shoulder tightly. “The thing about Bloods…they look human, they act human, but they’re not. At least, not completely. They’re dangerous fuckers, and years, even centuries of control can’t eradicate their desire for blood.”
“Especially the blood of powerful magic users,” adds Gabriel. “Just…be careful.”
Bloods.
I shiver violently at the thought. These…creatures are talked about all the time in the coven, used as bedtime stories to deter kids from misbehaving. To know that there’s one nearby? Or even a coven of them? It terrifies me. They’re the apex predators in a world where we’re supposed to be. Somehow, they found a way to cheat death.
And I know that if even one Blood catches whiff of me, they will all descend until I’m drained dry.
Chapter 12
“Leave me alone.” My voice trembled, despite my best efforts to keep it steady. I wheeled around towards the four boys surrounding me, taunting smirks on their ridiculously handsome faces. “Please.” I hadn’t meant to plead—witches didn’t beg for anything—but the pathetic word tumbled out before I could reel it back in.
Panic burned a hole in my chest, incinerating my heart, as Cassian laughed giddily and grabbed my shoulders, pulling me forward. Before I could react—scream, cry, kick, cuss—a second set of hands grabbed my arms and wrenched them behind my back. I didn’t even have to look to know that the cinnamon scent belonged to Karsyn.
Elias merely grinned where he leaned against the far wall. He never really participated when they were all together, preferring to watch his best friends from the sidelines. But that just made him more culpable. Willfully ignorant, but infinitely more dangerous.
But maybe ignorant wasn’t the correct word to describe Elias Briggs. It wasn’t as if a sick, twisted part of him didn’t get off when I was tormented. I could see the excitement in his eyes, the slow curl of his lips, the hunger emanating from his pores. The psycho just preferred to torture me one-on-one instead of in a huge group.
“Don’t cry, little witch,” Lucas purred as he stepped closer. Lucas Scott. The devil in the flesh. I truly didn’t believe in evil until I looked into his sea-blue eyes and saw them devoid of any warmth or compassion. To be frank, I couldn’t remember a time I had ever seen him wear anything but an apathetic front. Even around his best friends, a cold glaze remained in his eyes, as if he was hewn from ice itself.
“Lucas.” I trembled desperately as he took another step closer, raising a hand that held a pair of scissors. Cassian took a step back and began to laugh gleefully, while Karsyn’s arms tightened. “Please, don’t.”
But my cries fell on deaf ears when he took the scissors to my white ponytail and cut all of the hair off. I watched it pool around my feet as his eyes glowed with satisfaction.
“Whoopsies,” he taunted. “My hand slipped.”
The rest of the guys broke into laughter as anger burned through me. I could feel it rippling in my veins, wave after wave of electricity, and before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed the scissors out of Lucas’s hand.
Before he could scream, I stabbed the scissors into the side of his neck, watching as blood bubbled in his mouth and his jaw slackened in shock. His gorgeous eyes flickered to my face in horror as he tumbled to the ground.
“Whoopsies,” I said darkly as Karsyn, Cassian, and Elias began to scream. “My hand slipped.”
I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding, as the remnants of my dream crashed over me like a damning tidal wave. It started as a memory of the time in seventh grade when they cut all of my hair off, but quickly transitioned into…
Into something beyond awful.
Did I really just dream about murdering Lucas Scott? Surely I’m not that desperate for revenge.
It feels as if I’m covered in a dark, sticky slime, one that I can’t wipe off no matter how hard I scrub. It coats my hands, my arms, my legs, and my face, burning away my skin until I’m scratching at the fleshy meat underneath.
Tossing an arm over my head, I work to control my turbulent breathing as my heart thunders. Logically, I know that it was just a dream, that it doesn’t mean anything, that I don’t actually want to kill my childhood tormentors, but a tiny voice in my head screams at me, demanding to know how far I intend to go in the name of revenge.