The Merciless (The Merciless #1)(54)

“Hello?” I whisper, but there’s no answer. I step forward and open the front door.

Fluorescent red and orange light streaks across the sky. It’s that eerie in-between light, neither night nor day. Just like in my dream. I hesitate near the door, wondering if I’m still asleep. Heat presses on my arms and gathers beneath my thick hair. A bead of sweat trickles down the back of my neck. This is too real to be a dream.

“Mom?” I say, stepping onto the porch. She should still be awake. It’s probably only seven thirty or eight o’clock. But the street in front of our house is eerily quiet—deserted. After what happened last night, I’m more aware of the emptiness. There’s no one here to see where I’m going, no one to hear my screams.

I step, barefoot, onto the dry grass. It crunches beneath my weight, poking the soles of my feet.

“Mom?” I call again, making my way around the side of our house. Our driveway curves off the main street and back behind our house, to an old shed. The sun-warmed pavement burns the bottoms of my feet. Insects buzz in the yard, but the sound is so familiar to me that I almost don’t notice it.

The red-lit sky casts shadows over the driveway. I move slowly, easing around Mom’s giant black SUV.

A shadow streaks across the driveway and I freeze, biting back a scream. Then my eyes focus, and I make out a squirrel crouched beneath a bush. I breathe a sigh of relief.

The smell reaches me first, the same heavy, sick scent I noticed beneath the bleachers on my first day of school. Chicken after a night in the garbage. Fish left in the heat. I picture the skinned cat, and my skin prickles. Trembling, I walk around the car.

There’s another sound now, a dripping. My skin pricks, warning me. I should run. Instead, I move closer.

Thick white candles line the sides of the driveway, their wicks flickering in the twilight. A hastily painted black pentagram stretches across the driveway beneath them, and in the middle of the star lies a dark black pool.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

I look up.

A human body hangs from the shed, its arms stretched out to either side and tied to the roof gutters with thick rope. The body doesn’t look remotely human anymore. Its skin has been peeled back in strips, revealing the pink muscle and blood and tissue beneath.

The only parts of the body that are still intact are its hands and its feet. My eyes hover at its feet. From the feet hang Grace’s gold platform sandals.

I gasp and throw my hands over my mouth. Grace’s head lolls forward unnaturally, and her lifeless, cloudy eyes stare at the ground. Someone shaved off her hair, leaving behind a bloody scalp. Her arms stretch to either side, like she’s been crucified. Blood drips from her body.

“Grace!” I shriek. There’s not a person on earth who could survive what her body’s been through, but I stumble toward her anyway. “Oh my god, Grace! Grace, no!”

I trip over one of the candles and fall, hard. The driveway peels back the top layer of skin on my knee. I cringe and try to push myself to my feet. The candle sputters out as it topples onto the asphalt.

In the candle’s last glimmer of light, I see movement below Grace’s body. I freeze. Brooklyn crouches in the shadows, her head ducked so that, at first, all I see is her spiky blond hair. She stands slowly, her eyes leveled on me. She steps into the circle of candlelight.

“Fun fact,” she says. “We’re not really afraid of fire.”

She smiles, a pocketknife clenched in her hand. The candlelight surrounding her flickers, making the knife’s blade glint.

“Brooklyn,” I start, but the words I want to say get caught in my throat. I picture Grace jumping out from behind my bench to scare me on my second day of school. Grace, who wore leopard-print headbands and sequin skirts and got so excited about her crush on Tom. She must’ve felt the same relief I did when she ran out of the house this morning. She must’ve thought that whole terrible night was finally behind her. And now she’s dead.

Not just dead—mutilated. Tortured. Bile rises in my throat. I clench my eyes shut, but Grace’s body stays painted on the insides of my lids. Her skin curling away from her limbs. Her scalp, bald and bloody.

I open my eyes again. Brooklyn crouches and lowers her finger to the pool of Grace’s blood, then lifts it to her mouth. Her grin widens as she runs her tongue up the side of her finger, licking the blood away. She stands, tightening her grip on the knife. My fear sharpens, and I stumble backward, banging into the back door to the house.

Behind me, the door creaks open. I whirl around as my mom steps outside.

“Sofia?” she says, groggily. “What’s going on? I heard noises.”

I glance over my shoulder, but Brooklyn’s gone. My voice freezes in my throat.

“Mom,” I start. “I . . .”

Before I can think of what to say, my mom’s eyes shift to the body hanging from the shed. The blood drains from her face, and she screams.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


“Mom?” A tremor begins in my hand, then spreads up my arm until my whole body shakes. I did this. I trusted Brooklyn, I let her out. The sharp, metallic taste of her blood still lingers on my tongue. Riley told me she was evil, but I didn’t listen. What happened to Grace happened because of me.

I put a hand on my mom’s arm and she stiffens, finally dropping her hands from her mouth.