Chapter Forty-Four
I’m in a chair.
Don’t remember getting here. Don’t remember much of anything other than fresh snow and vicious, mocking laughter. The whole evening is a jumbled mess in my brain, which can only mean one of two things: drugs or concussion.
Either way, it’s safe to assume that I’m in a bad spot now.
I wiggle my wrists, then my ankles. Bound, as I expected. A heavy, scratchy sack covers my head, blocking out all but a few pinpricks of light.
The Order. It has to be.
Okay. If I stay calm, I can work my way out of this.
My head pulses with pain. Another sign of a concussion—or of isoflurane poisoning, so that actually doesn’t rule out either of my options. A few more memories are beginning to creep in, so that’s a good sign—returning to my room, remembering to retrieve the Order’s note… is that when I was ambushed?
Sudden sound blares in my ears, a voice amplified far beyond any natural volume?—
My voice.
“I hope she’s proud of me. I mean, I don’t know if I believe in any afterlife, but if there is one…”
No.
I remember how those words felt on my lips. How nervous I was to utter them.
How he looked at me, into me, and how I felt?—
Safe.
This isn’t the work of the Order, after all.
“I want to prove to her that I can do it. That I want to fit in… that’s the most important thing in the world to me. And I’m scared that I’m not very good at it. Honestly, it’s all just so new. People have told me I’m kind of weird, but maybe not in a bad way?”
So loud. Echoing around me, engulfing me, trapping me in a horrible void of my own most precious secrets.
“But, well, I told you I’ve never been to a restaurant. The truth is that there are a lot of things I’ve never done… so I guess I’m a little bit scared.”
Then, even worse, Ryker’s voice. Thunderous over the speakers.
“Like this?”
“Yeah, like this. I haven’t had a real friend, let alone a boyfriend… not that you’re—I mean, I don’t know what we are… but I haven’t done this, either. Sex, I mean… I guess that makes me a virgin.”
A click as the speakers shut off.
The sack rips off of my head.
Nausea fills my stomach as the light hits me. Too bright, an oversaturated blur of color… I must be seeing doubles or even triples, because there are so many faces… so many people, staring at me.
One figure stands at the forefront.
Even through my distorted vision, I recognize him.
“Welcome to the afterparty, Lia,” Ryker says calmly.
Afterparty? I don’t understand. Is he talking about the hockey game? My lips are too numb to form a question, and I’m sure he wouldn’t bother with a response even if I could get myself to speak.
“You’re one stubborn cunt, aren’t you?” He steps closer and crouches down until his eyes are at my level, two bright points of blue in the center of my hazy vision. “People tell you again and again that you aren’t wanted here. That you will not fit in. That you would have broken your mother’s heart with how pathetic you are. And yet here you fucking are. Still finding new ways to delude yourself. Still thinking that you deserve a happy fucking ending.”
Each word drives a fresh shock of pain through my chest. I thought it was over. I thought they had done enough. I thought they had won.
But they’re not done with me yet.
He’s not done with me yet.
And now he’s done something so evil that even I didn’t dare to imagine it.
“Those… recordings…” I manage to mumble.
“My doing,” someone brags from behind me. I know that voice—Shane Dixon, one of the GODs that I met while I was with Ryker. I liked him, thought he seemed smart—now, hatred shoots through me like a lightning bolt. “You should have known that there were cameras before you started spouting off all of those sad little confessions.”
“Baring your little soul,” Ryker growls. “Because I gave you a pity fuck, and you thought that was the same as love.”
Laughter sounds from behind him, students’ voices clashing together in a hellish chorus of mockery. Is it all of them? The whole school, again? It seems like it, but I don’t know how much of it is echoing in my own dizzy skull, or how many figures are a trick of my fuzzy vision.
I stare at him. Not speaking. I can only hope that he feels every last ounce of the spite building inside of me.
“Now everyone knows!” Marissa shoulders her way up beside him, grinning from ear to ear, her eyes ablaze with a sheer, almost childlike delight that sickens me to my core. “All of your little secrets—I mean, as if it’s any wonder that you’ve never had a friend!”
Harper is my friend. I want to spit that fact in her face—but I hold back. I refuse to let Harper become another target of their vicious abuse.
“And not just that, but a virgin?” Marissa continues, choked with laughter. “A stupid little virgin who thought she had a chance with the king of the GODs?”
My blood is on fire. If I could get my hands on her?—
“Play it again, Dixon,” Ryker orders. “The good one—louder this time. I want to see her face.”
“With pleasure, boss.”
Click.
“Yeah, like this. I haven’t had a real friend, let alone a boyfriend… not that you’re—I mean, I don’t know what we are… but I haven’t done this, either. Sex, I mean… I guess that makes me a virgin.”
His features are swimming into sharper clarity now. Familiar and alien, both at once. Behind him, the high ceiling and curving walls… they’ve brought me to the student union.
I hold my face as stone-still as his. Don’t let a single muscle twitch.
