It was four in the morning when Violet and Hayden snuck back home, exhilarated and exhausted from hours of dancing and laughing and drinking with people whose names they'd never remember. As she entered the house carefully, invisible to the half-awake father in the living room, Violet mused over the events of the evening and how much lighter she felt.
The club, as she'd predicted, was too full and too loud. She and Hayden had barely gotten inside before the first hand made its way to her ass, and it wasn't by far the only one that night. But as she gulped down her first tequila shot, and Gangnam Style started to play – a song she actually knew how to dance to without looking like an enormous dork – it didn't matter much. For the first time since she could remember, the stares that fell on her weren't of judgement or mockery, just plain and simple amusement. Sometimes longing, even lust. They'd think it was alcohol, but it was the distance – just being away from that gloomy house, those gloomy people, excited her like few things were capable of. And she didn't mind it when they looked, or when their words were less than kind (and more than horny), or even when a very tall, very cute black boy with a pierced eyebrow pulled her in for a kiss.
She'd never been with strangers, but right now she'd begun to ask herself why. This was good. This was thrilling. This was nothing like Tate. Nope. Nothing at all. It wasn't reminding her of him or anything.
Violet, calm the fuck down.
For that one night, she belonged to nobody. She wasn't dead, she was timeless, limitless, endless – immortal. And with the touch of unfamiliar hands, sometimes combined with Hayden's well-known fingernails digging lightly into her hips as they danced together, she wasn't lost. The loud, almost deafening music filled the ever-growing emptiness in her chest, and made her head spin around, happily dizzy like she hadn't felt in years.
Naturally, when she snuck back into the living room with her friend, Violet thought she'd be resting under the uncomfortable weight of reality now. But neither one of the girls had much time to breathe before the red-headed twins appeared before them.
"Your boyfriend's finally lost it!" One of them complained, his hands on his waist. "He's down in the basement beating up a kid! A living kid!"
Violet groaned, barely casting a glance at Hayden before following the twins downstairs. Uncomfortable weight of reality indeed. And it all comes crushing down on me in the form of Tate Langdon.
The scene awaiting them in the basement was far less shocking than the twins had led them to believe. Compared to the violence that had already taken place in there, the wailing Asian boy getting slapped repeatedly across the face, his ankles and wrists tied and a gag in his mouth, was nothing.
"Tate, get the fuck off that kid."
As the blond boy looked up, his eyes were nothing short of savage. Someone who didn't know better might have said the deep brown orbs were detached, but Violet would prefer it if they were; there was so much raw emotion in them – emotion that she had helped let out, a whole new soul she'd uncovered and stripped bare – she couldn't hold his gaze for fear that it'd burn her down.
"You wouldn't want me to do that, Vi. No, you wouldn't…" His pale hand shook violently when he grabbed a handful of spiky black hair, in what they all could see was enormous restraint on his part. "I'm gonna tell her what you did, and oh, boy, are you gonna be sorry."
The two blonde girls exchanged a doubtful stare.
"Spit it. We don't have all night." Hayden glared at him, her careless smirk curling her lips to the side. "What could this scrawny little brat have done that's worse than your regular Tuesday?"
There's something about living in the same place for all eternity. You become very attached to it. Protective of it. Even if you don't like the family who lives there, you get territorial about them; if anyone's gonna fuck with them, it has to be you. No outsiders.
And so, when they heard the next five words, Violet and Hayden had two very different reactions for very different reasons.
"He raped the Littman boy. The bigger one with the wheelchair and the Japanese cartoons."
Violet was on him faster than they could blink. In a second she had knocked down the chair, John's head hitting the floor with a loud thump as she punched him square in the nose.
"What… The fuck… Did you think you were doing?" She screeched as blood began to trickle down the boy's face. "You little shit! I should have the exact fucking same done to you, except you did worse! You took advantage of- of a fucking disabled kid who was home alone for the first time!"
"He didn't do it alone."
All the heads in the basement turned to Tate, who seemed to shrink slightly under the stares, but continued to speak.
"If you take care of this, I'll go after the other one. He's dead, but he can suffer. And fuck, do I want him to…"
"Get your shit together, both of you!" Hayden yelled, not wasting a moment in prying Violet off of the fifteen-year-old bloody mess on the floor. "Tate, you're not going after any ghosts, it'd be a stupid waste of time. And Vi, are you crazy? If this little shit dies in the house, we're stuck with him forever. I'm all for slaying the son of a bitch, but we have like an hour until the Sun comes up and we have to find a place to put him so that Mr Littman doesn't get blamed for fucking murder!"
