“Here.” He tosses me a long black gun, cool to the touch. I hold it up to my cheek and let the metal sooth me from the blistering heat.
“Right here, right now!” Logan shouts, and we rain fire upon the enemy. They look so human, so afraid of the three of us. We slaughter them all in a hail of gunfire.
The sky grumbles overhead. God approves of the bloodshed. I always knew he would.
“I did this for us all,” I say.
“We did it,” Logan smiles with his strange bucked teeth. “Now you have to choose, Skyla. It’s either me or Gage.” His ears peak over his eyes.
“You can’t have us both,” Gage doesn’t move his beak when he says it, and this makes me wonder about him.
I run.
I run under the shadow of an ash-covered sky. My clothes adhere to my body, my shoes fill with water, and I don’t stop moving until I hit the cemetery.
I want to find Emerson and tell her the good news, but it’s too dark, there’s too much rain.
A hole in the ground with a huge granite slab abandoned beside it waits for me.
If I lie in there I’ll be safe. No one will find me, and I won’t have to choose. I can rest and sleep in peace—a lasting slumber that wraps its arms around me strong as death.
I crawl inside and let the dark embrace me. Pierce follows me in.
It feels safe now that Pierce is here with me.
“Will you stay?” I ask.
“I will,” he says.
He grazes his teeth against my lips, my neck. I can feel the blood drawing out of me. It brings me closer to Pierce, and I don’t want him to ever let go.
My final thought before I sleep is this—how strange to die in a cemetery.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Here
My eyes feel like chalk, my muscles too heavy to move. I let out a groan. It feels good to struggle to wake from this ceaseless slumber.
“Skyla,” Gage whispers in my ear.
My lids flutter open—two, three times before he comes into focus. I see his beautiful black hair freshly swept back with the track marks from the comb still in it, eyes like brilliant sapphires.
“You’re going to be OK.” His lips land soft on my cheek.
“The faction war.” I try to sit up but can’t. My hands and feet are tied down with miniature leather belts. “Oh God.” I know exactly where I am and suddenly I’m one thousand percent awake, and I want to get the hell out of here.
“Relax. If you get too agitated they’ll come in.”
“I’m in the psych ward?”
“Yes.”
“Tad did this,” I say accusingly.
“Dr. Booth did this. You’ve been out of your mind.”
“What?”
“You freaked out at school then went missing. Your mom is under the impression you were kidnapped and given psychedelic drugs then dumped off at the cemetery.” His eyes pull across my face with sadness. “You had another run in with Pierce.”
“Pierce?” I lay my head back against the hard bed as tears pool in my eyes. “What happened?”
He lets out a breath. “He hurt you.”
“Was I…” The words damn up in my throat and constrict my breathing.
“No, no, it was nothing like that.”
I’m afraid to ask how he knows this as a fact.
“He bit your neck. Actually he scratched you down like a cat sharpening its claws. It was pretty bad.”
“What do you mean was?”
“You were able to heal pretty well. The doctors are amazed at how quickly your scars disappeared.”
“How do you know it was Pierce?”
“My dad saw the same puncture wounds you had after homecoming. The doctors think you were mauled by a wild animal while you were in the sarcophagus.”
“The sar-what-agus? Oh my God, a grave?” I close my eyes and press my lips together. “What else happened?”
“At school, before you left, you took down a few people on their way to gym.”
“Oh no.” Freaking out doesn’t begin to explain the emotions running through me right now.
“It’s OK, no one’s dead. It happened so fast they thought they were jumped by a bunch of guys from East.” He gives a little laugh. “Just a few broken bones.”
“Broken bones?” My eyes dart across the ceiling in a panic.
“Nat’s expected to recover.”
“Nat? I beat up Nat?” I’m horrified.
“Her, you almost killed. She’s here on the fourth floor.” Gage grafts those blue eyes onto my skin. I can feel the pain as he tries to pull them away. “She knows it was you, Skyla.”
“Oh shit.” I give a hard blink.
“Yes.” He breathes a sigh of relief. “I’m just glad you’re doing better. I really missed you.”
“You missed me? How long was I out of it?” It could be senior year for all I know.
“One week.”
***
About an hour later, Dr. Booth has the restraints taken off and escorts me into a square box of a room at the end of the hall. It feels as though my legs haven’t been used in a year. It feels as though an entire decade has passed, and I’m afraid of everything that’s transpired around me in the interim.
“Well Skyla,” he says, pursing his lips to one side. “Gage filled me in on what really happened. Has he told you the cover up?”
I shake my head. I think he did, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my brain somehow muddled the facts, and everything I thought I heard was somehow null and void.
“An unidentified person attacked you, bound you, left you for dead at the cemetery.” The hard commas engraved on either side of his face emphasize his age. “The perpetrator is also most likely responsible for the attacks on the other nine students.”
“Nine?” It croaks from my throat. My threadbare sanity won’t allow me to believe this.
“The police will want to speak with you. They’ll ask if you remember any details about the attacker.”
“Nat remembers hers.” I spit out the words.
