London drove Caitlin up to the cabin. Once she reached it, she texted her friends what had happened.

It took a while for them to escape class and make the long mountain drive. By the time they arrived, London had gotten nervous about Caitlin waking up again and had bound her arms and legs, just in case. Together, the six girls carried Caitlin into the cabin and lowered her down into the dark basement.

“Well, praise Satan you were at the library and spotted her,” said Venice, after London told them the whole story. They had successfully transferred the sleeping cheerleader to the basement. She lay motionless in the center of the pentagram, eyes closed. Venice was in the process of strapping down her arms.

“Yeah, pretty good timing!” agreed Brooklyn. She was strapping down Caitlin's legs. “If you were just a bit later or a bit earlier you would have missed her!”

With a long match, Paris walked around the room, giving life to its many candles. “Good timing? Really?” she asked worriedly. “The guys are going to be here in half an hour!”

“That's no big deal,” said Sydney. “We'll just lock the door. We could even put something over it. The guys won't even know this place has a basement.” Caitlin's top had ridden up slightly in her sleep. Sydney gave the exposed midriff a hungry look. “We can have our party, have our fun...then send the guys home and sacrifice our little guest tomorrow morning.”

“You couldn't wait?” Paris asked London. “You had to bring her here TONIGHT? This is too risky!”

“It would have been even riskier to let her go free,” said London. She looked down at Caitlin. “She's too smart.”

Denver smiled. “Oh! She's smart?” she asked with interest.

“Yeah.”

Denver glanced at Caitlin, then down at the floor. She asked, almost embarrassed, “Then, ya think that since she's smart...when we give her to Satan, he'll make ME smarter?”

“I don't see why not!” said Brooklyn. “But you're already plenty smart, Denver!”

“But I wanna be really smart...” said Denver. “You know. So I can do stuff other than bad stuff.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Science is my favorite class. I wanna be a scientist.”

“What kind of science?” asked Venice.

Denver stared at her, not understanding the question. Finally, she decided, “Nice science.”

“Sure, Denver,” smiled London. She put a hand on Denver's shoulder. “Satan can do that for you. Once we give this cheerleader to him, I'm sure he'll be very grateful to you. He can give you anything you want, as long as you're willing to give back.”

Denver just replied with an innocent smile. Paris glanced at them, then tried to suppress a sad, ill frown as she turned back to the candles.

..........

The first sense that returned to Caitlin was her hearing. She heard murmurs of female voices, gradually becoming more and more distinct.

“-her clothes?”

“There'll be time for that in the morning. We need to get ready for the guys. Besides, it might be a cold night. We don't want her to freeze to death before we can do a proper ritual.”

These voices served as a rope to hoist her up from the depths of unconsciousness. As she breached the surface, she opened her eyes.

She saw the candles, felt the straps on her wrists and ankles. Felt the cold floor beneath her. And she saw the volleyball girls in the dim light.

“All of you...” she mumbled.

Six heads turned toward her. “Oh! She's awake!” said Brooklyn brightly. She put her hand on Caitlin's forehead, brushed her hair out of her eyes. Caitlin felt a sting of pain, and realized her forehead must have been wounded. “How are you feeling? You took a nasty bump on the head.”

“All of you...” repeated Caitlin blearily. “You're the ones...” She couldn't believe it. Couldn't wrap her head around it.

When the confusion cleared, her first emotion was not anger. Was not fear. It was grief. A fresh wave of grief for the loss of Rebecca. “You killed Rebecca...” she said, feeling tears spring up in her eyes. “You killed her...” Now that she was here, where Rebecca had been...she empathized with Rebecca deeper than anyone else possibly could have. She felt her fear, her helplessness, her pain. “She didn't do anything to you...She didn't do anything to anyone...why would you do that to someone like that...?”

“It wasn't anything personal, Caitlin,” said London. Her voice was calm, but she could not make her eyes calm. They pierced the way they always did.

“Nope!” said Brooklyn. “In fact, I'd take it as a compliment! We sacrificed Rebecca because she was so pretty and nice and healthy and bright and had so much potential! We knew Lord Satan would love her!”

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Venice laughed. “Oh, but don't get us wrong. Sure, we didn't select you. Sure, the only reason YOU'RE here is because you got too close to the truth. But Satan will love you too. I know he will.”

Denver nodded. “Satan loves everybody, Caitlin. He doesn't care who you are or what you do. If you do bad stuff sometimes, he understands. All he asks for is devotion. They told me so.”

They didn't seem to know or suspect that there were others who knew about the cabin. That, at least, was a relief to Caitlin. “If you let me go I won't tell anyone. I promise.”

“Bitch, please. Don't insult our intelligence,” said Sydney. She ran a hand across Caitlin's stomach, then brought it to her neck. She fondled her throat lustfully for a moment, then took her hand away. She got out her Ice Breakers container, and started chopping up some coke. “The first thing you'll do is go running to your mom. You know as well as we do that we can't allow you to leave this cabin alive. You're going to die down here, sweetheart. Hope you accomplished everything you wanted to in life, because this is the end for you.”

“Syd, this isn't the time,” said London sternly.

“Just take a second,” Sydney replied eagerly. “I need a hit of this chick so bad.”

She dumped the cocaine onto Caitlin's throat. The candlelight glinted off the razor blade. Caitlin followed it with fearful eyes until it disappeared below her chin.

