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I frown at Diego, pulling my gaze away from where I’ve been staring through a concealed gap in the hedge.
“Patienceis, in fact, a virtue, Diego.”
My VP of The Reckless grins at me around his cigarillo. “Right. Because I’m known for being so virtuous and pious.”
“Well,someof us couldn’t sleep at the mansion last night,” Ivan mutters, glaring at our Spanish friend. “Due to thetwoyoung ladies in your room screaming ‘oh God’ about a million fucking times, yourholiness.”
Diego crosses himself—the wrong way, and with the wrong hand—before touching Ivan’s forehead. “Confess your sins, my son.”
Ivan wrinkles his nose and brushes Diego’s hand away. “You literally still smell like pussy. Touch me with those grubby fucking hands again and I’ll have a sin to confess real quick.”
“Nah,” Diego chuckles, sniffing his own finger. “That’s merely holy water.”
“That’shoewater. Take a shower, you fucking degenerate,” Ivan mutters.
“Are you suggesting that women who enjoy themselves sexually are hoes, Ivan?” Diego shakes his head dramatically. “That’s not very progressive of you.”
“I’m suggesting that the Venn diagram of female Knightsblood students I see leaving your room in the morning and female Knightsblood students who are infamous for being batshit nuts and fucking anything that smiles at them is a perfect circle.”
“Will both of you please shut thefuckup so I can actually look for these shitbags?” I hiss, glaring at them. “Please and thank you.”
They shut the fuck up.
I turn back to the hole in the hedge, my eyes scanning the green littered with various groups of students between classes.
For the most part, the rivalries between the school clubs—notably, the one between us, The Reckless, and the pompous, cleft-chin fuckbois in Para Bellum—are confined to mostly harmless pranking. They leave a bag of burning shit on our front door; we set off the sprinkler system during one of their parties. They let rats loose into our basement; I find and kill those rats, let them marinate in a plastic bag for a week, then cut that bag open and leave it hidden in their mansion’s air vents.
You get the idea.
Except this past year, since that smarmy fuck-head Chase Cavendish became president of Para Bellum, things have started escalating. And theykeepescalating. Now, the pranks are becoming less “jokes” and more “how much physical harm can we inflict before the school becomes involved”.
And the three of us are testing the limit in about ten minutes.
We’re hiding next to the path that Chase and two of his buddies and top Para Bellum leaders—Brad Hathaway and Spencer Campbell—frequently take from the cafeteria to their afternoon classes. Where the path enters the rows of hedges, it makes a circle around a pleasant little pool with a fountain and dotted with lily pads.
Hidden beneath the idyllic little pool, fountain, and hedges, though, is one of the water mains to the cafeteria kitchens. It runs right up through the base of this very fountain. And it contains water flowing at a fairly dangerous three hundred PSI, which is basically the force with which water comes out of a fire hose.
There are currently two charges wrapped discreetly around this high-pressure piping—one that would burst it in the direction ofonepath. And the other aimed to burst it in a slightly different direction atanotherpath, since Chase and his pals take either, at random. I know. I’ve checked.
Is purposefully bursting—via the remote detonators in my pocket—dangerously high-pressured water directly into the faces of three unprotected humans less than ten feet away slightly more than a prank?
Most certainly. In fact, there’s a decent chance one or more of them will lose a fucking eye in the execution of this “prank”.
Between us, I’m halfway hoping for that.
This is the exact sort of escalation I was talking about. But they moved it up a notch first. We’re merely retaliating. At the last fight night, which a few of us hold in a clearing in the woods behind the stables, Para Bellum put up one of their own—Ian Winstead—against one of our guys, Vincent Marchetti.
As bloody as it can get, fight night means a fair fight. Or, it’s supposed to. Except last time, Ian, on the direction of Chase Cavendish and his little fucking friends, stuffed his hand wrappings with metal.
Vincent is now nursing a broken jaw, arm, three cracked ribs, and a half-shattered hand.
SofuckPara Bellum. They’re about to reap what they fucking sowed.
I glare through the hedge, watching for them, waiting to see which path the fuckers take so that I can detonate the right charge and, with luck, blind the lot of them. But suddenly, without any warning, something catches and utterly arrests my attention.
It’sher.
The new girl.