He nods. “I hear she has an abusive boyfriend.” Dr. Booth is deadly serious. I know in my heart what he’s implying. I know how it will all go down if I even remotely go in that direction.
“And if I don’t name my attacker?”
“I may have heard a rumor from the chief of police. They hope to arrest Natalie’s attacker and look for DNA evidence on the boys that were injured. You could be a danger to yourself and others for a very long time to come.” His dark eyes laser through me.
It’s me or Pierce. One of us will go to jail, amass a juvenile record, become infamous on this very small island.
“I’m suddenly remembering every single detail.”
***
The police are kind enough to come into my hospital room along with Mom and Tad.
I snuggle into Gage as he sits besides me.
“I can’t believe that lunatic is free right at this moment,” Mom scratches at her head before hastily pushing back her bangs. “We need him arrested tonight.”
If I wasn’t so groggy, so weak, in this impotent state of evaluation I would swear she loves me.
“We’re going to need lawyers to pull this off,” Tad looks at her as though she’s lost her mind. “Let the state take care of this. I’m staying out of it.”
“She was nearly killed! You saw her throat when it happened. He left her there for rats to gnaw at her like she was…she was…” Her hands flail as she struggles to formulate a sentence.
“Come on, those rats are down there every night chewing on a smorgasbord of corpses.”
“Excuse me?” Gage looks indignant at the fact Tad’s demonizing his father’s facility. “The cemetery is free of vermin I can assure you.” It’s clear by the looks on their faces no one seems to believe him. “Do you mind if I drive Skyla home?”
“Yes, we mind,” Tad barks. “And you, by the way, can stay the hell away from her if you don’t mind.”
/> “I agree,” my mother says coldly.
“What is going on?” I fasten myself to Gage for protection. Clearly the demonic rose has had its side effects with the family as well.
The rose! I must have…come to think of it, I do feel better.
Then it all comes back to me. Gage, Logan, Ellis, all with strange animal heads. Oh my God—I did beat those people. I threw Nat in the air like a ragdoll. Pierce…I finger my throat.
“Pierce Kragger did this to me,” I say out loud. “I want him arrested.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Now
I’m finally able to convince Mom and Tad that it would be very healthy for me to go out and have a nice hot meal with Gage as soon as they discharge me from the hospital.
“What the heck are they so pissed about?” I ask as we step into the Oliver’s house with our fast food bags.
“No clue. They turned on me mid week. One day your mom was nice as can be, and the next, you would have thought I was caught filling her tires with razors.”
I run my fingers through his hair as we place down the bags. He pulls me into a tight embrace, buries his face in my neck and just breathes. I push him back an inch, surprised by the quick bite of pain.
“I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”
“No, it’s OK.” I go over to the oven door and appraise myself in the glass. I look completely normal from what I can tell. The scar on the side of my face is a thin seam of flesh, not a stitch in sight.
“She lives.” Logan walks over and scoops me into a hug without hesitating. He presses a quick kiss onto the top of my head. I love you. It comes out horrifically somber, and I wonder if he meant for me to hear that after all.
“I’m OK,” I say, pulling away. His stitches have come out on the side of his face, and there’s just the thin trace of a line left to remind me of what I did. “I named Pierce as my attacker.”
“I know.” He looks from me to Gage. “I had a friend hook me up with a Glock 19.”
“What’s a Glock 19?” It sounds dangerous, and I’m afraid it is.
“It’s a gun, Skyla. I’ve got the names of the five remaining Counts on your hit list, and I’m going to track them down and finish the job.”
“Hit list?” He makes me sound like some maniacal killer. OK, so maybe I am, but still. “We don’t need guns, Logan. We can use the spirit swords, or—”
He shakes his head and interjects, “We need something faster for what I have in mind.”
I pin him with an isolated stare. It takes all of my energy to look at Logan, and I know for certain that there’s no way in hell I’ll have the energy to chase someone around the room with a knife.
“OK, you shoot, but I’m coming with you,” I say.
“I’ll go with him.” Gage offers, wrapping an arm around my waist.
“We can all go,” I shrug over at Logan. I know he wanted this to play out like some kind of romantic death date. Like we were suddenly going to morph into a futuristic version of Bonnie and Clyde, that maybe it would be the binding chord we needed to solidify my trust for him, but he needs to face facts, Gage is, and always will be a part of my equation.
I can feel myself floating into Gage, relaxing for the very first time since I’ve been awake. A week—I lost a week of my life. I shake my head at the thought.
“I dreamed the faction war was over,” I say.
Logan’s cheek rises and pushes in his newfound dimple.
“I hope you want it to be.”
***
Gage drives me home.
“I get my truck back tomorrow,” he says as we head into the house.
“Are you serious?” Now it feels like I’ve been gone a million years.
“Yup.” He lights up with a smile. “I’ll take you for a drive if you want.”
“I want. I always want to be with you.” Why can’t we get married now? I’m so sick of pretending to be Tad and Mom’s daughter. It’s all a parade of lies, and I’d rather be with Gage every day—every night, in a real bed, doing real things.
