Rich Kids Don't Die | Featured

Chapter Twenty Six

As Leah attempted to comprehend the enormity of the mess they'd just gotten themselves into, her eyes swept across her surroundings, her bones capturing the steely fragments of fear in the air. Pinpricks of pure horror crept up her spine, a blood-curdling sense of stillness hanging in the dark sky. Like impending doom crawling towards them, an eerie thundering of footsteps sounded from behind.

Ever so gentle, the sensation of digging fingernails singed her skin as she was dragged further into the garden. An alarmed scream escaped her lips. Beside her, Violet too became encompassed within the iron grip of the Golden Sniper's guards. Only a flash of Katya's crimson hair could be caught in Leah's peripheral vision, and her urgent thrashing against the masked figure holding her.

Relentless, Katya reached to kick the man in the abdomen. He tumbled backward. A haunting tune of deadly spells trickled from her now bleeding lips, and tendrils of black smoke surrounded his hunched figure.

Leah did not fail to notice Katya's escape from the man's hold. Eager to do the same, she reached for the weapon stuffed into her boot. Violet followed suit, and in the same fleeting moment, they managed to plunge their glinting knives into the black armor of their hooded captors. The two men flung back onto the grass.

The light from Katya's magic was getting brighter now. It was rising into the sky like an entangled web of mingled hope and desperation, a symbol of power against her enemies. She began to observe the product of her strength, whilst shrouded in momentary weakness.

Then, the girls glanced at each other. A sense of determination flooded their veins, thudding inside their souls so violently, so robustly... before they could control what was happening, waves of their colliding magic washed over their surroundings. Literal bouts of turquoise light flooding the premises. Occasional, small explosions, each with a sharply distinct pop!

Violet inhaled sharply, craning her head to catch sight of the rippling pulsation they'd all just released. The knife clenched in her fingers plunged out of the man's skin with a sickening squelch as he fell to the ground with a thud.

Then, with the distant lights still flashing dangerously in her vision, her gaze flitted to the side of the building. On the red brick walls was a small, hunched shadow. The flowing stream of magic they'd exerted now began to travel steadily in that very direction. The light shone on the wall. Right there, with those same curled brown locks and their purple bag of coins... the stolen kids.

Violet could not control what happened next. The man's blood still dripping from her nimble fingers, the pungent sight of him sprawled on the blackened grass. A shoulder wound couldn't have killed him, but the bile still began to rise in her throat. It was all too much. Too much.

Thundering footsteps echoed in her mind, her flurry of thoughts indecipherable against the thick, gray haze of established panic and exhaustion. Violet was drained. Her consciousness escaped her, and soon she too was sprawled on the ground in a state of slumber. She'd fainted.

No one knew when she would awaken. Any average mortal may even have thought that she might've been dead. She certainly looked dead.

"Great," Leah said, her piercing eyes flitting towards Violet's body. "Now what?"

The two remaining girls were knocked out minutes afterward.

Katya was a hard light to extinguish... If Violet and Leah were still awake, maybe the girls could've won. But Katya was vastly outnumbered.

The perpetrators, all with wicked grins and honey-colored skin, smirked down at their newest hostages. Their amber eyes glowed in the darkness, swimming with glee. A cluster of boys streaked with golden hair, black hoods concealing their sharp features. Soon, one of them began to laugh.