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six

You Can Jump, But You Can't Hide

Tate

I 'm alive.

That's what goes through my head when I break through the wooden door and turn the lock. I've never felt this alive in my fucking life, never felt this powerful.

"You should have played the game, Noah," I say as I step into the room. "Now, I'm going to have to spank you, too."

But just as we make eye contact, she leaps from the balcony.

"Don't!"

I race across the room just in time to see her hit the ground on the other side of the fence. She lands on her feet before bending her knees and rolling. I watch, holding my breath, and after about a minute, she finally moves, groaning as she pulls herself into a seated position.

So, she's alive. But there's no way she's uninjured.

"I don't know where you think you're going!" I shout as she uses a nearby tree to bring herself to stand. She limps over to where she lost her shoes and slips them onto her feet. "There's nowhere to run, baby. "

She looks back at me once before limping away from the house.

"Fuck!"

"What happened?" Silas asks, stepping out onto the balcony beside me. "Did she—"

"She jumped," I tell him. "She fucking jumped, but it's fine."

"Is it?"

There's hope in his dark eyes. He thinks I'm going to let her get away, but he's wrong. "Yeah, it is, because I know where she's going. See those lights in the distance?"

"Summerfest?" he asks. "You want to chase her down at a carnival? What if she goes to the fucking cops?"

"She has a mile and a half to go on at least a twisted ankle, probably other injuries, too. We're ahead of schedule as it is. We can still take care of Zach and maybe even beat her there."

"What about the other girl?" Silas asks.

I point to the fence below. "She's a fucking shish kebob. Got off easy."

"Jesus. That's getting off easy?"

"I would have made it last a while." I sigh, shaking my head. "Fucking cunt. I wanted Mia's eyes to be the last thing she saw before she died. She sucked the fun out of it."

Silas rests his hand on the back of my neck. "Tate, I'm—"

"Whatever. I'm not going to let her ruin my fucking day. Do you think you can get the power on and the wifi back up?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Good," I say. "Let's do that. We'll have to be quick about it. I want to record it on his phone. We'll schedule it to post later—once we're long gone. Everyone can watch him die, too. I'm going to cut off his dick and shove it down his fucking throat."

"You can hit stop now," I tell Silas. "Speed it up and add some music to it—something uncomfortably upbeat, like you'd hear on an old, silent film."

He laughs a little. "That's disturbingly perfect."

I look at the corpse tied to the chair. "Well, this is my masterpiece."

Carved into his chest and abdomen—and I mean, really, really carved in there—are the words FOR MIA . And even though he passed out from the pain and blood loss, which made it a little less fun, I still sliced his dick off and shoved it down his throat, and he still choked on it until his heart stopped.

"I scheduled the post for late morning," Silas says. "That should be plenty of time for us to get to where we're going."

"See you later, fucker," I say before kicking over his chair. "Let's go get Noah."

"We could get caught."

I know there's logic behind what he's saying, but I don't see it. I feel like a god right now; I'm unstoppable. I can have whatever I want, and right now, I want Noah.

I want to watch the light fade from her eyes for the last time. I want to feel her body go slack and lifeless in my arms and finally stop carrying the weight of her. I'll brush her hair away from her face and tell her it's too bad it had to end this way—that we could have burned the world down together, but she was too fucking scared.

And I want her to tell me she understands why I have to do it; I want her to accept it. After all, there are worse things than death, like she said. Then we'll both be clean.

"But we won't get caught," I tell him. "Can't you feel it? We're gods now, Silas. They can't stop us." I run a bloody hand over his chest and then down to the waistband of his jeans, using it to pull him into me. "We can do whatever the fuck we want."

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, okay."

"So, what do you want, Silas? Do you want Noah?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's okay. I saw the way you were looking at her—do you miss her tight little body? Do you miss her mouth?"

I run my hand over the ridge of his cock, growing harder by the second.

"Tate…"

"It's not a trick question," I say. "There's no wrong answer. We could have some fun with her first. It won't be wrong if she likes it, and you know she likes it. Do you want Noah, Silas?"

"Yes…" he finally says in a gravelly tone. "I miss her a lot."

"Then let's go get her," I say, kissing him hard before releasing him.

