Chapter One – Laina
Music pounded loudly in the speakers built into the wide-open room, the band on the stage rocking out hard. Lights flashed in sync with their music—and the singers? They both practically made love to the microphone, especially the guy. The girl pranced around the stage, taking her mic with her as she ground and swayed to the hardcore beat.
There was a time, not so long ago, that this type of music didn’t do anything for me. I was a hip-hop girlie, someone who liked songs with more of a beat. But now, after everything… let’s just say rock fit better with the current state of my life.
And what was the state of my life?
Different. Forever changed. After all, I wasn’t the old Laina Hawkins anymore, the young, meek girl who quietly went along with whatever her dad said because she wanted him to be happy. No, I was someone else now.
Still Laina Hawkins, but different. Better. More accepting of the darkness inside me and in others. I’d been through a lot, seen a lot, even done some of it myself, and I liked to think that, even though I may have had two less fingers, I was more now than I ever was.
I wore a rather revealing long-sleeved shirt and tight black leggings, paired with studded ankle-high boots. The long sleeves helped hide the fact that my left hand wore a metal gauntlet of sorts—not my torture gauntlet, but the one that gave me two pretty metal fingers that were damn near as good as my natural ones. My pink and blue hair was wavy, although the cute waves had pretty much been sweated out.
The place was full of bodies, okay? It was hot in here.
I might not have had my guys with me, but I wasn’t alone here. No, I came with the woman who’d basically become mybest friend over the last five months, a woman who I truly admired: Lola Harding.
She might have been a crime lord, the Bloody Queen, but tonight wasn’t about her power or her flexing the wealth she inherited by killing the city’s old Bloody Princess. No, tonight was a throwback to a time when she didn’t have a harem of boyfriends, a time when she went on the hunt.
Because Lola wasn’t just the Bloody Queen, a woman who donned a skeletal metal mask anytime she had to instill fear in her enemies. She was also the Night Slayer, a serial killer who took care of certain types of men.
Who, exactly, was Lola’s preferred target? Other than a swinging dick between their legs, she hunted for the men who’d take advantage of women and girls. The ones who wouldn’t hesitate to rape and sexually assault if they thought they could get away with it. The ones who took one look at her and assumed she was an airhead, a promiscuous woman with a gorgeous face and an even more beautiful body, with no intelligent thoughts in her head.
In other words, she hunted the men this world wouldn’t miss. Sure, they might be sons and brothers. Maybe they were even boyfriends. Maybe they had good jobs. Maybe there were some people in the world that depended on them, but in the end, it didn’t matter. It never did. If it didn’t matter when a girl was raped, why should it matter when a man was killed?
The more Lola talked about it to me, the more I agreed with her. Although, it could be thanks to the deep-seated rage nestled inside me, the rage that had only grown while I watched the world pass me by for two whole years.
My Devil, Kieran, had helped me open my eyes to the injustices of the world, and spending time with Lola only reinforced my beliefs. As a girl, as women, we truly couldn’ttrust anyone to care about us—beyond the men we surrounded ourselves with who would gladly give their lives for ours.
We were the forgotten ones. We were held to a higher standard constantly, images of what a perfect girl was pushed upon us practically from birth. We were controlled in damn near every aspect. Monitored, watched, supposedly cared for—but that’s not what any of it was about.
No, just like everything else in this world, it was about power and control. It was about the inferior men calling the shots. Maybe we were backsliding into the past, but there would always be women like Lola resisting.
And me, now. I was no honeyed sweet treat anymore.
I stood off to the side, watching the crowd bang their heads when a particularly hard song came on. They were catchy songs, I’d give the band that. About love, loss, desire, rejecting the man above; the band, Black Sacrament, leaned heavily into their alter egos. The male singer and guitarist, the second guitarist, and the drummer all wore black, save for the masks on their faces. The only bit of color on them were various white crosses painted on either their masks or the bit of skin around their chins that showed. The rest of their skin was painted a deep black color; they were basically demons on the stage.
Sexy demons, I could honestly admit, but I had a thing for masks thanks to Kieran.
There was a fourth member onstage, the girl. I did a little research on the band when Lola said she got us tickets. The fourth member was a girl named Angel—although that wasn’t her legal name. The true identities of this band and its members were a secret. Angel was picked, plucked from obscurity when Black Sacrament lost its old lead singer after a drunken, drug-fueled rant that was caught on video.
Angel wore a mix of black and white, her mask containing smaller, more delicate crosses that clearly drew inspirationfrom the other three. She wore a black leather jacket over a white dress, and on the back of her jacket were stitched white wings. Her skin was painted white, the opposite of her male counterparts, and the crosses on her and her mask were black.
Someone bumped hips with me, and I turned my head to see Lola right as she draped an arm over my shoulder and grinned. “This is fun, isn’t it?” She had to practically yell in order for me to hear.
She wore torn jeans that showed off much of her toned legs, and the V-cut in her shirt was so low it revealed much of her lacy bra and the round chest underneath. Her blond hair was kinky, and her blue eyes were shrouded in a smoky look. As always, she was the epitome of beauty; I could honestly understand why so many men fell for her trap. I didn’t think I’d ever seen a more gorgeous woman.
If I didn’t have multiple boyfriends, I’d be tempted to see if she’d add little old me to her harem of lovers. Any girl who wasn’t completely straight would be attracted to her, honestly.
All I did was nod.
Lola leaned closer and said, “I think she’s fucking them all. Good for her.”
That comment made me glance to the stage again, taking in the way Angel pranced around in a new light. As far as the world knew, Angel and Priest, the male singer, were a thing, but there were reports of things being complicated between the band. If that girl had a thing for masks like I did, I didn’t blame her one bit.
“Mark my words,” Lola mused into my ear, “someday soon it’s going to come out that they’re all one big item, and people are either going to love it or hate it—there will be no in-between.”
Yes. People either loved atypical relationships, or they hated them, didn’t understand, and refused to try. It’s one of thereasons I hadn’t told my dad yet that I was seeing more than just Fang.
