Chapter 5 #2
“Don’t move, soldiers,” says Campbell in a loud voice. “Cass, get everything ready. I’ll be back in a little while.”
She nods and they both head out, Campbell, through the door we’ve just entered. I spring up, my brain throbbing as I try to think up a plan to get Piper out of here. How the hell can I do that without anyone noticing?
Cass left by the door she’d walked through with Piper. Which means, hopefully, that it leads to an exit. In any case, it feels like a better solution than trying to head back the way we came, with the likelihood we’ll cross paths with Tragen.
I jump forward, gluing my ear to the door, listening to Cass’s footsteps growing dimmer.
Meanwhile, the other soldiers are staring at me stupidly, following Campbell’s orders unthinkingly while only registering slight surprise that I’m not.
Apart from Finn Austen, who looks ready to commit bloody murder.
When Cass’s footsteps die down, I look around for Piper, preparing to grab her by the elbow and push her right out of Devil Tower, providing there’s an exit somewhere around. And if Cass tries to stand in the way, I’ll just—kill her.
I’ve never killed anyone before, and I never thought I would start with a girl who wasn’t Piper, but I’ll do just about anything to keep them from injecting her with whatever they’re planning to inject her with.
But the idiot object of my obsession is already on the other side of the room… rifling through a stack of papers Al Campbell must have left on his desk.
What the hell?
Before I can reach her, she’s pocketed a paper, and then she looks at me, grinning.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her grin at me since the first day of freshman year, moments before I dunked her head in the toilet.
But the next moment, her smile dies down as her eyes take me in. I guess she wasn’t grinning at me. She was grinning at the thought of the paper she’s slipped into her pocket.
I don’t care about that paper. I don’t care about her smile. All I care about is getting her out of here.
I grab her elbow and she gasps in surprise, the sound quickly turning into a whimper of pain as I squeeze her harder than I probably need to. But before I can do much more, the door opens onto Cass again, holding a syringe.
She eyes us both in surprise.
In the moment it takes for my gaze to fall onto a potential weapon—a volumetric flask—and for my mind to form a plan, Piper manages to wriggle out of my hold.
“I’m feeling pretty tired, actually,” she lies to Cass. “I think I’ll go home.”
Cass stands in front of the door, her stance making it very clear that no one is leaving. But Piper, as usual, is oblivious.
She tries to pass her, but Cass doesn’t budge.
“Can I go?” asks Piper in confusion. “I have a… uhm… a headache. Can you please let me pass?”
She’s a terrible liar, and Cass doesn’t buy it anymore than I do. She merely stands in front of the door, looking down her nose at her.
“Let’s just wait for Mr. Campbell to come back,” she says in a way that sounds like a suggestion, but that I very well know isn’t. “You’re going to need a lot of help if you don’t want to flunk science class. You’re the stupidest girl I—”
She breaks off her sentence at the sound of shattering glass. I’ve just grabbed the flask and slammed it against a nearby table. Both girls jump, and even the West High soldiers seem startled out of their dumb silence.
Meanwhile, Finn stands up slowly and comes to stand behind me. I have no idea if he means to help me or stop me, and frankly, I don’t care.
My full attention is on Cass as I hold the broken flask threateningly in my hand. She sees it, and her eyes widen almost imperceptibly, but Piper, after the initial crash, doesn’t notice a thing. She’s far too busy… flipping off her lab partner.
“Let me go,” she snaps, “you bitch.”
I can’t help the shadow of a smirk that tugs at my lip. But while Piper probably imagines it’s her words that at last cause Cass to relent, I know it’s the broken flask I’m still holding threateningly behind her.
Cass rolls her eyes and steps to the side. “Fine. Whatever. Bye, loser.”
Piper’s answer is another middle finger, and then the silly, astoundingly oblivious girl saunters away.
I pause just long enough to hold the glass to Cass’s neck. “I thought I’d told you not to speak to her,” I growl.
Her eyes widen even further, but the next second, I realize she’s not scared of the glass at her throat. She’s scared because… I’m leaving.
“Wait!” she gasps. “Don’t go! You can’t go!”
I ignore her and rush after Piper, who’s angrily stalking down a very narrow and winding corridor.
I just have time to hear Cass cry out, “No, no, no! Finn! Get back inside! Stop!”
And then, there’s a loud thud, like the sound of a falling body. I glance back and see Finn on the ground, a syringe in his neck, while Cass looks on, her face a mask.
But I wipe the strange scene clean from my mind as I realize Piper is disappearing around a corner of the hallway. I hurry to catch up to her.
She doesn’t once look back, clearly lost in whatever thoughts are causing her to wear the goofy, victorious grin that I notice when I grab her again by the arm.
“Let me go!” she screams, trying to free herself from my hold.
