Page 38

What do I do now? Run?

My eyes dart toward the front gate.

"The gate won't work with the power out. You can't leave, Noah," Silas says, as if he can hear my thoughts.

I pull myself to my feet, wiping my face with the back of my hands before chasing him into the darkened house. "Wait! Please!"

The first thing I hear when I step inside is Kendall screaming. Huddled on the staircase, she peers through the wooden posts, watching as Tate struggles against both Zach and Leo.

Tate has a knife in his hand, and Zach is leaning over, screaming while holding his hand to a knife wound somewhere near his hip. But the two of them are both football players as big as Silas. Leo gets an arm around Tate's neck, holding on tightly while Tate stabs him in the thigh.

"Ah, fuck! Get the knife!" Leo yells as blood saturates his white swim trunks and runs down his leg.

Before Zach can go for the knife, Silas takes him to the ground, punching him in the face a few times before putting him in a headlock with his legs wrapped around the front of his body, immobilizing him.

"Help!" Kendell screams again through tears. "Zach, no!"

And when I look back at Tate, Leo has him on the ground with the knife in his hand. He brings it overhead as if he's about to drive it into Tate's chest.

"No!" I scream. And without thinking, I grab a bottle of gin from the bar and break it over Leo's head. He falls forward onto the ground, releasing the knife. Tate grabs it and crawls out from under him, laughing, his teeth red with blood.

"Oh, god," he laughs. "That was fucking great."

"Leo?" I call out, crying as I shake him. "Leo, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

Glass from the bottle crunches beneath Tate's combat boots as he moves toward us. "It won't save you, but I'm glad you did that for me, baby. It made me really fucking happy. You still want to be a good girl for me, don't you?"

Leo groans, bringing his hand to his head. "Fuck…"

I shake my head. "He didn't do anything," I tell Tate. "He really didn't, I promise. He didn't do anything wrong—he even told them to stop."

Tate sighs, and then kneels in front of me, pressing his blade against my lips. "But did he fuck you?"

"What? N-no."

He bites his lip ring and shakes his head. "Noah, I've known you for your entire life. That means that I can tell when you're lying, and if he fucked you, then hediddo something wrong, didn't he?"

"Tate…"

But before I can finish whatever sad ass excuse for a rebuttal I had, Leo pulls himself to his feet and tries to run. He doesn't make it far before he collapses on the floor, likely due to both the knife wound to his leg and the head injury, courtesy of me.

This is your fault, Noah.

Tate flashes me his bloody teeth once more before he casually strolls over to Leo, who is on all fours attempting to pull himself up again, and stabs him in the back until he stops moving.

"God, that feels good," he says. When he turns back toward me, his face, neck, and the front of his shirt are all splattered in blood. He nods at Silas. "Is that one dead?"

"No," Silas answers. "Just sleeping. I figured you'd want to kill him yourself."

"What about the girl? Where did she go?"

"Upstairs."

"Fucking idiot. Tie him up, and I'll go get her…after I kill Noah."

I scramble to my feet and begin backtracking toward the staircase. I realize it makes me an idiot like Kendall, but I don't have a clear path to an exit, and even if I did, the fence is eight feet high.

"Silas!" I scream through tears. "Silas, please! Please, don't let him hurt me!"