Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,5

my own gun, rolling onto my back and firing, not at Mason, but at Russ as he rounds the corner with an assault rifle at the ready.

I manage to peg him right between the eyes as Mason turns back to me, frowning so hard in the dark, damp space, I swear I can smell it on him. Surprise. He shoots me in the arm, and a gasp escapes my lips, one that reveals the lie I refuse to admit myself: you are not invulnerable, Callum Park.

And I’m not. But I wish so fucking desperately that I were that I almost believe it sometimes.

The floor beneath me shifts dangerously as Mason takes a few steps in my direction.

“I think I’ll take you home with me,” he says, his voice a total deadpan. But his mouth, what little of it I can see in the light that cuts through the boarded-up window, is vicious. Ruthless. Penetrating. Mason lifts the gun to shoot me in the leg, but I slam my boot down on the floor and it collapses.

So does the floor beneath it.

I end up gagging on dust and debris as I scramble out of the pile and down the staircase, stumbling and dripping blood everywhere. On my way toward the front door, I pick up a loose board, swing around the corner with it and hit one of the nameless lackeys in the face with it so hard that I’m wondering if I might’ve broken his neck.

Regardless, he drops to the floor and I keep going.

When the next man gets in my way, I drop low and throw myself into his belly, keeping him from shooting me as he lands on his back with a gasp. The end of the board in my hand is ragged, bits of splinters and jagged shards of wood at one end. This is what I ram into the soft, white skin of his throat. Once, twice, three times. He’s gurgling now, but I don’t have the time or leisure to make sure he’s dead.

Instead, I’m out the door and blinking into the weak morning sunlight, even as I notice the red and blue wash of police lights in the distance. The cops are at the school. The thought brings me some amount of relief. SWAT will come. The VGTF will be there. Reporters.

Bernadette will be safe.

I stumble a little, knowing that I haven’t got the energy to make it back to the school. So what do I do? Where do I go? First, I tear my hoodie over my head, ignoring the screaming pain in my arm and shoulder, utilizing the adrenaline. I press the fabric against the stab wound and keep my bloodied arm tucked against my belly, just to make sure that I don’t drip.

The last thing I need right now is to leave a trail that Mason can follow.

Using the brick wall of the building for leverage, I make it as far as I can before I’m forced to duck into the backyard of a foreclosed home.

The world spins around me as I fall to my knees. But I don’t stop crawling. Not until I’m falling through a ground-level window that leads into an empty basement. I hit the floor shoulder first and blood splatters everywhere.

Bernadette, I’m coming.

I make that promise, even as my eyes close, and I spiral into the endless black.

Bernadette Blackbird

I swear to fuck, I am channeling my lover Callum Park as I’m dragged from the building in cuffs, blood raining down my face as I laugh like a demon ripped straight from the gates of hell. You’re hysterical, Bernie, calm down. But all I want are my boys, just my boys.

“Bernadette,” Sara breathes as I’m escorted out the front doors and down the steps. I just bashed in James Barrasso’s head with a fucking doorstop. That’s how it was always supposed to end for that sister-fucker, I think. Killed with a trinket from a National Park. That’s how he deserved to go. Motherfucker gave me the creeps.

I let out a piercing howl as the cops manhandle me into the back of an ambulance, one of them climbing in to ride with me and the fidgety looking paramedics. Victor howls right back, and a series of howls echoes around the school. I see my husband, but only briefly, as he’s violently shoved into the back of an ambulance in a way that I’m almost certain isn’t textbook.

We are not the bad guys here.

We are Havoc.

We defended our school. We