Kings of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #1) - Caroline Peckham ,Susanne Valenti Page 0,217

saw Jessica calling my name, her hand reaching for me.

A haze washed through me and I tasted blood in the air as I drew in a ragged breath. All the light in the world seemed to extinguish as my thoughts started to slowly pull back together and I felt his hands on me. His fingers dragging down my skin, his rancid breath against my lips. The clink of him undoing his belt and the distinctive rolling down of a zipper.

My hand twitched as I heard Monroe calling my name and shouting at Merl with a thousand curses as the gate banged and rattled while he tried to break it down.

Suddenly more voices joined with his and for a moment I was sure that I could hear the Night Keepers calling my name too. But instead of fearing more monsters drawing close to me, the thought of them coming for me brought me a fierce kind of strength.

My throat was tight, my mind blurry, but I fixed on one thing. One rule I’d lived by my entire life. The gift my father had given me, stitched into my damn soul. Survive at all costs. Any cost.

I screamed in my assailant’s face, pouring my hate, my rage, my need to live into every note, then I yanked the hunting knife free of my pants and rammed the full length of it into his side. It sliced through flesh and bone, the impact of the blow echoing through my arm. My soul.

He jerked, grunting in shock as my thoughts snapped back together and I gazed at the man who looked over me as blood dripped from his mouth onto my face, making my limbs freeze in horror.

Merl was ripped off of me and I lost my grip on the knife as he was thrown to the ground. My lips parted as I stared up at Monroe to my right and the Night Keepers to my left with the dying man at their feet.

They looked like four demons, their dark expressions filled with a fury so pure I could taste it on the air. But there was more to them than that. Something that was equally as terrifying in the way they were looking at me. It took me a moment to realise it was fear. Real, pure fear for me. These brutal creatures had come running to my aid when I needed them most and despite all of the things that had passed between us, in that moment I felt truly safe with them surrounding me. Protecting me.

Blake moved forward, taking my hand and pulling me up. He was looking at me like the night we’d been together, back when he didn’t hate me, when I’d just been a girl whose flesh he’d worshipped.

My breathing was suddenly so loud against my ears. Everything was too quiet and I was horribly aware of what I’d done. I clawed my hands into my hair and felt the stickiness of my attacker’s blood on my skin. I could smell it, taste it. It was everywhere. And Merl groaned and cursed as more and more of it pooled out around him.

“No…no no no,” I spoke to myself, unable to look at anyone around me. “I stabbed him. My life is fucked. I am so fucked.” I started to shake from a new kind of fear. I couldn’t find it in me to regret it. He’d been attacking me. But I’d stabbed him bad. He was going to die. I could see it in his eyes, in the pool of blood that just kept growing and growing and-”

“Tatum,” Saint said my name in a powerful tone and my eyes snapped up to find him in the dark as the single word cut through the fog of my panic.

The dying man’s phone lay beside him, the flashlight on it smeared with blood so we were all lit in ominous red tones.

Saint leaned down, taking hold of the hilt of the knife in the man’s side and ripping it out in one clean pull, making him scream in pain. In a flash of movement so sudden it made me gasp, Saint drove the knife into Merl’s chest with a merciless blow.

Merl shuddered and passed out, still somehow clinging to life, but his body was growing stiller by the second.

“You didn’t kill him,” Saint growled in a tone flecked with warmth as he looked to me. “I did.”

A beat of silence stretched through the air for so long, it felt eternal.