Page 82 of Riot Reunion
“Seriously.Who fucking cares? The wind blew a door open. It’s howling through every crack in this drafty old bitch of a building. Come on. We have togo.”
I understand Pax’s desperation. I do. But Wolf Hall is a historic building of note. The academy can’t even put up a notice board without having eighteen meetings about it first. The place is meticulously well-cared for, and any repairs are taken care of immediately. Thereareno cracks for the wind to sneak through. The wind didnotopen that door. I’ll be damned if I walk by and pretend like it did.
“Go on without me if you need to. This’ll only take a second. I’ll catch up.”
“The door was probably open when we went by the first time,” Dash argues. “Let’s get back to Presley and take her back to the house. You can come back here, hunting for ghosts, when we know she’s all right.” He tries to grab my shoulder, but I step out of his reach.
“What did I say? I’ll be right behind you. GO!”
I’m not fucking debating this with them. They can go, by all means, but I am checking that door. I have this feeling—I can’t breathe around it. It’s like the tapping on that window in the kitchen. An insistent tugging onme, beckoning me to go back. I can’t ignore it…
I turn on my heel, back the way I came. I run.
“Jesus fuckingChrist,” Pax spits. “I’m gonna fuckingkillyou, Jacobi.” But the sound of their boots hitting the stone joins mine as I charge back toward the English room.
There it stands.
The door is open.
The way inside…
I enter, fists already clenched, teeth gritted, adrenalin surging like an electrical current stripping my veins raw. The tang of blood hits the back of my nose before I can register anything, and then—
The floor moving out from underneath me—the walls spinning—the ceiling flipping—everything turning—
The back of my head cracks as I hit the floor.
Pain lances through every molecule of my being. My brain feels as though it fractured with the impact.
“Holy fuck, dude. Are you okay?” Dash crouches over me, hands tugging at my arms, urging me upright. “You slipped in—what is th—oh my god!”
Even through my splintering vision, I can already see what has given Dash pause. I’m lying in alakeof blood. The reek of it shoves up my nose, so pungent and awful that it makes me want to gag.
From my position on the floor, I quickly find the source of all the blood. Over Dash’s shoulder, above him, a body swings from a support beam, listing lifelessly from side to side.
“What thefuck?” Pax drops the bag of food down onto one of the tables, staring open-mouthed at it. Dash offers me a hand, and I accept his help; I’d have to put my hand down in the blood in order to push myself up, and I sure as shit don’t want to dothat.
Fuck, there’s blood in my hair. My jeans are soaked with it. Pax still stares at the body, eyes full of horror, transfixed by the sight of it. It becomes abundantly clear why. It’s a woman. She wears a short black dress, black patent pumps on her feet. Her fingernails are painted a bright shade of purple. I can’t see her face, because...
Because…
“I’m gonna throw up,” Dash whispers, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “What kind of sick fuck…?”
The body wears a mask. But not a masquerade mask. No, this is far more macabre. The head of a wolf has been fastened to the woman’s face. Its jaw is broken, the bone shattered and piercing through the animal’s skin. Its tongue lolls past sharp, yellowed teeth, creating a horrific, leering smile. Grey fur. One clouded, blue eye, one clear. A jagged scar running down its face. The woman’s face is fully obscured by the wolf’s head, thank god, but the rope synched tight around her neck is not. A yawning rent has been slashed from one side of the woman’s stomach to the other, and her insides have tumbled out of the wound. Blood still drips from the wet, snake-like ropes of intestines, slowlypat…pat…patting onto the pool below.
“That…” Dash says breathlessly. He swallows, taking a step toward the nightmarish scene. “That’s Rasputin. The wolf I used to see in the forest all of the time.”
“But who the fuck isshe?” Pax asks.
I’ve seen the silver Claddagh ring on her finger. I’ve recognized the color of her nail polish. I know exactly who this woman is. “Her name is Alessia Regan.”
28
ELODIE
The car or the academy?What makes more sense?
Shit, shit, shit.
