AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Only this time, I won’t be going down without a fight.
They surround me in seconds, their shadows darting around in the room like rambunctious ghosts. They lunge in my direction roughly, ripping the sheets off my body.
A pair of hands grab my shoulders, and another holds on to my feet. I can’t see their faces because they are all shrouded in black fabric, but their outlines are all I need to aim.
With one steady movement, I slash in an arc. My knife connects with something and a squeal rips from one of my would-be kidnappers.
“She has a knife!” one of them shouts, and there’s a furor of shuffling hands and whispering voices as they try to subdue me.
I struggle in their grip, writhing as much as I can. I manage to stab at them twice more before the knife falls from my hold. I don’t give up the fight, though. I kick and buck, desperate for them to let me go. My muscles ache from the exertion, the pain spurring me on.
They will probably succeed in taking me, but I won’t let it happen so easily.
I can’t be sure how badly I’ve hurt them, but I hope I drew blood.
When they finally overpower me, they bind my hands and feet and force a blindfold over my eyes. My heart thrums loudly in my chest. Fear courses through my veins, chilling my blood.
It’s nothing compared to what I’ve endured the last few days, though. No, I’ve looked certain death in the eye and came face-to-face with the person who wanted me dead.
Their stupid initiation won’t break me.
It can’t be worse than killing me.
It’s that thought that holds me over as these girls drag me to whatever barbaric ritual they have planned. Whatever happens won’t end well for me.
I’ll come away from this experience with some sort of trauma to deal with. Some sort of shit that’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
I hate them. I hatethis.
I didn’t choose any of this—I’m not who they thought I was, and it was probably a mistake why I ended up in Hemlock House anyway. I never wanted to be a part of their cult, but now the feeling is even stronger.
Now that my secret is out, the world I once knew has shattered with it. I was playing a part, all this time. The jig is up now. Alize Moreau never wanted to attend Saint Frederic University, and she sure as hell didn’t want to be part of this fucked up “sisterhood.”
There’s no clear path out for me.
I’m pondering my options when I’m flung to the floor by my captors. The walk to wherever they took me was shorter than the last time. I don’t think this is the basement, or that abandoned building they had those wretched auctions in.
No, this feels like we’re still in the Hemlock House building, probably still on the same wing of my dorm. It doesn’t even feel like they descended any stairs.
My body hits the ground with a thud, pain blossoming in my hips and shoulders. My thighs ache where the rough wooden floor scrapes my healing wounds through my thin nightgown.
The blindfold is ripped off next, and the room is so bright it takes me a while to adjust. They free me of my restraints. My captors retreat in the time it takes me to get my bearings, slamming the door behind them.
Okay, this is definitelynotlike the last two places.
The room I’m in is sterile—white walls, white-washed wood floors and huge white fluorescent bulbs set in a striking silver chandelier overhead. There are no windows, no furniture, no clocks. It looks like the kind of room you’d see in cartoons when they want you to think the character has been sent to a mental institution.
A chill runs up my spine when I notice I’m not alone, but I shake it off.
Whatever this is, I’ll meet it head on. It can’t be worse than what I’ve gone through already, what I will have to endure now the whole school thinks I’m engaged to that buffoon, Alexander. What’s in store for me if the men hunting me find me.
I know two of the three people in the room with me.
One of them is Liz.
She looks the same as I remember, wearing the same reptilian sneer, dressed in the same cultish robe, her thin blonde hair combed in an austere updo that matches the other two girls with her. Her nose is bandaged, an angry bruise on the skin around it. Did she get a nose job?
The other girl, I’m not too sure of her name—Viola, Violet?—but her face is familiar. She’s a member of the Hemlock House Council. Her hair is ice blond and wavy. She has tanned skin, and her vixen-like gray eyes pierce daggers into me.