“I’ll tell you what, Lia. That does make you a virgin.”
He stands up and stretches, cracking his neck first to one side, then to another. Behind him, the crowd whispers and giggles.
“Do you know what virgins do, when they aren’t ready? When they think they can take something that’s too much for their sensitive, naive little bodies?”
Something creaks behind me, and a horrific scent fills my nose. Meaty, raw, metallic?—
“Virgins bleed.”
Reeking, steaming, sticky liquid consumes me in a tidal wave of sheer horror. In seconds, it soaks through my hair, my blouse, my skirt—staining my scalp, burning my skin, filling my eyes, nose, mouth—until I know nothing but red, crimson, stifling, choking?—
My ears ring. My restraints bite at my wrists as I sag to the side, gasping for air but only tasting more of the horrible stinking gore?—
“Pig’s blood for a pig!” Marissa’s voice, so shrill that I can hear it past the thunder of blood coursing across my body. “Pig’s blood for a pig!”
More join in. And more. And more.
“Pig’s blood for a pig! Pig’s blood for a pig! Pig’s blood for a pig!”
Blinded. Engulfed. Undone?—
—And then it falls silent.
Eerily silent. Then a whispering, rushing sound, hundreds of feet on the floor… and, at last, nothing.
I wrench my eyes open just as the lights go out.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The blood is fast to cool. Thick and tacky on my skin, gluing my clothes to my body.
I count my breaths until the dripping stops, and that’s when I finally move.
The sticky blood makes the rope around my hands a bit annoying. They’ve used a fisherman’s knot—not a very effective obstacle for someone who knows what she’s doing. Once I tug it loose, the ankle restraints are no problem. The bristles of the ropes have gouged deep furrows into my skin—hopefully there’s no permanent scarring, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is.
To think that they thought they could leave me here tied up all night.
Amateurs.
I get to my feet with only the slightest of staggers. Safe to say at this point that it definitely wasn’t a blow to the head that knocked me out—somebody knows a thing or two about how to use chemicals.
Ryker lied to me. Pretended to be something he wasn’t. Hid the true depths of his cruelty.
He’s not the only one.
Heart beating steady and slow, I exit the student union.
Outside, the snow has picked up pace, each flake melting as it hits the still-warm blood soaking my body. I raise my hands in front of my eyes. In the darkness, they don’t look red—instead, they shine pure, glossy black.
The quad is littered with footprints, half-filled by the rapidly falling snow. All of them leading to Greek row. I could have guessed as much. It wouldn’t surprise me if the real afterparty lasts all the way until daybreak.
Not a problem. Loneliness is the least of my concerns right now—as a matter of fact, I could use a little privacy.
The tower dormitory is just as quiet and empty as it was when I stumbled my way over from the sports field hours ago. The elevator sounds just as loud.
This time, I don’t avert my eyes from my reflection.
I’m a crimson nightmare. A specter straight out of a slaughterhouse.
My expression betrays nothing.
Down the hall, through the door, to my bedroom… I shudder with every step, but it isn’t weakness that makes my body shake.
Anger. Pure, unadulterated fury.
I’ve had enough.
They thought they could mock me. They thought they could humiliate me. They thought they could leave me there, bloody and broken, stuck in the student union with only the echoes of their laughter for company.
They’re the pathetic ones.
And I’m going to make damn sure that they know it.
I storm into my room, turn on the light?—
My world freezes.
They’ve left something. A final parting gift.
People. Fucking. Suck. Blood drips down my hands, staining the once pristine carpet under my feet as I stair at what remains of my dorm room. I thought coming to this school was what I wanted. To fit in. Be normal. Oh, how wrong I was.
There is no such thing as normal, not for me.
They may think they have broken me…
Well. Fuck. Them. All.
Thoughts of revenge swirl in my head as I look down at my little stuffed lamb, with her insides on the outside. Torn to bits, drenched in her own pool of blood to match mine—and littered with tiny paper scraps that cling to her shredded fur like a demented parody of the snow outside.
Most of them are soaked through, but one larger piece sits in front of the rest of the mess. Four letters penned in neat, elegant script.
Mama.
I barely register the rest of the room. The shredded painting on the wall. The shattered tablet and ripped-up books. The mess of clothes torn from my closet, ruined under even more blood.
My heart is a knife in my chest.
I can see it now?—
All this time, I’ve been naive. I believed that people could be kind. That love could be pure. That dreams could come true.
I was taught to build walls, and I let too many fall.
I was taught to stay vigilant, and I left myself vulnerable.
I was taught to fight, and instead I surrendered.
No more.
To hell with Ryker. With Marissa. With every last one of them.
Fuck fitting in. Fuck being normal.
I’m not going anywhere. Come next semester, they’ll be in for one hell of a rude awakening?—
Because they don’t realize what they’ve done.
They don’t realize who I am.
They’ve pushed me too far.
And I’m going to make them pay.