Outcast (The Darkeningstone Series Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

sound had a rhythm. And it could only be one thing: footsteps. Cally swallowed hard. Again, she looked along the corridor. I should go . She took a step backward. And another. The handle on Seaton’s door rattled and then, very slowly, it began to turn. Cally gasped. She should never have come. Not on her own. What was she thinking? She stared at the door, transfixed. Another step backward and with a jolt, she came up against the wall. She cried out—she couldn’t help herself: “Bloody hell.”
    And at that moment, the door swung open.

Chapter 4

    2014
    TOM RAN A HAND OVER HIS FACE and slumped back in his plastic chair. “No,” he said. “Of course you wouldn’t hit him. Where would that get you?” He looked around the group of lads, every one of them lounging back on their chairs, every one of them trying so hard to show they didn’t give a damn. They all wore the same defiant smirk. Sometimes, I feel like banging their heads together , he thought. But that wasn’t why he was here. He glanced up at the CCTV camera in the corner, counted five blinks of the red light, and his anger faded away. For a moment he wondered if anyone up in the detention centre’s control room was watching, laughing at his efforts to get through to these lads. And that’s all they were, just lads. He couldn’t give up on them. He had to give them a chance; the same chance he’d had at that age. “Anybody?” he asked. “Anybody hazard a guess at exactly where that course of action could lead?”
    A couple of the lads fidgeted on their seats. One lad, Steve, stretched out in an exaggerated yawn, deliberately reaching his hand toward the lad sitting next to him; a heavyset youth named Jesse. Steve paused, savouring the moment, then flicked Jesse’s ear as hard as he could. In an instant, Jesse turned in his seat, his face a mask of cold hatred, his fist raised. “Try that again,” he snarled.
    Steve’s face lit up with a savage smile, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
    Tom glanced around the group. The rest of the lads weren’t slouching now. They sat bolt upright, on the edges of their seats, their shoulders back, their fists ready. A few of them were licking their lips. And every single one of them was thinking quickly—choosing sides and calculating the odds. Their minds were working faster now than they’d ever done in classrooms or exam halls. You could cut the tension in the air with a butterfly knife.
    Tom knew exactly what they were feeling: blood buzzing in their ears, pure adrenaline coursing through their bodies, snapping every dormant muscle into life, sizzling through every nerve. They felt fantastic. This was what they lived for. This was what they were good at.
    But Tom just sighed. He’d seen it all before. He sat up and raised his voice. “That’s enough,” he warned. “Any more of that and you know what happens—you don’t come next week.”
    Steve and Jesse scowled at each other. But they knew Tom was serious. He’d kick them out of the group in a heartbeat. And the group was a soft option. It was easy time. Time away from the drudgery, the monotonous routine, the confinement. Nobody wanted to miss out on that, and Tom knew it. It was the one thing that gave him power over them, the single chink in their armour. It wasn’t much, but it was something he could work on. And week by week, if he was lucky, he’d get a few of them to let their guards down long enough to face what they’d done.
    Jesse shook his head in disgust and sat back with his arms folded. Steve smiled and followed suit. The rest of the lads slouched back on their chairs, disappointed.
    “OK,” Tom said. “Back to the situation we were talking about. You’re out having a drink with your mates, and someone, a complete stranger, pushes past you and makes you spill your drink. Danny here said he would hit the stranger. Steve, perhaps you could tell the group where that response could lead.”
    Steve tilted his head and stared at Tom.