Chapter Forty-Two The ripest fruit first falls
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The ripest fruit first falls
I STUMBLED THROUGH THE DARKNESS, my footsteps pounding over the soft ground as Vivian and I searched for safety.
Everything was a blur of trees and moss, bushes and branches as we charged ahead. Vivian led the way. The earth and roots and leaves wilted in her path, only to spring back to life behind us, obstructing our trail for the Theta member pursuing us.
“We’re nearly at the shed,” Vivian whispered, pointing ahead.
All I saw were trees and undergrowth, the shed much too far, so we found shelter near a tree.
I crawled beneath its low-hanging branches and used a bush to hide, while Vivian rested her hand against the tree’s trunk.
As she did, the trunk began to age, just like how the foliage had wilted in her path.
“My powers are stronger here, closer to where I died. Not so much on campus, but a girl can dream.”
“Should we try for Theta House? Or should we spend the night here?” I said, trying to measure the distance between the shed and our hiding spot.
“You can’t be serious,” Vivian said. “This is all a game to them. Most of them don’t even know the history of the rituals they’re imitating.
They just do it because it’s Westfield tradition.
Their so-called heritage. If only they knew what spirits they called upon for their rituals.
Their ignorance is their violence, and again and again, we become victim to it. ”
“I’m not changing my mind,” I said, defiant. “I don’t want this, but if there’s a way—”
“You can’t break the curse,” Vivian hissed, cutting me off. “It’s too difficult. The ?nhye and Theta have attempted it for years, and if we had figured it out, I wouldn’t have drowned trying to save my poor Melvin.”
“Melvin,” I whispered. “As in, Kasem’s ancestor?”
Vivian nodded. “I was already a member of ?nhye, but when Melvin decided to rush Sigma to see if their society had any information to help him break the curse, I left the sisterhood and rushed Theta instead. We both died in the process. I took your gloves from you, hoping you would realize that suffering through your powers here at Westfield wouldn’t be worth the pain.
And certainly not for a man, not even two of them.
So go home now, Sianna. Leave Westfield before another accident makes you its victim. ”
“You had no right to do that,” I said. “Vivian, do you know how much torture it’s been, seeing visions everywhere? Having to force myself to be in the present because everything I touched was tearing me away from reality?”
“I know,” Vivian said. “I realize that now, and I’m sorry. But I don’t want you to end up like me. Dead because you sacrificed everything, including yourself, over love. I thought you’d give up and leave.”
Vivian was pleading, her eyes wide, beseeching me to hear her words.
Suddenly, screams cut through the night. They were bloodcurdling, and terrible. But we recognized the sound of the voice.
Luke.
He wasn’t far from us.
Vivian’s gaze steeled.
“I tried to warn him. I tried to warn you both. He thought he’d get into Sigma. That they’d accept him because his family’s been in Virginia for centuries. But he’s just collateral damage to them. Do you know which houses make up most of the board of trustees and their puppets in Sigma and Theta?”
She didn’t have to say it for me to understand.
Ivy House. Legacies of Westfield. The old money elite who made up the ivory towers of most of the oldest institutions in the country.
Luke’s screams grew louder, wilder.
“Sianna,” Vivian warned.
But I was already running. All around me, the night oozed and writhed, my footsteps a drumbeat marching toward unescapable horror. I couldn’t see past the foliage and shadowy forms, but the sound of Luke’s cries was like a signal drawing me closer and closer.
Vivian floated behing me, urging me to find shelter instead of racing toward Luke’s cries. I spun to face her.
“Luke is your friend, right? You’re just going to let him die?”
“There’s nothing we can do. Listen to me, if you interrupt their ritual, Sigma and Theta will sanction you. I’m already in bad graces with the sisterhood for intervening with the summoning at Theta. Do you want to jeopardize your chances of becoming one of us too?”
“We can’t just leave him.” The memory of that burning auditorium lived with me, always. So too had the images of the flames rising, and the decimating pain that had become a scourge on my body. The memories were mine, not a vision, but the pain was trapped in my own recollection.
Despite my parents’ tumultuous relationship, they had stayed together, loved each other, and died that night saving me.
From backstage, my father had charged to where I sat playing.
My mother was close behind him, and together, they’d covered my face with his suit jacket, lifting me off the stage and into the hands of a passerby trying to escape the worst of the fire.
Above, the light fixtures had shrieked, groaning a terrible sigh before they came crashing down, erasing my parents from view.
They’d protected me and they died because of it.
“We can’t abandon him.”
Vivian looked conflicted. “All right,” she said softly. “Of course.”
