Kill For You
Hauling me out of the brush, the four Reapers continued taunting me while dragging me up to the roadside. Every last one of them cackled and snickered as they informed me that all my so-called “friends” had been put down like the miserable mutts they were.
Keep laughing.
The SUVs barreled towards us, only slowing down once the drivers caught sight of the men around me waving their flashlights. Hoots and hollers greeted us as the Reapers inside the vehicles saw what their comrades had in tow, everyone but Nick. He paled.
Thankfully, nobody else appeared to have noticed, both now and his help in my escape, because they just cheered as my limp body was dragged back toward the backseat where he sat. Nick got out and had to make a conscious effort not to help me as I stumbled to climb inside with my bound hands. The skin around my wrists was a sickly red, the flesh blistering over as every movement chafed it more and more.
My evident pain appeared to please the bloody-nosed Reaper seated on the other side of the backseat. His nose hadn’t been perfect to start with, but now, it was bent at an ugly angle, all thanks to my trusty elbow.
“Better get use to those,” he snickered, grabbing my cuffs and yanking me inside. The silver bit into my burning flesh with such pressure, I couldn’t hide the pain as I cried out.
Nick climbed in after me, and I collapsed my exhausted, injured frame against him.
“Awww, I think she likes you,” laughed someone from the front seat. I didn’t bother seeing who, letting my eyes sink shut. “Considering the dose Bill hit her up with, she’ll be as harmful as a declawed kitten.”
“You drugged her?” Nick couldn’t mask the anxiety in his voice.
“Relax, it wasn’t Syrfian. Okay? It’s just some Diazepam.”
“A shit-ton of it, but yeah,” laughed another voice.
The cars started on down the road, and I tried not to grimace at the cuffs biting deeper into my wrists. I just kept my eyes shut and my body slack like the good little drugged-up Blood Whore that I was…supposed to be. The engine revved as the cars picked up speed. We drove for a couple minutes with my fellow passengers exchanging in overly embellished retellings of the fight back at the abandoned house. The very same men who’d run inside screaming were now declaring themselves victors as they proclaimed to have taken out each of the Hounds. By their accounts, there would’ve needed to be an army of wolves to even come close to matching their imaginary body count. Still, Nick didn’t say anything.
The subtle warmth lingering in my chest roared to life, and it took everything in me not to laugh.
“Think that’s cute?” demanded Bloody Nose beside me, noting the evident smile I couldn’t hold back. “Something tells me you won’t find any of it to be amusing when Reynolds gets his hands on you.” His fingers grazed down my arm as he leaned into me, his breath warming my ear. “And just wait till I get my turn.”
The menace in his voice had provoked something deep within me, an equal cruelty. A low, vicious laugh eased from my throat. The pleasure in it sounded so foreign to my ears. Monstrous even. I finally opened my eyes and turned to him, biting my lip. My teasing smile only infuriated him more as he continued his taunts, but I didn’t so much as say a word.
“Leave her be, Brett. The bitch is crazy,” remarked the driver.
“Is that it?” Bloody Nose sneered. I merely snickered. “You got something to say?”
It was my turn to lean into him as I whispered softly, each word as smooth and lovely as silk. “I’m talking to a dead man.”
The grip on his rifle tightened as his eyes snapped down to my hands, expecting to see me holding some kind of concealed weapon. Yet, I held nothing, and not a single rune was lit. He scoffed, the tension in his shoulders easing for just a split second before a thunderous roar pummeled in front of us. Everyone’s attention shot forward, watching the speeding SUV ahead of us suddenly swerve sideways, tires squealing as rubber burned into the pavement. Between the momentum and the unnatural angle, the vehicle spun and all-out flipped. Rolling again and again into the oncoming lane, it finally crashed to a halt, landing upside down as it fell into the ditch.
Everyone in our car was suddenly thrown forward like crash test dummies as the vehicle squealed to a stop. With rifles and handguns at the ready, the men surveyed the abandoned rural road. The air rippled ever so slightly, making the hairs stand up on my arm. I knew that feeling all too well.
“Get us out of here!” demanded Bloody Nose.
The driver continued pushing the gas pedal to the floor, but the wheels just spun uselessly against the asphalt, not carrying the car an inch. Smoke poured across the front hood as the tires were clearly burning out from the full-throttle rev on the engine. And yet, we didn’t move. “I can’t!”
Metal shrieked as something carved alongside the passenger doors. Bloody Nose and the man up front both yelled before an annihilating mass slammed into the side of the SUV. The vehicle rocked, the impact shattering the windows. Guttural snarls emitted from the darkness, commanding everyone’s attention. With their guns primed, the aim shifting aimlessly around the shadows, not a single Reaper paid mind to the dark figure up ahead that just so happened to be sauntering down the street right for us.
Those startling pale blue eyes gleamed in the headlights even before the platinum dyed hair was discernible. A single gunshot went off, presumably from someone trapped in the rolled over SUV. But Blaine didn’t stop. At last, everyone’s attention cut to him, but they couldn’t seem to discern where to aim: the stranger or the hidden Hounds lingering in the darkness. Curses came from the overturned car, and several figures staggered up from the ditch, one hurling something right for the Dark Mage.
Blaine simply raised a hand and waved it towards the offender. The object froze midair, only to switch paths and catapult right back at the Reaper. The oval device dropped into the ditch beside the SUV.
“Grenade!” one of the men screamed.
The bloodied crew frantically leapt away as the device detonated. The blast sent the SUV’s backend bucking up as the vehicle ignited with a blast wave that knocked the men to the pavement, their hands instinctively shielding over their heads for protection as flaming metal and scraps rained down on them. If they still had any gusto to attempt another strike against him, they weren’t given the window. A black mass of fur emerged from the forest. The Hound circled around the fallen men steadily, like a Great White Shark preparing to make a surface charge at the first man who so much as moved.
