He thought about what it would be like to cut her throat and kick her bleeding body out of his truck like he had done to Kate. Even though he was on the edge of going into that twisted mindset, the thought of killing Luna—even injuring her—sickened him. Flashes of a bloody, white gown filled his mind again, causing him to shiver. Luna looked over at him for a minute, the rose he had given her clutched carefully in her hand. She did not suspect the darkness of his thoughts. He forced his eyes to look back at the road.
Part of him worried how she’d react when she saw the broken-down house he made his home in. Chance was sure she wouldn’t tell, but what would Luna herself think about it? He didn’t quite know why he wanted to take her to his house, but her suspicion at the dance was unsettling. That mind controlled him more than he would admit. Was he taking her this way because part of him was planning to kill her?
Luna knew something was off about him.
He didn’t know how she knew that, but she had figured it out. She knew his knife had something to do with why he had been acting funny as well. He looked at her again as her glazed eyes stared out the window. She had nothing on him at the moment.
Nothing at all.
***
AFTER A TWENTY-minute drive, Chance finally slowed the car. Luna looked out the window, but she could hardly see anything in the gloom of the night. She could barely make out the shapes of trees, and wariness tugged at her core.
“Well, we’re here,” Chance announced, shutting off the engine to his truck.
He opened the door and stared at her expectantly to do the same. She pushed it open hesitantly and jumped out of the truck into the chilly night air. Chance was beside her in an instant. He began to walk, and she followed behind him wondering why he had brought her to his house.
“I don’t see a house,” Luna whispered.
“Just keep walking and you will,” he replied.
She frowned as they passed a huge, towering oak tree.
In the distance, she noticed a black gate that looked like it should’ve been around a cemetery. Past that stood a rundown house. It looked ancient, with dark siding, and on the second floor a stone perch hung underneath a window. Some of the black shingles on the roof were missing. In between the two round windows on the top floor sat a stone gargoyle, staring sightlessly from its perch. The house looked like it had originally been designed as a haunted house.
“That’s your house?” Luna asked in disbelief.
He didn’t answer her with words, but his unrelenting strides toward the building were enough for her to be sure. Luna didn’t want to follow him. Chance turned back to her, and she knew by the look on his face that he wasn’t going to give her a choice. She sighed and followed him through the knee-high grass. A minute later, they stood on the old porch and part of her feared she’d fall right through the rotting boards.
“I don’t want to go in there,” she said.
He rolled his eyes and grasped her arm.
“Hey! Let go!” Luna demanded, baring her teeth as she tried to pull her arm free.
He didn’t listen to her as he pushed open the old door with his other hand. He dragged her inside and closed the door behind them. In the depths of the house, darkness fell around her until a light illuminated the shadows. Chance had lit a candle.
With the light glowing radiantly, Luna could better see her surroundings. It was a living room…an old one with a high ceiling. Two light-colored couches sat across from each other beside an old stone fireplace and a table sat between them. On the other side of the room, she could see the doorway to a hallway and beside that, a staircase with a deep blue carpet led upstairs.
Chance let go of her arm and crossed the room without looking at any of the furniture. He walked over to the couches and lit a candle that sat on the old fireplace.
“Are your parents home?” she asked as she realized the only sound in the room was the sound made by their breathing.
He stayed quiet for a minute before responding. “No, I don’t live with my parents.”
She looked at him, crinkling her forehead. “What? Why’s that?”
“I’m emancipated from them,” he explained without looking at her.
“Oh,” Luna replied nervously. It was just him and her.
“Come, sit down on the couch,” he said. “You look like you’re very uncomfortable standing there.”
“I’m uncomfortable being here,” Luna muttered.
She looked warily down the nearest hallway. The haunting darkness that the living room had worn a moment prior now cloaked the threshold, and she wondered where it led. She walked past it slowly and sat down on the nearest couch, looking at Chance as she scratched her arm. He still stood beside the fireplace.
“So, what’re you thinking?” he wondered, his voice soft.
“That I want to go home.”
“Really?” He tipped his head to the side before letting his gaze wander around his house. “I would’ve thought what I said at the dance would still be on your mind.”
She looked at him, frowning. “It is. Why do you ask?”
“That’s why you’re here.”
“I don’t understand.”
Chance tensed. “I’m still not telling you.”
Luna gritted her teeth and stared at the dark fireplace.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she blurted out, desperate for any kind of escape.
He looked at her before he pointed at the strange, dark hallway. “It’s down that hall, the first door on the left.”
Luna stood up and nodded at him. There had to be something in the house that would better explain him. If there was, she would find it. She walked over to the beginning of the hall and set her hand against the wall. Once she reached the bathroom, she peeked over her shoulder to make sure Chance wasn’t paying attention. After a brief pause, she continued down the hallway. All the doors along it were closed.
