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"Blake," I whispered. My legs shook as I approached his still body.
The bottom of his mouth was torn back, like he'd caught his lip ring in a woodchipper. It now hung from his chin like the last tear away strip on a sad bulletin board ad. A bloody gash ripped his right eye open. Gore and goo leaked out, crusting over his cheek and through his already-red hair.
My gaze traveled down his body. Three deep scratches sliced open the soft spot beneath his chin, trailing all the way down his neck and to the collar of his shirt. The fabric was shredded, like the great white shark on his shirt had torn through, exposing another set of bloody gashes. The cuts ran across the tattoo of an enormous eagle he had on his chest. Its gold and red tipped wings were spread to his shoulders, but now, the white and blue feathers were streaked in blood. Instead of crying out in victory, its golden beak now screamed of agony.
"Blake," I begged, kneeling down next to him. The blood that soaked the plastic floor was cold on my knees. It was too much to process. My mind refused to think through what was happening, and in shock, I moved on autopilot. I placed two fingers over his neck, but I didn't know why I was doing it. I didn't even know where the pulse point was.
His skin was cold.
I snapped my hand back. My stomach turned as fire tore up my throat, and as quickly as I could I braced myself at my knees. I gagged, and then I expelled a mouthful of vomit onto the floor. Pale, yellow acid splashed into blood with a gurgling plop. My nose burned, and my diaphragm ached as I dry-heaved.
"Oh my God," I gasped. "Oh my God."
I leapt to my feet, my hands running over my arms uncontrollably. What the fuck. What happened? Had some animal gotten into their tour bus? But how? Had we both blacked out or something? Had I run out and left the door open? It didn't make sense. It didn't make sense!
My gaze traveled to the ring of tiny puncture wounds on the side of his neck that I'd missed before. A bite mark.
A human bite mark.
I traced my fingers over my mouth and chin. My lips were covered in blood. My entire body was covered in blood.
What have I done?
I backed towards the door, still unable to look away from the dead body lying on the floor in front of me. When I reached the stairs, my foot missed, and I stumbled, catching myself on the handle. Shaking, I pushed myself up and swung the door to the bus open, taking in a huge gasp of fresh air as I leapt out.
"What the fuck!" I pulled at my tangled hair, pacing along the side of the bus. "What the fuck!"
What was I going to do? Nothing made any sense.
This was a dream. This had to be a dream. Some sort of strange, twisted nightmare that seemed real. That was the only explanation.
"Wake up, wake up, wake up!"
"You're not dreaming."
I shrieked and leapt a foot in the air before spinning to face the source of the voice.
"Relax." Make Them Scream's drummer, Liz, sat with her back against the side of Gen F's tour bus. Her hands were tucked into the pockets of her black leather jacket, and the wind tugged at her spiky, blonde hair, making it fly around her face.
She turned to look at me, then pushed herself to her feet and paced forward. Liz was already a couple inches taller than I was, but in her knee-high, four-inch heeled boots, she towered over me.
I'd first met her and the rest of Make Them Scream on a tour a few years ago, but I hadn't really spoken to any of them since. Over the past year, they'd somehow gotten uber popular and were now headlining their own shows. I wasn't even sure why they'd invited us on this tour in the first place.
"How long . . . " I trailed off as I spoke. "How long have you been sitting out here?"
"Long enough," she replied, like she was reciting a script from some trash B-movie.
I backed up a step. "What are you doing out here? And please don't say that you could ask me the same question, 'cause I might smack you." I held my hand up and pointed a finger at her, trying to ignore how much my arm was shaking.
She raised a pierced eyebrow at me. "You look too shaken up to slap anyone right now."
Suddenly, I became aware of the tears streaming down my cheeks. My eyes burned, and I felt cold for the first time all morning. A hollow emptiness tugged at the inside of my gut like a great black hole was eating me from the inside out. I didn't want to cry in front of Liz, but I couldn't help it. I shrunk down to my haunches as a sob wracked through my body.
"Hey," Liz's voice suddenly softened. "Allison, I'm sorry."
I looked up to her, and her blue eyes met mine. She was still wearing eyeliner from the show last night, but now her mascara was smudged and running onto her cheeks. I was sure I looked even worse in my second-day makeup.
A hiccup shook through my diaphragm. "What do you want from me?" My voice came out as a growl. I clutched the laces of my boots in my fists. "Why are you here."
"I want to help you." Liz squatted in front of me like she was talking to a child.
I narrowed my eyes at her. "Why should I trust you?"
"Because," she paused for a breath, looking off to the far end of the empty parking lot before looking back to me, "I happen to know a thing or two about disposing of dead bodies."
| | |
"You doing okay?" Liz asked. "Do you need to take a break?"
"I'm good." I held my breath against the stink as we heaved Blake's body down the steps of Gen F's tour bus. His blood stained the blue tarp Liz had insisted we move him onto before carrying him. It had taken a few extra minutes for her to run back to Make Them Scream's bus to grab it, but at least now we weren't leaving a trail.
"What about the mess on the bus?" I grimaced, shifting my grip to keep my sweaty hands from slipping in the latex gloves Liz had given me. "It's going to take us forever to carry him out into the woods. What if someone from his band comes back from the party before we get back? What if . . ." The image of blood soaking the plastic floor and the splatter of vomit I'd left behind flashed through my head. "We need to clean up the . . . evidence."
