Kings of Anarchy (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #3) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,165

this monstrous place to let them off easy now I was back. I wanted to strike at them, needed to. Just a little to show they hadn’t broken me and to prove to myself and my girl that I was dedicated to making this whole fucked up club and every single member of it burn, no matter what it took.

Niall caught my elbow and tugged me out of the corridor we were moving down, through another veiled doorway and onto a raised mezzanine level that looked over the death game taking place on the lower floor.

I tugged Tatum close as we slowed our pace, the screams of the people running from the fire quickly drowned out by the agony laced screams of a man in the maze of death beneath us.

I didn't want to look, didn't want to be forced to think about what it had been like to take part in the carnage of that twisted game, but I wasn't going to allow something as irrelevant as fear hold me back in any way. It was just an emotion designed to cripple. And I refused to let anything like that take root in me.

My hand gripped the railing as I looked down at the game taking place below, watching as the screaming man fought a losing battle for his life against a girl who was stabbing him with all the fury and injustice that I'd felt when I'd been put in that cage.

Tatum stayed close to me, tucking herself beneath my arm and looking out over the carnage too, taking in what I'd lived through in silent disgust. Niall kept walking, but I knew he wouldn't go far so I didn't pay too much attention. No doubt he was up to something, wreaking a little havoc of his own, and I certainly wasn’t going to stop him.

It was dark up here, the spectators little more than shadows where we stood above the game. I remembered looking up from within that maze and seeing the glint of black and gold masks peering down at me, knowing not a single one of the people hidden behind them cared if I lived or died and wishing I could drag them down there with me to feel the kiss of my blade themselves.

"My money is on the girl," a man said as he came and took up position to my left and it took me a moment to realise he was speaking to me.

"Oh yeah?" I grunted, watching as the girl in question stood, covered in the blood of the guy she'd just killed and turned to run further into the maze with the bloody knife in her hand.

She was probably a year or two older than me, her long, black hair sticking to her tanned shoulders as the heat of this place made her sweat. She ducked into a shadowy corner just before another guy rounded the other end of the tunnel she was in and I watched with a sneer on my face which was thankfully hidden beneath my mask.

The guy beside me didn't reply as we all watched the big dude draw closer to the girl's hiding place. He clearly hadn't seen her and for some reason, I found myself rooting for her, even though I doubted her opponent was any more deserving of death. Ninety percent of the contestants in the games were proxies plucked off of the street and offered money to take part in a contest without ever being given the full details until they were here with no other choice but to fight for their lives. And even the winners didn't have much prospect of a better life beyond that cage.

I was one of a very few members here who had refused the offer of taking on a proxy and had chosen to fight my own battle for my membership to this fucked up club. If I'd had any real choice, I would have told them to stick their membership up their gold coated assholes and cut their shrivelled ball sacks off for good measure. But of course I hadn't been offered that luxury. Once I was here, someone had to go into that game one way or another so I’d chosen to play with my own life rather than a stranger’s. And like most people in this sorry world when faced with the option to fight or die, I'd chosen to bloody my hands and taint my soul in favour of my own survival.

The guy