“Look after him,” I said to Loretta as we wrangled the bodies outside.
With every step I expected someone to run from one of the rooms and accost us. I expected Vincent to have snipers in the trees ready to gun us down. Every footfall on the decking rang as loud as a gunshot. I didn’t let out my breath until we penetrated the trees.
Ayaz ran after us, a long-handled shovel in his hands. “I found this in the hotel’s storage shed. I figured we’d need it.”
Quinn’s eyes widened, but he didn’t ask what we planned to do with them.
We walked.
Deep into the woods, until the lights of the hotel faded into fireflies and my arms burned from dragging the heavy body. Blood soaked the sheet. Quinn gazed all around – above our heads, into the trees, everywhere that wasn’t his father’s shroud.
We came to a small clearing. Rain falling through a hole in the trees had left the ground soft. Wildflowers poked their heads through a covering of dead, wet leaves. Trey set down his bundle and picked up the shovel. Without stopping for a breath, he began to dig.
Trey’s muscles rippled as he worked. I thought back to the first time I’d seen him do physical work – when he’d chiseled out the bricks in the tunnel so we could sneak back into school. How he’d worked all night under the light of my fire even though it frightened him.
From the way he kept glancing over at Quinn, who roamed around the clearing picking the wildflowers, I knew what frightened him now. Quinn just saw his dad killed in front of his eyes. He hated his abuser, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hurting. These things were always complicated. I knew all too well how grief and rage and hurt could be shaken into a potent cocktail of crazy.
Trey hollowed out a foot of earth before passing the shovel to Ayaz. While Ayaz tossed dirt out of the hole, Trey slumped to the earth beside Quinn.
“This burial is too dignified for him,” he spat.
Quinn said nothing, staring down at the posy of flowers clutched in his hands.
Ayaz dug until his shoulders shook. The soft earth had disappeared, replaced by thick clay. The hole was barely two-feet deep when he finally leaned against the shovel, panting, his energy spent.
“My turn,” Quinn reached for the shovel.
Trey grabbed it from Ayaz and tossed it out of reach. “Sit the fuck down. Let us do it.”
“Don’t fucking tell me what I shouldn’t do,” Quinn snapped. “You don’t have to protect me like I’m some fucking child. I’m notsad. I am more proud that we’re ridding the earth of that shitstain than I am of anything else I’ve ever done, with the possible exception of boning Hazy, cuz she’s fucking spectacular.”
Despite the horrific situation, I burst out laughing. Quinn would always be… Quinn.
Quinn grabbed the shovel and jumped into the grave. He dug furiously, flinging clay over his shoulder in all directions. It was like he didn’t even feel the bite.
When he finally tossed down the shovel, he stood in a hole four-feet deep and about long enough for Loretta to lie down in. Trey helped Quinn clamber out while Ayaz and I rolled Damon’s body into the grave.
Quinn reached for the shovel again. I planted my hands on his chest and shoved him back. “Let me do this for you. Please.”
Something in my words broke Quinn. He slumped to his knees. A tremor shuddered through his entire body. He was done.
I pushed the clay and earth back into the hole. With each toss, I thought of the whip marks Damon left on Quinn’s back, of the little boy who’d been belted for hugging his daddy, of the way Damon openly flirted with other women – shunning the weakness of others while succumbing to his own. None of it made this day any less shit, but it did make me throw the clay down extra hard.
Damon Delacorte would rot in an unmarked grave, and it served him right. He wouldn’t join his fellow Eldritch Club members as children of the god, sailing through the stars on their way home to fuck-knows-where. If Vincent didn’t make the parents show up at graduation, then as far as I cared, they could all enjoy the same fate.
I knew they’d cook up some scheme to save their asses. We expected it. I just hope like hell we play them before they play us.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“I’m so sorry.” Deborah met us at the edge of the forest as we traipsed out, her arm being wrenched out of its socket by two poodles desperate to get at Trey. He fell to his knees and they licked his face and gazed up at him adoringly like he was a brave soldier returned from war. Which in a way, he was.
We’d left the other guy, still unconscious, a mile or so away from Damon’s body. Eventually, he’d come to and stumble out of the forest, hopefully with a serious headache. Or he wouldn’t. I didn’t give a fuck.
“Vincent is the one who’ll be sorry,” Trey growled, standing up to look Deborah over. I knew he was thinking of poor Roger. He touched a cut on Deborah’s cheek. “Are you sure he didn’t hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Not physically.”
“Tell us what happened.”