Deeper and deeper we ventured into the swamp. The screams were waning, but I could feel us getting closer. Finally, I spotted a group of figures in a small clearing.
It was Luke. But he wasn’t alone.
Beside him was another initiate, one of the Desi guys I recognized from Poppy House.
Both he and Luke had been stripped to their boxers.
They were being circled by three masked crows while a silver vulture watched, leaning against a tree trunk.
But the crows had grown violent. They nipped at Luke’s and the other man’s bare chests, drawing blood from them as they screeched and chanted in the night.
My powers manifested at my fingertips. I focused on the roots and overgrowth beneath the Sigmas’ feet. With a flick of my hand, I drew on my affinity, imagining the roots coiling at their ankles over time and yanking the Sigmas to the ground.
“Stop!” I screamed.
The incantation set fire to my nerves. The magic churned in my mind and my veins siphoned the energy from the living world around us into the single syllable of the command.
The roots came to life and the Sigmas were thrust to the ground, a few feet from where Luke and the other man lay gasping.
“We need to find shelter,” I said, approaching Luke and the man, my heart racing in disbelief at what I’d managed to do.
But three masked figures I hadn’t noticed sprinted toward me.
“Unworthy,” they shrieked. “You are all unworthy.”
The man beside Luke used the distraction to yank off the silver rope that bound him and disappeared into the distance. The masked crows screeched in anger, rushing toward me. Pain jolted through my body as they toppled over me, jostling my arms and my hands with their beaks.
“Enough,” the silver vulture shouted. “Leave her. You know the law. Only a Theta can initiate another Theta bid.”
From the open slits of their masks, the stench of liquor and smoke tinged the bodies of the two Sigmas who pinned me to the ground.
They’d been drinking and smoking, and who knows what else.
And if they heard their vulture leader, they showed no sign of it.
One of them tore part of my skirt, the sound of ripping fabric a violent, piercing thing.
The other slipped his hands along the length of my thigh, past the band of my underwear.
I kicked and screamed and clawed, landing a blow in the stomach of one of the crows, while the other pushed me against the trunk of a tree. For a brief moment, through the lace openings of my gloves, my fingertips connected with his skin.
The vision yanked me into the past, to moments before as the members started the campfire and donned their masks.
I didn’t recognize the face of this crow, but I’d seen him on campus, in one of the engineering buildings.
He was a senior and through Sigma, he’d already gotten a job at a massive venture capitalist firm.
The vision ended abruptly as a hand pulled the crow off me and violently threw him to the ground. I screamed as the vulture descended, but his voice was soft, pleading.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Sianna.”
Gasping, I recoiled from Kasem, wrapping my arms around myself and my torn clothing—my mother’s dress. One of the last things I had that belonged to her.
I’d known he’d be here with the other Sigmas, but him watching this happen, being a part of it? It made me sick to my stomach.
“You know what they are and you’re working with them. Even though they killed Melvin, your own ancestor,” I whispered. “Why would you be a part of this?”
From the slits in the mask, confliction churned in his gaze.
“This is my first time being a part of the hazing as a member. I swear,” he said.
His voice was steeped in bitterness, and he wouldn’t meet my gaze, but I saw the truth in his words.
Guilt and self-loathing had already begun to consume him when he spoke.
“Every year, they have a different chapter member take part in it. Keep us connected to Sigma, or so they say. This year, it was my turn.”
“So they’re passing the mantle. You let them humiliate you as an initiate, and now they’re having you do their dirty work.”
“It’s a rite of passage,” he said. “And it’s what I have to do as part of the conservatorship. Become a member of Sigma and a chapter leader.”
I yanked the mask off his face, anger and hurt and everything else oozing through me. Kasem looked windswept and surprised, as if I’d pulled him from a dream and back into reality.
He pursed his lips, searching for words. But then Luke’s scream—and others’—cut through our impasse. In the dark, something had taken to Luke and the crows. Multiple somethings.
I clung to Kasem as a creature emerged from the swamp.
Silver scales gleamed against its body, and its snout bore sharp pearly white teeth that dripped with a shimmering, oozing silver liquid.
Its body stretched across all fours, with a spiked tail curving into the night.
Within the depths of its pupilless eyes, crimson veins pulsed, a bloodthirsty hunger glinting in its gaze.
An alligator, but mutated, like a corpse awoken from the dead.
Fear rippled through me. In an instant, the silver creature was on Luke and one of the crows, its bellowing roars striking terror through the night.
With its massive jaws, the creature gnawed at Luke’s bound feet and the crow’s right thigh, tearing through their flesh in bloody abandon.
And then, bathed in blood and carnage, its hunt began.