Silas doesn't do well with teasing. When I step back, his eyes darken with lust.

"If we go now, we should still make it there before she does. "

We leave the bedroom, and as we pass the living room's floor-to-ceiling picture windows, light from outside catches my attention. With the power now on, the pool is illuminated with LED lights, changing colors while three bodies float at its surface. Dark blood stains the water around one of the bodies—the girl with the pixie cut, Brielle. I watch it turn from red to deep purple to something closer to black with the alternating colors. It's the most serene shit I've ever seen. If I had more time, I'd stay and watch for a while, admiring Silas's work. Since I don't, I take only an additional second to commit it to memory before closing the door behind me, leaving them to their respective tomb.

Once we get to the car, we open the trunk and change into clean clothes before getting in and starting the engine. Silas is quiet, which is typical. But tonight isn't typical.

"She looked really pretty," he says as we drive.

He's not wrong; she did look pretty. I hate her teeth, but not because I don't think they look good. I just don't like that she felt like she had to change them. It's not what I wanted for her. And the bruises—I didn't want that for her, either.

"She has a tattoo on her shoulder—did you see it?"

"Yeah," Silas says. "A butterfly."

It's fitting. They're beautiful, but fleeting and deceptive in a way. If you crush their wings, they're no different from any other pest you wouldn't bother looking at twice.

I thought Noah was different. I thought we were all the same. But she's just like them , isn't she? Just like all the other pests .

I reach for the dashboard, cranking up the volume, and the latest Gods of Tomorrow song blares from the speakers. Then I lean back in my seat, draping my arm out the open window, my fingertips tapping the side of the vehicle to the beat of the song.

"Not very stealthy," Silas shouts over the music.

"Doesn't matter, Silas. I told you—we're gods now, too."

He hits the gas and by the time the song ends, we're pulling into the parking lot.

I don't even flinch when we walk right past the police officers at the gate. I take down my hood and smile at the woman sitting in the ticket booth when I pay cash for our admittance.

Noah wouldn't have had any money on her—I don't think. But I don't think she would have tried to go through the front gate, and I have a feeling the scene would look a lot different if she'd shown up here screaming about mass murder and begging for help.

She's either hiding, or we beat her, and she's not here yet.

I scan the area, taking inventory of my surroundings. I haven't been here before—it's not really a place for people from our side of the highway. It's a decent-sized lake; a few boats float idly at its surface with a pier just to my right. The area where they've set up the carnival is paved over, and there's a small permanent stage at the far end where they have concerts in the summer. Now, it looks like it's being used as some kind of local talent show or school showcase. Younger girls wearing sequins twirl batons while their parents watch.

Not long from now, they'll be calling their friends and neighbors, saying, I can't believe we were that close to the murders . And maybe what could have happened to their children will haunt them for quite some time.

A boy can dream.

To my left, one of those rent-a-fences separates the carnival from the wooded area. I worry it'll be difficult to find Noah in a place like this, even for a god.

"I don't think she's here. We should watch the fence," Silas says. "If there were a dirty girl limping around here in a bikini top, she'd stick out."

"Right…okay."

Just as I could see the carnival from the house's balcony, I can just barely see the lights from the house through the trees from here. "I'll watch from there," I say, gesturing to the building housing the restrooms just behind me. "You should move down toward the midway."

He pulls his hood over his head before stuffing his hands into the pockets of his sweats and walking off, and I backtrack toward the small, shed-like building, leaning against its back wall.

I grab a cigarette from my pocket and light it, and then I watch.

And watch.

I smoke it down to the filter, dropping it and grinding it into the blacktop with my heel.

What if I missed her? What if I miscalculated, and she ran out to the highway and someone picked her up?

Then Noah will be gone, and I'll still be haunted. She'll be fine, just like she has been for the past year. That's why I could never let her go. I can't wrap my head around how she could do it—how she could exist so easily as someone new, someone without me—while I had this horrible, dirty, twisted feeling in my gut after she left that I couldn't get rid of.

Maybe it's time to start combing the forest.

But just as I get impatient, she limps out from the tree line toward the safety barrier, shoving one of them aside before stumbling through the space she created and falling…right into Silas's arms.