Fiery Little Thing: A Dark Academy Romance

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” I whisper as I slam the access card against the door.

I scan my surroundings for any security guards or Grandpa’s Men in Black–looking goons, then dive into one of the classrooms to grab my go-bag that Kohen and I stuck here earlier this morning. I duck behind the screen and strip out of the formal uniform for graduation and quickly change into a hoodie, a pair of jeans, and boots. I slide the hood over my head even though it’s too hot for any of what I’m wearing, but my red hair makes me stand out far too much.

We should have gotten a wig. Or a hat. Or shaved my fucking head.

Sneaking out of here to smoke a joint and getting arrested after fucking up the Osmans’ place didn’t make me break out in hives. But trying to leave Seraphic Hills without anyone associated with the Whitlocks is proving to be one of the most stressful experiences I’ve ever had. Fourth to being locked in a tub, being medically electrocuted, and getting so high one time I thought I was being abducted by giants.

My eye is twitching, my fingers are trembling, I’m lightheaded, and I can barely fucking breathe. Somehow, this isn’t the same high that comes with stealing or doing shit I’m not supposed to.

If I don’t make it out of here, I’m going to die. That’s not me being dramatic or presumptuous; if my grandfather catches me, a part of me will die, and I will never get it back.

I didn’t hold on for this long to end up worse than where I started. But also, how fucking embarrassing would it be to die as soon as I graduate high school?

My hand slips into the front pocket of my duffel bag and wraps around a solid plastic gadget, which I stuff into my pocket. The cold sweat breaking over my skin makes my hands shake as I throw my duffle bag over my shoulder and peek out the door before gapping it. This is a shit plan. A really, really shit plan. But it’s the best one Kohen and I could come up with in such a short period of time. And my plan relies on one person who could very well let us down.

I slam to a stop and glance around another turn. My breath hitches when I spot the other son of a bitch on my hit list. Motherfucking Boris, the security guard that crawled out of Lucifer’s ass. The coast is clear behind me, so I could leave this wing if I wanted. It’d just mean being outside and exposed for longer.

Or I could go with the original escape plan and take the eastern exit. And fuck up my initial plan at the same time.

His back is to me, hunched over what I assume is his phone. The man sways in the middle of the hallway, shifting his weight from side to side as a video sounds through the otherwise silent hallway.

Kohen would be pissed off to no end if I didn’t make a run for it when I had the chance. He’d be extra pissed off if Boris and I had an entirely avoidable altercation without my guard dog present.

I breathe in deeply through my nose as I pull the taser out, nice and slow, clutching it tighter to stop my fingers from shaking.

Kohen will be mad. Furious.

I should run. Gap it before Boris sees me or Tony decides our friendship is limited to drugs and partying, so he doesn’t pick me up.

But I don’t move away.

My shoes pad softly against the wooden floors, careful not to make too much noise as I creep through the wide corridor of the old gothic structure. My heart hammers harder against my chest as I get closer.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

The day I was locked in the tub, I made a promise to three men that they would die by my hand, and they laughed in my face. One of them is in the ground, the other is searching for me, and the last? He’s right in front of me, just within reach.

I don’t need to close my eyes to remember all the times Boris has laid his hand on me to hurt me and make me feel less than human just because McGill let him. Or how many bruises he’s given me in the few months I’ve been here.

But mostly, it’s the click of the latch that haunts me at night, then the sound of retreating footsteps as ice sloshes and clangs against the metal tub.

McGill died surrounded by the evidence of his broken soul.

Boris will die on academy grounds so he can spend the rest of eternity wandering these halls being a slave to this school. He tried to kill a part of me, so I’m going to kill him.

I leap forward and ram the taser against the back of his neck. Static fills the air and vibrates down my spine, filling my veins with electricity. Boris’s mouth falls open with a silent cry as his muscles seize and his entire body quakes. I don’t release the button when he drops to the floor or when tremors shake through his body, picturing how the silver of the tub reflected off his face that day.

I count to three and release, dropping my trembling hand to my side and breathing hard as I take in his body. A lump forms in my throat and liquid hatred runs through my veins as I spit out, “Sorry, I forgot to say you’ll feel a slight tickle.” He twitches when I kick him in the side for good measure.

Fucking cunt.

I gaze up and down the hall, and then with a strained huff, I drag Boris’ partially conscious form to the closest room. But Jesus fucking Christ, this man must weigh like two hundred pounds. My muscles in my weak leg are already quivering, and I’ve only made it five steps.

