A Demon Made Me Do It (16 page)

I gasp, bringing my hand to
my mouth.
Bodies
?

“
In the gym. Janitor found
them this morning. There’s a girl there too…but she’s too messed
up, they can’t identify her yet.” Corrine makes a strange hiccup
noise and bites her lip.

“
Oh, my
God
.” I grab her hand and stagger
over to the curb to sit down. The crowd seems to have doubled in
size. Now parents and townspeople are arriving to see what’s going
on.

“
Liora,” a deep voice comes
from behind me.

Relief washes over me, and I jump up
to meet Kieron’s troubled gaze. “Kieron. Oh, Kieron, have you
heard? I can’t believe it.” I move closer to him, thinking for some
reason we should hug. Isn’t that what people do in these sorts of
situations? But he stiffens and I hesitate. We look at each other
and Kieron nods grimly.

“
They’ve cancelled classes
today, for obvious reasons. I think it would be a good idea if we
get out of here; let the authorities do their business.”

I glance down at Corrine weeping
softly into her hands. Throwing Kieron a pained look, I kneel
beside her, patting her long hair.

“
Sweetie, it’s gonna be
okay. Come on, let’s go. Kieron will give you a ride home.” I eye
him hopefully and he nods. But Corrine surprises me by shaking her
head.

“
Thanks, but I’d rather
take the bus,” she mutters. When I start to protest she gives me a
steely look, and I realize she’s embarrassed about Kieron knowing
where she lives. “Go, I’ll be fine. I’ll call you
later.”

“
Okay, if you’re sure.” I
help her to her feet. She gives me a quick hug before walking
toward the bus stop. Kieron and I watch her in silence as she
shuffles away, head held low. Part of me wants to go after her, but
I know she wants to be alone. I have to respect that.

When she’s out of sight, Kieron
motions for me to follow him. We weave through the crowd of
distraught and frantic people until we reach his truck.

“
Where are we going?” I
ask.

“
To get some breakfast. I’m
starving.”

******

A letter on the roadside cafe is
burned out. Instead of reading ‘Dine Here Now’ it’s ‘Di e Here
Now’.

Perfect.

Kieron hops from the truck and opens
my door. When he holds out his hand to mine, it’s covered in deep
scratches. “What happened?” I ask.

He glances down as if he hadn’t
noticed the wounds before. “Oh, nothing,” he says and shrugs.
“Neighbor has a frisky cat.”

One that’s part
lion?

The waitress sits us at a cracked
Formica table with sticky seats. I ignore the menu in front of me,
but Kieron studies it briefly before ordering a monster pancake
platter. How can he possibly be hungry now?

I order tea and sip it slowly, aware
that he’s staring at me. I glance at him, trying to read his face.
He looks tired. Confused. Stunned.

“
I still can’t believe
they’re dead,” I murmur. “Who could have done that?
Why?”

He shakes his head and fiddles with
his silverware. “I dunno. Pretty scary stuff.”

“
I wonder who the girl
is…Corrine said they didn’t know.”

Kieron nods. “Kind of hard when
there’s no head—’’

I gasp and feel sick.
“
What?
She didn’t
say anything about that—” Trembling, I put down my mug, splashing
tea on the table.

Kieron looks pained. “Sorry…I thought
you heard. Everyone was talking about it…I didn’t mean to upset
you.”

I shake my head and wipe away the tear
streaming down my cheek. Even though I didn’t really talk to anyone
at Dove Creek High other than Corrine, Emme, Skye, and now, Kieron,
the thought of any of my classmates—even jerks like Cade Johnston
and Lee Marvis—suffering so horribly, chills me to the
bone.

It’s just like what
happened with…

The waitress returns with Kieron’s
food, and he hungrily dives in. I shake my head to clear the
haunting memories, wondering again how he can possibly eat at a
time like this.

He glances up to see me staring.
“Sorry,” he says between bites, “I didn’t have a chance to eat
breakfast, and I’m famished. Worked up quite an appetite last
night…” He suddenly stops and looks at me, almost guiltily…as if
he’s said something he shouldn’t have.

My eyes narrow with
suspicion. Something isn’t right here. Under the restaurant’s
unforgiving fluorescent lights, I see how tired he looks, like he
hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep last night. Still devastatingly
gorgeous, there are dark circles beneath his eyes that weren’t
there before. Light stubble on his cheeks suggests he didn’t bother
to shave. Deep welts on his hands that
definitely
did not come from some
ornery house-cat. And in the midst of finding out three of our
classmates have been brutally murdered on school campus, he decides
he needs to devour a hearty breakfast.

And the way he keeps looking at
me…almost knowing, yet distrustful. My stomach flutters
uncomfortably.

“
I—I think I need to go
home,” I say. “Tatiana will have heard what happened by now, and
I’m sure she’s worried.”

He stares at me for a while, then
nods. “Sure, just let me finish up here real quick and I’ll drive
you home.”

I shift in my seat, absently fiddling
with my napkin while he eats in silence. Something isn’t right with
him, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. And until I can, I
think it’s best to keep my guard up.

After he pays the waitress, we head
back to the truck. I can feel his tension almost as much as my own.
He angles out of the parking lot, but instead of taking the road
back to school and my cabin, he turns in the opposite direction,
heading away.

“
What? Where are you
going?” I gasp, reflexively reaching for the door handle. My
stomach lurches, and I feel my heart racing. But what am I going to
do, jump out of a moving truck?

Kieron stares straight ahead, his eyes
focused on the road. “Liora, I think you and I both know we need to
talk.” His voice is even, firm.

“
About what? Kieron, I told
you I want to go home…where are you taking me?”
No, no.
This is impossible. I’m not
being
kidnapped, am I? Oh, this is too
much. I
knew he was too good
to be true.
Lucky,
please wake up and kick his ass. You have my blessing.

