I’m sure I’ve heard that commanding American accent before. So he has to be either Gareth or Killian Carson, the siblings the girls and I often see at the fight club.
Or Jeremy Volkov.
Please don’t let it be Jeremy.
A sane person would wish for anyone aside from the psycho Killian Carson or the crazy Nikolai Sokolov, but in my eyes, Jeremy has always been the worst of the Heathens.
Just because he doesn’t announce his actions as publicly as the others do doesn’t make him harmless, just much better at hiding his monstrosity.
After all, he didn’t become the leader of the Heathens by acting nice.
“Being accepted into the club can only be achieved through running, not hiding,” he continues in that less-robotic yet freezing-cold tone.
I open my mouth, then slam it back shut.
Blimey.
I almost spoke and completely gave my nationality and my unorthodox appearance at this initiation away.
Orange Mask pushes off the tree and I take a step back, then slightly jump when my shoes hit the rock.
“You’re still not running.” His voice lowers with a dark edge, overcrowding with promises of a worse fate than the other participants he sent flying.
I inhale as deeply as physically possible and then run.
I’m not even two steps in when my legs give out from underneath me. I shriek as I fall headfirst into the dirt and the air is knocked straight out of my lungs.
“Number twenty-three eliminated,” the speaker echoes around me.
The finality bubbles beneath my flesh and hurts.
But not more than the burning in my knee or the bruise that I already feel forming on my hipbone.
I’m lying on my stomach on the ground, my mouth kissing the dirt and my nails sinking into it.
Slowly, I raise my head to find Orange Mask inspecting his blood-red golf club.
Please don’t tell me that’s my blood.
No, it can’t be, he didn’t hit me with it. In fact, I suspect he tripped me with it, which is why I’m currently in this position.
A dejected breath spills out of my lungs and I sit up, dusting the dirt off my shirt and jeans. There’s a bleeding hole in the knee and I wince at the sight.
I’m all dirty and for what?
Well, at least I now know a bit about the structure of the Heathens’ mansion and I didn’t lose consciousness like the other participants who went against this bastard.
“Let’s see the face behind the mask.” He reaches his gloved hand in my direction, black and dark and straight out of my worst nightmares. “How did someone as incompetent as you get invited to the initiation—”
I slap his hand away, cutting him off mid-sentence. The sound echoes in the air, stabbing the silence and accentuated by the pause in his entire demeanor.
My other hand clenches in the dirt and it takes everything in me not to blurt out something just so I can fill up the stillness in the air.
He already eliminated me, why would he need to see my face? There was no rule about that.
Also, why does he get to see me when I don’t get to see him? That’s not fair.
The world isn’t fair, Cecily. That’s just the way it is.