Page 58 of Endless Anger (Monsters Within #1)

ASHER

“Hey, Anderson. Could I talk to you for a second?”

I look up from the list of things an RA is apparently supposed to be doing as Muna traipses over from the other side of the quarry.

She tugs on the lapels of her plaid blazer, and I note that the emblem isn’t a Curator one but two torches and a key and wonder if that means she’s switched organizations.

Aurora said Visio Aternae doesn’t take new members mid-semester, but maybe that kid’s death really did leave a hole they wanted filled.

The question then is why .

“Speak.” I lean back on the rock I’ve designated as mine while I watch over Lucy and her little forest cleanup crew.

Their orange vests are completely unflattering, yet as my girl bends down to pocket a shiny rock before turning to bark orders at the other students, I find myself wanting to fuck her in nothing but it.

Muna exhales but doesn’t try to sit anywhere. She crosses her arms, tossing a glance over her shoulder before shuffling a bit closer. “I need to know you won’t go spreading this around. It has to stay between us.”

My eyebrows arch. “Do you think I’m Pythia or something? My desire to talk to most of the people on this campus is nonexistent. ”

“Still.” She narrows her eyes as if sizing me up. “You’re an Anderson. A Fury Hill blue blood.”

“Until my sister enrolled here, I didn’t even know this town existed.”

“Doesn’t matter, and you know that. Fury Hill cares, even if you don’t.”

“They hate us.”

“It’s not hate exactly. They’re afraid of you—that’s why you were able to enroll. Some people want to appease your family, while others want to destroy it.”

“Are these people aware that we lack superpowers?”

She stares at me, unmoved, and I blink, realizing she’s waiting for me to promise secrecy still.

“All right.” I cross my ankles. “You have my word that I won’t say anything to anyone.”

Except Lucy, that is. But the other half of my soul doesn’t count, right?

Inhaling slow and deep, Muna pinches her eyes closed for a second and lets her arms fall to her sides. Beyond her, I see Lucy watching us, her chin cocked slightly, as if asking to come over.

I give her a short shake of my head, praying she understands that I’m not dismissing her or keeping her out of the loop. After a prolonged moment, she turns back to her group, heading to get more compostable trash bags.

Muna clears her throat. “Since the beginning of the semester, something’s been…

off. And not just with the student deaths—programs have been getting secretly rewritten, professors have been dismissed from positions they’ve held for years, and there’s this veil of mystery that the administration is hiding behind.

Ever since the fall budget meeting when there were questions about spent funds with no receipts.

We’re talking millions of dollars here, Anderson. ”

“Is that…supposed to alarm me?” I ask, raising my brows. “I’m an art major, not finance or even political science. My assumption has always been that colleges misappropriate funds, and they love slashing more liberal programs to allocate money elsewhere.”

“But Avernia is a liberal school. It was literally founded on the basis of amplifying the arts, the humanities, and the spirit of mortality. Mortui vivos docent, right? The dead teach the living. That’s our motto. Yet it feels like they’re doing away with the heart of the school.”

“Maybe they’re adjusting to fit the times.”

Muna shakes her head. “No, it’s not a simple reconstruction, it’s total annihilation.

The programs are being slashed and the money is just disappearing.

Employment and policy protocol is being ignored…

It’s almost like someone wants the school to fall apart and then no longer exist.” She rubs her chin, pushing some of her black curls off her shoulder.

“The dead can’t teach the living if the living have nothing and nowhere to learn. ”

Looking out past her again, my gaze travels the expanse of the lake, which extends all the way to the mountainside, disappearing beneath. The water is so black, it’s impossible to see into.

How anyone retrieved Celeste’s body without a legitimate rescue crew ever coming to the scene and drawing attention is beyond me. Especially considering the effort it would have taken to haul her to Erebus, string her up in Lucy’s dorm, and never be spotted.

It would have to be someone with an inside connection. Someone who could convince the dean or the campus police to look the other way while they carried on with their nefarious acts.

A memory rears its head in my mind.

Foxe is looking for bottled water, so I have to make this quick.

The brunette spits as I remove her gag, glaring at me. Malice drips from her like the blood on her chin, spattering onto her knees below.

Mere minutes on this fucking campus, and already, the reminder of why I didn’t want to come here is evident.

Someone has it out for me. Otherwise, what purpose would this bitch have had to attack a random guy in the woods? I wasn’t even following her, didn’t see her coming, because I was too busy trying to execute my own plan: burn this university down before it can ruin anyone else’s life.

The bruising on my side throbs a bit, but nothing too bad. I’m fucking lucky I noticed the knife before she drove it into my shoulder. I don’t trust Foxe to know how to properly handle an injury .

Yanking on the girl’s ponytail, I make her look up at me, wielding the blade before her. Not my blade, since I don’t want this tied to me later. The less DNA left behind during the initial crime, the easier it is to clean up, Dad always says.

“Why did you attack me?” I ask her, keeping my voice low. We’re out by the gazebo and abandoned building, the place that’s haunted me for years, and I don’t want another fucking ambush.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” she hisses, her eyes devoid of anything besides pure hatred.

“Creepy.” I pull on her hair again until she whimpers. “Explain what you mean by that.”

She shakes her head. “That isn’t part of the deal. You don’t get to know what’s going on before they get you and everyone you love.”

“Look, I don’t have very much patience. Really, any at all. So if you don’t tell me something important in the next three seconds, I’m going to take that as a threat and act accordingly.”

A maniacal laugh comes from somewhere deep within her.

“Stupid, stupid boy. Just like your sister and your grandmother and your ancestor. People like you think they own the world, when really, it’s just waiting to swallow you whole.

