?” I demand. “What do you think you’ll find that we haven’t?”
“Something my daddy hid,” she spits. "A thing you're too blind to seek."
“You think I’m protecting him.”
Her eyes sharpen. “I think you’re wasting time.”
She twists again, hips brushing mine.
My breath stutters.
Her mistake. My mistake. Her lips are suddenly inches from mine.
Her voice softens, dangerous.
“You don’t understand the danger,” I say quietly.
“And you don’t understand what Pearly Gates becomes when the doors close,” she whispers. “You can’t imagine what I saw growing up there.”
Her voice trembles at the edges, real fear bleeding through the armor of anger.
I lean in until our foreheads nearly touch. “I was there remember?”
“Sometimes. Not always.”
That’s Becki. I don’t know if she doesn’t remember, or she’s saying I wasn’t there as long as her. It doesn’t matter. “I know plenty.”
She doesn’t pull away.
“Why do you even care?” she breathes.
Because I do. Because I shouldn’t. Because I’m sick in the head for wanting her bound to my bed where no one, not her daddy, not Oaks, not even goddamn Legend or even a fucking Demon Leaper, can touch her.
My free hand moves to her waist, fingers digging into her soft skin. Her palm hits my chest. Not to push me away. To steady herself. The air turns molten.
And then…
My mouth brushes hers. Barely. A ghost of a kiss. Her breath hitches. Her knees give just slightly. Her fingers curl in my hoodie. I’m one second from losing it entirely… Pinning her wrists above her head, pressing my knife flat to her thigh just to hear her gasp…
When my sanity claws me back.
I rip myself away like she’s fire. Her eyes open, furious and confused. Like she can’t decide whether to fight me or pull me back in. I bend down, grab the key off the ground, hold it up.
My voice comes out rough.
Scraped raw.
“Where did you get this?”
“I stole it.”
“From dear ol’ dad?”
“Yes.”
I narrow my eyes.
“Who let you out?”
Her brows knit. “What?”
“Your chain. My door. That shampoo.” I lean in, sniffing. “Was it Oaks?”
She flinches. Not guilt, but offense.
“No.”
“Then who?”
Her pretty little mouth twists. “A club bunny. Blond one. She said she felt sorry for me. Brought me shampoo so I could take a whore’s bath in the sink.”
My grip on the key tightens until the metal bites.
Fucking Joey.
“You talked to her?”
“I bribed her with the only thing I had left, my last stick of eyeliner.”
Bullshit.
I stare at her. She stares back. She didn’t have any eyeliner on her. Or did she? She had a fucking key I didn’t find. This girl is gonna fucking kill me. I glance past her into the darkness and freeze.
“Come on,” I say, heading toward the church.
The night air chills as we cross the gravel behind the clubhouse, heading toward the old Pearly Gates’s church. There’s a new one now, practically a mansion. But the Reverend will lurk there.
Can’t run into him and keep my promises to Legend not to kill him.
Becki keeps pace beside me, close enough that her shoulder brushes mine when the wind pushes us sideways.
It should feel wrong.
But it seems like déjà vu.
This road.
This silence.
This dread in my gut.
I walked it before.
“Funny,” Becki mutters, staring at the broken steeple ahead. “How I always end up back here.”
I don’t answer at first.
Because a picture hits me, hard and fast, of the two of us teens, walking this same dirt path under an August moon. Her hair in messy braids. My hands scraped from climbing the fence. Both of us barefoot because we weren’t supposed to be out past curfew.
Back then, this place didn’t look haunted.
It looked holy.
Or at least, that’s what they told us.
“Do you remember,” Becki says suddenly, softer now, “when you used to meet me behind the chapel before morning prayers? You’d sneak me the candy you stole from the gas station.”
I huff out a humorless breath. “I didn’t steal it. Tucker left the damn box open.”
“You stole it,” she says, bumping my hip with hers. “Gummy worms. And you always gave me the grape ones, so I’d stop crying before breakfast.”
My steps slow despite myself.
“That why you still hate grape?” I ask.
“No.” She shakes her head, eyes fixed on the church. “I hate grape because that was the year Daddy made me fast for two weeks. Only thing I tasted afterward was those stupid candies.”
I'm gritting my teeth. I remember that. I remember seeing her kneel on cold concrete with her hands folded, knuckles white as bone, while her stomach growled loud enough to echo.
“I wanted to kill him,” I say quietly.
“You were a boy,” she says.
“Didn’t matter.” I drag a hand over my face. “You shouldn’t have been crying alone.”
She glances at me then, quick, sharp, too knowing.
“You weren’t alone either,” she says. “Remember the night they made you sleep in the baptismal pool? Too cold to breathe, your lips turning blue while they said water would purify you.”
My throat goes dry. I hadn’t thought about that in years.
She steps a little closer, voice low. “You came to me the next morning shaking so bad you couldn’t button your shirt. I did it for you. You said you were fine.”
“And you said you believed me,” I murmur.
“I lied,” she says. “I always thought you’d freeze to death before you’d admit you were hurting.”
We reach the old church steps, rot-soft wood, overgrown vines, the smell of mildew and memory.
