Vex (28 page)

“You’ll freeze, Love. Only one death for today, please.” He walks over to Kate’s head just lying there as the crowd of spectators continues to grow.

I run alongside him and stare down at her. Her eyes are still open—looking up as though she were actually focused in on us. Her lips are parted as if she were about to say something and got cut off, literally. I take Marshall’s jacket from around my shoulders and place it gently over her remains.

Gage comes over.

“There’s something wrong with the lift operator,” he says.

“They had a late night. They both fell asleep,” Marshall offers.

I can only assume Marshall is talking about the one downhill as well. He did this. There’s no doubt. It has his bloody calling card all over it.

 “She didn’t steal the ring,” I scream into him.

“Sometimes receiving stolen goods makes you an accessory,” Marshall looks to Gage. “Imagine what I would do to someone who tried to kill me.” He stalks off in anger, over to a medic that’s just arrived at the scene.

“He’s going to kill me,” I whisper.

Gage pulls me in, lands a kiss on my cheek, and warms my arms.

“He was looking at me when he said it.”

***

They took Kate’s head back down the mountain in an icebox packed with snow as though they actually thought they might be able to somehow reattach it. I guess it was mostly for show in an effort to look competent and avoid any further liability. After all, two of the resort workers passed out on the job and one of the medics threw up onsite.

Marshall arranges for the buses to pick us up a day early, and if we leave in the next few hours, we’ll still make the last ferry back to Paragon.

“I feel terrible,” I cry on Brielle’s shoulder back at the room.

“Don’t, it’s not your fault.” She presses a warm hand onto my shoulder.

“Of course, it’s her fault,” Emily spits the words out while jamming art supplies into a duffle bag. “Whose ski was it again that lopped off her head? Oh, that’s right, it was your ski, Messenger.”

“It was a freak accident!” Brielle goes over with her chest puffed out. “If you saw how fast that damn machine was moving, you wouldn’t even think about making her feel this way.”

Emily cuts a quick smile in my direction.

Something tells me I won’t be living this down anytime soon. I’ll probably do jail time. I’ll be known as the decapitator for the rest of my days but really I don’t care.

I fall onto the bed and let the tears flow. I hate that I somehow meshed into Marshall’s plan of revenge. I’d like to think that he used me and not that I, in my accident-prone glory managed to do this on my own. He was probably only going to give her frostbite. Maybe her finger would have fallen off, or at worse, he would have hacked off her hand—but no, I had to go and rip her skull off at the base. I’m so pissed at myself first, then Marshall. I’m going to strangle him and not just as a euphemism this time. He’s gone too far. People don’t kill people for purchasing stolen items.

Then it comes back full circle, and I have to face the fact he was probably going to let her live, until I inserted my Celestra strength into the mix.

Michelle slaps her things together. I look over at her glazed expression, her crazy short hair that’s actually matted in the back. She’s next—maybe not death, but a limb or two, for sure.

Emily snaps up her luggage and disappears. Drake comes in and snatches up Brielle’s bag, slings it over his shoulder.

“You OK?”

It takes a moment for it to register that he’s actually talking to me.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Really I’m not. I’m going to keep Dr. Booth busy for the next several decades regarding this very incident.

“You want me to get your bag?”

“No thanks. I’ll be down in a minute.”

 They take off and I go over to Michelle. I grab her by the shoulders, rattle her like a bobblehead doll.

“Listen to me!” I didn’t mean to scream it in her face with unbridled rage. “That necklace you have on—that ring. They’re haunted. They are the sole reason for your nightmares. Those scary things you see, even when you’re not sleeping? They’re after you, Michelle. They’re real. If you don’t take off this demonic crap, you’re going to end up dead just like Kate!” I break out in a hot burst of perspiration. This might be my one last-ditch opportunity to save Michelle.

“Are you threatening her?” Chloe appears from behind. I hadn’t even noticed that she walked in the room.

“No,” I shake my head.

“I heard you.” She snatches Michelle by the shoulders.

Michelle holds out her hand and gazes down at her finger. It’s black. It looks necrotic as if it’s dying from the inside. She plucks the ring off, and hands it to Chloe.