Violet growled, still fidgeting under Hayden's grasp, hissing obscenities at the boy who cried on the ground.
"Tate, you help me with the boy. Violet, you – shut up! – you go upstairs and see if Mr Littman is asleep. We'll bring him up. Grab the sharpest knife in the kitchen and meet us out back!"
And so she shoved the girl away, and Violet stumbled towards the stairs, still grunting angrily as she stomped up each step. The father of the injured boy was on the couch, mouth agape as his snores filled the living room.
From there it was a matter of less than five minutes before the three blonds were out of the house, Hayden and Tate carrying the boy in a bag they had pulled a huge, artificial Christmas tree out of to make room for him, the top open to allow him to breathe. He couldn't die yet. Just for safety, they made it to the beach with the kid mostly intact, the knife securely tucked under Violet's skirt as she followed the older two.
"Who shall do the honors, kids?" Hayden chuckled, dumping the bag on the ground and pulling it slightly down so that John's neck was fully exposed. The boy's eyes were wide and pleading, head shaking violently as he begged incoherent words through the gag. None of them minded.
"What's the plan here? Do we just leave him out in the open?"
"We dump him in the water after it's done, of course. Now, come on. We don't have all night. Violet?"
The fairer girl pulled the knife out of her skirt, but handed it straight to Hayden without even thinking. She wasn't a murderer, after all. She wanted that boy dead and done with, but to do it herself was a whole different deal.
But as she voiced this thought to the two other ghosts, her friend arched a brow at her, the expression in her face so amused it was hard to believe she was about to at least witness the murder of a teenager.
"Honey… If you're not a murderer, then what the fuck have you been doing to Tate for the past two years?"
"That's different! He- he asked me to! He deserves it!" She stuttered, outraged that her friend could think such a thing about her. Heart racing, she turned around to face the blond boy, needing a confirmation.
His eyes were on the ground, staring intently at the sand beneath them as his voice came out even shakier than usual.
"She's cleaning me."
"Well, that's some nice soap you've been using, Vi. Sorry to break it to you, but you're kind of just like him now. I mean, you did keep your promise of doing everything he did, right? But we're on a ticking clock here, and if the two of you are forgetting that this worthless little bag of dirt raped a twelve-year-old boy with legs that don't work, I might as well…"
Violet didn't hear anything beyond that point.
As the knife sliced through John's throat, a clean cut that severed his jugular and painted the wet sand with blood, she felt Hayden's words – or rather, the truth in them – doing the exact same thing on her. She'd thought she was purging Tate of the monster inside him, while in reality…
In reality, she'd just been turning into more and more of a monster herself.
That night, after she helped them roll the bag with the dead boy into the sea just in time to appear in the house seconds later, the first hints of dawn already up in the sky, there was only one thing Violet discovered about herself that could still be considered good.
She'd been a sneaky little shit while alive, hiding blades in the weirdest places. Including one she had completely forgotten, taped under the bed that now belonged to Ginger Littman.
She wasn't afraid to cut deep now that death was no longer a threat.
"Tate?"
It was a soft whisper, uttered from under a blanket. At first, Austin thought his call wouldn't be answered – that the man that had picked him up and helped him get clean was a one-time illusion. But after a few minutes, the weight in his bed shifted, and sure enough, the fair-haired teenager was sitting by his side, a silent question in his eyes.
"I can't sleep. I keep…" Austin swallowed hard, clutching his pillow tightly. "I keep thinking they'll come in through the window or some shit."
"They can't."
There was a tear of frustration rolling down the twelve-year-old's face as he retorted bitterly.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because they're dead. I did it." Tate replied matter-of-factly, shrugging as if he'd given the most obvious answer in the world.
Austin's heart started to thump in his chest. Dead. This man killed them. He could kill me too. Holy shit. But he helped. He helped! He's… Protecting me? Boy, is that fucked up or what…
"Are you a- a- what are you?"
He glanced up at Tate and saw his lips curve into a satisfied grin, arms crossing behind his head as he lay beside Austin without an invitation, ready to keep him company through the restless night.
"Some might say I'm a monster..."
A/N: So it's been months, right? But Purge is back on track, and yes, this chapter was weird and a bit shorter than the others, but I'm pretty satisfied with it. Are you? Please tell me in the comments!