Bloodshed (Order of the Unseen, #1)(3)

My saliva thickened in my mouth, and the dull ringing in my ears returned with a vengeance. I nodded, doing exactly as I was told. “Yes, sir.”

I went to school with stitches in my palm the next day as if nothing had happened. Not a single teacher or student questioned how I had gotten the wound. It was as if I was just a mundane ten-year-old boy. Like I didn’t just witness a murder the night before.

As if I didn’t kill the man myself.

For the first time in my life, someone’s blood was on my hands. Not my father’s.

After that night, something changed within me.

And for the next few years, life went on. My father ventured out and hunted down our next victims, chained them up in our basement, and I was tasked with putting them down.

September twenty-third, when I turned thirteen years old, was the first night he took me into the woods with him after dark. That was the first night he showed me how to hunt people myself. Not animals.

People.

He taught me how to use shadows to my advantage. How to track.

He made it a game, and I grew more and more eager to play.

Until the night of my fifteenth birthday.





CHAPTER TWO





JENSEN





I grew up in state custody until I aged out. I was too troubled for foster homes, so I spent my childhood in residential programs that educated and housed emotionally-troubled kids. Neglected youths, as they would say.

I bounced around a lot. There was only one night I spent at a proper foster home when I was thirteen years old. Respite was what they would call it, while I was waiting to be placed into another program. Program, after program, after program. I was given an old cot in the middle of their biological son’s bedroom.

That was the first night I had felt well rested in years.

The next morning, I was woken up extra early, and dragged along to work with Sarah, the joyful foster mom, before getting dropped off at school.

She was a bus driver.

How convenient.

After starting at a new school that day, I ended up getting placed into a short-term, thirty-day program just a few towns over.

“On the table, please,” the lady instructed. I placed my duffle bag on the table between us, and she dumped out all my clothes, beginning her search.

Then a male staff member began his search on me, patting me down.

Fortunately, he wasn’t thorough enough, considering he missed the cigarette pack tied to my calf with a rubber band. I was a pro at smuggling shit in at that point.

She handed me my duffle bag with a grin. “I’ll show you to your room.”

I secured the strap of my bag over my shoulder and followed her up the old, creaky staircase. She led me to my assigned room, and I sighed when I spotted the second bed in the corner.

“Can I go on my fifteen-minute walk?” I dryly asked her.

She gestured to my side of the room with her hand and sighed. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable for now? Unpack? Get settled in?”

I frowned.

I never unpacked. What was the point? “Nowhere” was my final destination.

I was constantly on the move.

Nobody wanted me.

And I was fine with that.

But I was not na?ve enough to unpack my shit and “get comfortable”. They called these programs short-term for a reason.

“Fine,” I shot back.

She dismissed herself from the room, leaving the door agape behind her, and I tossed my duffle bag onto the bed.

Then I shut the door.

I opened the window and retrieved my cigarette pack from my calf. Placing the filter between my lips, I pulled out the small lighter from the carton and sparked it up, inhaling a long, much-needed drag.

My door suddenly burst open.

I snarled. “What the fuck—”

A boy who appeared to be around my age, thirteen, stood in the doorway. He gawked at me for a moment before scurrying inside and shutting the door behind him.

“Can I help you?” I asked, arching a brow.

He watched me take another drag, and I stared back, taking in his every detail. He was wearing gray sweats and a baggy, black hoodie, hands shoved into the pockets. His dirty-blond hair was a little past his shoulders in length, although it was hard to tell because most of it was tied back. Several strands hung in the front of his face, obstructing my view of his eyes.

He ended up sitting in front of the window beside me.

They were chestnut brown.

“Yeah. You can help me,” he muttered, shifting his gaze to the lit cigarette between my fingers. “Pop my cherry.”

“What the fuck?” I asked, my eyebrows raised. “What do you mean ‘pop your cherry’?”

“Never had one.” He gestured his chin to the cigarette.

“Go get your own,” I countered.

He looked directly into my eyes, really looked at me, and I froze. I’d never seen anyone look so sad. So helpless. Like a lost fucking puppy.

“Fine,” I sighed, offering him a cigarette.

He sparked it up and inhaled with no signs of him being a first-time smoker.

He didn’t even cough.

He just smirked.

“You played me,” I accused, letting out a dry laugh. “Asshole—”

“No,” he cut me off. “Micah.”