I didn’t have to be death.
I didn’t have to be a monster.
I didn’t have to abandon Jason.
Leaving him to do whatever the fuck he does, stalk and creep around the party. I headed up the stairs, still on the same mission to find Abigail. I was pushed right up against a wall with the feeling of being powerless pinning me to it.
KHAOS
“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid… it tastes like cult vibes,” I said with a smirk, because I knew she was doomed either way.
She drank up Grimm with her damn eyes, and now look at her, head over heels for the one person we warned against falling for. The world warned you against guys like us: damaged goods.
“Khaos?” She looked at me harder from behind a pair of big glasses with magnified eyes pinned to the back, making it a mask. “Why? It’s just punch. You wouldn’t poison your own.”
Her eyebrows wrinkled together in confusion above the piece of tulle and lace covering her eyes. In her hand was the glass of red punch that she didn’t actually know had a drop of everyone’s blood in it. It was tradition. One we couldn’t avoid, and one my mom had a lady boner for. She was big into the occult and wanted some kind of contingency plan if things imploded.
“Nothing is what it seems. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
She sipped from the tiny clear cup in her fingers, and I could see why Grimm liked her so much. She was drinking punch dosed with our blood with a curt fucking smile on her face.
Might as well have been my jizz.
Fuck me.
Illegitimate children would only make my family more hated. We were liberal to a fucking fault. My French mom was a hippie who preferred to be naked and kept crystals all around her house, while my dad grew up in the Clave but somehow managed to get his way when it came to my mom.
Krosby DuPonte always got his way. Most people chalk that up to my mom’s witchy ways.
I watched Abigail look around the room at all the people wearing masks, another custom we couldn’t avoid.
Oscar, someone I never used to mind associating with, sauntered over like he was walking on water. If you didn’t know him, you would think his glassy eyes and inability to give a fuck was him tripping, when the sad reality was that he was just a rich asshole—one I had to mind now that Grimm made it clear what side of things he landed on. If you chose wrong, consider him your enemy too.
Slapping Oscar’s cheek with an open hand in a playful way, I asked him, “How's the face, pretty boy?”
There was no denying the guy was fucking pretty in that never-got-his-hands-dirty way. That’s what we had in common: clean hands.
“Shut the fuck up, DuPonte.”
He refused to use the nickname I took on at twelve, Khaos; instead, he used our last names. Probably to remind himself he was on the outside looking in. We were kings of the Clave.
Untouchable.
Undisputed.
Unruffled by the people that didn’t sport one of the four names.
“Now, now, don’t be a bitch, Oscar. I’m sure you have enough dumbass ideas to win them over next time.”
Abigail stilled and stiffened, with her skin paler than normal with Oscar around. I could chalk up by the response that she either had her own sour experiences or Grimm was not a sharer. Side stepping ever-so-casually to block her from his view. I felt responsible for her only by proxy. If something happened and I did nothing, I might as well have done that shit myself.
If I was taking the blame, I was getting the rush of the fucking crime.
Oscar mumbled under his breath and took off. Being focused on him, I couldn’t see anything else around us, only being the wall between him and what was Grimm’s.
The Rothschild’s Surrealist Ball is a fucked up LSD trip without having to take anything.
I was grateful. The last time I took LSD I got into a motorcycle crash trying to burn rubber against a roof and land in the pool. Well, I overshot the pool and broke my arm.
LSD is on my shit list.
The masks were extravagant and the stuff of nightmares. Monsters, fabric covering their faces, paint, anything to cover up the humanity. Tonight was a party for all the bad in each of us. Our demons were at play, not us.
“How much do you know? Answer carefully.” All the energy drained from my voice, hoping she would continue to seem scared. She needed to be scared enough to run the fuck away from us.
“Everything, horsemen.”
Well, Grimm really fucked me in this ass this time.
Now I was even deeper in the role accomplice.
Abigail was a mind fuck. She looked fragile from the outside, when in reality it was just her control problems taking your perception and fucking it until you couldn’t see straight.
I watched her walk away, not even waiting to try to pump me for information, confirm, or deny anything. She just knew.
“I’m supposed to be watching you!” I shouted in her direction, even though it was useless.
My eyes followed Abigail, until they stopped on a blonde wearing a mask with tall, straight, bunny ears standing from the crown of her head. She was hard to miss, even with most of her features covered up. Bunny pulled me in like a magnet. My feet were moving in her direction before I knew it.
Stopping right next to Bunny in the fitted corset and leather pants, I said, “I’m Khaos. I gotta run, but don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
Pulling a hit-and-run on the mystery blonde with big curls, I jogged down the hall, trying to catch up to Abigail after using up a few minutes to make sure I was in the forefront of Bunny’s mind.
This place was massive, and the hallways were lined with doors, making it easy to lose people, things, inhibitions…
“Abigail?!” I shouted her name, but of course no one responded. We weren’t even supposed to be using our names. With the masks firmly attached to our faces, we weren’t ourselves here, not tonight at least. Here we were whatever we wanted to be.
“Abigail?”
Fuck me.
Grimm was dragged off by his parents clearing their throats as soon as they realized the girl on his arm was a brunette not the blonde they picked for him. And here I was failing at keeping her safe and sound.
After a few more minutes, going deeper and deeper down the hallway, I heard the faint sound of throwing up.
The punch isn’t that bad.
Pushing the door open, I witnessed Abigail kneeling over a toilet dry heaving and coughing a lung up. Gripping the sides of the toilet, she didn’t make any attempts to move. She just sat there, waiting for whatever bile teasing her throat to come up.
“He really fucked up, didn’t he, Abigail?”
Fuckity fuck, fuck.
She sat on the floor, letting her back lean into the wall with her mask in her lap. “What gave it away? My love affair with the toilet?”
Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, I was still putting pieces together in my head. Grimm didn’t just save someone and send them to another country this time. No, instead he got a girl pregnant, one he had no business being involved with in the first place.
Accomplice. Obstructing justice. A giant middle finger to the Clave. All things I was conditioned for. All things that ensured chaos would fucking ensue.
“Who knows?”
If he was smart, no one.
I knew the minute he cared about some priest having too much fun torturing her that we were all fucked.