up, but I screamed when a face came into view.
Brantley’s face.
“Game’s almost over, and you’ve nowhere near won.” He whacked my phone out of my hand until it skidded to the side, his other hand around my throat. “I’m bored. Let me kill her.”
Bishop chuckled from behind him. “Just wait. You know how I play.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve played enough, now I’m bored. I need to go home and make sure Lucan isn’t there.”
Bishop tied a rope around my wrist. “Not yet. First, this.”
Brantley
Lena pulls at the final stitch as I stretch out my arm. The effects of alcohol swimming through my blood. She starts packing away her tools, her eyes on mine. I already know what she’s going to ask. She and I haven’t known each other long, but we click. Lena never asks questions. She just exists.
“You gonna tell me about her?” she asks, zipping up her suitcase and falling onto the chair opposite me.
“No.” I wrap my lips around the tip of the bottle and tilt my head back until liquid is lighting a fire down my throat.
Lena takes the bottle from me and guzzles. “Doesn’t look like something new from where I’m standing.” I toss the shirt that’s on my lap onto the table. It’s pretty fucking cold out, but with all the adrenaline from tonight, mixed with the alcohol, my blood feels less human and more furnace.
“Because it’s not.”
“Ahhh,” Lena says, leaning forward. “Is she the girl?”
My eyes snap to hers. “What girl?”
“The one we don’t speak about. I thought she was dead?”
I rushed out the side of the back of the house, slamming the door closed. Thunder clapped above my head, raindrops pelting down my cheeks. I needed to find her. Fuck, but this was getting worse. So much fucking worse than it was last month. My bare feet squished into the mud, curling around my toes as I ran toward the entrance of the cemetery. Trees curved over the entryway like shadows of the night, warriors of the moon.
Then I saw her.
Her body draped in white, her hair long and silky. She was everything that I wanted to protect, but never allowed myself to keep. I couldn’t. It didn’t matter how much we aged; I couldn’t have her.
Ever.
“Saint!” I yelled, jogging up to where she stood. The rain had seeped through the white fabric she was wearing, so it clung to her every curve. I could see beneath that she wasn’t wearing any underwear. Didn’t help my fucking case.
She didn’t turn. Her head was tilted up, as if she was reading the Vitiosis tomb.
I reached for her, slowly, my hands around her arm.
She spun around so quickly her hair whipped the sides of her face. Her mouth dropped open as a piercing scream erupted around us.
I dropped to the ground, covering my ears. Mud splashed around my knees as I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her down with me, her stark white now filthy. She stopped screaming, her soft whimpers clinging to my shoulder. Wrapping her arms around my waist, her crying instantly dissolved into the dark of the night. She pulled away from me gently, searching my eyes while sinking her teeth into her bottom lip.
“Brantley? Is that you?”
“Goddammit, Saint!” I yelled, my anger fueling a tone I wouldn’t normally use with her.
“I’m sorry—I’m. I don’t know.” She paused, her head tilting from left to right. “What am I doing out here?”
I grabbed her by the hand and helped her to her feet. “Inside. Now.”
She took my hand, just like she did all those years ago. So small and delicate against mine. It was like seeing an angel trust a devil. So naïve and pure. When we’re back inside the warmth of the house, I locked the patio door behind us and shook the water from my hair. She stood in the middle of the lounge room, the fabric sticking to her frail body. To her nipples like a second skin. So pink and perfect.
“Fuck.” I stormed toward the liquor cabinet, ripping it open and reaching for the oldest scotch I could find.
“Brantley, I’m—I don’t know what happened.”
Wrapping my lips around the tip, I took a few shots before placing it onto the coffee table.
“It’s fine. Just a nightmare.” The lie was easy. Too easy.
“No, I don’t think it was.”
Too easy if you’re not Saint, who was far too observant to lie to.
I nudged my head up the stairs. “Go run yourself a bath and get to sleep.”
She did, without a