Kieron glances over at me, lets out a
deep sigh, and immediately pulls over to the side of the road. The
second the truck stops, I push open the door and make a break for
it.

“
Liora,
wait
!”

An eighteen-wheeler flies by and I
jump back, right into Kieron’s arms. “Let me go,” I shout,
struggling against his firm grip.

“
Not until you calm down
and listen to me. You trying to get yourself killed?”

“
Let me go!” I squirm
again, but to no avail. Kieron’s arms are locked around me like a
vise. With as much strength as I can muster, I stomp down on one of
his feet. He doesn’t budge, and lets out a small
chuckle.

“
Liora, stop. I’m really
sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you. Look, I’ll let you go if you
promise not to run out and become road kill.”

“
I promise, now let me go,”
I say through clenched teeth.

He gradually loosens his grip and I
take several steps back, eyeing him warily.

Kieron sighs, his blue eyes
sad and frustrated…pleading. “Liora, I’m sorry. Honest. I shouldn’t
have done that without asking you first. I...I thought you’d want
to talk… about… everything that’s going on. I misread your
concern…I thought we could go somewhere away from the craziness and
just, I dunno, be
real
with one another for a minute.” He looks down and aimlessly
kicks at a pebble on the ground.

And now I feel like a huge
idiot. What am I worried about? Do I really think he’s some sort of
crazed murderer?
Of course not.
And so what if he’s hungry? He’s a growing boy.
And we’ve all woken up not looking or feeling our best. If it
wasn’t for Tatiana’s magical potion this morning, I’d be looking
like something someone scraped up off the side of a ditch. Who am I
to judge? I lower my eyes, ashamed at my paranoid
overreaction.

“
Sorry,” I mumble. “I
didn’t mean to be a spaz…it’s just with everything that’s
happened…I don’t know what to think right now.” I run my hands up
the side of my head and clench some hair.

He takes a step closer to me. “Is it
okay if we go somewhere to talk? Or do you really want me to take
you home. I’m fine with whatever you want. I’ll even call you a
taxi if you don’t want to be around me anymore.”

I think it over for a few moments.
“How’s your foot?”

He grins. “I have another
one.”

“
Sorry ‘bout that,” I
mumble, and give him a tentative smile. “I guess it’s cool if we go
somewhere for a while.”

Without saying a word he heads to the
side of the truck and opens the door for me as I climb in. As he
starts up the engine again, I look out the window and pray I’m not
making a huge mistake.

******

Once again, Kieron takes me on an
unfamiliar road. Instead of to the cemetery—we both agreed we
didn’t want to be there now—he’s driving us up a mountain, a
winding back-county road flanked by patches of trees and wide open
fields.

“
Where are we going?” I
ask, feeling a sense of déjà vu. He just moved here; how is it he
knows about all these places I don’t?

“
Just somewhere I think
you’ll like,” he says. His profile looks hard and tired at the same
time.

“
Yeah, well you said that
yesterday, and you took me to an abandoned cemetery.”

“
But you liked it, right?”
He looks at me from the corner of his eye.

“
Yeah,” I admit with a
sigh, and look out the window. Our conversation has been stilted
and awkward ever since I tried to run away. But I can’t bring
myself to relax; there are just too many things bothering me…not
the least of which is the fact that here I am driving off into the
middle of nowhere with a guy I hardly know, and who is making my
Spidey-Sense tingle warnings under my skin.

From out of nowhere, a
large black crow flies up alongside my window. Great.
Of course
Tatiana’s
checking up on me. For someone who is blind, she sees
way
too much sometimes. I
casually glance over to Kieron, hoping he doesn’t notice our new
companion. Thankfully, his attention is focused on the curvy road.
The bird keeps pace with us for a few more miles, then abruptly
flies off in the opposite direction. No doubt heading back to tell
Tatiana what it saw.

“
You doing okay?” Kieron
looks over at me and smiles for the first time all morning. We’re
near the top of the mountain now, and the town seems far
away.

I nod. “It’s so pretty here…I’ve never
been out this way before.”

“
Really?” He raises his
eyebrows. “That’s weird. I just assumed…”

“
What?”

He pauses. “Nothing…”

The higher up the mountain we climb,
the more colorful the scenery becomes. Autumn has transformed
ordinary trees into a magical array of reds, golds, and greens. The
sun, peeking through some ominous clouds, dances on the valley
floor below us. It looks like a picture from a postcard.

“
How do you even know about
this place, wherever it is we’re going? Haven’t you only been here
for a few weeks?” I ask.

“
Give or take a few days…”
he murmurs. “My uncle brought me here soon after I
arrived.”

“
Tell me about him,” I say,
eager to break the uncomfortable silence. I want to go back to how
we were yesterday when it was so easy to talk to him, before all
the weirdness got in our way.

“
His name is Troy. He was
my mother’s brother.”

“
Was?”

“
She passed away when I was
six.”

“
Oh…I’m sorry. My mother’s
gone, too. She died when I was born,” I blurt out, much to my
surprise. I’ve never told anyone the truth about my mother before.
Usually I just say that my parents died together in a car crash
when I was two.

“
I’m very sorry.” His gaze
briefly leaves the road to meet mine.

“
It’s okay,” I say,
shrugging. “I never knew her. It must have been much harder for
you, losing your mom at such a young age.”

He doesn’t answer, and I want to kick
myself. Good going, Liora. Morbid conversation, much?

“
It was…very painful,” he
finally says, his mouth pressed in a straight line, his eyes like
steely ice.

“
So is it just you and your
uncle?”

He slowly nods. “Troy’s lived out here
for several years.”