Page 181 of Vying Girls

Elly steps reluctantly into the archway, her phone making a quick arc around the empty space. She watches raptly as we continue on.

‘Fucking hate this,’ Haz bites out.

I shush her, pointing to the next empty chamber.

I feel calmer on my own, like I’ve shed a weight. Already worried about Tilda, I can’t be stressing about those two as well.

My palm sweats around my blade. There’s light ahead. I don’t hear anything. No voices, no struggle. But who else will be down here but them? There’s no society meet, everyone else is out celebrating Varsity.

My ears twitch when they catch a low, burring noise. A voice, one I never thought I’d hear again.

Though is that true? Since sixteen I’ve been running. I didn’t escape him, I just stayed one step ahead. Until Hazelhurst, when the tables turned and suddenly I was running afterhim.I hadn’t been chasing his ghost, just took his name, the key to the best future I could secure. Then I’d be free. But now, here, it all seems creepily inevitable.

Sightlessly, I raise a palm, hoping the others will divine its meaning. I don’t hear them behind me as I creep forward.

I don’t hear Tilda, either, but it must be her he’s talking to. My heart pounds, so loud I think it’ll give me away. I try slowing my breaths through my nose. There’s still no plan, nothing but going in there, snatching Tilda and running for the rest of our lives.

Back pressed against the tunnel wall, I close my eyes and think.

Tilda

It’s better with my eyes closed. One less sense, no way to see the low ceiling of the chamber, the horrible shadows his torch throws. I don’t want to see the place where I might die.

Unfortunately, everything else is heightened. There’s ringing in my ears after coming round from passing out. I’m no longer in the chair, but draped over his lap, his jeans scratchy against my bare legs. His sweat stinks, that chemical smell I once smelled on Nic. His breath is hot where he talks, making me wince each time he laughs and it hits my neck like a flare of fire. Worse is the feel of cold metal against my head.

A gun, properly loaded—he showed me. It quivers against my scalp. He’s snorted more shit since I came round. He’s talking fast, desperate, almost like he’s the dying man not me.

So I keep my eyes closed, mentally screaming Nic’s name in a bid to drown out this trip down a hellish memory lane he’s decided to take me on.

I don’t want to hear what he’s done to her, but he just won’t stop.

‘I used to make her come, you know.’

Breathe in, breathe out. Keep my head still so I can’t feel the gun. Scream for Nic. Scream, scream, scream.

‘Bet she never told you that. I was her first. Fuck, it was good back then. With a little something in her system, she was a dream. Hesitant at first. Trying to work out if I meant what I was saying I wanted from her. But the shit we were on, made you want to fuck like bunnies. Didn’t matter who with. Didn’t matter to her after a while. She’d bend over before I even told her to, head buried in her arms, pretending she was hating everyminute of what I was giving her. I could feel her squeezing around my dick though, the way her legs would stiffen, shake a little, her little choked gasps. When you want it but don’t want it, you know? When you don’twantto want it. That’s my favourite kind of fucking.’

Perversely, I do know. Wasn’t that how I felt about Nic, feeling those things for her for the first time? How she felt aboutme?

At least we had choices. At least we weren’t literalchildren.

Damien shifts, raising his hips beneath me, a groan escaping him which quickly dissolves into a derisive laugh. ‘Wrong type of shit for that.’ He taps the barrel of the gun against my head. ‘Why I’m here, actually. Unless Nicole pulls through, doubt I’ll be getting that shit again. Or any shit, I suppose.’

My bones melt in relief. Besides dying, him doing to me what he did to Nic, down here, alone, just like in their basement, had been my fear. I made my decision, minutes ago, that I’d rather die ten times over than suffer the fate of that.

I want to ask him questions. To know why he’s even doing this. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do in situations like this? Keep them talking, get them connected to you. But I’m too scared. With a gun to my head, I’m rendered mute. Blind. Ironically, my nose is now unblocked. He could tie me back up but it’s better when I can’t see him. His eyes were scaring me.

It’s a wild kind of fear too.Truefear. Not anxiety or stress or anticipation. It feels like I’m a tiny, terrified bird. One caught in the paws of a toying cat.

I’m prey. That’s how I feel. The adrenaline so acute, I’m hardly human.

‘I found out who you were,’ he says musingly. ‘The one before me, hm? How…serendipitous to find each other again. Nicole has a way of reconnecting with the past. It never leaves her, just like it never leaves me.’ He heaves out a tutting sigh. ‘She shouldhave known that before running off. I taught her better than that.’

Again, he hits the gun against my head, punctuating every word with it. ‘I…found…out…everything.She never talked about her pa, nothing about you. Didn’t talk much at all, to be honest. Only ever wanted to live in the present, where it was known and controllable. Where I was. We knew our dear uncle was dead, that I never got to meet him. Mum was cagey on thewhy.’ He chuckles. ‘And I can see why. Dirty bastard. Preying on a pretty kiddie like you. Some fuckers just like them that young. Nothing in that for me. Let them ripen a few more years, let them discover their bodies, how much itwants,then be the one to show them how good it can feel.’

I grit my teeth, rage eclipsing the fear so rapidly my body jolts with the effort not to strike him, to rake his fucking drug-hazed eyes out, take that gun and pummel every bone in his body.

Make him hurt as much as he hurt Nic.