Page 222 of Boys Who Hunt

Gotcha.

I stuff it in the bag too. I’ll worry about how to open it later. Even if only a couple of bills are inside, anything is better than nothing.

I rush through the Skull and Serpent Society house and haul everything downstairs.

“Why do we have to run so much?” Cora says, breathing wildly. “I can’t, my feet hurt.”

“Yes, you can. You must.” I grip her hand tighter so I can focus on getting us to safety first.

BAM!

The moment my foot touches the last step, I’m blasted backward into the stairs as a loud explosion fills the room, and my head knocks back into the wood. The bag is flung out of my hands. I’m disoriented from the blast, and my ears are ringing and my eyesight has gone hazy. But I can definitely see four masked men barging into the house, guns pointed right at the other students.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Gunshots fill the room with smoke and death, blood splattering everywhere. The screeching of students brings me back to the here and now, and I cover Cora with my own body to shield her from the rain of bullets.

Left and right, students go down instantly, unprepared for the sudden assault, but to my surprise, none of the bullets even so much as grazes my skin. I breathe in and hold it as hard as I try to hold my courage to keep Cora from feeling the fear taking hold of my heart.

Until hands wrap around my arms and drag me away from her.

“No, no, no!” I shriek, trying to maintain balance despite being hit in the head by what feels like a sledgehammer.

“Keep quiet, bitch,” the guy who holds me says.

And I have to watch in abject horror as they drag me farther away from her … while she screams my name.

“Ivy!”

Another guy picks her up and throws her over his shoulder. “Move!”

Even though I’m bleeding from the back of my head, I still knock myself back right into the guy’s forehead.

“Fuck!” he yells.

And I kick back into his nuts and bite down on his arm, leaving a bloodied indent.

“Let me go!” I scream.

But the more I kick and shove, the harder he clamps down on my body.

“This bitch bit me!” the guy yells at the others.

“Handle it!” another one yells back. “We gotta get back to the van. Now!”

They march out the door with both of us, but the moment we’re outside, we’re split up.

“Cora!” I yell while I drag my feet on the ground to slow them down as we head farther and farther away from the Skull and Serpent Society, the only safety net I still have left. Down, down, down, into a dark void I’m shoved, and the only light I have is destroyed by two doors slamming shut.

But I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care if I have to rot in here for all of eternity as long as I know one fucking thing.

“Where’s Cora?!” I yell. “Where is she?!”

CHAPTER 54

Max

I’ve never seenHeath drive this fast up the mountain. He’s so fixated on the road that I can’t even get through to him.