I turn to her.
“You shouldn’t remember all that,” I say.
“Someone has to,” she answers. “Otherwise, it feels like we made it all up.”
“Legend never believed us,” I say.
“Until he learned on his own.”
The wind kicks up the bush of her short hair. Something raw flickers in her eyes, anger, fear, grief, I can’t tell. Maybe all three.
Same cocktail she used to swallow, sitting beside me on the back pew while the Reverend preached fire and damnation and the choir sang loud to drown out the screams from the locked rooms.
Always imagined unruly kids being punished behind those doors. Punished like Becki and me. But what if something more sinister had been going on right under our noses.
She exhales.
“I used to think,” she whispers. “That we’d run away someday. Leave all this behind.”
“You and Legend.” I say, not questioning. Knowing.
She meets my eyes.
“We should’ve,” she says. “You and I.”
I look at her, older now, bruised, dangerous, beautiful in a way the Reverend would’ve tried to punish out of her.
“We didn’t,” I say. “And we’re sure as hell not those kids anymore.”
“Good,” she says, voice trembling. “Because those kids were too scared to look under the church. To go down in the basement.”
“Where the demon leaper might get us,” I say, remembering stories kids tell. The ones they hear from the grown-ups.
“Not anymore.”
Becki leads us to the basement like she’s been there before. Her key works. We push open the door together. And this time, we don’t run.
We hunt.
The stairs creak under my boots as Becki goes ahead of me into the basement, her shadow stretching long on the stone wall.
And just like that, I’m not here anymore.
I’m fifteen again.
Knees on cold chapel wood. Hands locked behind my head like I already confessed to something. Candlelight flickers, making the altar breathe. The Reverend’s shadow swallows me whole.
“You filthy little bastard.”
His fist tangles in my long hair, jerking my head back until my eyes burn. “Looking at her like that? You think I don’t see you? You think God don’t?”
“She’s mine to give,” he hisses. “Not for trash like you. Not damaged goods.”
The word still cuts.
The bucket tips. I detect the snake before I see it. Copperhead. Coiled. Alive.
“Pick it up.”
The strike is fast. Fire explodes in my wrist. I scream.
“No hospital,” he says calmly. “You’ll sit with it. Pray. Let the Lord decide.”
I remember the poison burning. The room emptying. My body shaking against a pew.
And then a hand on my forehead. Cool. Gentle.
“Breathe,” a woman whispers.
“Don’t tell. Just live.”
Mama Crowley.
I wake later, bitten but alive. The Reverend never speaks of it again. They call it God’s will.
I call it her.
She comes back after that. In dreams. In the quiet. Sitting at the edge of my bed like smoke with a face.
“Watch over Becki,” she tells me. “Don’t let him break her.”
The memory fades as Becki reaches the bottom of the stairs.
My wrist throbs like it remembers.
I follow her into the dark, anyway.
Because I always do.
It doesn’t take long. By the light of my phone’s flashlight, something glints near the far wall. A scrap of fabric. Pink. Glittery. Stiff with dried blood. One of the missing girls, maybe. Everything inside me goes cold.
I cross the room, lift the cloth.
Becki follows with her eyes, face draining of color.
“That belonged to Marlena,” she whispers. “She always wore glitter shirts. Like that one.”
Marlena.
Gone.
I look back at Becki, her fear the truest thing she’s ever shown me.
And just like that her face changes to thoughtful, resentful. “Like that girl who barged into your room like she’s been there before. Gave me the shampoo and my freedom. She doesn’t want me in there.”
Joey.
“We’re leaving,” I say. “Now.”
She steps close, voice trembling. “Are you taking that to Legend?”
“Yes.”
“What about me?”
“You’re coming with me.”
She straightens. “You’re not locking me up again.”
This time I grasp her arm gently, not harsh. “Yes. I am.”
Her fury is instant. “Royal…”
“If someone used this basement?” My voice drops, deadly quiet. “If something happened here? You walking around free puts a target on your back big enough to paint.”
“You think Daddy is involved?”
“I think the wrong person seeing you out of that room gets you killed before your daddy even tries.”
Her lips part, soft realization hitting her.
“You’re protecting me,” she whispers.
I don’t deny it.
I can’t.
“Sneak out again,” I say, my hand on my blade. “I’ll chain you to my bed in the basement.”
Her breath catches. Not in fear.
As we’re leaving, the Reverend’s shadow appears. Not him, but a man who aims to take his place one day. Pleasant Southeran, snake tattoo slithering up his neck, checking the perimeter. A shotgun strapped to his back.
Slapping my hand over her mouth, I drag Becki out of his line of sight. On the walk back, we keep to the shadows. But my head is noisy with thoughts of why anyone is guarding the old church and its basement.
We make it to the clubhouse quick. I lead her to my room. Her room now. This time, when I lock the chain, she doesn’t fight.
She watches me, her eyes dark and hungry.
“You almost kissed me,” she whispers.
I stare back. “And I won’t make that mistake again.”
Closing the door, I lock it.
I lie.
Because next time?
I ain’t stopping at her mouth.