Chapter XV #2
Two millimeters of ketamine—enough to disassociate but not enough to kill. The same drug they use to kidnap all the girls for their fucked up rituals. I jab the needle into his neck before he can make a move.
He stumbles.
His eyes are wide, clawing at the air.
“What the—what did you—?” He’s already slurring his words, already fading.
I step away from behind him and watch him fall.
“Today’s your lucky day, Langley,” is all I have to say.
He doesn’t deserve any more words than that.
Just pain.
Pure, unadulterated, blood-curdling pain. The kind that makes you wish for death, but it never comes. I’d never be so presumptuous as to put him out of his misery. Instead, I take my time with him.
A fist to the face.
A knee to the ribs.
A dumbbell to the shoulder for good measure.
By the time he has the cognizance to beg, his mouth is a bloody smear. But his tongue won’t cooperate so it all comes out as a blubbering mess.
Good.
I drag him to the mirrors by the collar of his sweaty gym shirt, forcing him to look at himself, how stupid he looks.
“Not so fun when you’re on the other side, huh?” I whisper.
Tears fall from the fool’s face.
I can’t help but smile.
When I’m done torturing him, I drag him to the showers and turn it on, watching as red-tinged water circles the drain. I wish it was Silas, but keeping friends with an abusive rapist is grounds enough to warrant what I’ve done to him.
MAXIMILLIAN - 19:05
Believe it or not, when the coward sees me—he runs.
It’s as if he has a sixth sense. I’m certain Cedric is still unconscious in the gym bathroom, which means he couldn’t have had the chance to tell him.
The fear, the cowardice, this all just part of his personality it seems.
His pompous act never fooled me. A man that is obsessed with chasing skirts is always lacking in something, that’s why he feels the need to make up for it with female attention—and it seems Maximillian lacks backbone more than anything else.
I don’t speed up my pace.
This campus bears my last name.
I know it like the back of my hand.
There’s nowhere to hide—not along the back paths that the servants used in the 1800s, not the hidden exits that lead into various parts of the Scottish Highlands and even the broken grate behind the kitchen that leads to the old underground tunnels.
So Max? He doesn’t make it far.
I catch him by the greenhouse, his breath fogging in the cold air.
“What do you want, Beaumont?” Now that he’s cornered, all his bravado is gone. But he’s trying to put on a brave face now. “Stalking me around campus? That’s a new low, even for you.”
A hollow laugh escapes me.
“Is it?” I mock. “Whatever the case, just know that what I’m about to do, it’s premeditated. I’ve wanted to do this since the moment you came here bragging about fucking Vivienne’s cousin.”
I’m on him in an instant, slamming him through the glass—hard enough for him to see stars. Again, I’ve always been underestimated. Beneath all the baggy sweaters is a physique that honed from hours of exercise each day.
Whenever the weed doesn’t help me sleep, I work out until I’m tired.
Max is scraped and bruised from the shattered glass, holding his head as a rivulet of blood gushes down the side of his face. He tries to scuffle away from me, but he’s on his back and powerless like a crab.
I stomp on his ankle.
It crackles like a fresh bag of crisps.
Then I do the other—and that’s when he screams. In between his groans and shrieks I assume he’s swearing at me. But I can’t make anything out. I kneel beside him.
“You knew what your friend was up to, what he did to her and continues to do to her. You knew about the rituals that would bind her to him, and you participated.”
His lip quivers. “I told him the last one was crazy,” he stutters. “None of us wanted to kill that girl but Silas insisted he had to, to make Eden his.”
New information.
It hardly changes the fact that he’s complicit, but it will change how I deal with him.
“It might not have been your idea, but you participated.” I reiterate, and he whimpers as I roll my heel along his broken ankle. “Did you think that it wouldn’t cost you anything?”
I leave him writhing, lying among the shattered greenhouse panes, roses blooming in his blood. I flick the lighter out of my pocket, sparking it near some dried leaves.
Orange flames take hold immediately, and I cast a glance back at him, and there’s terror in his eyes as he realizes the implications. If he doesn’t get up soon, he’s going to be eaten alive by the flames—just like how they burned that girl’s corpse.
He’s hurt but not dead.
Max will make it out of the fire if he’s lucky.
ALISTAIR - 19:19
Out of them all, he gets the only simulacrum of sympathy I have.
He still thinks that this is all a game, that they’re all just boys playing war, that the secret society he’s a part of just comes with being a Montague.
The Montague name precedes him—my parents have paintings done by members of his family hanging in our house, statues they’ve carved in our gardens.
My mother even hired his mother to paint a mural at one of our estates.
It’s a shame that Alistair ended up on the wrong side of history.
I find him in the chapel, on bended knee before a statue of the virgin Mary, praying frantically as he rubs his hands along a rosary. He looks exactly the way he should for a man trying and failing at playing god.
Guilty.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” he whispers as I get closer to him. “For what it’s worth, I think he’s gone off the rails too.”
He’s still kneeling when my steps slow behind him. “It doesn’t matter what you think. Inaction is still making a choice. You had your chance,” I say with a smile.
Then I knock him out with the butt of a flashlight.
I drag him by the collar of his gold-stitched shirt to the baptismal basin that no one uses anymore. I fill it with holy water, even taking the time to read a Psalm I found on Google to consecrate the suffering I am about to inflict on him.
Alistair is a slight thing, so hauling his unconscious body into a leaning position against the basin is easy. I press his face under the water, and he springs to life immediately—he thrashes, blowing bubbles on a silent scream, his lithe fingers clawing at my own.
But it’s no use.
I hold him there.
Not long enough to kill him, of course.
Just to scare him, to make him wonder when it will stop.
To make him feel the weight of helplessness, of drowning when if you were given a fair chance you maybe would have had a better chance. Of what all those girls must have felt in those final moments, choking on silence.
When I lift him out, he sputters and coughs.
He begs for mercy.
“Of course, Alistair.”
Then I do it again.
After the fifth time, he breaks.
Cries into marble.
“None of us can control him,” he whimpers.
I lean close. “That’s too bad, isn’t it?” I bang his head against the basin. “I’m not here to offer you penance.”
I leave Alistair collapsed beside the basin, face soaked, pants soiled, lungs rugged.
I walk out into the cold night.
My hands stink of blood and candle wax, of ash and sweat and roses.
My jacket is torn, my heart a bit heavier—but my list is shorter.
I crossed off three of the four people on it today.
With each step I take towards my cottage, it’s as if the entire school is trembling, holding its breath.
But if this school is as holy as they say, then it knows what’s coming.
Silas is next.
And after him?
The altar.
The truth.
The girl whose name is written into the fabric of my soul—Eden Lockhart.