Page 7 of What We Bury

Then I see what’s holding the rope.

Five figures emerge from the blackness one after another, like they were always there, waiting. Their faces are hidden behind masks. Not Halloween plastic. Smooth, matte skulls, eyeholes rimmed in nothing, like something out of a sleep paralysis. One of them has the rope. Two more close in around Brock, methodical, watching him kick. Another moves toward me but stops a few paces away, planting himself between me and the body twisting above us. Blocking the line of sight.

I open my mouth to scream and nothing comes out. My voice is sand and seawater, scraped to thread.

Brock’s struggles slow. Weaken. But his feet keep kicking.

The silence that follows is the loudest thing I have ever heard.

These aren’t normal men. They move like a pack, synchronized and soundless. Like they’ve done this before. Like they werewaitingunder here.

The nearest one—the one between me and Brock—is a mountain. Broad in the shoulders, muscles straining against a tight black shirt. He shifts his stance and moonlight catches something at the top of his combat boot. The handle of a knife. Matte black, folded, tucked into a leather band.

My body moves before my brain catches up.

I lunge.

TWO

MICAH

“Knife!” I yell, already moving toward her. She’s half animal, bright-eyed and smeared with tears, and most of that wild shimmer is focused on the blade she’s just yanked out of Knox’s boot.

It happens so fast my brain processes it in little fragments instead of whole scenes—her fingers curled and white-knuckled, the blade up and forward, her legs thrumming a split second before she launches.

Holy shit.She’s going to?—

“Fuck!” Eli’s head snaps toward me, and Milo takes a step forward, and Knox?—

Knox doesn’t move.

He stands there, watching this girl with sand on her knees and mascara streaking her cheeks as she raises a blade over her head and screams like something in her has finally torn loose.

Before we can stop her, she plunges it straight into Brock’s gut. He howls, but it’s muffled by the noose, his body jerking wildly as she yanks the knife out and rams it back in—lower this time, right into his exposed crotch. Blood sprays, hot and dark,soaking her arms, her face, the pink dress that’s already half-ruined from what he did to her.

Jesus Christ, she’s?—

I freeze for a split second, brain screaming at me to intervene, but fuck—there’s something in it I recognize. She’s not stopping. Brock thrashes, legs kicking uselessly, but the rope holds him high, his face purple and bulging, eyes rolling back as she keeps going, her scream turning into guttural snarls.

“Heaven has sent us an angel, and her name is death,” Holden mutters, but no one moves. Knox remains statue-still, watching her like he’s seeing a kindred spirit or some shit.

“It’s the world’s most fucked-up piñata,” Milo says, watching organs spill out like candy.

Stab after stab, the knife sinks and twists and pulls free. This isn’t rage. It’s precision. She’s not just stabbing. She’s destroying.

Like she knows exactly what she wants to take from him.

She’s one of us.

Brock’s pants are down around his knees, and she’s turning everything below his belt into ground meat, guts spilling out in slick loops. The fifth stab goes deep, and there’s a wet thunk as debris hits the sand.

I look down.

Brock’s dick is lying there like a sad, severed sausage.

Without thinking, I kick it.

It flies in a perfect arc and smacks Milo in the chest. He looks down, processes what bounced off him, and lets out a shriek that could shatter glass.