Mr. Flannel upfront in our own SUV shot off a few rounds into the darkness beside us, praying to hit something before he reached out the shattered window and primed his aim towards Blaine. Before he could even center his shot, another black mass slammed into the passenger side door again. This time, the Hound’s strike was intended for more than a scare. One second, Flannel was strapped in the front seat. The next, his body was snatched right out of the window, his feet kicking helplessly as the Hound dragged him into the darkness.
A hail of gunfire sounded all around me as large masses surrounded the vehicle. Nick grabbed hold of me and pulled me down to the floor, using his body to shield me from the chaos. The SUV jostled and thrashed and rocked. Screams cut through the air before everything suddenly went quiet. Nick and I both stole a look up around us, finding the inside of the cabin empty. Bloody Nose and the driver were gone.
“You okay?” he whispered, slowly easing himself back onto the seat.
I nodded. “Thank—” The unmistakable click turned my stomach as I looked up to find him deathly still, his hands raised in the air. I pulled myself off the floor to discover the barrel of a gun pressed into his temple from someone outside. The unrepressed intensity in Blaine’s eyes set my blood cold. His entire arm was ablaze with runes, but he wasn’t bothering to use them. This was personal. He wanted the damage—the kill—to come from his own hands. “Don’t.”
I wasn’t sure if I said the word out loud or only thought it, but he flinched, his chest heaving furiously as he barely managed to rein in his wrath.
“Throw your weapons outside,” he growled to the Reaper. “Slowly.”
Nick did as commanded, reaching inside his jacket and lobbing the guns from his dual shoulder holster onto the pavement.
“The other one,” Blaine snarled.
The Reaper grimaced, removing the concealed pistol strapped around his ankle as well.
Blaine stepped back, his own gun still fixed on Nick, as he reached inside the shattered window and unlatched the door. He motioned Nick out, and I followed in suit, but the heaviness in my legs sent my knees buckling under my weight. The two managed to catch me before I ate a mouthful of asphalt. Blaine’s eyes went to the silver cuffs—and the scorched skin covering my wrists. He pried me away from Nick, the barrel of the gun centering between the Reaper’s eyes.
“He helped save me,” I said gently, resting my bound hands on his forearm.
To Nick’s relief—and my own—the Mage lowered the gun under my hold.
Headlights blinded me as I turned to the rumbling and crackling that made its way towards us. A familiar black Escalade rolled up with a familiar ruffian positioned behind the wheel. Only, the vehicle wasn’t looking so resplendent. The front bumper of Val’s beaming new Cadillac was dragging along the pavement, the grill crinkled and cracked.
“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” Val jeered to his brother, thumbing the cut on his forehead. “Romeo, here, insists on driving, only to pass out behind the wheel—going 90 miles an hour, mind you. Sent us flying off into a damn cornfield.”
The air left my lungs as I peered up at Blaine. He hadn’t just passed out. And by the knowing look he returned, he knew it, too.
Val took a better look at the current spectacle. The burning van, the bloodied men, the Hounds returning to the road with crimson tarnishing their startling white teeth; all of it. “And then you run off to have all the fun without me, while I’m stuck hauling my poor baby out of Farmer Ted’s field? What a jip.”
Ignoring the remark, Blaine turned his attention back to the Reaper. “Where are the keys?” It wasn’t so much of a question as it was a command, lifting my burning wrists.
“I don’t have ’em. Brett… the one who put ’em on… your Hounds ran off with him,” Nick muttered.
“Can I at least take him out?” remarked Val mischievously, motioning to the Reaper.
“Only if I get to take you out next,” I rebuked, cutting him a warning glare.
He only chuckled.
Blaine let out an ear-aching whistle, apparently summoning one of the nearby Hounds. He said something to it in Latin, and the massive wolf bounded into the woods.
“There’s another outfit on its way,” Nick said lowly, as if he were at risk of the other men still lying on the ground up ahead overhearing. “Twenty Reapers, strong. And they’re just as eager to get their hands on the two of you. Wherever you’re heading, I’d suggest staying off any of the main roads. They’ve hacked into the traffic cameras, so they have eyes on all highways, interstates, and major intersections.”
Blaine just eyed him suspiciously.
“Thank you,” I offered in turn.
Nick nodded, recoiling as the gigantic wolf returned to the roadside with metal dangling between its bloodied lips. The Hound dropped it, and I shared in the Reaper’s sentiment, realizing what it was. Keys. Bloody keys.
Nick crouched down to retrieve them, but the Hound merely snarled at him. “Unless you want to burn yourselves as well, let me help.”
Blaine nodded, and the Hound retracted in allowance.
The Reaper grabbed the set, sifting through the collection before he singled out a particular key. It was tiny, a simple metallic post with a circular butt. I cringed as he was forced to grab the cuffs bound around my wrists to find the lock. Relief was immediate as the silver unclasped.
The Hound on Blaine’s other side snarled, its gaze homed in on something in the distance the rest of us couldn’t see.
“Time to move, people,” called out Val.
With an arm secured around me, Blaine turned to guide me over to the Cadillac when Nick’s hand suddenly clasped around mine.
“Good luck,” he whispered, releasing his hold slowly enough that I could feel the crinkled slip of paper now pressed into my palm. I nodded, balling it up just in time before he let go.
Blaine assisted me into the backseat of the Cadillac, his skin sickly pale as he struggled to haul himself up in after me. I watched Nick’s frame illuminate in the red glow of the taillights as Val drove us away, giving him a parting wave before the Reaper disappeared into the night.