Cronus Anderson took gleefully from our town, and you and the others will pay for his transgressions. ”

I make a face, wondering why this student talks like she just stepped out of a novel from the nineteenth century, and shove her away. Exhaling, I bring my hand to my forehead and twist in a circle, trying to decide what the hell I should do.

Coming here was a mistake, but I can’t really go back. Especially not with the cryptic email sitting in my inbox, suggesting actual danger to the people I care about. Leaving Lucy and Aurora alone now is not an option.

Not this time.

Still, the people at this college are clearly convinced that this family curse is real or are at least interested in making me think it is. Maybe the idea is that if enough people believe in the curse, fewer will question motives when I wind up dead .

I’m only half paying attention when the little bitch launches herself at my back, slipping her bound hands over my neck as she tries to strangle and tackle me. Unfortunately, I’m half a foot taller and much stronger, so I overpower her easily, shoving her into the ground face-first.

Digging my boot into the back of her skull, I push down until she begins to panic, letting up only enough for her to suck in some frenzied gulps of air. She cries out, and I almost feel bad about doing this for a second as I twirl the knife between my fingers, contemplating.

Pausing, I crouch and wait for her sobs to subside.

“They curate it all, you know…” she manages, glaring at me. “The deaths and deception. They run the papers, the online forums, the local authorities. What you see is not reality. This school, this town… They’re cruel. Evil. And they won’t rest well knowing you’re around. Or knowing I failed.”

“Why do they want me dead so badly?” I don’t even know who they are, but at this point, the reasoning behind it all feels a bit more important.

“Not dead,” she says. “Suffering.”

I don’t see where the new knife comes from, just see her hand shift from the corner of my eye, and then she’s rolling, driving the thing right into her own throat.

The force of it causes blood to splash across my chest and face. She assaults herself multiple times until finally dropping the handle.

Somehow, she’s still breathing, despite her head almost being detached from her body. I’m soaked in crimson, staring in disbelief as she clings to life.

Her glassy eyes find mine. Something passes through them. An evil I don’t understand.

Chest heaving, I take her knife and finish the job.

And then get to work leaving a message for whoever sent her, noting the distinct screams echoing from somewhere else in the forest. Not Lucy’s screams, but she could be next.

When I’ve finished with the stranger, temporarily hiding her in a carpet I found behind the abandoned house, I take off in search of my former best friend, aware that I have fewer answers, more problems, and no way to explain the blood .

Swallowing down those memories, I look at Muna. “Say I believe you. Who, in theory, do you think is behind the shit going on?”

She scratches at the back of her hand. “Who says I have suspicions?”

“I’m assuming you wouldn’t waste my time otherwise.”

“At the beginning of the semester, I thought Beckett and some other Curators were acting kind of…weird. They were skipping classes, throwing way more parties than usual, and disappearing for days on end. It’s not uncommon for Curators to go off and do their own things, because their parents call them back home a lot for events and stuff, but we’re required to submit logs detailing our whereabouts.

They weren’t requesting leaves to travel. All their absences were off the books.

“We have these weekly meetings that are required for active members to attend, unless there is a well-documented and sponsor-approved excuse, and the dean was suddenly stamping a lot of forms, or students wouldn’t show up at all.

Curators are very serious about their membership; if you’re put on probation, there’s a good chance you’ll be removed, and if you’re removed, you can’t join again.

Most kids don’t want to risk their families’ wrath. ”

Ugh. College fucking blows.

“So it seemed odd to me that our president especially was one of those students we couldn’t keep track of. But no one’s reported his or any other absences to the school board or the Curator chapter heads. No one seems to care about anything here, and it’s almost like…”

She trails off, and I lean forward, draping my arms over my knees. “Like if they don’t care, they figure no one else will either?”

Muna nods. “I know you don’t have any reason to believe me, but I also found this.”

Checking to make sure we’re still alone, she inches forward, shoving a photograph into my hand. It’s a full-color picture where rows of students in blazers pose in front of a quad statue where the Curator emblem is spray-painted.

Written on it in bold red marker, covering some familiar faces like Beckett and Tiernan, is a three-headed beast.

Muna points to a back corner of the picture, where a grainy couple stands staring at each other; they’re hard to see, but I’d recognize that red and black hair anywhere. Not to mention me in front of her.

It’s us from not long ago, after we fought and made up in the admin building. The Curators had been in the quad taking their fall membership photo, and I’d had to practically drag Lucy from it to keep her from confronting Beckett.

Every person in the photo is marked out, except for Lucy.

I gnaw on the inside of my cheek, crimson rage spilling into my veins. “Where did you get this?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” she replies. “I found it in Beckett’s dorm.

And with him being marked out, it looks like he’s part of the threatened group, but why would it be in his dorm if that’s the case?

A threat like this isn’t something you take lightly, especially a prominent Dupont kid.

They’d be all over the news and school getting to the bottom of things. ”

Staring hard at the photo, I wait for her to continue, piecing the puzzle slowly together myself.

“I think he’s trying to frame Death’s Teeth for something, which would make sense given all the markings around school—Death’s Teeth’s biggest known crime was basic vandalism until this semester, after all the weird shit started happening.

Everything else has only ever been rumor, and after you showed up, it turned to blood and murder. ”

“I thought they were a violent vigilante group? Wouldn’t blood be their calling card?”

Muna shakes her head. “Nobody knows anything about them really. The school acknowledges them to make things seem legitimate, but no one’s ever seen them. All they have is an incomplete chapter application and their emblem.”

“The three-headed beast,” I say pointlessly, glancing at the photograph again. “So either Beckett is trying to frame Death’s Teeth and make it look like Lucy is involved, knowing I’ll leave if she does, or…”

“He is Death’s Teeth.”