Page 25 of Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys 4)
Once, when one of the fires got really, really bad, and the entire eastern half of Springfield was told to evacuate, I came out here and put my feet in the stream. The sky was orange, and the ash fell like snow. I could smell the charred remains of the forest, the remnants of broken, shattered lives.
And I was surprised to find that, despite the fact that I’d never been so close to a fire before, I recognized that smell. It’d been a near permanent fixture of my life for years.
“You are so fucking full of yourself!” Kali shouts at me, her voice breaking just a little. In the moonlight like this, her eighties-inspired makeup doesn’t seem quite so dark, quite so harsh. She looks less like a woman of the night and more like a fragile, lost, little girl.
Some strange part of me wishes I could help her.
The rest of me knows that sometimes people are wicked, through and through.
Kali is one of those people.
Coraleigh, on the other hand … she was merely pathetic. She hurt people because that was the only way she could ever feel powerful, the only way she could take control. She was never truly wicked; she wasn’t strong enough for that. She was just a blind sheep in a bad flock.
Kali is a whole different animal.
“Full of myself?” I echo as she steps toward me, her green party dress catching the light. It looks awful on her. It clings in all the wrong places, emphasizing the bony structure of her body. If she really is pregnant, then she isn’t showing.
“Standing out here like you’ve got some moral high ground, spouting crap at me that’s as bad as your poetry.” She pauses and tilts her head to one side. Maybe she thinks I don’t see her reach into her purse? But I do. “The thing is, Bernadette, you’re just as bad as all the boogeymen you think you’re fighting against. You’re a monster, too.”
“Maybe,” I say, turning the knife in my hand, holding it the way Callum showed me. I look up at Kali as she pulls a second knife from her purse, tossing the hideous, gold thing aside. Guess we’re going to duke this out, hand-to-hand.
Lots of blood and pain. Like it always should’ve been. A gunshot between the eyes would’ve been too easy, too clinical.
I let Kali rush me, ducking as she swings the knife in an arc at my face. The blade digs into the trunk of the big tree behind me, buying me enough time to swing around and come at her from the back. Unfortunately, she’s not as dumb as she looks. Kali ducks and avoids my blade, yanking her own knife from the bark of the tree as she spins around to meet a second thrust.
She knocks my knife aside, but I cut her anyway. Blood wells over her pale hands. Not surprising. Knife fights are never clean. I’ll probably end up with a partially severed finger before the night is out.
Because I know Kali all too-well, when she starts to swing frantically, pushing me backward into the blackberries, I smell a trap. Not a second too early, I drop down and throw my bodyweight into her belly, narrowly avoiding falling down a small ravine into the icy waters of Mill Creek.
We hit the ground, blades flashing. I see my own cut to the bone on her arm, a scream raking from her throat as she swings at my chest. The lace of my dress splits open, an angry slash of red appearing across my breasts. I don’t feel the pain, however, too intent on my mission.
End this.
Kill Kali.
Bernie, this isn’t you, I tell myself, but that’s the old me, pre-Penelope’s death. All I wanted was to be good, to drink black coffee and write terrible poems. I wanted to be a poor artist in a studio with a leaky roof, and I wanted to create things. I wanted to plant an herb garden on the windowsill and squeal when I had enough basil to make spaghetti sauce with zucchini grated into it. Because that would mean I was creating things instead of destroying them.
That girl … she’s lived too long with people like Neil and Eric, Coraleigh and Kali. They have changed her, altered her irreparably.
The only way she’ll ever feel sane again, is to destroy them at their own game. It’s a thing she knows she can do, and do well. With Havoc by my side, I will rule this horrible town and all of the awful people in it.
Hell, I’m already well on my way. There have been delays. There have been metaphorical wildfires. But nothing is going to stop me. Nothing. Motherfucking nothing.
I stab the blade down as hard as I can, holding it with both hands, but Kali manages to turn her head at the last second. My knife severs the bun of green and black hair from her head, but that’s about it. She yowls at me like a frightened cat as she brandishes her own knife, slicing me across the shoulder.
