Page 87
Story: Barons of Decay
Once the song is playing, Hunter takes off the headphones and gestures for us to follow him to the outer room. Another DJ has just shown up, a female.
She coughs and waves her hand around. “I see you’re still smoking.”
“I see you’re still a ray of sunshine,” Hunter says, then makes quick introductions. “Everly, this is DK and Arianette.”
She takes Damon in first, soaking in the dirty boots and wet jacket. The drop of ice cream on his jacket. “The other Baron and,” her eyes flick to mine, “the Baroness.”
“We got ice cream,” I blurt, immediately feeling dumb. She’s poised and polished, the kind of girl any guy would want to be with. The kind without piles of trauma, and a mouth that speaks too much, and a husband-to-be that hates her. She looks smart too, and not like she just spent the day crawling around the mud chasing ghosts.
I’m not sure she notices because she’s already turned back to Hunter. “That show was different from your usual moody introspectives.”
He shrugs. “Just using my platform to spread awareness and offer discourse on an important subject.”
Her eyebrow arches. “By encouraging peoplenotto go to the police.”
“Fuck the police,” Damon mutters, face twisting up. “They’ve had time and have done jack shit with it.”
I have a feeling she would love to argue a little bit more, but the song is winding down and her shift is starting. She steps inside without another word and shuts the door behind her, sealing us out.
“Any leads worth following?” Damon asks as he sinks into a chair, legs sprawled like he owns the place.
I perch on the arm next to him, still trying to ground myself.
“There was that one call about bones in the woods. That felt,” he searches for the word, “real.”
Damon leans back, rubbing a hand over his face. “We’ll check it. First thing tomorrow.”
“It’s already tomorrow,” Hunter grins, “you know that, right?”
Ares curls at his feet like a guardian. I stay still. Quiet. My skin still tingles from the woods, from the ice cream, from the warmth of Damon’s body in the car. I feel haunted. Hungry.
Hunter loops his bag over his shoulder, nodding toward us. “What about you two? Make any progress out at the river?” His eyes roam up and down my body, at Damon’s hoodie, at what I’m sure is disheveled, messy hair. “Other than falling in?”
I go still. Waiting. Bracing. Ready for Damon to tell him everything–how I cried in the woods, how I begged him without words and he made me forget everything with the tip of an arrow. Why my lips still ache. I know what I must look like.
Damon’s eyes flick to mine, unreadable. He shrugs. “Nothing we didn’t already know.”
That’s all.
Just that.
And somehow, that answer makes my chest hurt more than the truth ever could.
27
Hunter
I’m walkingout of statistics, sun glaring hard off the concrete, when I see her again.
Sofia Martinez.
She’s a graduate student and TA for my electrical engineering class. Smart, and serious in an ‘I’m busy and important’ way. She’s tough with grading and a stickler for not wasting her time in tutorial. I’ve never spoken to her outside of class, but the past few days I’ve caught her looking at me more than once.
This time she doesn’t look away.
"Hey," she says, falling into step beside me. “You’re Hunter Sorrin, right?”
Before my initiation, I roamed the campus incognito, no one realizing the guy next to them in class was on the radio at night. But after becoming a Baron, that gift of anonymity is no more. “I am.” I frown. “Is there something wrong with my project?”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144