When she reached the end of the hallway, she turned to walk back toward the living room, checking the doors as she did so. They were all locked, until she pushed on one of them, and it swung open quietly on its hinges. Luna opened the door the rest of the way and stepped inside the room. Like the living room, candles lit the small space. Her eyes focused on two blood-red candles which sat in golden candle holders on the floor. At the base of the holders sat random bones which she guessed had belonged to the animals Chance had hunted.
The candles were lit—wax ran down them to drip onto the gold, looking like blood. The two candles illuminated the wall above them, and Luna stared at it in horror; a five-pointed star had been drawn on the wall in bright red. She backed away, ducking into the dark hallway. Luna silently closed the door and breathed in deep to calm her frightened nerves before she emerged into the living room.
Chance raised an eyebrow. “You were gone a long time. Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, I, um…fell in the hallway is all,” she said weakly with a small laugh.
“Yeah, the carpet can be tricky.” He yawned.
He looked up at the wall suddenly, and Luna noticed a clock ticking away silently.
“It’s getting late,” he said. “I should probably take you home before David gets mad.”
She nodded at him, more grateful for his decision than she could put into words.
He stopped walking and turned to look at her through narrowed eyes. “Are you okay?”
Luna swallowed her fear and held his gaze. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m great. Just exhausted,” she said and let out a fake yawn.
“I thought that was it. Well, come on.”
Neither of them spoke as they headed through the night toward the black gate, but Luna’s mind flicked between the bird he killed and the bones in his back room.
Could it be that Chance was something more than the perfect, popular high school senior he pretended to be?
Chapter Fifteen
WHEN CHANCE FINALLY dropped her off at home, Luna stumbled through the door and didn’t waste a
second closing it. She glanced around warily for any sign of her father. After a minute of searching, she didn’t see him, and smiled at the idea of him being asleep.
She let out a sigh, glad to not be questioned about her evening. She sank onto the nearest chair in relief and stared straight ahead at the wall. Maybe the mysterious room she had found at the back of Chance’s old house was her clue to finding out what he had been talking about at the dance.
It was a weak link, but better than nothing.
What could it mean? If she could figure out the pentagram, maybe she could get an idea of what ran through Chance’s mind. She got up and made her way toward her room. She planned to get on her computer and research all she could on the symbol she had seen in Chance’s house. Luna turned on the computer and waited for it to load. Once ready, she clicked on the internet button. As quickly as she could, she typed the word ‘pentagram’ into the search bar and pressed enter.
She got hundreds of pages in results. Sighing, she clicked on the first one. At the top of the page, it said ‘pentagram’ in a blood red color with a black background. When she scrolled down, she noticed the paragraph underneath it, also written in blood red.
The pentagram throughout time has been a sign of evil. It’s thought that witches use it after they sign a pact with the devil. Another theory is that a pentagram can be found on the body of a man who is a werewolf. Whatever the case, most often the sight of the pentagram is associated with Satan.
In more recent times, the pentagram is used by Satanists. Usually a pentagram is drawn in blood during rituals to call on the power of spirits of the underworld to grant the performer power. Though not all Satanists do rituals and sacrifice, they all make use of the pentagram.
Luna stopped reading, staring at the computer screen, not feeling too pleased with what she had read. She reread it to make sure she hadn’t missed anything and thought about what it told her.
Chance was no witch—he also wasn’t a werewolf though the sight of him eating the bloody steak in that restaurant the other night had been disturbing. That only left one thing…Satanism. Luna thought about it—Satanism would certainly explain Chance’s obsession with death and his room full of bones with bleeding candles.
She sat back in her chair in disbelief as she continued to stare at the computer screen. Part of her hoped that maybe she had read something wrong, but the more she stared at it, the more she believed the reality of the words. There was no denying what she knew.
Chance, the most popular boy at her school, worshipped the Devil.
***
THAT NIGHT, BOTH Violet and Chance sat alone in their rooms, both feeling hollower than they had ever felt before.
CHANCE STOOD IN his pitch-black room, leaning against the wall, an alcohol bottle clutched sloppily in his hand. He tried to numb his mind, stop it from working for a little while. The bloody, white gown seemed to haunt him as it clashed with more recent events. He kept running through thoughts of his evening, trying to find out where it went wrong.
He couldn’t hurt Luna…he couldn’t. He didn’t know what that meant for him, but he guessed it couldn’t be good. Never before had he felt disgust and guilt when that mind came into play. It usually only filled him with adrenaline and anger, making him feel better than usual.
But Luna was different from all the other people he had turned on before, and so were the emotions she sparked in him…but why was she so different? Was it that she didn’t use him for his popularity—or the fact she simply seemed to not care about him at all? Or could it be that he cared…actually cared about the loner, making her ability an added benefit?
Inside, he knew it wasn’t about trying to attract her attention anymore. That had been a game to him, something to pass the time, but things changed—they were serious. He sighed and lifted the bottom of the cold glass bottle to his forehead. He had never cared about anyone before, not even his own parents. Yet, Luna seemed to break him down to a vulnerable state he couldn’t even define.
