AllFreeNovel
Share Us
No one bothers to ask why Halen’s throwing her fourteenth birthday out here. Apparently owning your own track isn’t enough when your kink is destruction on the streets.
Cars line the parking lot of the cathedral in town square. The night is young, but people are already rowdy. I fucking hate being around people from school. The stress of constantly having to stop Priest from murdering students aside, I can’t fucking stand any of them either.
Vaden pushes his body up the hood of my car, his lithe legs rippling over the edge as we watch the scene unfold in front of us.
“Why she gotta be this way?” Priest fixes on his twin. Candles on the GTR lettering cake that Evie is sashaying over to her illuminates the wide smile on her face. So carefree. Happy. Content. I could never ask for more than for her to be exactly the girl she is now. I fucking hope that never changes.
“Because she can.” Vaden lifts his heavy-set shoulders, but he doesn’t shift his gaze from her as Evie starts singing Happy Birthday. “Good thing we own this town. Imagine not being able to drive since you were ten because the law says so.”
Fifty or so other drunken voices join Evie in the famous tune.
Halen glares at her best friend, and whiskey catches my throat when I choke on my laugh, with Vaden’s hysterics following closely behind.
Priest shakes his head. “She’d fucking hate that.”
“Torment.” The word leaves behind a bitter aftertaste of images of me doing what I’d prefer to torment her with. None of it includes singing.
My phone lights up in my pocket, and Bishop’s face flares over the screen. Tapping Vaden’s shoulder with mine, Priest turns just in time as I take the call.
“What’s up?”
“Halen’s birthday?”
“Yep! You wanna talk to her?”
Silence. Anytime Bishop Vincent Hayes is silent, it’s a bad sign. For one, his genius is working overtime and I already know that whatever he’s about to say, I ain’t gonna like it. “It’s about the ritual. Are you all there?”
Priest and Vaden both move in closer, and I tap on the speaker button. We’re far enough away that no one can hear, yet close enough to watch the girls.
The tone in his voice is tight, as if he struggled to say the words. “We’ve found some old translations of the possible events that could unfold during the ritual. It never happened with us, or with Hector’s generation, so we’re trying to figure out what it means and how a certain herb could be of importance.”
A certain herb? Well, fuck. It better be ganja.
“You think it was true?” I stub the spliff out.
His hand brushes his beard once more, as if battling with the very thoughts that triggered the delay of the ritual to begin with. “What’d you see?”
“I wasn’t out long enough to see shit. Or if I did, I don’t remember.”
Early morning sunrays capture the stress lines around Bishop’s eyes. “You’d remember. That much Hector did know. I know you can’t tell each other, but if you have suspicions, you should voice them.” He shifts his gaze down to my phone. “You tracking her?”
My brow arches. “You surprised?”
“Not a single bit.” He stands, patting my shoulder before disappearing behind me.
The heady bass of Tech N9ne stirs me from my sleep.
Fuck.
My legs swing off the bed as I roll to the side, pinching the corners of my eyes. Once I’m sure my body has caught up, I push off one of the beds in the playroom. It was another area for us to throw parties growing up, but when we were toddlers, it was an actual playroom. Six bunk beds constructed into the walls, all handcrafted into castles. The space was kitted out with all the best toys. I’m pretty sure we all slept here more times than we did at our own houses growing up, since we’ve always been one family.
We kept the name playroom, only now there’s a pool table tucked in the darkest corner, and a wide industrial bar that’s lined with electric blue LEDs. The main parterre garden is on the other side of the room, behind a glass wall. The room uses a lot of the space from the floor plan in the top levels, which is why it’s so large.
Vaden makes it snow over the coffee table he’s in front of, as Priest’s shirtless frame saunters by, his hair in disarray and a bottle of bourbon clutched between his fingers.
It’s fucking Monday and I slept away most of the day, including seeing what time she got home.
Tapping on the GPS app to see where she’s at, my body relaxes when her location picks her up here.
