Page 27 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
The price for my pity.
Like I said, the universe doesn’t play fair deals. Villains are not killed with kindness.
And even a cheap stun gun hurts when it’s pressed into raw, bloody flesh.
“You stupid goddamn bitch,” Kali laughs, choking again as she stumbles over to me, looking down on her handiwork with an awful smile. It doesn’t quite fit her face, like it was designed for somebody else and plastered there against her will. She kneels down beside me as I struggle to pull myself together enough to stand up.
Jesus Christ, where the fuck was she hiding that?! Not in her teeny, tiny panties, that’s for fucking sure.
“Since this is the last time we’ll ever talk, I just want you to know that I didn’t hate you at first. You drove me to it. Bernadette, I loved you like a sister in the beginning.” Kali scoots a little closer to me, reaching out to brush some hair from my forehead. I try to slap her away, but my hands and arms are too twitchy, and I can’t seem to make my body do what I want it to.
Plus, I’m still bleeding. Bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.
Maybe I’ll always be bleeding, both physically and metaphorically. Maybe that’s the price of my fate.
“You think you’re so high and mighty, Bernie. I used to look up to you, but then I realized that you’re too deep inside your head to care about anyone but yourself.” Kali grabs my hair and jerks my head up, putting one of the abandoned knives to my throat. “And there’s only room for one queen in this city. Listen to me good, Bernie: it isn’t going to be you.”
My fingers dig into the dirt, and I manage to get myself together enough to fling it into Kali’s eyes. She cries out as I roll away, but I’m still stumbling and struggling to make my body work the way it’s supposed to.
So I do what I can, crawling into the blackberry bushes as Kali struggles to clear her eyes and locate me in the dark. It isn’t so easy to see out here. City assholes always gripe about the dark, but you haven’t seen shit until you’ve been out on a country night.
“Bernadette,” Kali calls sweetly, like we’re playing hide and seek, like she’s truly Neil Pence’s awful, little soul mate. “I always knew you didn’t have the ovaries to actually do it, to hurt me like that. You’re pathetic.” Kali moves away, back in the direction of the playground. Or … what I think is the playground. “Think about it,” she calls out, voice ringing in the dark. “You called Havoc for nothing. You’re out here bleeding alone in the dark.”
She laughs at me as I struggle to get my bearings. To be honest, I have no idea where we are anymore. Somehow, during the fight, we’ve moved.
I keep crawling, slow and quiet, still twitching, my heart racing like crazy. The next time Kali speaks, calling out my name like a summoning spell spilling from the mouth of a witch, I unstrap the blade from my thigh and clutch it as tightly as I can with spasming fingers.
As soon as I hit the edge of the bushes, I shove up to my feet and start to run. A gunshot hits the tree to my right as I make a sudden left and sprint toward the edge of the cemetery. Fuck, shit, son of a bitch. She found her gun.
Of course this is where it would end—just as it did for Neil—in the darkness of a moonlit graveyard.
The graves here are old and utilitarian, nothing like they were at Our Lady of Mercy. There’s not much to hide behind. So I don’t bother. I just turn and watch Kali stalking across the grass toward me, gun in hand.
“Look,” I say, dropping the knife and holding my hands up in mock surrender. She keeps coming, so I fall to my knees, knowing that she’ll enjoy that, the exchange of power. “If you’re really carrying Neil’s baby …”
“Of course I am,” she says, pausing about six feet away from me. Close enough to get a shot, but far enough away that she doesn’t think I can surprise her. My fingers dig into the grass as I drop them to my sides. There’s a piece of broken headstone that I cling to, careful to keep my movements quiet. The knife I just dropped is too obvious, shining silver about a foot in front of my knees; this is better. “Neil loved me, Bernadette. He loved me.” She pauses and adjusts her grip on the weapon, two-handed and very steady.
You very well could die here, you idiot. Because you’re still clinging to morals you have no right to.
“Do you want to know where he is?” I ask quietly, keeping my eyes averted. If I look her dead in the face, she’ll know I hate her too much to ever let this go and she’ll have to kill me right here and now. But Kali wants to talk because she’s always loved an audience. There’s no point to my dying without anyone around to see it.