What a mess.
VIOLET NEARLY PARALLELED Chance in emotional drainage that night. She sat on her bed, propped up by the wall. She wasn’t drinking, but she was so out of her mind with exhaustion that she might as well have been plastered. She couldn’t sleep. Going on her second night without it, she felt terrible. Pain radiated from her brand new headache, and her whole body felt thoroughly tired. She had been lying down for hours, and her muscles had cramped up from the lack of movement.
She had propped herself up for a few minutes after lying in bed at least five hours, but sleep wouldn’t come. She had skipped the last dance of her school life to get some much-needed sleep, and now she missed out on both. She slid back flat onto her bed and buried her face into the pillow. She screamed out her frustrations into it…what was wrong with her?
***
LUNA SCREAMED AND kicked with all of her might, but it did her no good as the forest passed her by. There would be no escaping; he was so much bigger than her, and stronger to boot. She aimed a kick for his leg again, hoping to cripple him, but he moved it out of the way in time, so her foot slid through empty air. She struggled for nothing once again. She let out another frustrated scream which rippled through the silent air.
He stopped walking and turned to her. “Don’t waste your breath, there’s no one else here.”
Luna froze at his words and stared at him in familiar horror as she remembered all of it had happened once already. As her eyes focused on him, the forest slid away into nothingness. When she opened her eyes, she groaned at the feeling of exhaustion clouding her mind. She blinked as she came back to wakefulness—another fitful night’s rest.
She lifted her head to look at the alarm clock—2:15 already—she had barely gotten a wink of sleep the entire night. The mere hour she had slept had been plagued with nightmares. She yawned loudly and lay back down, pulling the covers up to her neck to try to get comfortable.
Once again, she had that same dream. The dream where Violet was killed, and she was kidnapped by someone though she couldn’t do anything to stop him. After the second time of having the dream, she couldn’t understand the vague feeling of familiarity she got from him, and that bothered her. She thought she would have figured it out, but she remained as clueless as the first time she had watched her friend bleed to death in the woods.
She had read a lot on dreams in her time spent studying, and her mind automatically wandered to things she’d prefer to not think about on her own. What if the dream tried to tell her about events which would actually happen to her in the future? She stopped her thoughts right there.
It was just a dream …right?
Luna turned onto her side and stared at the pattern of shadows on the wall as worried thoughts continued to ruminate in her head. No matter how much she tried to use science to comfort her, she still wondered about that dream. There was something unusual about it…even if she didn’t know what it was.
Maybe what she had seen in Chance’s house had horrified her. Or maybe his words at the dance still upset her. She frowned as she re-thought through everything that had happened last night.
Stress was the cause of her strange nightmare—nothing more, nothing less.
There was no meaning in the dream, no danger. It was a nightmare, a simple nightmare. She closed her eyes. She needed to sleep; it would give her a break from her worried thoughts if she could rest for even an hour. She wanted to open her eyes, but she made herself stay curled up. Finally, she felt a wave of exhaustion crash over her and sleep engulfed her.
***
CHANCE STARED AT the shining shards of glass from his broken beer bottle. Hours ago, he had thrown it there and not bothered to clean it up. He sat in the dark, in total silence, wondering why the world hated him so much. He hadn’t slept; his mind wouldn’t let him do anything but worry.
He couldn’t care for anyone. He was supposed to be a bloodthirsty monster, a follower of Satan, and a murderer. Caring about Luna was a crack in his
armor—and a pretty big one, he noted bitterly. If she could get through to him, others could too with time, and that thought truly bothered him.
If he started to care about people, then he’d no longer be able to kill…and that meant he’d never get out of the rut he was in. He had to work his plan to completion and going soft wouldn’t get it done.
Maybe caring about her could be a good thing.
He shot down that thought instantly...he knew it was bogus.
Chapter Sixteen
LUNA WALKED SLOWLY to the school, feeling oddly numb as if she were in a trance. A bird chirped from a nearby tree, but she barely heard it. She slowed down, searching for Violet. Luna stopped walking when she realized her friend ran toward her. Violet stopped a few feet away and stood there with her hands clutching at her sides.
She looked terrible, she wouldn’t lie. Black half-circles hung under her eyes like she had been sick last night, and the sound of her ragged breathing made Luna feel uneasy.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Violet nodded. “Yeah, just fine.”
Luna could tell there was something wrong, but she knew Violet wouldn’t say what. She wondered if she should tell Violet what she had learned of Chance the night before. If she told her, would Violet believe it?
Would anyone believe her if she told them Chance’s secret?
“I found out something about Chance last night,” Luna blurted out before she decided if she wanted to say it or not.
Violet glanced up at her from her crouched position. “Oh yeah, the dance was last night, wasn’t it? I almost forgot to ask you, how did it go?”
“What happened at the dance is not important,” Luna scoffed, looking back at her.
She sighed. “What’s the point of asking you questions? You never give me details.”