“You could get one in learning when to shut the fuck up.”
He laughs.
Eden’s class lets out soon, and then it’s my favorite part of the day—the part when I get to take her back home and have her all to myself.
There’s movement to my right, and I lift my head to look. The van feels wrong before it finishes the turn.
Gray panel, windows blacked out, and it’s taking the speed bump without lifting off the gas. It swings wide of the visitor spots and lines up on the south entrance.
I’m off my bike before the side door slides open.
Four men pour out of it.
No colors. Doesn’t matter. I’ve stood across a county line from two of those faces. Crimson Warriors.
They’re here with bats, a length of chain, and the one in front carries a blade low against his leg.
They didn’t ride on bikes. They planned, but they didn’t have the guts to do it on two wheels. Fucking cowards with a getaway van.
They don’t come at me.
They go for Trapper.
“Trapper!”
The first bat catches him across the shoulders before he’s off the seat, and the bike goes over with him half under it. The second swing takes the headlight apart. Glass sprays across the asphalt. They drag him out from under his bike, and I’m there.
The chain swings for my head. I step inside the arc, catch the arm, and put my elbow through the man’s face. He sits down in the glass and stays there.
Two of them have Trapper on the ground. The man with the blade comes at me low, and for half a second, I get a flashback to the night Eden found me on the road.
Not this time. This time, I’m rested, I’m upright, and the man holding the knife is standing between me and a Kings’ prospect.
He makes a swipe with the knife. He catches my forearm instead of my ribs. Before he gets a second chance, I close my hand around his wrist.
Bones move under my palm as I snap his wrist. He screams. The knife rings off the asphalt, and I run him into the side of their van hard enough to fold the panel in.
Then the building doors open.
Class change time.
Students pour out of the south entrance into a lot full of blood and swinging bats, and the screaming starts. Phones are already up, and from across the way, I spot auburn hair coming toward me.
Everyone on this campus is running away from the violence.
Eden is running into it.
“EDEN!”
She doesn’t look at me. She isn’t running to me. She doesn’t even see me.
She’s running to Trapper, who’s bleeding on the asphalt with a boot driving into his ribs.
I don’t think. I run.
The man standing over Trapper raises the bat.
Over her.