“I’ll keep it safe for you.” Chloe doesn’t flinch at the site of Michelle’s dead finger. Instead, she places the ring on her hand, holds it out for me to admire.

“It can’t hurt me, Skyla,” she whispers low and lethargic. “Nothing can hurt me, and no one can stop me.”

“I can stop you, Chloe.” I wish I believed the words I was so quick to issue.

“By turning yourself in and disappearing forever? Please do.” She bites into her lip with a pleasure-filled smile.

“By removing you from West, from my life, and from Gage forever. That’s what I live for Chloe. And I’m desperate enough to do anything to make it happen.”   

I sweep my things into a bag and head out the door.

I’m going to find Marshall and make arrangements for just about anything.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Next to You

The buses fill in quickly.

The temperature drops. The sky darkens to soot as though the world were mourning for sweet, beautiful Kate. I scan the crowd for Marshall. It’s him I want to sit next to all the way down the mountain, so I can lambaste him for being so cruel.

“Skyla,” Logan pulls me in without permission. The warmth from his skin comforts me. Makes me linger far longer than I ever should.

“Have you seen Dudley?” I need to stay focused.

“No,” his expression clouds over. “I want you to stay away from him. Both Gage and I do,” he corrects the rebuke to include Gage, as though, I might listen to reason better if he weren’t the only one in the equation—and usually he’d be right, but not in this case.

“I can take care of myself.”

“No,” he says it sweetly with pathetic undertones. “He’s too powerful. He has an agenda. The rest of us are just pawns. That includes you.”

“Well, the tables have turned. He’s my pawn now.” There’s no way I’m going to tell Logan that I plan on sleeping with Dudley to get Chloe out of my life for good. Marshall’s voice booms from the other end of the parking lot. I shake Logan loose and dart in his direction.

My feet glide on a patch of ice, sailing me right into Marshall.  

“I’m sitting with you,” I say, panting from the sprint.

“First seat on the left, you can take my bag,” he hands me a small duffel.

I snatch it from him, and head inside.

***

Another half hour passes before we’re just about loaded to go. Gage and Logan are on another bus, so I won’t have to worry about them disrupting ‘operation take Chloe down’.

I rest Marshall’s duffel on my lap and something protrudes from it hard on my thigh. I try and molest it from the outside but I can’t make out the form—probably more lethal jewelry. Really, why doesn’t he just leave this stuff at home in a safe like normal people?

Without putting too much thought into it I unzip it and peer inside. It’s not like I’m going to take anything. I’ve seen what can happen. It’s not pretty.

It’s too dark to make anything out properly. I turn on the overhead light and dig around inside. Tons of free floating metal objects filter through my fingers. I remember Marshall once mentioned he forged iron or something along those lines. I fish out the largest item in the bag and hold it out—a silver statue of Ezrina. I drop it like a hot coal and fish out something else. A small rattle looking thing, circular with a long handle and something inside of it pounds the walls of the metal surface as though it were trying to escape. I place it back towards the bottom and pull out a disc. It’s unreasonably heavy in comparison to the Ezrina figure and the haunted rattle. It has an opaque stone in the center, pink, pretty. I pull out another with a hazy blue stone, and another with the color of light green jade. The three discs look just like the ones Emily drew on my torso. Creepy.

I fish out a final disc from off the bottom. It has the picture of a flame on one side. I flip it over and gasp.

I recognize those lips, those eyes, that hair—it’s me. My likeness molded into this colossal-sized coin. My face protrudes from the metal as though I were trying to escape.

I put the disc in my jacket pocket and dip back into the bag. Something round maneuvers between my fingers, almost as if it came to me.

Marshall steps on board and walks past me to the back of the bus, taking roll. I pull the final object out of the bag and examine it under the light.

A severed head.

I replace it in the sack, zipping it back up just as Marshall lands by my side.

“I’m giving you preferential treatment because of your emotional trauma. Otherwise, female students are not allowed to sit with male professors.”

“Thank you.”

“However, since the entire student body knows that you and I are an item,” he wraps his arm around my shoulder and leans into me inappropriately. “And, I’m the only instructor on board, we don’t have to hide our affections for one another.” He glides into a lust-filled smile that fades as quick as it came. His eyes narrow in on mine before he holds his hand out.

