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“What’s the issue? Thanks, Sis, for the present-”
“Max! You are an absolute moron! Do you know what nearly happened tonight? I told you the kind of trouble you could get into getting involved with the Demonios-”
Max blanched. “I never told you what the gang was-”
Sophie grabbed her brother’s arm and dragged him in the direction that Phantom nodded silently. To the hydrangea bushes at the bottom of the garden.
“What the hell are you doing, you weirdo, get off-” Max tried to struggle but Phantom whipped his head around and silenced him with a look.
“I fucking know, because Phantom is an assassin, and he kills Demonios, and he was just about to kill you!”
Max pushed his head back as if Sophie had said something dumb.
“What?”
Sophie and Max shot their identical amber flecked eyes to Phantom. Who stood and stoically stared back, rooted to his spot surrounded by hydrangeas.
“And you…!” Sophie rounded on him. He stood still and stared above her head.
“One more? Fucking one more and it’s my baby brother?”
“I’m not a baby-”
“Pipe down!” Sophie shot off in Max’s direction.
“How didn’t you realize… why did you think… I can’t even…” She couldn’t get the words out, she was so full of anger, of hurt.
“He wouldn’t have killed me,” Max scoffed, trying to diffuse the situation.
Phantom nodded further into the bush, indicating that something was there, directing her attention. Sophie looked where he was nodding, vaguely distracted, but then stared. Max, too, was mouth open gawping.
There was a dead man in their garden.
Dressed all in black, knife sticking out of his throat. The blood had already drained out and into the soil.
“No way, man!” Max exclaimed, eyes practically popping from his head.
“Oh Christ,” Sophie muttered, eyes flitting from the dead man, to Max, to Phantom.
“You gonna teach me to do that?” Max turned to gaze at Phantom like he was Superman.
“No, of course he is not going to-”
But Phantom’s hand shot out then and wrapped around Max’s throat. Max stuttered in surprise.
“Wait, what-” Sophie stuttered.
His other hand came out and yanked at the neckline of Max’s T-shirt.
“What the fuck, dude-” Max squealed, an octave higher than his normal voice.
And Phantom exposed the top six inches of Max’s hairless, skinny teenage chest.
Sophie immediately realized what he was looking for. She felt her blood slamming angrily through her body, she felt flushed and like she wanted to lash out. She glared back at Max now.
“The mark… you haven’t been branded?”
“Wh-what?’’ Max stammered, the whites of his eyes glowing in the dim light. “They talked about some sort of initiation, how it wouldn’t hurt much, but then I never heard from them…”