Once I’m out of here, I’m going to need to get my back cracked like a glow stick.

Silently muttering a string of curses, I put my entire weight into pulling him backward by his wrists. Barely hearing anything beyond the roaring in my ears as I slap the access card against the reader into the room. The lock beeps, and I shoulder the door open, panting as I yank the fuckwit the rest of the way.

I discard him at the front of the room, then lean over and place my hands on my knees to catch my breath. I think the asshole made me tweak my back. It only makes me burn hotter that he can still hurt me even though he isn’t conscious.

Well, if I need a room to commit murder in, I guess this place is as good as any. Conveniently, I had history class here, so my fingerprints will already be everywhere. What’s less convenient is that Mr. Blake is at school, and his satchel is leaning against his desk.

There’s no telling when he’ll come back.

Pulse thundering in my chest, I get straight to business and drop onto my haunches next to Boris and bitch-slap him across the face. He jolts, blinking groggily at the room. Did I look this stupid every time I woke up from a tasing?

“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,” I sing, roughly tapping his cheek, my voice echoing against the walls of the hundred-year-old room.

He bats my hand away, mumbling something incomprehensible, and I retaliate by slamming the butt of the taser against his nose, knocking his head back with a cringeworthy thud. Blood spurts from his now crooked nose causing a wave of nausea to swim through me. It takes a second too long for him to reach up and clutch his broken nose. I must admit, it’s a satisfying sight, but the victory short-lived. The timer in my head ticks, second by second, as a constant reminder that I need to haul ass before I get caught or miss my ride.

I yank one of the seats from off the table, and bracket the legs around Boris’s body. Sitting backward in the chair, I quickly zap the taser in the air for dramatic effect. The guard groans, moving his head from side to side.

“I get it, dude,” I say. “It usually takes me a few minutes to figure my shit out after getting tasered. Sometimes it even gives me a headache for a couple hours.”

I should be at the tree line now, the little voice in my head reminds me as I glance up at the clock.

“What are you doing, you bitch? I—”

I cut him off. He didn’t actually say the last part. I don’t think he said the first part either. But I’m guessing that’s the translation of whatever language he just spoke.

“Right, let’s speed this along.” I clap my hands together. “We’ve never had a proper conversation before, and I don’t plan on starting now. So here’s how this is going to go.” I swing my leg over the back of the chair as he says something in the same garbled language as before, gaining enough consciousness to push himself up on his elbows. “I’m going to break your ribs, then bludgeon your head in with this chair. Once I’m done, I’m going to leave you here to die.” I push myself onto my feet and instantly miss my three seconds of rest. “How does that sound?”

“No,” he coughs out, fruitlessly attempting to get the chair off him.

“That was a rhetorical question.” With every ounce of energy in my buzzing veins, I flip the wooden seat over and bring the back down onto his diaphragm.

Still too disoriented to fight back, he folds like a lawn chair. I can practically hear all the air punch out of his lungs in time with the crack that follows the impact. But the seat tumbles onto the floor when I lose my grip, and I buckle over.

Boris groans and hugs his center as he rolls around the floor like a worm. I yelp when his large hand wraps around my ankle and yanks me off my feet. Crashing onto the ground next to him with an unceremonious thud, my instincts take over. Kicking my free foot at his face, he cries out, loosening his hold around my other foot. I keep kicking for the hell of it; his face, stomach, ribs, everything I can.

Strands of hair stick to my sweaty skin, and my knees click in the process of rising to my feet. I glance up at the clock and curse. If Tony doesn’t stay and wait for me, I’m killing him too.

Pulling my leg back, I add as much power as I possibly can into burying my boot into his side. Pain thunders up my foot as soon as it collides with flesh. His wails bounce off the cold walls, and I do the first thing I can think of: I throat punch the motherfucker. Sound and air instantly cut off with a gasp, and he sputters and chokes while he futilely tries to stand.

I move to the chair, stumbling from the ache that tears through my foot. For fuck’s sake. Twist—or partially dislocate—your ankle once, and that shit will never heal.

“No hard feelings,” I pant, voice hoarse with exhaustion as I raise the seat over his head. Hundreds of images flash behind my eyes of all the times he’s thrown me around, kicked me, yanked my hair, spit on me, and fucking groped me. Boris deserves to die. “You’re just a fucking dick.”