Instead, I wrap my arm around her, squeezing her even more firmly, my other hand closed around the flask. I hurry her past several smaller doors before reaching a double one. I kick it open and exhale a relieved breath when I see that we’re outside.
Piper feels none of the relief that I do. She merely gazes down at the broken flask with its sharp, jagged edges, and questions, “What’s that?”
I don’t bother to respond. Instead, I let go of her just long enough to wrap a hand around her long red curls and pull her along that way.
“You’re hurting me!” she squeaks out.
Good.
I want to hurt her. I want to fucking hurt this idiot girl who nearly got herself killed. I’ll never leave another bruise on her face. But fuck, am I struggling not to give in to the urge to rip her hair out of her skull.
“Where are we going?” she gasps, as I drag her along toward the motorcycle I’ve parked a few streets away from Devil Tower.
I push her over the front of the seat, so her ass is up, which is the only part of her that I don’t want to kill right now. Though I really want to fucking punish it.
She deserves to get punished for the insane shit she just pulled.
“Quill!” she protests as I sit right behind her, lifting my leg to pin her to the seat.
I only let the flask fall to the ground once I’ve turned on the ignition. Then I barrel down the street as she squirms under me helplessly.
“Let me up, Quill! I didn’t do anything! Let me up!”
Those words make me snort. Sure, she didn’t do anything. She just nearly got herself killed, that’s all. And is about to get me killed, too, because I have no illusions about what happens to Devil soldiers who disobey orders.
It’s not my own fate, but the one she narrowly avoided, that makes me park in the quiet street by her house and pull down her jeans.
“Quill!” she gasps, her voice high-pitched from shock and humiliation. “What are you doing, Quill? Please, Quill!”
She’s begging, but strangely, I can’t tell exactly what she’s begging for. There’s no clear signal she wants me to stop. Which is good, because I’m not sure I’d be able to.
Something prevents me from pulling down her panties along with her jeans. Because if I saw her fully naked ass, I might go a lot further than I mean to.
“Quill,” she whimpers again, wriggling her ass in a way she probably doesn’t mean to be enticing, but which very much is. “What are you doing, Quill?”
“Punishing you,” I growl, and then my hand falls, hard, on her left cheek.
She only has time to take a sharp intake of breath before I give her right cheek the same treatment. Then I fall into a hard, fast rhythm, not stopping until I can tell, even in the darkness of the October night, that both her globes are a uniform shade of red.
At last, I flip her up, setting her half-naked ass down on my thigh, her jeans still around her ankles. Her face is wet with tears, and I lift up a finger to dry them, fighting the sudden urge to taste them with my tongue, and then taste her small, perfect mouth, with its pouty form that…
No!
“You’re such an asshole, Quill,” she sniffs, her thighs clenched so hard I suddenly wonder if she’s as turned on right now as I am.
Of course not. She hates me. I’ve given her more than enough reason to despise me over the years.
“An asshole, huh?” I murmur, taking my time drying her tears. This is the first time I’ve touched her face, and her skin is very soft.
I don’t hate it.
“The biggest asshole I know,” she huffs. “A total jerk. An absolute—”
I’m trying hard not to laugh at her cute display of anger. Instead, I threaten, “Does that mean you want another round?”
“No, no, no!” she squeals, trying hard to get off me, but I hold her firmly.
I don’t know why, because I’m not planning to follow through on my threat, but I just can’t bear not to touch her right now.
“If I ever see you around Devil Tower again,” I tell her, real danger in my voice now, “you won’t get off so easily. Got it?”
She nods hurriedly, but curiosity must get the better of the fear that’s worked itself back into her features at my last words. “Why were you there?” she asks in a wavering voice.
I reward that question by tilting her to the side and giving her another resounding smack on her ass.
“Ow! Quill!” she whimpers.
“Ask me again,” I growl, “or go anywhere near Devil again, and next time, I’m spanking you on your bare ass in front of the whole fucking school. Okay, Piper?”
Her wide eyes and the hands she’s currently fisting in her lap tell me she doesn’t doubt my threat for a second.
Which makes my chest strangle with sudden guilt, because the truth is, I’d never do anything as monstrous as that. Not because I’m not a monster. But because there’s no fucking way I’d let anyone see her half-naked.
But I push down on the strange emotion bubbling up inside of me.
“Okay, Piper?” I insist.
“Okay,” she mouths, looking like she’s trying very hard not to blink so she won’t spill the tears that I can tell are sparkling in her eyes.
“Can I go now?” she asks timidly.
It feels like the lack of her physically burns my skin as I at last loosen my hold and let her do just that. As she pulls up her jeans and scurries off to her house, I wonder if this is the last time I’ll ever see her.
What will Tragen do to me when he hears I left in the middle of… whatever that was?
I don’t actually care what it was. I’m not the least bit curious. The only thing I’m worried about is Piper. If I get shot for disobeying orders, who will make sure that idiot girl stays away from Devil Tower?