Raven (Legends Saga Book 2) by Stacey Rourke Read Free Book Online

you!” Anderson teased, grabbing another ball from the pile beside him and rolling it in his palm.
    Harold tossed the half of the bat he still held aside and accepted the new one offered to him by Douglas. “Not a hard feat, considering you throw like my sister!”
    “Do we want to speak of sisters? ” Anderson smirked, throwing the ball and catching it behind his back. “Because with tits as big as yours you could pass for one!” 
    “ From what I heard you know the curve of your own sister’s breast well.” Harold took a practice swing, a cat that ate the canary grin curling his thick lips. “Amusing you must be one of the poor girl’s chores.”
    Ignoring their banter, Douglas bent to retrieve the section of shattered bat that had fallen beside Harold’s feet. His bent posture prevented him from seeing Anderson, face flushed with aggravation, arch back and whip the ball with all his might. Oblivious to the warning cries of the horrified onlookers—Edgar’s own voice among them—Harold instinctively swung just as Douglas’s head rose at their shouts.
    Many ghoulish things would haunt Edgar Allen Poe all of his days. None more so than the gruesome, hollowed thunk of the bat colliding with Douglas’s temple, splitting his skull open wide. His head snapped to the side in an inhuman angle, a steady current crimson gore pulsating from the wound. The bat slipped from Harold’s guilty fingers, slowing time with each of its rotations before hitting the ground. The entire schoolyard seemed to suck in the same shocked breath. Moving as one body, every boy rose to their feet in fretful panic. The hue of Douglas’s skin drained chalk white, his eyes rolling back as he toppled to the ground, stiff as an axed tree. His jaw hit first, driving into the dirt with the unmistakable crunch of bone. Like an enraged mother aching at the pain of her young, life picked that moment to roar back to real time.
    Anderson dove to Douglas’s side, cradling his friend’s lulling head in his lap. Yanking off his blazer, he pressed it firmly against the spurting gash. “Harold, go get the school nurse! Now !”
    Harold stood rooted to that spot, gaping down at the expanding patch of blood soaked grass stained an inky black. Sweat dampened hair clung to his head as Harold shook his head in denial of the truth staring back at him with fixed eyes.
    “Harold? Go !” Anderson bellowed.
    Seeing how fear had immobilized the larger boy, two of the domino players darted inside to fetch help. A crowd gathered behind Anderson, each boy looking every second of their youth in the face of true travesty.
    It could have taken a minute or an eternity for the nurse and two teachers to come spilling out of the school’s double doors. They brought with them a flurry of activity : frantic footfalls, fumbling hands assessing wounds, exchanged looks of shock and knowing. Two fingers nestling into the crook of Douglas’s neck, just below his slack jawline. And the head shake—that fateful gesture that dashes all hope without a single word being uttered.
    Violent sobs shook Harold’s hefty frame as the nurse shook out Anderson’s blood soaked blazer and used it to cover Douglas’s face. Students huddled together, whispering their shock and awe of the unimaginable. All this noise and chaos faded to a dull buzz in the background of Edgar’s existence. Staring down at his hands, he pinched the tip of fabric on one gloved finger and peeled the leather away. Alabaster fingers wiggled back at him, daring him, taunting him. Whispering he could be a hero—with a simple touch.
    “ Dougie, come to dinner ,” a high-pitched voice mocked from beside him. “Every day at dinner time, as long as I can remember, that is how my mother called to me. The fact that I was on the precipice of manhood made no difference to her. Why would it? She saw me as nothing more than her precious baby boy who only stopped wetting his bed two short years ago.”
    Eyes bulging, bile