Dying for Rain (The Rain Trilog - BB Easton Page 0,73
to lurch forward and release a noise so guttural, I assumed something important must have ruptured.
With his left hand, the skinhead yanked the guy’s head back by his chin-length brown hair and screamed into his terrified face, “Say that shit again!”
I felt like I might throw up. My heart was racing, and my head was pounding from being upside down, but all I could register was a sickening sense of helplessness and humiliation for that poor kid. I’d been raised in a house with pacifist parents and no siblings. I’d never seen anyone get hit before—at least, not in real life—and I felt that punch as if it had been dealt directly to me.
In a way, it had. That punch shook me to my core. It showed me that senseless violence and cruelty really did exist, and they came wearing boots and braces.
When Skater Boy remained silent, the skinhead responded by shoving his head so hard that he flew sideways and landed, hands- and face-first, in the gravel. His body slid a few feet before finally coming to a stop. The kid scrambled to pull himself into a ball and made little screeching sounds as if struggling to suppress a scream.
Instead of attacking again, his assailant began to circle him slowly, like a hawk. I held my breath and gripped Lance’s waist tighter, ignoring the throbbing in my eyeballs, and watched upside down as he assessed his victim. I was horrified by how calm he was. He wasn’t angry or upset, just … calculating. Cold and calculating.
The skinhead approached the kid, who was now trembling and sobbing quietly, and slowly rolled him onto his side with one very heavy-looking combat boot. Still curled up tightly, Skater Boy choked out what sounded like a muffled, garbled apology. Unimpressed, his attacker bent down toward the kid’s face and placed a meaty hand firmly on the side of his head. I didn’t know what he was doing at first, but when the brown-haired kid started screaming in pain, I realized that the skinhead was pressing his face into the gravel.
“What was that?” he asked calmly, tilting his head to one side as if genuinely interested, the veins in his muscular arm beginning to bulge as he applied more pressure.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! Please stop! Please!” The scream at the end of his apology got increasingly louder as that heartless, hairless demon crushed his face further into the jagged rocks.
The skinhead released Skater Boy’s head and stood up. I exhaled and felt my body relax into Lance’s shoulder and then watched in disbelief as he kicked the kid directly in the lower back one, two, three times. By the time my eyes registered the strikes and my ears registered the resulting scream, it was over, but my spirit was forever changed.
It said, These people fuck and they fight and you’d better get used to it, little girl.
Lance set me down, slowly, and I wrapped myself around him like a tree trunk for stability.
I stared, partially hidden behind Lance’s sturdy frame, as the skinhead idly spit on the ground next to his victim, lit a cigarette, and walked with long, confident strides … directly toward me. The gravel crunched under the weight of his steel-toed boots, which emerged from the bottom of a tightly rolled pair of blue jeans. Bright red laces wound themselves up the front of his boots, and bright red braces slashed across his muscular chest—a chest which was wrapped in a tight black T-shirt emblazoned with the word Lonsdale.
Steeling myself behind Lance’s comforting presence, I mustered the courage to peek up at the skinhead’s face. It was like looking at a ghost. He resembled a person, but there was no color to help differentiate his features. His skin was white. His hair and eyelashes were virtually transparent, and his eyes … his eyes were a ghostly, icy gray-blue. Like a zombie’s. And when they landed on mine, my hair stood up on end so violently, it felt like a million tiny needles were stabbing me at once.
Those zombie eyes flicked from mine to Lance’s with a look of irritation as he approached. I could feel a buzzing electric current of malice radiating off of him well before he reached us, and I winced as he passed, as if bracing myself for his wrath. When nothing happened, I carefully opened my eyes, relieved by the change in the atmosphere. The static charge was gone. He was gone. But