Their Vicious Games(94)
There’s a deafening crack.
And just like that, Pierce Maxwell Remington III is dead.
Leighton sits atop him, a lioness above her prey, as she stares down the Remington boys.
She sneers at them as her glacial exterior shatters. Ruffled and undone, a run in her pantyhose, her silk shirt untucked, she stalks toward them. “I promised… there would be blood.”
CHAPTER 33
“DAD! YOU KILLED MY DAD, you crazy bitch!” Pierce shouts, ducking behind the sofa as Leighton runs across the room, snatching the hunting rifle from the wall, loading it with an expertise that speaks to memory. Memories resurfaced for her last night during Simon Says, and I’ve used the chaos it unleashed in her to my advantage.
From the corner of my eye, I see a swish of sea green and blond and I just swing out of the way of Hawthorne bringing her crossbow up. The arrow hits the floor with a thud, right where I was, and then Hawthorne brings the bow back again, aiming at me. Fuck.
I throw my shoulder forward, hitting hers. Graham snags me by the wrist and then he tugs me straight out of the parlor.
“Let’s get the hell out of here!” Graham insists. His bottom lip trembles and he aborts a move to look back at his father. Instead, he flinches when there’s the sound of a gunshot. Leighton.
I start running faster, the broadsword heavy in my hand, slowing me down just the tiniest bit. “Yeah, I’m ahead of you there, Graham!” I shout, skidding around the corner. The hunting parlor is on the first floor and the door is close.
“Not so fast, Miss Walker.” A shot is fired and we duck as the bullet slams through the front door, a single little circle of white piercing through the wood. I lift my sword defensively, but what is steel to a bullet? “The game has only just begun.”
There’s a click of another bullet being loaded and I duck again, yelping when my ankle twists underneath me and instantly starts throbbing.
Leighton aims the hunting rifle at the pair of us, her lips curling, but I’m surprised to see her tilt it at Graham.
“You were always so disappointing, Graham,” she sighs, like it’s no big deal that she’s pointing a rifle at his head.
For a moment I imagine abandoning him here. I can make it out the door without him. But he came for me last night. He’d agreed to play, finally stood up to Pierce. I won’t leave him until I have to.
“Upstairs! Upstairs!” I screech, and start hobbling sideways, tugging Graham along this time.
Leighton fires another shot and it whistles to the side of him.
“Fuck! Why is she aiming for me?” Graham yells as we scramble up the stairs, practically tripping over each step, rushing up past the second floor, up to the third, farther from the freedom I am so desperate for. My ankle twinges again and I fall hard on the last step, but I shove myself back up.
“Because killing Miss Walker is a privilege I’d like to savor. You are a Remington, and thus, a chore,” Leighton says, her voice finally, after all these carefully controlled weeks, rising into a roar. She’s coming closer, the click of her heels growing louder as she ascends at a steady pace, like she’s savoring this moment. “Miss Walker, I really am saddened by this turn of events. I thought you were here for the right reasons.”
Graham and I try door handles frantically but they’re all locked. The sound of the bolts rattling in the frames sounds mocking and my heart sinks. We rush back to the stairs to ascend to the next floor, just as Leighton appears.
“I came here for your right reasons—because I thought I wasn’t enough. But I’d rather die than be turned into some weird shiny smoothed-over version of myself that self-medicates with wine and becomes some fucker’s puppet,” I say viciously, lifting the sword again. “I’m good. Thanks.”
Leighton loads the rifle again and lifts it to aim. “Well, I can oblige,” she says.
I back myself up the steps to the fourth floor, my ankle stepping it up from a twinge to a steady throb, and I know I won’t make it. I squeeze my eyes shut, but then I feel Graham throw himself in front of me, shoving me back and causing me to lose my grip on the sword, like he’s going to take the bullet for me. But no shot sounds.
No pain blooms across my chest. Slowly, I open my eyes.
Leighton stands there, her eyes open wide with a childlike sense of wonder. She looks down at her blue silk top, and it begins to darken to a big purple splotch in the middle of her chest. She drops the rifle and it fires into the ceiling. And then she falls backward, sliding down the steps, revealing Penthesilea on the third-floor landing, hand outstretched, like she’s just thrown something. Leighton’s body rolls, and there, in her back, is the smallest black handle of a knife.
Penthesilea tears her attention away from Leighton and takes a step upstairs, like she’s ready to pursue a new target. Graham drags me back to my feet. I reach for the sword on the landing, where it fell, but Penthesilea steps hard on the flat of the blade and slides it behind her, out of reach.
“Pen—” he starts.
“I thought you took the bat,” I say.
“Come on now, Adina. You know I always have something in my pocket,” Penthesilea says, and then she lifts her bat, holding it like she’s goddamn Babe Ruth. But then a voice shouts:
“ADINA WALKER IS MINE.”