Page 8

Chapter seven

“ W hat the fuck was that? What a cunt.” Hayes was seething, and I was still trying to comprehend how Vivian would end up precisely where she shouldn’t be.

That woman was going to be a real fucking problem. Our target was surrounded by so many people now, and worst of all, my Little Virgin. It was too risky to push the matter. Hayes needed to let her believe he stood her up.

We needed to regroup and figure out a different target.

“Hayes, this is an easy solution. You have enough desperate bitches in your phone that would jump on the opportunity to get a text out of the blue. Where is that prowess you’re always flaunting?”

Hayes shook his head. “I am going to get a reputation as a freak. Not that you care.”

I laughed, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Oh dear brother, I am sure that your magical dick will have stories told about it through the ages.”

My brother threw me off him as I cracked up with full belly laughter that made my sides hurt.

“Hardee-har, asshole. Remind me again why I haven’t shoved my hockey stick up your ass?”

I winked at him. “Keep your kinks to yourself, Haysie boy.”

Truth be told, I loved using random shit as toys, but that was not for my asshole.

“C’mon, enough foreplay. Do eeny, meeny, miny, moe or something. We need to get hunting. I am on edge.”

Hayes shook his head.

“And you say I am the drama queen.”

“You are,” I amended, adjusting my hoodie and watching through the cloud of darkness.

I had a view inside the windows up on the second-story floor of my Little Virgin. She was talking to the one we were supposed to be hunting and peering around outside.

Did she see us? And more importantly, had she recognized me?

“Do you know my chosen?” I said out loud.

Hayes followed my gaze and shook his head. “Nah. She’s hot, though, but clearly a fucking nutball.”

“I like ‘em crazy and broken,” I said, with a low growl in my throat.

Hayes continued to stare at the window with me until Vivian roughly dropped the blinds of the room.

“Yeah, good luck with that.”

The fact that Vivian was such a challenge and not like these meek, mousey women was honestly such a relief.

Ding.

Hayes looked down at his phone and smirked. “Well, looks like we have a bite.”

I rolled my shoulders and looked up one last time at the woman in the dormitory. My Little Virgin may have saved that student from me…but she would never save herself.

“Damn! This bitch can run.”

The adrenaline was thrumming inside my brother’s veins and mine as we ran. We were electrified, deep in the hunt. The first-year lab tech was nearing the end line of the woods. She would soon realize that there was nothing but a cliff to greet her.

She could choose to take her own life by jumping into the dark water below, or she could turn around and face us.

It was always my favorite part to see what choice someone would make, how desperation and hope made people do the stupidest things. There was no other option…jump or turn around.

We could see the female’s pigtailed silhouette running to the end of the tree line toward the cliff. We needed to hurry. It was nearing daybreak. It was much later than I wanted to be out here.

The sun was cracking through the clouds. Hayes was lagging behind, and I turned my body, continuing to run while backward. Adjusting my horned mask onto my face, I hollered back to Hayes.

“Lazy Haysie! Where’s that hockey athleticism?”

Hayes growled and picked up his pace.

“I run on skates, asshole,” he grumbled.

I was taller than my brother, but not by much. He was catching up to me in so many ways, though. His time was nearing to take over me entirely.

He needed to learn.

I wouldn’t be here forever to teach him how things worked. He had to appease the Elders and excel overall, including myself. Thinking of the scars riddling my back and shoulders, I flinched.

His own skin depended on it.

“Go away! What is wrong with you?” the female was shrieking.

She must be close enough to see the cliff. The school sat on this type of peninsula. There was a large cliff surrounding all sides but one, and unlucky for her, we were blocking her only means of true escape.

“It’s nothing personal, baby,” Hayes drawled, lifting his gun and checking the bullets in the magazine.

I rolled my eyes while my brother flirted with the prey. When would he learn that playing with his food was never a good idea? He approached her while I stayed back a few paces.

Such an insolent fool does not belong in my Divine. It is he that I shall strike.

I growled, shaking my head at the whispered tone around me. The voices did not yet plague Hayes, but he didn’t have much longer to keep peace in his own mind. Everyone was already threatening my brother. When would they realize it would have to be over my dead, cold, lifeless body?

“I really am sorry, Hailey. You would have been a nice little fuck.” He stepped up closer, running his hand down her cheek and across her jaw, smirking behind that damn mask.

