The Truths we Burn (The Hollow Boys Book 2) Page 17

  He walks to me, wrapping his arms around my body and pulling me into his chest, a one-sided hug that makes me want to puke all over his shirt.

  “Then we will pull you out, and I put you up for auction,” he grits out, tone low and dangerous. “Either way you will cooperate. Aid us in our investigation, or I’ll sell you dirt cheap to the ones who don’t care about what the girls look like. Ones that only care for the torture. The choice is yours.”

  This could be it.

  My path for avenging Rose.

  All I have to do is act, pretend, fool them into believing I’m cooperating.

  When in reality, I have the chance to work with four people just as resentful. I have the opportunity to help them, to help Rosie.

  The only problem is…

  “He’s not going to trust me. He is never going to trust me.”

  “You’re a clever girl, Sage. Figure it out.”

  Rook

  Patience has never been my virtue.

  I’ve never actively had a virtue, if I’m being honest. I relate more towards the opposing side that includes things such as lust, wrath, and pride.

  Waiting is something I loathe. I’m an animal that works on instinct and adrenaline. Someone who doesn’t pause to think about the action, just operates on the primal urge to destroy things.

  However, my first semester at college has taught me less about chemical equations and more about when planning a string of murders and assaults, waiting is key.

  Especially now.

  We all knew once this started, there was no stopping until every single person who was involved in Rosie’s death was bleeding out or ripped to pieces. We also knew the danger, the consequences that came with that.

  The FBI has been sniffing around hard as of late, asking questions, gathering intel. They’d yet to interview or pull any of us in, but we aren’t stupid. We know what this town thinks of us, and when asked the question, “Who do you think is capable of murder?” everyone’s answer would be us. It’s the reputation we’ve built up over the years that both helps and hurts us.

  Even with the rise in police awareness, I still don’t care.

  For almost a year, I’d watched my best friend become more and more like a corpse. Silas was never super lively to begin with, but we all knew there was something inside, more to him than he let on.

  Now, all of it is gone.

  Wrenched straight from his soul and shredded in a blender.

  I bite the inside of my raw cheek, trying not to remember what those first few months were like. The ones where he refused to leave his room and I spent days lying on the floor outside his door.

  When I could hear his mother crying, terrified of losing her oldest son to suicide because the light inside of him had died.

  I didn’t even have time to mourn Rose.

  Not in the way I wanted to.

  I was so busy trying to keep Silas alive that I hadn’t fully accepted the fact she was gone. That she had been taken from him, as well as me. From all of us.

  There was no one else to call me RVD and no one’s hair I could ruffle.

  I lost a little sister and a brother the day she died.

  Anger surges through me, even more than when this first started because I know who was involved, whose fault it was.

  When Alistair told us what was on the tape he found with Briar, I wanted to act immediately. I wanted to fillet Greg West like a fish and turn him into dog food, then take a day to think up the most painful way to torture someone before testing out theories on Frank Donahue.

  I’m haunted, forever, by the way he so easily chose Rose. How he so selfishly was able to choose between two human beings he’d created, ones he’d watched grow up.

  Greg got what he deserved. He’d admitted to being the one who injected her with the drugs causing her allergic reaction. He’d been the one who caused her death, and we had handled it accordingly.

  But Frank, he’s still out there, breathing.

  Walking around, smiling, acting like his actions didn’t kill his daughter. He’s the whole reason all these people have to die.

  My hands start to twitch because of irrational temptations. If I’m not careful, I’d let my anger fester so much that I’d take Frank out myself, and I know I can’t do that yet.

  Like Alistair said, we need to be patient so we can stay safe.

  There had been times I wanted to tell him to shove it up his controlling ass, just because I didn’t care about my own safety. Prison doesn’t scare me—what could they do to me that I hadn’t already been through out here?

  But the boys.

  I don’t want that for them.

  So, I stay patient for them.

  Always for them.

  I lean forward, grabbing the hose that lies on the table and placing the tip inside my mouth.

  I’m at Vervain, a hookah bar in West Trinity Falls that’s just as sketchy as the town it sits in. There’s no one who hates Ponderosa Springs more than Wasteland townies. Something we have in common.

  I take a steady, long drag from the hookah, feeling the smoke rush my lungs. As I exhale, a dense cloud of smoke rolls from my lips, and I take another hit before setting the hose back down.

  I would have preferred to be born on this side of the tracks to begin with.

  Here it’s eat or be eaten, packs of savage dogs fighting for scraps, bleeding for a chance at a better life. That’s how character is built, how the weak are weeded out.

  I was raised among the rich, where it was corrupt or be corrupted.

  But Vervain, it’s the embodiment of West Trinity.

  It’s dirty, gritty, and gives me a break from the headache of constant goddamn prestige. The blinding cleanliness and trendy aesthetics.

  Music leaks from the old speakers, a combination of throw yourself off a cliff and rap.

  Just what I like.

  Through the haze of Fumari Ambrosia–scented smoke, I catch a glimpse of my waitress.

  I lean back into the booth, sinking into the seat farther and resting my arms across the back. My half-lidded gaze follows her around as she buses tables and men twice her age stare at her ass.