His eyes widen as I bring the chair down with the rest of my meager energy. Boris doesn’t get the chance to fight back or move out of the way. The black metal leg of the chair pierces straight into his eye socket, creating a shlurp sound that has bile lurching up my throat. I slap my hand over my mouth and stagger back to stop myself from emptying out the contents of my stomach. Men like Boris don’t deserve my suffering anymore.

But Jesus fuck. That is vile.

He twitches once. Twice. Six times. Then stops. All that’s left of him is the blood oozing from his broken nose and punctured eye, spilling onto the floor in pools of brown and maroon.

This is mercy compared to what I had planned for him. I planned on breaking each and every one of his bones until he begged me to stop, praying that I’d let him go—the same way I did when he locked me in the tub. But this form of vengeance is far more poetic after all he’s done to me, because Boris died while the sun shone and the grounds were packed with people.

He could have screamed. He could have shouted his pleas to the rooftop. But his voice was taken away. So no one heard him. No one came to his rescue.

Just like the day in the tub.

I pat myself on the back, ignoring the shiver that runs down my spine as I commit the sight to memory.

I’m no expert, but I’d call it a clean kill. Whatever a man can do, a woman can do better.

Suck my dick, Kohen. I didn’t need you on guard dog duty.

Maybe if I thought this entire interaction out first, I wouldn’t be murdering a man when there are over a thousand people on campus and I’m meant to be making a getaway. And I most fucking definitely wouldn’t be killing this man with a fucking school chair. Either way, dead is dead, and Boris is on his way to hell.

See you there, asshole.

Two murders in one month. Other than my timely disappearance, I doubt they’d lead this back to me when everyone hates Boris because of all his manhandling. Plus, little ol’ me couldn’t possibly do this. Or be the reason behind McGill’s closed-casket funeral. I’m rainbows, butterflies, and a goddamn fuckin delight. I shit innocence and exhale purity.

With one last glance at the clock and the corpse, I wipe down the chair with my sleeve, pocket the taser, kick him with my good foot, then haul ass out of the room. The added weight of the duffle bag makes it harder to move quickly when there’s pain slicing through my ankle every time I put pressure on it.

The heat of the outdoors hits me as soon as I break out the back door of the cold gothic structure. I pant heavily, darting my eyes around the terrain to ensure no one is around. I still when movement from my left side catches my attention, and I push myself back against the brick wall. A couple of students trip over each other as they laugh, moving between the main block toward the boys’ dorms.

There’s a good hundred-and-fifty yards between where I am to the first tree line, and there’s nothing but wide open space between here and there. I don’t have a choice but to make it work. If someone catches me, I’ll have to drop my bag and make a run for it.

Taking a stabilizing breath, I double-check that all of my hair is hidden beneath my hood, and I slip a pair of shades on to conceal my features—honestly, I think I only look more suspicious. Pushing Mrs. Crichton’s sunglasses up my face, I try to hobble toward the trees inconspicuously, side-eying my surroundings as I go. But my attempt at moving toward the tree line in a calm, orderly fashion is thrown out the window when I catch a glimpse of one of the Whitlock’s FBI-looking guys.

All logic and reason disappear from my brain, and I book it the rest of the way, then zip behind the first tree I reach. Gripping the bag strap with clammy hands, I inch around the thick trunk and immediately snap back into place.

I really wish I had just kept running right about now. At least three security guards and two of my grandfather’s men can be seen from this angle. None of them are looking my way, but there’s one guy uncomfortably close to the tree line a few hundred yards from here.

Taking deep breaths through my nose, my eyes dart over the forest in front of me. Sunlight filters through the canopy of bright green leaves and blossoming flowers. Birds chirp, hopping from tree to tree while the insects sing their song, oblivious to my existence. There’s half a mile between me and the fence I need to get to, then nearly double that to get to the spot where Tony is meeting me.

And Grandpa’s guard is only a few paces away from entering the forest with me.

Fuck it.

Fuck it.

I either get out of here, or I die trying. Pushing off the tree, I run as fast as I can through the forest, hugging the duffle bag to my chest with one arm and clutching the taser in the other. I don’t dare look back, too scared to see someone run toward me or lose my footing over the exposed tree roots. My lungs scream as I jump over bushes and run between trees, trying to keep as quiet as possible, but my jaw is aching from biting back a whimper every time my feet hit the ground. It hurts more than the first time I injured my ankle. My hand flies out against the closest tree when my ankle gives out and I tumble forward, skinning my knee against the ground as I go. The joints in my ankle feel like they’re grinding against shards of ice as I crawl back onto my feet, kicking up dirt behind me as I go.

