Brutal Boys Cry Blood: Paperback

1

No one is looking for me.

No one can hear me scream.

I scream anyway, because that’s what you do, isn’t it? That’s what you do when there’s a monster under the bed and your dad is at a late-night film shoot in heaven and you have to face it all by yourself.

I scream, and my voice coils back on itself in the claustrophobic space. It grows talons that rake across my skin.

I scream, and weirdly, I feel better.

Okay, not better, exactly. Because I’m still walled into this
pitch-black room with no way out. But I feel calmer. I stop screaming and lean my back against the wall and think.

I’m George Fisher. I’ve thought myself out of worse scrapes than this. None come immediately to mind, but still…

Claws didn’t keep me around last year because of my excellent karaoke skills. We get along so well because she does the
slaying and I do the thinking. And if I can help my best friend
run a criminal empire, then I can figure a way out of this room.

Why am I in this room? Who put me here? Is it some enemy of Claws, trying to blackmail her into submission? Or is this to do with the Orpheus Society? Or Keely’s family—

No. Don’t think about the why. That way lies only madness. I suck in a deep breath. Focus on the problem in front of you.

Right. How to get out of this cell.

I’ve already checked the room for possible tools I can use to break out. Nothing. I stood on my tiptoes and scraped my fingers against the ceiling, but it seems to be solid stone. The only exit from the room are the three windows – the one that faces into the church for receiving communion and the one the anchoress’ maid handed food through are too small for me to fit through. But there’s the third window, facing out into the walled graveyard where the monks are buried.

I cross the room and examine the window with my hands. It has old wooden shutters that I might be able to break, but the window is covered by three metal bars that seem pretty fixed in place. If I can get the shutters off, I can call for help, but the graveyard isn’t exactly frequented by people—

But the church is.

Even though the campus has emptied out, and even though both Sebastian and Father Duncan have gone to their priest summer camp for the next few weeks and there won’t be services, the church can’t remain empty. The college runs tours, the cleaners have to dust the holy objects…someone will come in.

“Help, help!” I beat my fists against the shutters on the tiny window. It’s locked from the other side, but if someone is nearby, they’ll hear me.

Please, hear me.

After a few frantic minutes, my arms aching and my fists bleeding, I collapse back against the wall. There’s obviously no one in the church right now. I’ll wait a little and try again.

I lean back against the stones and fight to calm the panic rising inside me. Imagine being walled up inside this room for your whole life. Imagine choosing this.

The anchoress who lived here gave up her worldly life to
make her home in this tiny cell, to commune with God and the angels. She became anchored to the church, a tether to the spiritual realm around which her community could congregate. But was it God’s presence within these walls that made her holy, or was it her sacrifice? Did the very act of giving herself to God, of stripping her life of everything but these four walls, allow her to see the unseen?

Is God here, in this place?

It’s a strange question for an atheist to ask, but what can I say? Gods have been showing up as a theme in my life lately, and the duality between Sebastian’s faith and the Orpheans’ rapture became obvious when he lay me on the altar and made me come so hard I could believe in God.

The anchoress’ asceticism, the Bacchanalia, the cilice Sebastian showed me in the sacristy: it’s all the same – humans eternally searching for ekstasis, for the joyous rapture of giving your body and spirit completely over to a god, to be possessed in every way until you are outside of yourself, until you’re beyond the veil of human suffering.

It requires something I don’t possess, will never possess – the ability to let go, to throw oneself over a cliff and trust in something you can’t see or understand to catch you. I like being in control of my body. I like my mind doing its thing without divine interference. I need to hold back a little of myself to keep safe.

Having a god barge into your head uninvited is a terrifying thought.

Although not as terrifying as slowly starving to death in an ancient anchorhold.

And once a god is possessing your body, how do you make him leave? How do you know he’s not still there all the time, directing you like a puppetmaster—

That’s it.

Why didn’t I think of it before?

It’s so simple. I leave the way I came in.

Whoever placed me in here couldn’t have used the windows – the size and the bars prevent that. So unless they dropped me through some hatch in the roof (unlikely, since I don’t have any broken bones), they must have removed some of the stones and pushed me through the wall.

The rough stones jab into my spine. I cast my mind back to when I first woke up in the cell. I heard a scraping noise – probably the stones being mortared into place. They probably used a quick-set mortar, but even so, I can’t have been in here for that long. I might be able to wiggle the stones free somehow or—

Holy shit. Dad’s toolkit.

I dig my hand into my pocket. As soon as I touch the case, my lungs fill with the familiar scent of my father – black coffee and fresh aftershave and prosthetic latex. I know it’s my brain tricking me into conjuring a scent memory, but in the gloom, I can almost believe it’s something more…that Dad’s here with me, looking out for his little girl.

Thank you, Daddy.

How did I not remember I had this with me? How did
whoever stuck me in here not think to check my pockets?

I click it open, my fingers sliding over the familiar shapes until I find what I need. A tiny screwdriver. I feel around on the walls until I touch mortar that crumbles in my fingers. It’s set, but not hard as stone like the rest of the room. I set the screwdriver into the mortar, draw back my hand, and hit—

“Yeow!”

I suck on my bruised finger. Ow ow ow. Who would’ve
thought trying to chisel an ancient rock in the dark is so damn difficult?

I take a smaller, more precise swing this time. The screwdriver slides into the mortar. Chunks fall around my feet. I cough as dust swirls around me. This is going to be a problem. The more mortar I chip away, the more dust I’ll create.

Keep going. If it becomes a problem, I’ll bust through the wooden shutters to let in fresh air.

I pound the screwdriver until my arm aches and my eyes
sting from the dust. I grab the stone and wiggle it, but it still won’t move. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, but I don’t know if it’s from the irritation or the sinking realization that it’s going to take hours of work to get these stones free, and my throat is dry and my head’s spinning and my limbs are starting to tremble from hunger. I fight back a coughing fit and move the screwdriver to the next stone. I bring my hand back. I swing, and the hammer hits the screwdriver, but the screwdriver doesn’t sink into the mortar, because the mortar is no longer there.

The entire brick wall crumbles away.

Dust encircles me in a cloud so thick and complete that even though light penetrates the wall, I can’t see what’s on the other side. Stones drop on my feet and scrape my legs.

I stagger back, trying to scream but unable to push sound
through my parched mouth, as a pair of monstrous hands reach through the dust and grab me.

Dark Academia
Book 1 - Pretty Girls Make Graves
Book 2 - Brutal Boys Cry Blood