  Blood rushes south, and my jaw tightens.

  Her face is hidden in the dark lighting, but occasionally, she steps into a stream of low light, exposing the color of her hair.

  It’s not natural—I know because it fades right before she gets it touched up, exposing her roots.

  But tonight, it’s freshly dyed the color of champagne and copper, strawberry blonde flames that cascade down her back, swaying as she walks and swivels around.

  There isn’t a single feature I’d noticed about this girl. I don’t think I’ve even read her name tag. I don’t know her eye color or if she has missing teeth. None of that matters.

  All I need is the hair.

  My zipper imprints on my cock so aggressively that it’s painful. It throbs, twisting my guts as it begs for release. My balls ache from the heaviness, my erection so hard it would make some men cry.

  I haven’t given myself the pleasure of release in months.

  My cock hasn’t been inside anyone’s body or mouth. It had barely touched my own hand.

  If my father did one thing in this life, it was instilling the need for repercussions.

  Discipline.

  Penalties for when you do things out of line.

  He beats me and preaches scripture for what I did to my mother.

  And I do this as a way to punish myself for Sage and what I let myself become with her. I had allowed myself to believe the world wasn’t a cruel place, that it wasn’t a fucking cesspool.

  I deserve this for believing in her.

  So, here, in the dark corner of this shady, smoke-filled bar, I watch this waitress with strawberry blonde hair and think about Sage.

  The only place I allow myself to think about her.

  The way she felt against my body, all small and warm. How my cock felt on the inside of her hollow cheek
s and inside her tight walls. I thought about her smell on my clothes after, sugary like candy.

  Sweet like syrup.

  She always talked about how she felt like she was constantly drowning.

  Now I’m the one shoving her beneath the surface of my memory.

  I block it out when I’m around the guys, when we are planning homicide or sneaking around campus. I leave this form of torture for when I’m all alone.

  I come here, knowing the redhead is going to be working, and I watch her from the shadows like some type of predator. I push myself to the brink of insanity till I’m so worked up I can barely breathe, and I sit there in that suffering, until I think I’ve had enough. Until my body quits playing my sick mind games.

  “You can’t smoke weed in here,” she says, her arms tucked behind her as she rocks back and forth uncomfortably like the last thing she wants to do is tell me what to do. She motions to the shisha that is normally just flavored tobacco, however, I’d packed mine with some devil’s lettuce.

  Apparently, they’d gotten tired of me breaking the rules and sent the lamb to the lion’s den.

  I incline forward, raising an eyebrow at her, offering a challenge.

  “Mh, you going to stop me”—I drop my eyes to her chest— “Emma?”

  My punishment is ruined now that I’m having to look at something other than her hair. Although her face is pretty, it’s not what I need or what I want.

  We make direct eye contact for maybe two seconds, and I think she might meet my confrontation. I wonder if she’s going to call me out on staring at her constantly. If she’s going to tell me that secretly she likes it.

  Instead, she does what they all do. She backs down, looking away from me.

  “I-I, um—I.”

  “Spit it out,” I demand.

  “I-I’m sorry. My boss hates the smell. I don’t care, it’s co-cool.” She stutters over her words like the answer is the difference between life and death.

  “Tell your boss if he has a problem, he can take it up with me next time, yeah?”

  Standing up to my full height, I dig into my back pocket for my cash and toss a fifty on the table for her tip.

  This is only a brutal reminder of how fucking empty and bored this last year has left me.

  I can’t keep anything. I can never keep or hold on to the people I care about, it seems. Every single time I let women inside, they either die or fuck me over. I’m never doing it ever again.

  Rose being killed. The disaster with Sage. Killing those guys.

  I don’t know if it’s only me, but the more blood we spill, the more hollow I feel. Not because I care, but because it still hasn’t taken the sting of losing Rose away.

  Every time I look at Silas, it’s another swift punch to the gut.

  She’s dead, and she isn’t coming back, no matter how many throats we slash or bodies we cut up.

  And I hate admitting how much that shit hurts.

  She was too good for this world, too pure, and life swallowed her up with its nasty, rotting teeth.

  I need stronger weed.

  I need something else to get me out of my head.

  To forget.

  I move through the other tables and past the smoke, pushing out the front door only to be met with cold rain pelting down in heavy drops.

  “Fucking fantastic,” I curse, knowing that the rain will feel like bullets on my body when I’m on the way home, even through my clothes.

  Tossing my hood up onto my head, I start to jog across the street to where I parked. I step onto the sidewalk and look to my left for just a moment before I begin walking in the opposite direction.

  My body collides with another, my attention pulled to the person I ran into because I wasn’t paying attention.

  “Shit,” I grunt, looking down to see some of her things have fallen from her purse.

  The weed makes me laugh a bit as I bend down to help her. I’m nice enough to be polite but still able to murder people.

  How ironic.

  My fingers reach to pick up a few random items—Chapstick, Advil, and a red-colored rock.

  But she stops me, her wet brown boots clicking together as she raises her hand up to me, silently asking me to halt my actions.

