Page 8 of King of Cruelty

I pressed my face against the window, squinting at my surroundings.

Foster care took me and Sienna to a bunch of different homes around Cinco City, more than a few of them in Rockchapel, but I didn’t recognize this part of town at all. “Where are we, Sienna?” I asked my sister, who was bumping and holding on for dear life in the backseat. “Do you know?”

“I know this is the part of town Diana told us to never set foot in. She wouldn’t even let cab drivers cut through here as a shortcut. Remember?”

A vague memory of our old and kind foster mom, yelling at a cabbie for turning down the wrong street, flitted through my mind. I remembered her telling us, after she made him pop a U-turn, that there was nothing to be found in this part of town except trouble. No decent people loitered here. Even those unfortunate enough to live here found excuses not to go home until exhaustion left them no choice.

I watched the blue dot on the screen getting ever closer.How fitting the worst people in Cinco were hiding in the worst place in Cinco.

Sunny whipped around the final corner, and our destination loomed before us.

I frowned. “A movie theater?”

“Yes,” Sunny ground out, his expression graver than ever. “The movie theater. I should’ve known.”

Our three cars screeched into the empty parking lot. The five of us tumbled out, Sienna included even though I barked at her to stay.

“I’m not letting you guys go in there alone,” Sienna returned. “She’s my friend too.”

“No one stays behind.” Bane tossed Sienna a gun that she fumbled, squawking as the thing bounced from palm to palm. “We need all the firepower we can get.”

“Point and shoot, Bestie,” Sunny told Sienna. He pulled me close even as he put a gun in my hand too. “Point and shoot.”

“Guys, are we sure about this?” I voiced it because I had to. Someone had to. “Bursting in there guns blazing. Won’t that put Genny in danger?” I wasn’t sure Sunny, Liam, or Bane heard me as they fanned around the peeling cardinal-painted double doors. “You’re the ones who told me you don’t bust in blind to an assassin’s lair.”

“And you’re the one who said Genny offered herself up to these bastards knowing they held all the cards.” Liam’s eyes were hard. “Besides, we’re not going in blind.”

My lips parted to ask what he meant when he jerked his chin at Bane.

“Let’s go.”

Bane busted in the doors, running in gun up with Sunny and Liam bolting inside after him. I threw my arm up, holding Sienna back until I heard—

“It’s clear,” Bane called. “Come in.”

Slowly, Sienna and I did. We crept in—me holding the gun up and steady, and her rattling the weapon like a jumping bean as her hands shook.

We entered the darkened, gloomy space, and a chill went up my spine. It wasn’t because it was old—because it was that. And it wasn’t because the movie theater was abandoned—because it was that too.

I shivered because it was...wrong.

Old, faded, moldy horror movie posters hung in their lighted display cases. Upturned buckets of popcorn littered the floor as if their owners had suddenly dropped them in their haste to leave. Spread out beneath my boots, the worn burgundy carpet boasted a strange, swirling, repeating design that vaguely formed the shape of an eyeball.

“Sunny, stay with Mackenzie and Sienna,” I heard Liam say.

I frowned, drawing closer to the movie posters.

“Bane and I will check the theaters.”

I opened my mouth. “Guys—”

“You won’t need to,” Sienna said, dropping her gun.

“You see it too,” I rasped as she fell in next to me.

Sienna nodded, lips trembling as she stared where I stared.

“What?” Liam cried, running over. “See what?”