“Stop!” someone calls from somewhere behind me.

Clutching the bag to my chest, I limp ahead as fast as my body will allow, muttering a string of curses as my eyes sting from the pain. I can’t let them take me. I won’t.

I don’t make it more than a couple steps before something collides into me and I’m thrown to the dirt, all the air punched out of my lungs. My fall is cushioned by the bag and the meager shrubbery. The taser flies out of my grip, and I cry out at the loss as panic claws at my throat.

The heavy weight on top of me moves, his hot breath burning the side of my face. “I’m taking you back—”

I whip my head back as hard as I can, clocking him in the face. A curse flies out of his mouth just as white spots dance behind my vision from the adrenaline rush. My hand snaps over my shoulder to latch on to his collar, and I use the gap between my body and the ground to wedge my knees beneath me, swapping our position. His arm automatically latches around my waist as he crashes onto the ground, while the other goes out to steady himself. I use the opening to bury my elbow beneath his floating ribs, and he grunts.

I’ve been in catfights since I was six, and I’ve been throwing hands against guys older than me the second I came out of the womb. This motherfucker has another thing coming if he thinks I’m a princess who’s just going to hold my wrists out and let him shackle me up.

“Stay still,” he grounds out. Both of his arms wrap around me, locking me in place against him. The single move is telling more than he realizes.

If he were Boris, he could punch me in my side to subdue me. But he isn’t. Whether it’s because he has a moral code against harming women, or because he’s under orders to capture me without harm, this man is on the defensive.

I curl forward, then swing my upper body back, knocking his head again and forcing the wind out of his lungs. His arms loosen just enough for me to shift onto my side and bite down on his arm without restraint. The layers of clothing between my teeth and his skin do very little when the human bite can register over 120 PSI—thank God for biology books.

“Fuck,” he snarls, letting go to shove me off him while he scrambles to his feet.

Just as I wanted.

I skitter along the ground to reach for the taser and bring the butt of it against the soft spot above the side of his knee. As the limb buckles, I shove my elbow right up into his balls. He howls as he crumbles to the ground, and I knee the asshole right in the gut to wind him.

I didn’t listen to most of Kohen’s teachings, but I sure as shit gave him my undivided attention when he was telling me about pressure points.

My legs protest with every one of my movements, but I force myself to straddle the security guard despite his attempts to throw me off. My knuckles bleach from the grip on the taser as I hook my fist toward his temple. The moment skin collides with skin, I bite back a shrill cry from the agony that rips through my hand, all the way up my arm. A high-pitched ringing sound screams through my ears as I tip to the side, clenching my trembling hand as I roll in the dirt to push back the pain. Metallic blooms on my tongue as I bite down on my lip to distract from the pain.

A chill seeps into my bones, because I swear I can hear footsteps approaching.

The man beside me is out cold, and I have no idea if he told anyone that he’s found me. I have to keep moving.

A sob rips from my throat as I stumble back onto my feet. Everything hurts. Everything is fucking horrendous. I want to catch my breath or check out my middle finger that’s turning purple. But I keep going. I keep moving, feeling the tears burn my cheeks as I fumble for a pair of gloves from the bag and put them on to unlock the gate and limp to the other side. I keep tasting blood as I lock it behind me and blink away the dots scattered over my vision.

Cold sweat drips down my spine as my body pushes forward with nothing but adrenaline to keep me going. I can’t help but wish Kohen were with me so I could feel less alone in my pain as I skirt around McGill’s house and down the driveway.

The only hope I have is that I’m almost there. I’m late and I’m filthy, but at least Tony’s car will be waiting for me at the end of the driveway. Then this will all be over and I’ll be free. I’ll make it to the motel, where Kohen anxiously awaits me. And it’ll be over. I just need to get to the car.

Except once I get to the end of the driveway and look around, there isn’t a car in sight. I spin and turn, feeling the panic clog my throat as I look for him.

No Tony. No shitty Corolla. No nothing. Just miles of road and forestry.

“Fuck,” I cry, pushing my broken knuckle against my lips as the first tear trails over my dirt-stained skin.

My drug dealer let me down after all.