Rebecca browsed her social media while they drove. She told London where she lived, but did not pay attention to where they were going.

She was making it very easy. London felt good about her. It would be a while before Rebecca realized they were going the wrong way.

“You guys did a great job,” said London, keeping up a normal conversation so as not to raise any red flags. “It was like a real malt shop.”

Rebecca looked up at her. Once again, she was affected by London's beauty. It seemed as though every time she looked at her, she was seeing her for the first time. She had shiny, neck-length black hair, a fit, long body with a rich, creamy tan from her practicing and exercising outdoors...but perhaps the most striking thing about her were her soul-piercing, amber colored eyes. It wasn't hard to see why she had ended up number one on the rankings. “Mmm. Thanks.”

“The malt tasted different than I expected. It wasn't like Whoppers at all.”

Rebecca giggled to herself. “Yeah. We heard that from a lot of people.”

“How much money did you make?”

“I'm not sure exactly. Caitlin was the one working the register.” She read the comments on a couple pictures she took and smiled. “I'm kind of surprised you came.”

“Why's that?”

“Well, you know. Us cheerleaders and you volleyball girls haven't exactly been buddy buddy lately.”

“Maybe I wanted to see what the competition was doing,” said London with a smirk. “But nah, we like you guys, really. I don't mind supporting your fundraiser. Now you have to come to the next one WE do, though.”

“Deal,” said Rebecca. She looked up. “Oh, uh, we passed my street.”

Damn. “I'm just taking the long way. My parents want me to pick up some food on the way home.”

With a shrug, Rebecca bought it. “Oh, alright.”

She didn't look up again until they were nearly out of town. “Hey, where are we going?” she asked. “There's no restaurants out this way.”

London kept her eyes on the road. “No...I guess there aren't,” she said in an emotionless voice.

“Then what's this about? Take me-” Rebecca stopped in mid-sentence. An understanding dawned on her. She looked at London. Slowly, London glanced at her, out of the corner of her eyes.

Rebecca quickly tried the door, but London locked it from her side a split second faster.

The cheerleader struggled with the lock, tried to get it open. London shook her head and turned her eyes back to the road. Rebecca really was making this easier than it had any right to be. If she had any sense, she'd try to attack London. Or at least not let herself be so easily distracted. In her panicked, single-minded focus on opening the door, Rebecca didn't even sense Sydney rising from the darkened backseat. She didn't notice Sydney's arms reaching forward around the headrest, didn't smell the chloroform until the rag was pressed over her mouth and nose.

…...

When Rebecca awoke, she was on her back. She was indoors, her wrists and ankles tied to metal rings set into the cold cement floor. The only light in the room was the soft yellow radiance of candles, flickering and moving, alive. When she looked around, she saw she was surrounded by them.

And there were people there. Robed figures. One was reading aloud from a Kindle, in an intoned, weighty voice, in a language Rebecca didn't recognize. Another was walking around the small room, lighting more candles. The rest were praying at a candlelit altar, of which a painting of a goat-headed figure was the centerpiece. All of them were volleyball girls.

Rebecca tried to scream, but her mouth was gagged.

She saw London stand up from the altar, bow her head to it, then put on a goat head mask. Sydney, a girl with long, sandy blonde hair, handed her a dagger with a wavy blade.

London walked to Rebecca. Rebecca thrashed and struggled, howling against the gag. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

The volleyball girl reading from the Kindle had begun a chant, and the rest of them joined her.

London raised the dagger high. The voices quickened. The flames of the candles pulsed and danced with the rhythm of their exhalations.

As Rebecca looked into the eyes of that goat mask, fear took her body's helm. She thrashed harder, trying desperately to make something, anything, give way. With her own watery eyes, she tried to voicelessly plead for mercy, to reach the human behind the mask.

She met a wall. In the end, she closed them in a kind of forfeit just before the dagger plunged through her heart.

….........

