Haley sat in the driver’s cab with her legs stretched out over the dashboard, busy watching a movie on her tablet, when movement in the side mirror caught her attention.
She squinted through the dusty windshield and saw several figures sprinting straight toward the van. Her fingers instinctively reached for the door handle, but her eyes quickly locked onto the familiar faces leading the pack. It was her friends, their breath ragged and their arms pumping hard as they closed the distance.
"Did you guys succeed? How did it go?" Haley asked the moment she pushed the driver door open and stepped out into the dirt, her eyes scanning their breathless faces.
"Oh, sweetie, I have a lot of info to tell you," Sasha said, stepping up first and wrapping her arms around her girlfriend’s neck for a quick, tight hug before dropping the bomb without a single beat of hesitation. "Your sister is a cultist, and I killed Stella."
"Huh?" Haley’s face completely froze, her brow furrowing in total confusion as her hands hung loose at Sasha’s waist.
"You didn’t kill Stella. She killed herself," Faye corrected, sliding past them with her jaw set tight, her shoes kicking up small clouds of dust.
"Okay, before mysterious blood starts raining on us, I think we should leave this sick place now," Malo said, bypassing the whole group entirely.
He pulled open the front door, threw his body into the driver’s seat, shoved the key into the ignition, and brought the engine roaring to life.
Sasha and Haley scrambled into the front passenger seats while the rest of the group hurried around to the side of the vehicle. They grabbed the handle, sliding the heavy metal door wide open before climbing inside one after another. Peamah slammed the door shut from the interior, the latch clicking locked just as Malo hit the gas pedal and peeled out of the place..
The back of the van was dead silent. Everyone sat tucked against the padded walls, still processing the sheer insanity of what they had just witnessed back in that hall.
A single drop of crimson blood falling from a ceiling beam had turned a grown, hundred-pound man into a shrieking, roasted chicken before instantly reducing his body to a tiny pile of dust and ashes.
"What did we just witness?" Faye muttered into the quiet air, her posture slumped against the paneling, her mind still replaying the horrifying scene frame by frame.
"A fat man getting barbecued by Kiara," Peamah said from his corner, his voice deadpan as his thumb traced the strap of his shoulder bag.
"No, it was the Hungry Demon. That’s how it works. A single drop of blood spreads like venom," Henry said, his knees pulled up close to his chest as he shook his head back and forth.
"Kiara wasn’t there, so how is that even possible? I’ve never seen that bitch do anything like that," Faye said, her hands clenching into fists over her knees as she still flatly refused to believe Kiara had any hand in the madness.
"Well, maybe you should ask your new Beta, who made us come all this way," Malo shouted from the front seat over the roar of the engine. They couldn’t see his face because of the solid metal partition blocking the cab from the back, but they could hear his panicked voice floating clearly through the small slide window.
"I still don’t understand how you killed Stella. Tell me exactly how you did it, that’s my future sister in-law..!"
"I had no choice, she tried to kill Faye.."
Up front, the sharp sound of Sasha and Haley arguing back and forth echoed through the partition, their voices rising over the radio static.
Faye took a deep breath, letting the stale air fill her lungs before blowing it out through her teeth.
She turned her head and looked directly at Bambi, who was sitting across from her, completely undisturbed, still holding Kraven’s steel handgun and cross tightly in her lap.
"Bambi, do you know anything about what we just witnessed?" Faye asked, her voice dropping into a steady, probing tone.
"I didn’t know she was going to do it. Last night, all she asked me for was his legal name and a picture. I gave them to her," Bambi said without looking up, her thumbs running over the smooth metallic edges of the cross in her palms, her voice completely calm.
"Kiara Petro did this for me," Bambi whispered, a slow, genuine smile spreading across her lips as she lifted her hands and carefully placed the cross chain over her head, letting the weight sit over her heart. "My revenge is complete. My brother can rest in peace now."
Everyone sitting in the back of the van simply stared at her, their eyes wide as they blinked repeatedly in utter disbelief.
The rest of the group was actively panicking over cults, flying bullets, and killer magic, while Bambi was sitting right in front of them peacefully celebrating a execution.
"Congratulations on your brother resting in peace. You should have just told us from the beginning that your girlfriend was planning to get revenge for you. Then maybe we wouldn’t have been in this situation, and Stella would still be alive," Haley’s loud, sarcastic voice rang out from the front cab, cutting right through the partition window.
"Again, Stella killed herself! It was an uno reverse, like a back-to-sender!" Sasha shouted back instantly, as she tried to defend her actions for the hundredth time.
"And if we hadn’t entered a place full of Faye’s secret worshipers, half of the world wouldn’t know that the Moon Wolf is Faye!" Malo shouted, hitting his palms against the steering wheel as he drove. He absolutely hated the fact that his long-time friend had basically exposed her true identity to an entire room full of gun-toting fanatics.
"I don’t think they believe that part," Faye said, resting her forehead against her hand and staring down at the rubber floor mats.
"You don’t think? Girl, I tell you, by tomorrow morning, you will be surrounded by them again! Soon enough, the Alpha of Oakland will find out. You just gave yourself up on a silver platter. You are the sole reason you and your brother left this town in the first place to find a quiet place free from these kinds of weirdos, and now we’re right back to square one," Malo yelled, his voice straining.
"Back to square one? Do I fucking know which square I was on before all this? Or is it my fucking fault that I’m the reincarnation of someone I don’t even know?" Faye snapped back, her head jerking up as her eyes flashed with pure irritation.
She slammed her fist back against the inner wall of the van, the metal ringing out under the impact.
"This is fucking stupid. They expect me to go around killing Alphas, and how is that even possible? Fuck! They better not come anywhere near me because if they do, I’ll be killing every single one of them instead. They’ll go from hating Alphas to hating the very thing they worship!"
Faye was completely overwhelmed by everything that had just unfolded within the last hour.
Their entire dangerous trip to the heavily guarded fortress had ended up being for absolutely nothing. They had risked their lives going in there just to get blood revenge for Kraven, only for a girl who wasn’t even physically in the building to effortlessly accomplish from afar what the whole team couldn’t do with guns or claws.
No one said a single word after Faye’s angry rant finished echoing off the walls. The back of the van fell into a thick, uncomfortable silence for the remainder of the drive as the city buildings began to replace the open wasteland dirt outside the windows.
Malo pulled the vehicle up along the curb near the corner market, dropping Henry and Kali off safely at their shop before shifting gears and navigating the streets back toward their base.
They finally pulled up into the alleyway behind the gym, cutting the engine. The group piled out into the cool evening air and walked through the rear door, stepping inside where they immediately found Princess sitting quietly on a bench, waiting for their return and she got company...
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