The Vipers and Their Vendetta (Verona Falls University #5)

1. Vani

CHAPTER 1

Vani

Pain rips through me as the man carrying me jolts my body with every step through the woods.

My left side is an inferno of agony, and my head feels as if tiny elves are hammering at my skull with mini pickaxes. The pain is the only thing preventing me from sliding back into unconsciousness.

“Help!” I try to cry, but it comes out as a strangled whisper.

A low grumble comes from above me. “I am helping.”

I want to struggle, to fight against the arms pinning me to his chest, but I don’t seem to have it in me. My brain refuses to communicate with my muscles enough to allow me to break free.

Where is he taking me?

Home. He’d said home. But what did that even mean? His home or mine?

The night is quiet except for the occasional, chilling screech of a fox. A sliver of moonlight peers from around a cloud, and, groggily, I lift my head from the man’s shoulder and lean back in my captor’s arms to try to see him.

He is tall and broad and seems to carry me with ease. I feel from his build, however, that he’s not as big as Zane. I wish I could see who it is, but not only is it dark, his face is partially obscured by a hood.

All that’s visible is a heavy brow and the blade of his nose.

“Who are you?” I manage to croak. “What do you want from me?”

He doesn’t reply.

It’s too much effort to hold my head up, so I let it drop back against his shoulder as he carries me God knows where. My heart is pounding, but I’m too injured, stunned, and weak to fight. Depending on how bad my injuries are, he could have killed me by picking me up. That alone tells me this person is crazy. I wonder if he’s even part of the college. It would be just my luck to have been out in the woods at the same time as a serial killer.

Just like in the moments before I crashed my bike, the faces of everyone I’ve loved flip through my mind. I think of how broken my father will be if I go missing. He’ll never forgive himself and, knowing him, will spend the rest of his life blaming himself.

Why did I try to ride out at that time of night, and in these conditions?

It was the wrong thing to do.

Where the hell did I think I was going? Home? Tail between my legs?

No, that’s not me. I can’t go back, as tempting as it is. I still need to find out exactly what happened to my sister. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I realize I want to find out exactly which one of the Vipers caused her death. Then I want to make them pay.

I’d laugh if I wasn’t so fucking terrified and in pain. Here I am plotting my revenge on the Vipers, when I’m half unconscious and being carried through the woods by a crazy man. I’m probably going to be dead and buried by tomorrow.

Will they miss me? My broken, dark men. Will they care? Have they even noticed I’m gone?

I doubt it, if the twins’ only thought at Reagan’s awful death was for their stupid car.

I’m unsure what distance I traveled on my bike. I’d been lost in a whirlwind of grief and rage, and I hadn’t been paying attention. Plus, I don’t know these roads. Other than the day I arrived, when I’d been safely following the rest of the club on their bikes, I hadn’t ridden that route. It’s also dark, which makes everything harder to distinguish. Things that might look familiar in the day take on a whole other form at night.

At the thought of my bike, I flail weakly over the strange man’s shoulder as though hoping to somehow reach it, even though we’ve left it far behind now. I hate to think of my poor abandoned Harley. I hope the damage isn’t too bad.

Fuck, my dad is going to kill me. I’ve really made a mess of my bike. It’s worth a fucking fortune.

“My bike…” I manage to groan. The words sound stronger in my head than they do coming from my lips. It’s barely a murmur I doubt anyone can understand.

Tears slip down my cheeks. I feel utterly helpless. My dad is going to be so fucking angry—not only because the bike is damaged and I got hurt, but because I rode out on strange roads, in the dark, on my own.

He’d taught me better than that.

And now look at me, bouncing along on the shoulder of a complete stranger who seems to think it’s okay to scoop up injured women from the road and carry them home.

It reminds me of that old Stephen King novel about the writer and the obsessed fan. I pray this dude isn’t going to go all Misery on me.

I try to imagine what I’m going to say to my father and realize that if he learns the truth, he’ll also find out that I lied about my reason for wanting to come to Verona Falls. The magnitude of what I’ve done seems to take a breath of its own and expand. He’ll find out about Mom and Reagan, and, worst of all, Jarl Olsen.

He’ll start a war.

And he’ll take me away from the Vipers—something I should want anyway, yet my heart cracks a little more at the thought.

The man continues to walk for what seems like a long time, and my mind hops around, a butterfly that can’t find a flower to land on. It’s like the crash shook my brains up and put them back all scrambled. I can think, but it’s not clear. The darkness of unconsciousness keeps trying to pull me in, but I fight it, terrified of what might happen to me if I give in.

