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Mackenzie’s body has gone completely slack, but she manages to twist her neck to watch me. Those ice-blue eyes stare right through me. I can’t fucking look at them anymore. It takes everything in me to break her gaze and face Alec.
“Noah? Bro, you listening?” Alec shoves me toward her. “Mackenzie Malloy on a platter. I did all this for you. This bitch broke into your house, she embarrassed you at Daphne’s party. She killed your brother.”
“I know that.” I can barely hear him over the roar in my ears.
“So?” Alec gestures to her. “She took something from you. Isn’t it time you repaid the favor?”
I shake my head. Something of my brother’s spirit swells inside of me, a tiny screaming piece f his soul that believes we can walk away from this unscathed. “This is fucked up, Alec. You said we were going to scare her, make sure she never came after our families again. But not like this. This isn’t right.”
“It’s justice,” Alec hisses. “This bitch branded my face. She deserves to be full of our cum.”
“That’s your idea of justice? Raping a girl?” My words have no meaning to him. He’s too far gone, too lost in his own sick fantasy. But he’s not the only one here. I swivel my gaze to our teammates. None of them can hold my eyes. “You’re sick. All of you.”
“Yeah, Alec,” Mark pipes up from the back of the crowd. He has a hand to his cheek, blood seeping between his fingers. When he lowers it, I see the slash Mackenzie’s knife made in his skin. “Come on, this is fucked.”
“Dude, I’ve got an athletic scholarship to Stanford. No way am I putting that on the line for this bitch,” adds Chad, dropping his hold on Mackenzie’s wrist. Of course, the most important thing is the athletic scholarship, not the fact his friend is trying to get him to rape a girl. But if it gets them to let go of her without violence, I’ll take it and deal with their shitty asses later.
“Look at her. She’s scared enough as it is.” I shrug, like it’s all no big deal, even though I’m one wrong move away from breaking every bone in their bodies. “You’ve had your revenge. Let’s take her back.”
Alec glares at our friends. “You fucking pussies. Fine, more for me.”
He presses his body against Mackenzie again, pinning her by his bulk even though the others have let go of her. His teeth dig into her ear, drawing blood. Mackenzie’s eyes lock onto mine, part cry for help, part promise. If I don’t do something, this is on my conscience, and she will never, ever let me forget it.
That makes two of us.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” Alec grunts. He reaches down between us to undo his zipper.
I don’t feel myself moving. One moment I was standing behind the guys, watching this whole shitshow unfold. The next, Alec’s on his back in the sand and I am hammering my fist into his face, over and over and over, until he stops moving.
I don’t hear him crying. I don’t see the blood. I don’t see the others pull me off him. My vision is filled with a pair of ice-blue eyes that have haunted my dreams for five long, hollow years.
I lift Mackenzie and toss her over my shoulder. Her hands go around my neck, and I try not to let the scent of her invade my nostrils.
I fail.
“We’re leaving,” I bark at Alec. “Don’t follow us.”
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I don’t even know what direction to walk to civilization. But what I do know is that Mackenzie’s tiny arms are so warm around me, and her breath in my ear is so soft, so different from the Mackenzie I used to know, and all I want to do is get her as far from Alec as I can. All I want to do is be the kind of guy who protects her from this shit. I’m not. I’m her worst fucking enemy, but right now, I want so badly to pretend.
I start walking.
Excerpt: Dark Academia, book 1
Read the first chapter of Pretty Girls Make Graves
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Nothing shatters the magic of my first day at Blackfriars University quite like a naked priest swimming the backstroke in the water fountain.
Until the moment I come face-to-dong with Father Sebastian Pearce, I’ve been enraptured by this place. Blackfriars is everything my life in Emerald Beach, California was not – I love the gothic arches and ancient, cobbled pathways, the hidden nooks and lichen-covered stone fountains. I love the storybook British names and customs for everything. I love lining up with the other students in our black subfusc robes for the matriculation ceremony, and looking up at the blackened church spires piercing the grey sky.
And turrets. I adore the metric fuckton of turrets (a ‘fuckton’ is the only thing I can correctly measure using the metric system, but I’m learning) at my new university.
Blackfriars is all my Hogwarts dreams come true.
At least, that’s how I felt this morning. But then I tripped on the uneven cobbles and tore my skirt, and then squirmed for two hours on a hard church pew while a dusky-haired priest performed the High Mass. In Latin. My initial enchantment gave way to boredom and a numb ass. I’ve never attended a High Mass before (or a Low Mass or even a Medium Mass). My sole exposure to the Catholic Church has been watching scenes from my father’s horror movies, and they usually end in someone summoning a demon and getting their brains sucked out through their nostrils.
