Heat crawls up the base of my spine and bleeds into the outer edges of my limbs. I close my eyes and try to rein it in because if I don’t, I’m going to lose my shit. Carson seems to sense this, so he takes control of the room.
“And which one of you fuckwits did she ask to break Kail’s ankle?”
Wyatt hesitates. I open my eyes in time to watch Carson kick him in the nuts again. His face turns green, and he curls into a little ball, gagging like he’s going to vomit.
“Which. One?” Carson repeats.
“Fucking Gavin,” he heaves. “Okay? It wasn’t me.”
“Yeah, you are so innocent in all of this, aren’t you?” Carson shakes his head.
My homicidal gaze swivels to Audrey, and for a moment, the weight of her destruction settles over me. Because of her, almost all our lives were ruined. Kail left for two years and came back so full of hurt and rage she nearly lost herself. Carson spiraled into addiction and destroyed his knee, along with any chance at a football career. I nearly killed myself in a car accident. Kail’s shattered ankle. The money. The lies. Our tattered relationship. The list goes on.
Audrey has left a wake of destruction so deep and wide it’s a miracle any of us have made it out alive. There’s nothing left in that void of a soul. I can see it now when I look into her empty eyes. I used to think the vipers in Hollywood were the worst, but I was wrong. Audrey is the worst of humanity. The demon spawn ejected from hell because even the devil himself didn’t want her. She deserves nothing less than pain and suffering for what she’s done.
“Now what?” Carson asks, glancing at me with the same question in his own eyes.
What can we possibly do to her that would make things right again? Even the darkest, most depraved solutions don’t feel permanent enough. Nothing can wipe her slate clean.
“Let’s talk outside.” I jerk my head toward the door.
Carson nods, glancing back and forth between the human scum. Wyatt looks like he’s still trying not to puke, and Audrey is plotting ways to spin this situation back in her favor somehow. I’m too wound up to think straight, but Carson grabs a desk chair and drags it out into the hallway behind us. He wedges it beneath the door and wiggles it into place.
We walk downstairs and out the back door. It’s getting late, and the moon is winking at us from behind the cover of clouds as we step onto the porch. Audrey’s house is secluded enough that we don’t have to worry about the neighbors seeing us here, but there is a main road just up over the hill. We parked a mile away and walked here through the woods, just in case.
“This is so fucked up.” Carson scrubs a hand over his face. “What the hell are we going to do now?”
My eyes are unfocused as they drift over the tree line. There are too many things to consider, and answering that question feels almost impossible right now. What would Kail want if she knew the extent of Audrey’s depravity? What would hurt Audrey the most, but leave our futures untarnished?
“What was that?” Carson’s head snaps to the side, and I hear it at the same time.
There’s a thud, and then an ear-shattering scream. At the front of the house, the door slams open so hard it sounds like a thunderbolt. Carson and I are heading that way when Wyatt peels around the corner, clutching at his bloody shoulder.
“The bitch fucking stabbed me!” he bellows. “She stabbed me!”
He weaves up the hill at a frantic speed, and Carson glances at me. Audrey is screaming like she’s being murdered inside the house. We’re trying to make sense of it when she comes flying out the door next, and the image looks like something straight out of a horror film. Half of her face and parts of her chest are covered in red, scaly burns that look like her skin is melting off. We only catch a glimpse as she stumbles after Wyatt with a bloody knife still clutched in her grasp.
She’s screaming as though she might die from the pain, but she’s not willing to give up the pursuit of her latest victim.