The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) (42 page)

When you tried to open the safe without the correct combination, the door made a dull clicking sound and held firmly shut.

The family groaned.

“What does it mean?” said Richard.

“It means that someone has lied!” shouted the oldest brother.

“Thank you everyone for sharing your numbers,” said James, then, in a swift movement, he pulled two pistols from his jacket. Aiming one at each of his brothers, he shot them both at once. Little Anna screamed as two of her three brothers fell to the floor.

“Don’t be upset, Anna,” James said. “I have done a kindness to our brothers. They weren’t long for this world. Neither are you. None of us would have lived long enough to spend
all the treasure mother accumulated in that safe. In giving their lives today, our brothers have ensured that our family name will live on forever. That’s why I did it, Anna. I’m going to live forever.”

James went to the safe and adjusted the second dial, the one with the ruby on it. He stopped at number seventy-seven.

Ninety-eight, seventy-seven, nineteen. Those were the first three numbers of the combination.

The fourth dial was still sitting at number eighty-four, where Anna had placed it.

James pulled on the handle. He too got nothing but a dull clang as the safe held itself closed.

“You lying little bitch!” he yelled at Anna. His pistols both spent of their single shots, he had nothing to attack Anna with except his hands, which he placed around her neck.

“What’s your number?” he shouted. “What is the fourth number of the combination?”

Anna began coughing. Her face turned red. Nicky wanted to rush over and help her.

“Don’t worry,” Sergio said. “Anna came to this meeting fully prepared for what happened.”

A second after Sergio spoke the words, Nicky saw Anna’s left hand emerge from her pocket. She was holding a small piece of metal. It looked like a nail.

With the metal, she scratched James across the arm, drawing a long, red line from his wrist to his elbow.

Even though the scratch was bad, Nicky was surprised at the way James responded. Shrieking as he recoiled, grabbing tightly onto his forearm, which was darkening rapidly near the scratch, his reaction seemed a bit much for a scratch on his arm.

“What is this?” he gasped. “What have you done?”

Anna fell to the ground. As she landed, the nail clattered onto the wooden floor.

“Poison,” she hissed. “I knew we couldn’t trust you. Mamma knew it too. We all could have been rich. Instead, we get nothing.”

Anna’s voice was weak. Her skin was going pale as quickly as her brother’s. Both of them were fading fast.

“She’s about to open up her left hand,” Sergio said. “Watch for it.”

The hand opened after Anna’s head fell to the floor. There was a large, bloody scratch on her palm. Like the wound on James, Anna’s was turning black at the edges.

“She cut herself,” Nicky said.

“It happened when she retrieved the nail from her pocket,” said Sergio. “The poison on that nail found her blood before it found his. But still she summoned the strength to kill him. She was a good little girl.”

James was the first to go. A minute later, Anna followed her brother in death. It was hard for Nicky to look at, so she didn’t. She turned her eyes towards the vampire hiding in the corner.

“Why didn’t Daciana intervene?” she said.
“I mean, if she loved James-”

“--it was because she loved James that she trusted the ritual,” Sergio said. “Immortality is a dangerous, volatile gift. We need the rituals to guide us. The rituals tell us if the bond is meant to be.”

“What if I don’t complete our ritual? What if we aren’t meant to be?”

The question hung in the air for a moment, until Sergio put his hand on Nicky’s cheek and turned her head towards him.

“Love is a matter of the heart, Nicky Bloom. Listen to what your heart tells you. You have only one number of the combination left to discover. Let the ritual guide you. Find it, so we can be together.”

His face was close to hers now. She felt like he was going to kiss her. She wanted him to. She closed her eyes and waited.

It didn’t happen. While her eyes were closed, the world around her changed. She sensed it first in her ears, then on her skin. When she opened her eyes again, she was back on the Thorndike campus, standing under the moon, holding onto a paper lantern.

Sergio was gone.

The wind carried the lanterns in a hundred different directions, and the class splintered apart to chase them. Jill and Ryan were mostly alone as they entered the courtyard, and entirely alone when they passed behind Sullivan Hall and onto the north lawn.

If they had truly followed the spirit of the game, they wouldn’t have stayed together, chasing after a single lantern. They were each supposed to chase their own lantern, but the lantern Jill made for Ryan was somewhere far away at this point. Ryan had let it go. He wanted to be with Jill when the lantern he made for her came down.

He wanted to be there when she saw the glass ring he had kept safe for three years.

The lantern led them across the lawn, through the senior parking lot, and towards the street. As it passed over the asphalt, they had to stop. A car was coming. A set of headlights attached to a very noisy engine—it had rounded the corner and was rolling up the hill, slowing down as it approached.

“I think this guy’s going to let us cross,” Ryan said. “Come on.”

He tugged on Jill’s hand, but she didn’t move. She was looking at the car, which was pulling close to the curb.

“He’s stopping,” Ryan said. “Let’s go before the lantern gets away.”

“Just a second,” Jill said, removing her hand from Ryan’s. She moved in the direction of the car, which was fully parked now. Its headlights were shining in Ryan’s eyes and he couldn’t see much, but he heard movement. The driver was opening his door. He was getting out.

“Jill?”

It was a male voice. The driver of this car knew Jill, and she was moving more quickly in his direction. Ryan took a few quick steps down the sidewalk to get out of the glare of the headlights. His eyes needed a second to adjust to the darkness, and the scene came together for him slowly.

A big, red car. A guy with black hair, tattoos, and piercings in his eyebrow and lower lip.

Jill spoke, not to Ryan, but to the guy getting out of the car. “Zack?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“You know this guy?” said Ryan. No one answered him.

“I’ve been looking for you,” the guy said.

“Jill, who is this?”