“Ow! She fucking bit me!” Hayes pulled his hand back, flapping it in the air and looking to see if she had broken skin. The last thing we needed was our DNA connected to a crime scene.

I sighed in exasperation, shaking my head and watching the woman take off back toward my location, dodging my immediate area and trying to swerve around me.

“Hayes—”

He cut me off, sprinting after her with more speed than before.

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t start bro.”

I lifted my gun, adjusting the silencer and viewing through the scope at the frantic woman as she continued to run. For a lab tech nerd, she was faster than some athletes we had hunted in the past.

Good for her.

She can take that victory to the grave. Unfortunately, no matter how fast she could run, a bullet was faster.

Hayes was still a ways from her, and I calculated my trajectory. I didn’t want to hit any major artery or end her simply from the bullet.

The ritual had to continue.

She needed to be alive.

Closing my eyes for a second and taking a deep breath, I refocused through the scope.

There!

That slight lapse of slowing down, and I had the perfect shot.

The muffled whizz of the bullet soared through the air and made its mark right into her side. There was a soft cry of pain, and then she was down. Hayes got to the sacrifice’s location quickly, grabbing her arms and dragging her body along the ground.

The blood trail left on the snow would be seen as nothing more than a deer unlucky enough to meet a hunter. I already had a doe strung up in the back of the university outside near the chapel.

As usual, I would be reprimanded later, but the blood trail was a much-needed distraction to the one we created out here.

“I changed my mind. You would be a shitty lay,” Hayes spat.

I rolled my eyes as I got closer to my brother and the downed female. The large oak tree was not far from our location, and I dug into the bag on my back to find the rope.

With one end of the frayed, scratchy material, I looped the binds around the woman’s legs, intricate in how I overlapped and created the knots repeatedly. The pressure cut into her skin, and her dazed whimpering became more audible.

“Let’s continue. Hayes, bring her to the oak.”

The woman fought uselessly as she was dragged along the snow-covered ground, spitting pleas and insults over and over.

“Let me fucking go, you freaks! They will follow the blood, they’ll find me! You won’t get away with this!”

I smiled sympathetically at the woman, pulling out my phone to review the earlier video. It was of the hunt and bloody chase of the white doe now hanging from the tree in the university’s yard. The fact that I had found such a rare breed only made me think of my Little Virgin.

Boom.

The sound on the screen resembled the one just moments before. The cries of the animal as it took its last breaths were a foreshadowing of her upcoming death.

“As you can see, you are no more than a deer’s demise. People will not only be ignorant of your disappearance but also cheer for the meat.”

Hayes laughed. “Yeah, you heard him. You’re about to be fed to your classmates.”

The girl paled and started to whimper, leaning up to rip at the binds around her ankles to no avail.

We arrived at the pine tree, and I grabbed the other end of the rope, threw it over the branch, and pulled the weight of the woman up until she was swinging like the doe back at the chapel.

Her hands were angrily slashing through the air, and her blood soaked the ground below her in a beautiful shade of crimson. Her wound was angry, and she was nearly dead before I could even finish the ritual.

“Hayes, pay attention. Strip her.”

Hayes winked at her glazed face before pulling her clothing apart. She shivered and just cried.

It was always different for people in the end. Sometimes, they succumbed like this to their fate. Others would fight to the very end. On the rare occasion, some would beg to ‘just end it quickly.’

“Sanguis tuus nunc noster est,” I said, grabbing the dagger from my bag and stabbing directly into her lower abdomen.

She convulsed for a few moments, wheezing and staring up at the jutting jeweled weapon protruding from her body. Her eyes were still open, still watching, as I yanked down hard, her body opening and spilling free all the entrails and any remaining blood.

Hayes grimaced like he always did. Evisceration was not his idea of fun, but it was how things must be done. “Collect the body. Good job, brother.”

I walked away, using a cloth to clean the red from the blade. It practically hummed beneath my fingers.

“Sanguis meus fratribus meis pertinet. Ego ad Divinum pertineo.”

“My blood belongs to my brothers. I belong to the Divine.”

The slight sting in my hand as I ran the metal over my flesh was always the worst part for me. Those scars opened again and again with each life we took. I bore the brunt for them all. Hayes would have his time, but for every second of my heartbeat, I would take the pain.

After all, it was called a sacrifice for a reason.