Page 57 of Vying Girls

It’s then I remember I’m not wearing my mask. I duck my head, knowing it’s too late. He knows I’m here. He’s here for me.

I hear my own breathing, his voice coiling around me like a constrictor snake.

It’s like we’re in the basement. It was dark down there too; he liked it that way.

‘I’m here to talk about blood,’ he says. It’s a strong opening. Sinister. Got everyone listening. ‘Useful stuff, right? It flows through all of us, bonding us to life, bonding us to each other. We have the blood of our mothers, our fathers, our brothers and sisters, ourcousins.’

I swallow, closing my eyes. He’s talking to me. There’s no one else in the room now.

‘I suppose everyone here offered their blood. A miniscule sacrifice to secure your place in The Order. We contain the blood of each other. We’re family. That’s the pact we made.’

It was the sea we offered it to, freezing our asses off in the middle of the night, on the highest point on Hazelhurst, cloakscracking around us like bin bags. Holding our bleeding hands over the edge. Itched like a fucker for weeks afterwards. Still got the scar. Fina cut mine too deep.

Should have known there was magic in that too. A binding power that’s brought him back to me. The thing keeping me standing here when everything’s screaming at me to run.

‘You can’t escape family,’ he goes on. ‘It would be a perversion of the blood we share, the blood we mixed. And why would you want to? We’re so much stronger together. A unified force. Same masks, same cloaks, same blood. We hold each other up like pillars, like the foundations of this very cave. You fall, and I reach down with a hand. Because that’s what family does. And I would expect the same from you. That hand could be anything. Anything I need, anything you’ve got to give. Dig deep. Because we’re always willing. Eager for it. Frothing at the mouths. We belong to each other now. We’re never alone.’

He clears his throat, making me flinch. I glance up. He’s pacing the altar slowly, hands still behind his back. I see him so clearly now. The same stockiness, the same arrogant,I-own-everything-on-this-earth-and-moreattitude. It exudes from him like smoke.

‘Even when we leave this place, we’re still part of The Order.’

I’m released from his clutches when he redirects his speech. I gasp in a breath, my fingers tingling. I furl them to fists, panicked I’m about to faint. The cavern erupts in applause. It’s so zealous, so fervent. This fucking cult. So desperate to belong. I’m disgusted with them all, no more so than myself.

Mora howls, a piercing, mournful sound. Fina must have trained her to do that. She does it every time we clap. Damien descends the altar, disappearing into the crowd, and that’s when I find the strength to run.

I turn, glancing off bodies as I stagger back into the tunnels. I can’t let him find me down here. It’s dark and cold and we’vebeen here so many fucking times. I should have run back then, but there was nowhere to go. Not until push came to shove and I couldn’t take it anymore. And that was years. Years of Damien and that basement, grams and grams of coke just to make it bearable.

My harried steps echo, making it sound like he’s on my heels already. It makes me run faster, taking turn after turn, no fucking clue where I’m going. I should be out by now. The tunnels have been taking me downwards instead of up.

I stop to calm down. This feeling. Jesus. Thought I was over it. Disgust drenches me like the sweat under my cloak. I’m no different to the kid I was, except that kid never ran. Not until she could. That kid was stronger. All that’s left is this husk.

Then something more than disgust drenches me when I hear his voice.

‘Aw, don’t stop now, Nicole. I was enjoying the chase.’

Tilda

I almost scream when Nic jumps from the cliff. Glad I hadn’t now; would have given me away. Her head remains bobbing just above it, so I assume there’s some kind of ledge there. I put my hand to my chest, trying to tell my heart that.

I watch her disappear before venturing over to see that ‘ledge’ was the right word. The foot or so of flat cliff stone and some precarious looking handholds certainly don’t constitute a path.

Too stubborn for my own good, I draw in a breath before shuffling along it. Glad for those bouldering lessons at school now. The wind’s so strong here I can barely keep my eyes open.

It widens on the other side by about a metre or so. No sign of Nic. There’s just Blakely lounging there in a black cloak, Nic’s hockey stuff at her feet. A strangely ominous sight.

‘Look who it is. Wednesday Addams. Visit the Vaults once and you think you’re all in, huh?’

I approach slowly, moving one of my plaits off my shoulder. ‘I’m here for Nic.’

Blakely smiles, some teeth-baring grimace. ‘She’s busy, little girl. She’ll be out to play later.’

I look behind her at the tunnel entrance she’s guarding. There’s nothing to indicate where it leads, only a plaque with an embossed wolf’s head on it. In the middle of its gaping maw is a four-pointed star.

Goes into the labyrinth maybe? Just how many secret entrances are there? There’s no point trying to barrel past. Don’t particularly like standing this close as it is. I have zero desire to be put over her shoulder again.

‘What’s going on in there?’

‘Nothing that’s your business.’