Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112449 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112449 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Arriving at the front of the house, I weaved through the cars, keeping low. A woman walking around carting a bow and arrow was something people remembered.
The porch creaked under my feet. The splintered wood’s better days were over a hundred years ago. I pushed on the handle-less door and stepped inside, pressing the bow tight behind my back.
A long, dim hallway opened up before me, the only thing approaching light was the glowing footprints leading around the corner and disappearing.
I tiptoed in their wake. Rounding the curve, I stuck my head in the living room.
A chandelier tangled in cobwebs hung over the room. Someone draped it in fairy lights to illuminate two busted, tipped-over chairs, and an ancient sofa currently occupied by glowing blue aliens.
The girl impaled herself on his cock, cries rivaling the noise from outside.
I recognized her even in the paint. She was one of the girls helping Cairo get the honey off his dick. Public sex must’ve been her thing. She had no problem with the half a dozen people in the room recording them on their phones.
But I did mind.
I snapped back, heart jumping out of my chest. All it would take is one person capturing video of that farm girl, Rainey, strutting around with a bow.
A shuddering breath blew from my hiccupping lips. What was I doing? Why the hell did I think I could do this?
“Tick, ticking, tock,” Cavendish whispered in my ear. “Time’s running out, Rain-ey.”
Peeling my eyes open, I backed away from their fun, searching for another way upstairs. Old homes like this tended to have them.
My search paid off in the kitchen. I passed more couples in various states of undress, going at it like this was an end of the world party. These guys were so wrapped up in each other, they didn’t notice me slip past, and they didn’t have cameras.
Two doors in the run-down kitchen—one led outside, the other revealed the back staircase. I went up, searching for the window I noticed when I stood down below with Cavendish.
Three down on the right, I found the room. Whose room, I couldn’t help but think. Was this empty, desolate space where Mayam once stood with her husband? Holding each other while they watched their children play on the lawn.
I stepped around a gaping hole in the floor, picturing it covered with a rug. Seeing a dresser against the wall. A bed covered in downy sheets, and a family just like all the rest, surviving in a town ruled by evil.
Cavendish turned his head up to the stairs again and saw me. But of course, he couldn’t have known I was there. It was pitch black in the room. Even so, our gazes locked across the divide.
Fixed on him as I was, I didn’t notice the only person who could steal my attention until he was in front of him. Amid the partying, debauchery, chaos, Cairo raised a fist and the music shut off.
“Bedlamites, is this not the best Ruckus Royale in history?!”
The crowd went wild, hooting, hollering, and shooting paint in the air.
“We promised you a party no one would forget, and we haven’t,” he said. “We haven’t forgotten the people who soaked this ground red so Bedlam could rise from the ashes. This is our town!”
“Yeah!”
“This is our home!”
“Yeah!”
“What do we do to people who fuck with our freedoms?”
“Sac-ri-fice! Sac-ri-fice! Sac-ri-fice!”
The chant spread through the forest, rippling over the eastern seaboard, and twisting my stomach. If I never heard that damn word again, it’d be too soon.
Someone brought out a drum and lit a fire inside. One by one, painted disciples—I couldn’t think of another word for them—handed Arsenio, Cairo, Jacques, Legend, and Roan a torch. They dipped each one inside, and spread out, brandishing their flaming torches to howls that bordered on inhuman, from captives and audience alike.
“Professor Valdez.” Cairo pointed out the thrashing man with a torch held too close to his rumpled clothes. “Organized the protest against us. Ordered Nana Grace and her sewing circle to photograph us in the streets. Take our names. Report us to the police.”
The boos blew the man’s ears back.
“What do we have to say to that?”
What else were they going to say?
Sacrifice.
“Kimball Joe over here,” he said. “He’s been coming up short in his monthly payments. Now, everyone knows the community fee we collect is for the good of the town. Who fronted the Dubecheks the cash when they defaulted on their loans and the bank threatened to take their house and land away?”
“Bedlam Boys,” they chorused.
“Who replaced that old, busted-up generator that died three days before Hurricane Hannah rolled through town? For two weeks, the only place with power, heat, and food that wasn’t rotting in the back of the fridge was the high school, thanks to...”
“The Bedlam Boys.”