“The amulet.”

“No,” I say, defiantly. “It’s mine—my face.”

His eyes glow an eerie fire yellow, inspiring me to produce the overgrown coin and place it on his palm.

“What is it?”

“It’s a decorative piece I’ve come to call my own,” he emphasizes the last two words.

“I saw the head. You knew it was going to happen.”

“On occasion I know things.”

“Why didn’t you stop it?”

“What fun is it to always save—rescue, release? Once in a while I just go with destiny’s flow, and if a head happens to roll, so be it.”

“Did you mean for Kate to get her head chopped off or did I do that on my own?” Not that it’ll make me feel any better either way.

“I, my love, take revenge very seriously,” his voice resonates pitch perfect with anger. “I don’t make mistakes, and I don’t let humans, or their partial counterparts, get in the way. But if you must know, my revenge coincided nicely with her timely demise. It’s a fact that she was called home at that hour, otherwise I would have dismembered her civilly, let her live out her years with a simple prosthesis. Not everybody has a body farm, you know,” he eyes my Chloe arm. “I would have saved death as a judgment for something far more sinister, a stabbing perhaps.”

Shit.

“And my role?” I try to revert the attention back to Kate’s death.

“Should you not have called upon your Celestra powers, you would have merely knocked her in the temple, equally as deadly, but not nearly as messy.” 

“What about the other two? Nat and Michelle?” I’m almost afraid to ask, but it’s doubtful Marshall has left a stone unturned.

“I have plans for the two of them,” he sighs. “Our friend, destiny, has yet to conclude its work in their lives, but when the time comes I’m allowed an indulgence or two, a limb, a head. You’re much more efficient than Ezrina, by the way.”

“You used me to kill somebody.”

“It would seem.”

“Is this something you plan on making a habit of?” I’m stunned to even be asking.

“Perhaps.” He pins me with venom. “Which Oliver pays for sticking me with the sword?”

“I take the blame.”

“Well, then.” He relaxes back into his seat. “I might just take the three of you down for sport.” 

“But you need me.” I can feel my entire life pulsating before my eyes.

“Then choose the object of my wrath.”

My mouth falls open. Of course, I’m not going to say Gage, but I can’t seem to find it in me to say Logan, either.

“No—and you can’t have them both,” I hiss.

Marshall runs his fingers over the side of my face, locks onto my eyes with a tender loving gaze.

“Neither can you.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

Downtown

The sky opens up. A vat of rain dumps on Paragon by the merciless distributor who sees fit to vex us with nonstop turbulent weather. The sky pours out its fury in a torrent of violent tears for Kate, whose only sin was to don a band of metal she purchased for twenty dollars by way of Nat.

Instead of Mom and Tad waiting for me at the terminal, I’m escorted by Marshall to the precinct along with Nat, Pierce, Holden and Gage. We were all expert witnesses to the accident that took Kate’s life, and now we have to recount all of the tragic events in horrific detail.

The harsh light of the police station burns through my retinas, causing me to squint my way through the precinct as we ready ourselves for questioning. I’m weary, worn out from a constant river of tears, overwhelmed by the fact I can’t go a month without slaughtering another human being, intentional or accidental.

A tall man with wiry hair and a police vest stares down at the five of us. “State your name and your version of the incident.” He starts with Holden.

“Ethan Landon,” Figures. Now, at the police station, he wants to use
that
name. He continues, “I was stuck in the snow and I heard screaming. When I looked up, her head was gone.” He blinks a smile, causing the officer’s ears to peak.

“And you?” He points over at Pierce.

“Pierce Kragger. Fell down. I saw the lift move, this guy fell over me. The next thing I know Skyla, here, has got this look of revenge on her face, and she’s gunning for the blonde.”

“I did not have the look of revenge on my face.” OK, so maybe I did, but I was thinking of Chloe, trying to kick off my skis in an act of self-preservation. I would have broken my leg, a thousand times over, if I knew what the consequences would be. Then again, Marshall did all but call me a pawn.