"Don't worry about it," Liz replied as we shuffled across the pavement.
We entered the cover of the trees at the edge of the parking lot, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn't seen any surveillance cameras, but I couldn't be sure. I just had to trust that Liz knew what she was doing.
"I talked to Alex back at our bus," Liz continued. "He said he would take care of the . . . mess."
My stomach did a flip in my gut. Alex was Make Them Scream's lead singer. I was already nervous that Liz knew what happened. I wasn't even sure I could trust her, and now she was telling other people about this?
I swallowed the lump in my throat. I didn't have a choice. I couldn't do this alone. Trusting her was my only option.
I held my breath and looked up to the sky, doing my best to ignore the fact that I was carrying a dead body through the woods. My arms and hands burned from holding up Blake's ankles, and my back ached. The stink of his drying blood made my nostrils burn.
"How far do we have to take him?" I asked after we'd been walking in silence for nearly fifteen minutes.
"Just a bit further," Liz said. "We want to make sure they don't find him for a few hours."
My foot fell into a small divot in the ground, and I stumbled. "Shit!" My arms gave out and my hands slipped. Blake's legs crashed to the ground. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." I bent over to pick him up again, but my arms and legs were shaking like crazy. I braced my elbows against my knees to help me lift, but I couldn't do it.
"Let's rest for a minute." Liz set the upper portion of Blake's body down. Gently . . . like he was still alive or something.
I sat and leaned with my back against a tree, panting and shivering. I never got cold, but right now I was so exhausted my body couldn't keep me warm.
"Here." Liz took off her leather jacket and held it out to me. "Put it on. You're in shock. And I'm sorry I didn't take care of you better."
"You don't have to take care of me," I grumbled. I was not a child, and I was pretty sure I was actually older than she was.
Another shiver wracked through me, and she raised an eyebrow, still holding the jacket out to me.
"Thanks," I finally muttered, taking it and pulling it on. I tucked my hands into the sleeves.
Liz sat down next to me, staring off into the woods in front of us. She was a tough chick, and she was stronger than she looked. She had surely carried most of the weight for the past twenty minutes, and she didn't even seem winded. Not to mention she'd done it in heels.
The trees creaked and groaned around us in a cool breath of wind. I wished Liz's jacket had a hood so I could pull it over my head and disappear beneath it. I kept hoping that I would somehow wake up from this nightmare, but with every minute that passed, the last-ditch hope became more and more distant. There was no going back from this.
I felt Liz's eyes on me, but I didn't want to look at her.
I pulled a handful of weeds from the ground and spun them through my fingers. "Why are you helping me?" I finally asked.
She exhaled heavily. "A lot of reasons. But I think there's a better question right now."
I glanced at her out of the corners of my eyes. "What?"
"Why are you so convinced that what happened to Blake has anything to do with you?"
My breath caught in my throat as she said it. Liz and I had hardly spoken since we got down to work dragging Blake's body out of the bus. She'd asked no questions about what had happened—about why Blake looked like he'd been mauled by a vicious animal and why I looked like I'd seen all thirteen ghosts from that shit horror movie Thirteen Ghosts.
Just kidding. I liked that movie.
"I . . . " I shuddered. "Blake and I hooked up once a couple days ago. We've been sort of a thing." I bit at my lower lip, wincing at how pathetic it was that hooking up with and fucking a guy once was something I considered a thing. "We were drinking together on their bus last night. Last I remember . . . fuck, I don't remember. I hadn't been feeling well. We must have drank too much."
Lies.
"I blacked out. I remember we were kissing, and then the next thing I remember was waking up somewhere in the woods." I crossed my arms and held myself at the elbows. I didn't tell her about the paw prints I'd seen in the snow leading up to me. The only footprints that had been there. That had just been my imagination. Some trick pulled by the way the snow melted against the warm dirt.
I turned to look at Liz. See how crazy she thought I was.
She held her gaze still on me, like a wolf waiting for its prey to move.
"The bite on his neck." My eyes dared to glance over to Blake's body, but I pulled them back. "That's human." My hand involuntarily went up to my mouth. "Fuck . . ."
When I looked back to Liz, she was staring off into the distance, her eyes trained on something beyond the horizon. "I know," she said as she let a breath out between her teeth, and then she met my gaze again. "That's why we had to bring him out here."
"They can trace dental records." The words streamed out of my mouth like vomit. "Once they find his body, even out here, they'll see those marks. They'll know . . ." I clenched my teeth, afraid to finish my thought. I'd seen enough detective shows to know how serious this was. I couldn't get caught and spend the best part of my life—or the rest of my life—in prison.
"We have to hide it." I ground my teeth together. There was too much I wanted to do. This wasn't how my life was supposed to go. I'd rather be dead than rotting in prison. "We have to cover it up."
"You're right." Liz paused for a second, clenching a fist around a clump of frosted autumn leaves. She tossed it into the air, letting the gentle breeze disperse it.
"How?" I asked. "Burn him?" It was the only idea I could think of.
Liz stood and made her way over to Blake's body, shaking her head. "Too much smoke." With a grunt, she pulled him off the tarp and folded the blue fabric. She tossed it to me, and without thinking, I caught it. "It would be too obvious."
"Then what's your idea?" I asked.
"Don't worry. I'll take care of it." She cracked her neck to both sides, and then she smirked at me. "Just promise me you won't scream."
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