When Rebecca's cold, crow-pecked body was found, Caitlin was the first cheerleader to hear about it. Lara called her from work, as soon as she was finished at the crime scene.

Caitlin and Lindsey were walking to school together at the time. It was a cold, frigid morning, and by the time Caitlin hung up, she was even colder. She felt herself shivering despite her layers of clothes, and her voice was shaking when she related what happened.

They stopped there on the sidewalk, and Lindsey held her for a while as they cried.

At school, the first thing they did was find Alicia. She was by Chase's locker, and the two girls were talking cheerfully about how well the malt shop had went.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

A part of Alicia knew as soon as she saw their grim, distraught faces. When they told her, her eyes widened. It took her a second to process. And then she fell into Chase's arms, and was sobbing into her embrace.

Chase clutched her tight. Tighter than she ever had. A torrent of emotions hit her all at once, leaving her mind undecided whether to cry or not.

She felt shock. 'Did I understand that right? Did that really happen?'

She felt angry. 'Whoever did this will pay. They won't get away with this.'

She felt protective. 'They won't get Leash. I'm going to hold her like this forever.' She wished she could hold Caitlin and Lindsey like that too. And Victoria and Melissa C. and Brittany and Nicole and everyone on the squad. If she could just hold them all, squeeze them all this tight, nothing would ever hurt them. If she had been holding Rebecca like this, she'd still be alive. But she only had two arms.

And then she felt sad. She felt the loss. She realized Rebecca was gone. At that point...she did cry. Anguished, frustrated, growling, bestial sobs were muffled by Alicia's hair and shoulder.

…........

Alicia cancelled cheer practice that afternoon, and the cheerleaders held a candlelight vigil for her by the football field.

Once her initial rush of feelings subsided, the predominant emotion Chase felt was anger.

She held the candle in her hand and looked at the photos of Rebecca in silence. She listened to her squadmates memorialize her, listened to them singing.

Chase wanted to kill the person or people who had hurt Rebecca. She suddenly didn't care if it was normal for a civilized teenage girl to fight or murder. She wanted to do it. She needed to do it.

Maybe it was inaccurate to say she didn't care if it was normal. It was more like she knew it wasn't normal and was willing to throw that normalcy away. If it made her a monster to kill, she would become a monster. If the normalcy she'd adopted was just a facade, if she was a wolf in sheep's clothing...well, she'd suspected as much anyway. She would become a wolf. She would do what she had to to protect her friends...even if it meant she could no longer pretend she was their equal.

“Must catch kill,” Chase told Alicia, Caitlin and Lindsey that night, after the vigil ended. “Not let Reb die and do no things. Not let more cheer die.”

Alicia looked down at the candle in her hand, saying nothing. Melted wax gathered in thick white clumps on the paper hand protector.

“Hell, I think she's right,” said Lindsey determinedly. Lindsey clenched her fists. Frustrated tears clawed their way down her face. “It's personal now, damn it. We can't just let these sickos get away with this. It's Rebecca. It's Rebecca! I won't even be happy if they're arrested at this point. I want to take a baseball bat to them with my own fucking hands!”

Caitlin put a soothing hand on her shoulder. Lindsey glanced at her, took a breath to calm herself, then reached up and rested her hand on top of Caitlin's. Chase looked at Lindsey, surprised. She felt a little better about her own emotions. Maybe it was more normal to want this revenge than she thought.

“I, I understand, Chase,” said Alicia. “You have to do what you have to do.”

“You want revenge too, right?” asked Lindsey. “You want these guys to pay for what they did!”

“Of course I want them to pay,” said Alicia, looking at her. “I want whoever hurt Rebecca like that to pay dearly. I want them to hurt like she was hurt.” She looked at Chase. “But I don't want you to hurt too, Chase. I know you feel you have to shoulder this. But I hate that you do. I wish that...it didn't have to be like this.”

Chase did too. But she felt, in that moment, that it was foolish to think she could change. Even if she could...now wasn't the time. Something needed to be done, something potentially violent and horrible. And she was the only one who could do it.