  “Just how far are you willing to travel into the dark before you see nothing good remains there?”

  I recoil, eyebrows furrowed. “Huh?”

  “The devil,” she says a little louder, scooping up three cards that had dropped from her belongings onto the wet concrete. “You’ve allowed the world to sit wickedness on your shoulders, honey, turning yourself into this image because it’s what they wanted, but is that what you really want? Is that who you are?”

  She holds out a card decorated in gold and black, the center image depicting a man with horns atop a crumbling throne.

  Confusion racks my stoned mind until my eyes spot the storefront she’d been walking out of. The neon sign reads Trinity Spiritually. Palm readings, tarot, spiritual needs.

  I return my gaze back to her blonde, massively curled hair spilling from her beanie and her witty eyes that seem to know exactly how I’m going to react to what she has told me.

  “I’m not paying for a psychic reading,” I mutter, scooping up the rest of her belongings before stepping back, ready to leave her crazy ass alone.

  “I can’t help who the cards speak to or about. They aren’t asking—they are warning you.”

  Do I have a sign on my forehead that says force your religion and spirituality?

  “Well, you can tell them I’m not interested in anything they have to say. Maybe you should keep these things to yourself from now on, yeah?” I shouldn’t be entertaining this. I don’t want to be.

  I stare down at her. The shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders, she stands openly in the rain, unbothered by it.

  “Stubborn boy.” She arches her eyebrow. “I’m telling you the high priestess”—she taps the card in the middle— “is coming for you. You can only run so far before you run headfirst into your past. You’ll have to face her, that pain, that heartache. Soon. Covering it up is only burying you further into your grave. Facing her can give you the redemption you need.”

  How the fuck did I end up here? Why the hell do I attract shit like this?

  My stomach burns with irritation.

  I hear enough about this stuff at home, just in a different format.

  Spirituality, religion. It’s all the same with their self-fulfilling prophecies. It’s not used for good or to help people, just to control minds, to keep people in line.

  It was created to scare people into following rules they wouldn’t abide by if they weren’t in fear of a big man in the sky.

  She’s coming for you? You’re fucking joking me.

  “I’m done with this.” I turn away from her eyes, placing my hands on my bike and throwing my leg over the seat.

  Apparently, she hasn’t gotten the memo, because she follows, walking up next to me.

  “I don’t want your witchy bullshit. I’m not buying it,” I say with a little more force so I can get my point across. I jerk my helmet over my head, messing with the straps.

  “And I’m not selling it.” In a calm movement, she reaches the last card towards me along with a business card, dropping both in my lap.

  “Ten of swords, kid. If you don’t rethink the path you’re headed down, prepare for a painful ending. One full of loss, betrayal—it will be brutal and nasty. You won’t make it out. Take these with caution, and if you ever heal from what religion did to you, come by and let me read your palm. I have a feeling you have a great story to tell.”

  Then she’s gone, as if she didn’t just drop some psychobabble horse shit on me, walking away through the rain, her boots clicking as she disappears.

  I look down at my lap.

  The one white rectangle has her name printed on it with a phone number.

  Bliss St. James.

  And the one next to it is the same pat
tern of black and gold as the other cards.

  This one has a man face down in the earth, multiple swords piercing him in the back, driving him farther into the ground. His arms are outstretched as he reaches for help that doesn’t seem to be coming.

  The wind picks up, and the rain begins to fall harder. Chills roll up my arms at the bitter water that soaks through my clothes.

  I quickly rationalize that the only way she knew about how I feel about religion was because of my body language. People like her are good at reading those kinds of things, picking up on the little things. It’s how they successfully con clients.

  Well, I’m not buying it.

  I flick both cards onto the ground with zero regard, allowing the water to absorb them into a soggy mess.

  I quickly turn the key over on my bike and let the engine rumble between my thighs. The power that surges through me as it hums warms my body.

  I pull my helmet shield down over my face, darkening the area around me more.

  Fuck divine intervention. I don’t need redemption.

  If God has a problem with me, he knows where to come looking for me.

  Until then, I’m going to keep ripping heads off until all of Rose’s wrongdoers are roasting alive in Hell.

  Sage

  Hollow Heights University.

  They invite success.

  The college of all colleges.

  If you attend and graduate from here, there isn’t a job out there you won’t get. It doesn’t matter if your competitors are valedictorian Harvard graduates, you’ll get the position before they do every single time.

  Because here, it’s about legacy. It’s about money.

  Just getting in means you are worth more than most.

  It’s an infamous university that people dream of attending their entire lives and the one place I never wanted to end up.

  I’d forgotten just how well it blurred the lines of distinguished and macabre.

  The huge campus is a jumble of towers and buildings, all secluded and swarmed with dark green pines. The fog seems to be a member of the school, always hovering close by, lingering above.

  It is odd wearing my regular clothes, ones that fit a little looser because of the weight I’d lost. However, almost naked wrapped in clothes that fit the image of a girl who used to be a queen bee and is now just a ghost story. They scratch my skin in weird places, feeling much different than the scrubs I had been required to wear before. My shoes click beneath me, hurting my ears as I wind down the halls searching for my first class.