Is he taking me farther from the college? I have no idea what direction we’re heading.

“Where are we going?” I manage to ask. “Where are you taking me?”

There’s no response.

His footsteps crunch on dried leaves, and the whine of a late season mosquito buzzes around my head. Above us, tree branches reach out to one another, as though trying to block out the moon and stars, stealing my only light. How does he know which way he’s going? What if he doesn’t, and he’s just wandering out into the woods for us to get lost?

People die out in the mountains.

But then we enter a clearing, and I lift my head again, despite the pain that turning my neck causes. A small moan escapes me. This isn’t a moan of pain, but one of fear.

Looming ahead is a tall, circular building I recognize.

It’s the old water tower where I ended up when I ran from the Vipers during the cross-country race.

It stands like a sentry blocking our path, dark and gloomy, and it chills me to the core.

The Vipers’ words of warning come back to me, the fact that it’s not a safe place, and what was it they said? Oh, yeah, I didn’t want to know who used it .

Well, I’m about to find out, up close and in person, it seems. The man puts me down on the ground, but one arm shoots out and grabs me around the throat, holding me in place against the wall. I’m wobbling all over, my legs unsteady and shaky, and my head pounding. I start to sink down the wall, but he literally holds me up by my neck, his grip strong.

He unlocks the door with a thick key and pushes it open, the aged metal of the hinges screeching in protest. He picks me up again and cradles me to his chest as if I’m precious, despite the way he held me so violently a moment ago. He stomps into the space and hits something on the wall with his elbow.

Light floods the room and blinds me.

I twist my face away, my eyes streaming with tears.

He puts me down against the wall, and I lean back, grateful for the support. My captor turns from me, and as I try to adjust to the light, he pulls something over his head in the corner of the room, before adjusting the hood into place.

This isn’t good. I assess my chances of escape, while he’s got his back to me. The door is two steps away, but I’m weak and dizzy, and he’d catch me in seconds. Finding a weapon to use against him would be a better bet. I glance around, blinking in shock at the brightness assaulting my pupils. Once more, I’m confronted with the space I was in mere days ago.

The memories hit me of then—of Zane and Saint and Lex touching me and stroking me and making me come—and I push them away, trying to focus on the here and now. Thoughts of them bring me nothing but pain and loss. How had I believed we’d had some kind of connection? I’d thought I was special. What a stupid little fool I am. I wonder if they had any idea what my connection to Reagan might have been. Had they been laughing at me behind my back? They knew I’d taken that folder. Was that the only reason they’d kept me so close? They’d wanted to learn what my interest was in Reagan, and they decided to fuck with me—and fuck me—at the same time?

My heart hurts.

I’ve lost my sister, and I gave my virginity to the men who were involved in her death, somehow. I’m not sure I’ll ever recover from this.

But first I need to ensure I recover from whatever screwed up situation I’ve landed myself in now. If I die here, my broken heart won’t matter a bit.

Now my eyes have gotten used to the light, I take stock of my surroundings. Nothing has changed. The half-melted candles and eerie drawings that dot the room are still very much in evidence. There’s the small kitchen and the rugged, almost barnlike seating area with the couch and the coffee table. My eyes are immediately drawn to the far side of the room where the carved wooden bed is still very much there . It screams at me, the reasons for such a large, opulent bed in this space making my skin crawl.

Unlike everything else, the bed is different now, and instead of the black silk, this time it wears deep red sheets. It means someone has been here since we were and changed them. Did they notice the streaks of white cum dried across them? Do they know the mess is because of me?

The man turns back around, and I bite back a scream. He’s wearing a mask under his hood, the white skeletal features stark against the black background. I shrink back as he approaches and raise my arms to ward him off.

“No, no. Please. Leave me alone.”

The movement shoots fresh pain through my body, but he ignores me and picks me up as though I weigh nothing. He carries me to the back of the room, toward that bed.

My panic escalates.

If he’s taking me to the bed, it means my worst fears might be about to come true.

Adrenaline spikes, pouring through my veins like lava. It heats me from within and provides an energy where before there was only a slow, fog-like exhaustion. My head is still pounding, and I feel weak, but my body reacts on instinct. I kick out at him, and punch against the chest of the man holding me.

“Shush,” he whispers, “you’ll hurt yourself.”