I stand on my toes and give him an urgent kiss in the entry.
“There you go!” Tad bellows. “She’s home for two seconds, and they’ve already conjoined faces. Lizbeth?” He heads back into the kitchen.
I lead Gage into the family room with caution. Everyone is sitting around watching TV, or doing homework at the table.
“We’re having this out right now.” Tad ambles over to Mom and takes a defiant stance at her side.
They look unimaginably pissed.
“Mia.” Tad holds his hand out until she deposits her cell. Tad manipulates the buttons then shoves the screen into our faces. “See this? This is what’s been going on while you were lying at death’s door, Skyla.” Tad wiggles the phone uncontrollably, and I can’t make out what he’s talking about, so I take it from him.
Oh crap.
It’s a picture of Gage and Chloe—her arm is linked through his, and she’s looking up at him adoringly. They look like a couple.
Great.
An unexpected wave of sadness comes over me, and tears start to break through. I blink them back and hand Gage the phone.
“Did you get fifty dollars for that?” I ask Mia.
Her vellum eyes widen in horror. She shrinks back as I fast approach.
“You think it’s funny accusing my boyfriend of cheating on me?” I shower my anger over her in one hot breath.
“I’m sorry, but he was with her, and I thought you’d want to know.”
“So you embarrass me in front of the family and Drake and Gage? Good going, sis, I’ll be sure to remember that and keep an eye out for ways to bring you to your knees in humiliation.”
“Why are you mad at me? He’s the one that did it!” She points at Gage.
Mia’s right. The only reason I’m shouting at her is because Gage was caught. It has nothing whatsoever to do with her. In fact, had he really been cheating on me, I would have thanked her, and the only thing I’d be bringing my knees to would have been his balls.
“Sorry,” I say to Mia.
I turn to look at him.
“I swear she’s just a friend.” His chest pulsates as though this were real—as though I didn’t know deep in my heart that Chloe is gunning for something way more than friendship and handholding.
“I believe you.”
“Oh my, God.” Tad throws his hands up in disbelief. “See that girls? File that under never believe your boyfriend when there’s photographic evidence. He obviously took up with this girl while you were gone. Lizbeth?” He shakes his head at her.
“Gage,” my mother comes over, “I really like you. I really, really do, but please, if there is anything in you that is interested in someone else, just come clean with Skyla, and gently let her go.”
It’s like some nightmare that keeps unfolding, this thing called my life.
“I’d like to talk to you outside a moment,” I say to Gage as I swiftly drag him out the front door.
The cool night air licks at my neck. For the first time this evening I’m acutely aware of the fact my skin feels raw as a sunburn.
“Tell me what’s going on with Chloe.” Tears blur my vision. I think the emotional toll of Chloe’s blackmail scheme has finally taken effect, and an entire river of damned up tears is waiting to fall.
“Nothing’s changed.”
“She still threatening you?”
He doesn’t say anything. “I said, is she still threatening you?” I drill the words into the night—rattle the leaves on the trees with my anger.
His eyes close momentarily.
“She was never threatening me,” he looks away when he says it.
“What?”
“She was threatening you.”
“It was Holden,” I say. “It’s because I killed him.” The words come out inaudible. “But we know she killed Emerson.” I pull his hands down and hold them. “We can fix this.”
He shakes his head. “It’s not
because of Holden.”
“Then what?”
“I gotta go. Get some rest, and I’ll be back in two hours, I swear.”
“Where you going?”
“Ellis is having some people over.”
“You’re meeting her there, aren’t you?” I’m beside myself at the thought.
Gage presses out a sigh, and the night lights up with his vaporous sadness.
“Tell me right now. If you want me to be your girlfriend, if you love me like you say you do. Tell me what in the hell has you acting like a trained butler monkey.”
His eyes widen at the inevitable collision we both knew was coming.
“No.” He says it clean, simple as though telling me the truth were never an option. “I love you. And right now that means protecting you.”
“Dammit if you don’t tell me—I swear I’m breaking up with you. You promised me you’d never keep anything from me. You promised!” I shriek into the night. I don’t care if Tad or Mom or an entire choir of celestial angels can hear me. I want to know exactly what he knows. I’m so sick of the way the Olivers prefer to keep me deaf, dumb, and blind, for my own safety.
He doesn’t say anything. A whole ocean of time sails by. He penetrates me with that hypnotic cobalt gaze and makes me want to forget everything I’ve just said, take him up to my room and have my way with him. They could all watch at the door, I really don’t care.
He leans in and kisses me gently on the lips.
“Sorry, Skyla,” he says before walking down the driveway.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Tonight
I acquiesce to Tad and Mom’s request and get up to bed early. Mom brings me a cup of hot chocolate and takes a seat besides me.
I wonder if this is the right time to bring up the fact I know she’s not my mother? That I know she’s a Count—that I just saw my father last week, but don’t. I sit up and take a sip of the warm creamy liquid and trace the burn as it singes its way down my throat.