Chapter 16 A Ceremony and an Occasion and a Freaking Celebration
A Ceremony and an Occasion
and a Freaking Celebration
It was reboot day number … who knew.
Again.
With Bobo at my side, I’d been lying awake in my bed, pretending to be asleep while I waited for my usual sharpness to return.
Whatever they dosed us with to knock us out was powerful.
I had no doubt that if I didn’t possess some sort of advanced preternatural healing I’d scarcely be able to function today.
Magnum and his team were doing their damnedest to cause severe damage to our bodies—when they weren’t outright killing us, of course.
How very delightful it was to be the puppets of raging psychopaths.
By the time my not-dad, not-Reece, arrived to wake me, I was fully alert. I put on a drowsy act, however, even though I wanted to scream, to cuss him out at the top of my lungs. In truth, I wanted to do more than that—much more.
I’d gotten a taste of what it felt like to make one of our captor-
tormentor-abusers pay for their crimes. Tearing into Fanny’s monstrous body had been visceral, bloody, and violent.
It had been beastly and brutal. I’d completely lost myself to the instinct of defending what was mine to protect.
I’d become a primal version of myself beyond the dictates of contemporary society.
And I’d fucking liked it.
Killing Fanny had been gross, no doubt about it. But it had also been righteous—motherfucking righteous, and that was a beautiful thing. It had been just and empowering when so much of our power and knowledge had been stripped from us.
Magnum and minions had done their ruthless best to make my crew victims.
What we’d collectively done to Fanny proved we were victims no longer.
When not-Dad began his usual shtick—Get up, sleepyhead, or you’ll be late for school.
It’s the anniversary of Mitzi’s abandoning Orson and Griffin—I buried my face in my pillow and claimed to be woozy and sick to my stomach.
I left out the part where I was woozy because the assholes kept drugging me without my consent, and how my stomach was churning because every last one of them were evil scum, and on top of that now I had to come to terms with wanting to murder them.
I was no longer certain killing Magnum—all four of him—would be sufficient.
It was possible our lie-rents, eager-beaver scientists with hard-ons for the Nobel Prize, would in his absence continue the work of murdering us, industriously noting the results on their clipboards, no matter their claims that they wanted to help us.
All we knew for sure was that they lied at every turn.
When not-Dad tried to turn my face toward him, I clenched my eyes shut against his observation. I worried he’d recognize that all the unrelenting torment had finally transformed me into a killer.
At first, he was hesitant about my staying home from school, but then he capitulated, probably since he knew exactly how many times my body had been forced to recover from their reboots. He left to go call the school so my absence would be excused.
I wondered if he’d actually place a call to the high school’s front office or if there was some sort of app or notification system that updated my crew’s whereabouts in real time for every citizen of Ridgemore—except for us, obvi.
Once my newfound murderous instincts began to extend to our classmates, who all must be aware of the plot against us, I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and texted Griffin, Layla, Hunt, and Brady in our usual group thread, which our lie-rents would see.
Me: Feeling like ??. Staying home. I already told my dad. Wanna meet up at the ???? after school? Not sure if I’ll be up for training today.
My friends’ responses arrived quickly.
Layla: If U R skipping, so am I
Brady: Ditto
Hunt: Meet up at the treehouse soon?
Me: Def but in a bit. I wanna spend some time with Griff alone first. It’s the anniversary of Mitzi’s leaving, remember?
Layla: How could we forget?
Even through text messaging, Layla’s sarcasm was thick enough to choke.
Layla: U gonna comfort ?????? him?
Chuckling, I rolled my eyes at her antics, entirely expected.
Me: Yup
Griff: Be there in 10. Catch up with the rest of you later?
Layla: Git some of that hot monkey sex & C U after. Hunt and Brade, dudes, we just got sexiled.
My phone continued vibrating with notifications, but once I saw the incoming messages were all from Layla, almost certainly making additional remarks about what Griffin and I might get up to, I abandoned my phone and rushed off to brush my teeth and take a quick shower.
Someone—I had no idea who—had cleaned me of the Monster-Fanny yuck after the mercenaries tranq’d us.
Someone had scrubbed my nude body and hair while I was unconscious.
But hey, what was one more violation in an infinite tally of them, right?
Now I needed to scrub off the touch of this anonymous pervert—I mean person.
Man, did I ever want to kill some bitches …
When I walked back into my bedroom wrapped in a towel, running a comb through my wet hair, Griffin was already sitting on my bed, petting Bobo.
He brazenly trawled his stare along my bare flesh, immediately heating it, evaporating any water droplets that still clung to my skin.
“Good morning, baby,” he grumbled in that deep voice that lit me on fire as he stood to greet me. “You’re looking fucking beautiful, as always. And damn if it doesn’t feel good to be able to tell you that instead of having to keep the thoughts to myself.”
He wove his arms around me and pulled me against him for a slow, languorous kiss. It was by far the least murderous I’d felt since waking.
I pulled back in his embrace just enough to really look into his eyes. There, intertwined with the brown, green, and blue of their hazel, I identified a dark, hard resolve.
Not only was Griffin Conway angry, he was fucking furious.
I asked him silently.
A sudden, thrilling rush zipped along my body, making me frown. The fuck? Was it some sort of primal, reproduce-to-save-the-species instinct?
I was twenty-two. Just, like, a week ago I’d believed I was eighteen. Motherhood wasn’t exactly a current aspiration.
Griffin was studying me closely.
He shook his head.
he said,
I cracked a smile.
He chuckled.
Griffin’s brows waggled.
I scowled.
Griffin pressed another kiss to my lips, teasing his tongue across the tip of mine.
I scowled. I grimaced.
He glanced over his shoulder.
I followed his line of sight to my pittie.
He was sprawled out on my bed on his back, his legs in the air, the tip of his pink tongue hanging out of his mouth.
He gave no indication he’d so recently survived a monster-eating.
Even his fur was soft and shiny once more.
Someone had obviously also given him a good scrubbing.
Griff added.
He faced me again. He kissed me. Another kiss. A third one that lingered and stoked the fire rapidly growing inside me.
When his lips finally pulled away from mine, I leaned forward, instantly wanting more.
He gave me a sly smile.
His hands tightened around my waist. He was already leaning in to kiss me again, when I said,
I looked around him to my bed. I said, directing the thought to my dog.
It worked. He snorted awake. His legs cycled a couple of rounds. Then his head swiveled in my direction.
I couldn’t help but smile at him. I told Griffin before addressing Bobo:
Speaking to my dog was perhaps one of the least shocking revelations of the last several days, considering we’d seen four Magnums lined up for a fuckfest, and a full-on alien … or something.
Bobo rolled onto his stomach, tucking his legs under him.
I tried to keep a straight face, but his kiddy lisp was just too endearing.
Bobo leapt from the bed with his usual grace—being gobbled by Monster-Fanny hadn’t harmed him, whew—and padded toward the door.