Chase went straight to the scene of the crime, even though she and Alicia were expected home for dinner. Alicia texted her parents saying they were studying late with Caitlin. Caitlin and Lindsey told their mom and dad, respectively, something similar.

Rebecca had been discovered under an old bridge on forest service land. The creek that ran beneath it was dry at this time of year, and the pentagram was painted on frost covered rocks with dead leaves snagged in the cracks and gaps between them. The whole area was cordoned off with crime scene tape.

They drove most of the way there, up winding mountain roads. The night was deep away from town, a half moon handicapped by the thick trees. Alicia parked her car and they got out flashlights to walk the last half mile, just in case a guard was posted. It was a good thing they did. A police car was parked there, sure enough. A cop was sitting behind the wheel, sipping a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper.

When they got close and saw the cop car, they quickly switched off their flashlights and ducked into some bushes. “Crap,” said Caitlin, peeking out of them. The bridge was illuminated by the cop's headlights.

“Now what?” asked Lindsey.

Alicia looked uncertain. “We could wait for him to leave...”

But Chase wasn't in a waiting mood. She calmly stood up, pushed through the bushes, and walked toward the bridge.

“Chase!” hissed Alicia. “What are you doing?”

The cop glanced up at her. He set down his drink and paper and got out of his car.

“Evening,” he greeted her. There was sympathy in his voice. “Are you a friend of the victim?”

Chase said nothing and continued to walk.

“It's a tragedy what happened. A real tragedy,” said the cop with regret. “Not much to see here anymore I'm afraid, but you can stay if you-”

Chase pulled up the string of crime scene tape and crossed under it. “Hey!” said the cop suddenly. “Now hold on, kid! You can't go in there! That's-” Chase picked up a rock from the streambed and threw it. It collided solidly with the man's forehead. He fell backwards to the ground and didn't move.

Alicia, Caitlin and Lindsey ran out to check on the man. He was only unconscious.

“Ch-Chase, come on, you didn't need to do that!” said Caitlin.

But Chase wasn't listening. She was looking around the crime scene: in the stream bed, over and under the bridge, all around.

Sunnycrest was a small town, and its police department was perhaps not as forensically honed as the police in a big city would be, but they at least knew what they were doing. They had analyzed the crime scene thoroughly and meticulously, and any clear evidence around to find, they had no doubt noticed.

But they were not trackers. They were not hunters. There were things at that crime scene not even the best crime scene forensic scientist in the world would notice. Chase found them.

Chase looked at a smudge of dirt on a rock, then at the bark of a tree trunk which leaned over the creek. She didn't have a flashlight. She was used to night hunts.

Then, in a few jumps she was up the tree, crouching on a high branch. She looked down at the crime scene as a whole, got the full picture. Alicia, Caitlin and Lindsey ran forward in surprise, then stopped on top of the bridge and looked up at her.

Chase looked around at her surroundings. She slipped with ease, too much ease, into the mind of a hunter, a killer. She saw the approaches. The pathways a hunter would take to reach this spot. And then she put it all together.

She looked northeast.

“What is it, Chase? What do you see?” called Alicia.

Without responding, Chase fled, leaping from tree to tree into the forest, following some unseen trail. The trio followed her on the ground.

“I've never seen her like this,” said Lindsey, as they ran.

“Yeah, you have,” Caitlin worriedly replied. “When we first found her.”

Chase jumped tirelessly through the trees, dropping to the ground only occasionally to investigate something. Her three squadmates struggled to keep her in sight as they navigated the unkempt forest floor, climbing over fallen logs and pushing through branches. Most of the time, they had no idea what Chase was following, but occasionally there was evidence that even they could see: A broken branch, or a shoe impression in soft, loamy dirt.

And then, Chase stopped. She crouched on a tree branch like a jungle cat, looking down at something they could not see from where they were.

When they caught up with her, shoving their way past one more line of trees, they were surprised to come upon a cabin.