Again, no answer.
It was like Ryan wasn’t even there.

“Zack, you can’t be here,” said Jill. “You need to leave.”

“I have to talk to you,” the guy said. “Ever since that night…”

“Jill, is this guy bothering you?”

“It’s okay, Ryan. He’s a friend.” She looked at the other guy and added, “A friend who shouldn’t be here.”

“Please, I’ve been looking for you for weeks,” the guy said. “I’ve got to talk to you.
A few minutes. That’s all I need.”

Behind the guy, on the other side of the street, the lantern was beginning its descent. It was going to land in the flower garden on the north lot. What a perfect place for Jill to see the ring, and for Ryan to tell her how he felt.

“I’m sorry, Zack,” she said. Was she crying? “I can’t talk to you. I need for you to go.”

“We knew each other before that night at Marty’s, didn’t we?” the guy said. “I haven’t been able to get it out of my
mind. Ever since I saw you, I-”

“Hey buddy, she’s asked you to leave,” Ryan said. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

The guy, Zack, looked at Ryan, but only for a second. It was as if Ryan was just a piece of scenery. An inconsequential object that happened to be nearby while Jill and Zack had their moment together.

“My life was better when I knew you, wasn’t it?” Zack said, and with these words, Jill hunched over and brought her hands to her face. She was sobbing now.

“We can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t do it to you again.”

Ryan had seen enough. He ran around the front of the car. “Get back in your car and start driving,” he commanded. “She’s asked you to leave.” He was rushing at Zack, fists clenched. “Can’t you see that you’re upsetting her?”

As Ryan ran round the front of the car, Zack moved quickly around the back, going to Jill. Ryan quickly switched directions and ran at a full sprint to protect her.

“Don’t leave me again, Jill,” Zack said. “Not without telling me about us. There’s something I’ve forgotten, isn’t there?”

“Hey!” Ryan yelled, charging at Zack. “That’s enough!”

Ryan pushed on Zack with both hands, and he stumbled back, away from Jill. Feeling emboldened, Ryan pressed ahead. “Get out of here!” he said. “I won’t ask you again.”

Zack looked at Ryan, as if seeing him for the first time. “Are you her boyfriend?” he asked.

“What’s it look like?” said Ryan. “Now get in your car and leave!”

Zack stepped to one side and tried to talk around Ryan.

“I won’t leave until you talk to me, Jill,” he said.

“Okay, I’ve heard enough,” said Ryan, and he swung with a hard right hook at Zack’s face.

Zack was quick to duck, and Ryan’s punch missed entirely. Before he knew what was going on, Zack’s hands were on his stomach, pushing him, and he crashed back-first against the car. It wasn’t a hard landing. Ryan wanted to bounce right off the car and rush back at this asshole.

But his body didn’t cooperate. As soon as he hit the car, it was as if Ryan’s nerves were taken back to a different incident, a different time when he crashed his back into glass and steel. The pain was overwhelming, entirely disproportionate to the blow he had received.

His body didn’t know he had backed into a parked car. It thought he was in Renata’s mansion, crashing into a glass case after being thrown through the air.

He fell to his knees, moaning in pain.

“Ryan?” said Jill. “Ryan, are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said, waving her away. “Just fine.”

He ignored the pain and pushed himself to his feet. Jill was standing to his right. Zack was a few feet away, on the edge of the lawn.

Without thinking, Ryan charged at him, throwing his shoulder at Zack’s chest and tackling him to the grass. They rolled on the ground, Ryan struggling to get a handle on the guy. He threw a punch, but it glanced off Zack’s arm. And they rolled some more. Ryan wasn’t in control. A tangle of arms and legs—it all happened in less than a second. Zack had rolled Ryan onto his back and was straddled on top of him, ready to punch Ryan in the face.

“Stop!” Jill shouted.

“I have to talk to Jill!” Zack yelled. He was looking at Ryan when he said it, still holding his fist up in the air. “I don’t want to hurt you! I just need to talk to her!”

“Okay!” Jill said. She was in Ryan’s line of sight now, her hands on Zack’s shoulder. “I’ll talk to you. Just no more of this!”

Zack stood up and stepped away. Ryan raced to his feet but Jill held her hand up, ordering him to stay where he was.

He obeyed.

Jill and Zack took a few steps away from him and spoke in whispers. Ryan could only hear bits of their conversation. Zack was saying something about a Ferris Wheel, and a house. Jill was walking backwards as they talked, pulling them farther away from Ryan. She didn’t want him to hear what they were talking about.

He looked down the street, to the flower garden across the way. The lantern was on the ground now, glowing softly, the flame about to flicker out. He thought about the ring. Maybe tonight wasn’t the right time.

The lantern became even dimmer, and then faded out completely. Ryan was staring it at, trying to hold onto its location now that it wasn’t visible, when Jill came over to him. Putting her hand on his arm she said, “I need to go someplace with Zack.”

“What? Go where?”

“I’ll explain later,” she said. “I promise. This is important. I need to do this now.”

“But where are you going? I’ll come with you.”

“Not this time,” said Jill. “I need you to get back to the others and cover for me. Find the lantern I made for you and show off the present. I don’t want people to know I’ve left.”

“Left where? Can’t this wait? Jill, you can’t leave. There are immortals here tonight. This is an official Coronation event.”

She was already walking away from him, approaching the passenger door of Zack’s car.

“Jill?”

“I’ll be fine, Ryan. Cover for me. I’m sorry.”

She reached for the door handle. The way she jiggled on it to get it open—it was a practiced motion, as if she had opened the passenger door to this junky old car many times before.

And then she was in the car, closing the door behind her. Ryan looked on, helpless, as Jill and Zack drove away.