“Now hold still,” said Sydney. “Hold still, cuteness. This is kind of dangerous.”

Caitlin closed her teary eyes. She was trembling all over. Her every heartbeat was like a hammer blow of dread, pounding fear through her entire body.

A flash of hot pain. Caitlin cried out. “Aaahh!”

“Aw, you twitched. I told you not to,” said Sydney sympathetically. “It's not too deep though, don't worry, it's not your artery or whatever. Barely a scratch. Here, let me kiss it better.”

Sydney lowered her face to Caitlin's neck. Caitlin heard a snort, then felt Sydney's warm mouth on her wound, felt her tongue scooping up Caitlin's oozing blood. “Mmm,” Sydney moaned.

….........

“Damn, this cabin is really in the middle of nowhere, huh?” asked Henry.

Pine trees passed by the windows, silhouetted against the reds of a sunset they couldn't quite see. In a mountainous area like this, it got dark early. Even in the height of summer you only had the sun overhead maybe seven hours a day. The rest of the time, the tall, claustrophobic mountains and the evergreens on top of them which battled each other for sunlight kept the mountain road and the creek that ran alongside it shaded. Somewhere out of sight, however, the sun was setting. They could see the reds in the sky wafting outward from it through the blue, like blood from a body dumped in a swimming pool.

“That's an understatement,” said David. He turned them around a bend. The roads had some patches of snow on them, but not enough to worry about sliding. He had his winter tires on, anyway.

“You ever been here before, dude?” asked Wikman from the middle of the backseat. He leaned forward through the opening between the two front seats, his bulky arms resting on David's and Henry's shoulders. There was an open beer in his right hand.

“Why would I have?” asked David. “It's London's cabin.”

“How big ya think it is?” asked Wikman. “Big enough me 'an Sydney can get some privacy? If ya know what I'm sayin'?”

“I'm sure you'll figure something out,” sighed Henry.

David smiled. “You know, though...we're kinda outnumbered. Three of us and six of them.”

With a mischievous smirk, Wikman realized, “Bro, you know what that means. Two for each of us, am I right?”

“So that's what they're planning,” said David with a laugh.

“Dibs on the retard,” said Wikman.

Henry frowned. “She's not retarded.”

“Well, dibs on her anyway.”

“I get Venice. Call it my thing for blondes,” said David. “Guess that means you get London, Henry old boy. Lucky dog.”

Henry wasn't amused. “Come on, you guys. Knock it off.”

Wikman and David looked at each other. “Hey, come on, Henry ol' boy. Lighten up,” said Wikman. He handed him a beer. “And by that, I mean pre-drink.”

For a second, Henry just stared at the beer, annoyed. Then, he gave up. With an exasperated sigh, he took the beer and opened it with a crack. “Something tells me this is gonna be a long night.”

.........

Once the girls were done securing Caitlin to the slab and making sure she couldn't get loose, they covered her mouth with a towel and held it in place with some duct tape. It wouldn't do to have her screaming and hollering for help once the guys showed up. They then left her there in the basement, closing the hatch behind them and locking it. They didn't have a rug or anything like that to put over the door, so they stacked some firewood on it.

After that, they started getting things ready. Venice got some music going and Sydney busted out the alcohol. Denver had picked up some take and bake pizzas in town, and she put them in the oven.

Brooklyn made the beds.

“Deck the halls with boughs of holly, fa la la la la, la la la la!” she sang, tucking the corners of the fitted bottom sheet under the mattress.

“More Christmas carols,” said London, amused, leaning in the doorway.

Brooklyn stopped and smiled. “Sorry. I'm just excited David's coming...” She looked at the bed she was making. “It's okay, right?”

London laughed. “Are you kidding? Go nuts. Anything you can do to keep the guys preoccupied with something other than the basement is fine with me.”

When she walked out to the living room, she spotted Paris drinking alone. The girl was standing with her neck craned, looking up at the mounted elk head. A scared expression was on her face, her knuckles white around her red solo cup.

“Paris?” asked London, walking over to her. She smiled and put a hand on the girl's shoulder. The music from the stereo hid her voice from Sydney, who was dancing, high as a kite, on the other side of the room. “You okay?”

Paris looked at her. “I'm...Yeah, I'm...” She bit her lip.

“You don't want to kill her, do you?” asked London.

“N-no!” Paris cried nervously. “I'm in! I'm in!”

London laughed. “Paris, it's okay. Look, you're still human. It's okay for you to feel a little guilty. You feel guilty, huh?”

“...Yeah.”

“Well, Paris, you can't help it. That sense of morality, that Thou Shalt Not Kill that your mind tells you to follow, that was put there by the Christian society you were raised in.”

“Yeah, I know that, but...”

“But it's hard. I know. It's hard to throw off the shackles of oppression.” London hugged her. “Look at it this way. You don't want to go to jail, do you?”

“No.”

“You don't want US to go to jail, do you?”

“No.”

“Then we have to kill her,” said London. “We have to kill her, but we can do the best thing for her. And that is to give her to Satan, to ensure that her soul will be treasured and protected. She'll be a valuable possession to him. I know she will.”

Paris looked down at her drink uncertainly. She tried to understand her feelings. She was spared from having to find an answer by the sound of an engine outside and the chipper honking of a car horn.