Is he insane? Mere moments ago, he was holding me up against the wall by my goddamn throat. He picked me up when I was seriously injured, and while he clearly hasn’t done any long-term damage, that’s beside the point. He could have done. You never move a person who’s been involved in that kind of accident; that’s basic first aid. He simply decided to take me, despite it possibly being detrimental to my health, or even my life. It’s that which worries me the most. He doesn’t care about me in the slightest. He might be about to murder me and rape my dead body.

It makes the Vipers seem almost kind in their approach.

He places me on the bed and stares down at me. I try to sit up, planning to bolt from the bed, but his hand against my sternum pushes me back down.

His eyes glitter from within the shadows of the mask. He reaches up and sweeps the hood back from his face. The gray material falls onto his shoulders and reveals mid-length, dirty blond hair. All I can see of his face is his pretty green eyes, and then the scary mask.

“You are hurt.” His voice is deep and rumbling, as if it’s gurgling its way up from the earth itself.

“You moved me,” I say. “You shouldn’t have done that. What if I had hurt my neck or my back? You could have crippled me for life.”

“You had already moved before I picked you up,” he says.

I had? I don’t recall that at all. Then again, I did black out there for a moment or two. I move a little, and my head feels as if someone’s sliced an axe into it. I wince and put my hand over my skull as if I can stop the pain.

“As I said, you are hurt,” he says. “Let me help.”

The way he speaks strikes me as odd. Formal, almost. He doesn’t have an accent, so I doubt that English is his second language, but he also doesn’t speak the same way as most people of our age. He almost sounds like some monk who transported to the future from mediaeval times.

He leans in and reaches toward me. I flinch back automatically. What is he going to do to me?

“I need to help you heal,” he says. “I have things here that can help.” He gestures into the space around him, as if conjuring those very things out of the air itself.

This guy is seriously weird, and he’s giving creepy masked killer vibes. Add that to the gothic interior of this place, and what the Vipers said about it and its occupants, and I know I need to get out of here immediately.

“Let me go,” I beg. “I promise I won’t tell anyone that you brought me here. I need to get back.”

“Back where?” he asks.

I open my mouth and then close it again. After another beat, I blurt, “My father runs a biker gang.”

Sometimes that’s enough to scare people into not messing with me. This guy doesn’t reply, but his mouth twitches into a slight smile behind the hole in the mask. He chuckles as if he finds my words funny and amusing rather than intimidating.

I take in more of the room than I did the previous time I was here. Small jars with strange looking ingredients line a shelf along the back wall of this bedroom area. Pestle and mortar sets are dotted around the place, as if they might need to make pesto at any moment.

Additional jars of what look like dried herbs and spices are joined by more candles, and strange things I don’t even want to think about—dried chicken feet, what looks like a rabbit’s foot, which makes me shudder, and tiny collections of twigs in all manners of shapes. Are these guys into dark magic or something?

Oh, God, my fear notches up a whole other level. What if I’ve stumbled upon a cult?

“Listen,” I say, deciding to try again to reason with him, “I really do need to get back to my room. If I’m not there, then I’ll be in trouble and so will you.”

“Why would I be in trouble?” He cocks one brow and puts his hands on his lean hips as he stares down at me. “I’m helping you.”

I decide that even though I hate them, right now my only chance of getting out of this is my relationship with the Vipers.

“I belong to the Vipers.”

From what I’ve seen, those guys, particularly Zane, frighten the life out of most of the people at this college.

“I know.” He shrugs as if that means nothing to him. “I still need to make sure you’re okay, and I need a small favor. Then you can go back to those miscreants if you wish. You’re bleeding, though. Look at your arm.”

I glance down at my arm in response to his words and gasp.

How did I manage not to even feel the pain from this? A long, tattered line of crimson dotted material flaps around my skin, framing a deep gash.

The creepy room seems to recede, the faintness returning to me once more.

“That looks bad,” I say quietly.

“You are bleeding. I can dress it and clean it. Then I can make sure you’re all right before I help you back to your dorm.”

“You could just take me back now, and I’ll go to the infirmary at the college.” I’m not above begging if it might save me.

“I could,” he replies, “but I’m not going to. I’ll patch you up here, and in return you will give me something.”

“Give you something?” His words alarm me more than anything else that’s happened so far, and that’s saying a lot. “I don’t have anything to give you.”

“Oh,” he says with a smile that stretches his mask again, “but you do.”