The Disciples: A Dark Romance Collection

by Sweet, Izzy

  Fucking feels damn good.

  Andrew’s not around though, so I’m guessing he’s outside securing the perimeter.

  “Almost,” I growl out.

  “Andrew’s right, though. You’re going to need to be stitched up. You’re bleeding from your shoulder pretty good,” Johnathan says, then I hear his boots walking away from the room.

  Turning back to Meghan, I walk over to her, and the feelings of murderous rage start to slowly fill me again as I take in her small body bound to the medical table.

  I want so badly to go back to beating Alexei, but having a dead body slumped over her chest is enough of a deterrent to hold me back for the moment.

  “You okay, baby?” I ask as I shove the corpse away from her with one hand and push the sweaty hair away from her eyes.

  “If you untie me, I will be,” she tells me in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Sorry. Kinda got carried away over there,” I say as I begin to unfasten all the straps holding her down.

  “I can’t believe you killed him with your bare hands like that,” she whispers to me, her eyes widening with the realization of what she watched me do to a man.

  Her eyes need to see what I’ll do to any man that dares to touch her.

  “He’s not dead,” I say with a shrug. “I figured I’d give you the choice of ending that piece of shit’s life.”

  22

  Meghan

  Once Gabriel has unfastened all the leather straps holding me down, he lifts me up into his arms. The bloody sheet covering me begins to slip down my legs as his massive biceps wrap around me in a crushing hug.

  But I don’t care.

  After everything that’s happened, after watching what he did to Alexei, the need to be held by him, to feel him, to know he’s real, is all that matters right now.

  Sitting down on the edge of the medical bed, he pulls me onto his lap, and I press myself against his chest while something inside me cracks. The strength I’ve been holding onto crumbles away at his touch.

  If I could somehow burrow myself inside him and hide for the rest of eternity, I would.

  “It’s alright. Everything is fine now, baby girl,” he murmurs as I start to shake uncontrollably. “I’ve got you.”

  I toss my head back and forth in disagreement, tears bursting from my eyes. It’s not alright, and everything isn’t fine now.

  Cocooned in Gabriel’s warmth, the shock, the adrenaline rush, the focus on survival is gone, and all that’s left is the devastation of what’s been done.

  I almost lost everything.

  My life…

  The possibility of a life growing inside me…

  My father… oh god, my father.

  Gabriel kisses the top of my head, and I just can’t stop crying. I don’t think I’ve ever cried this hard before in my life. But there’s so much pain inside me, so much pain and anger, I can’t keep it locked inside.

  It’s not until I start to squeeze Gabriel back and sense him stiffening, that I can get the slightest grip on my emotions.

  “You’re hurt,” I say accusingly, and force myself to pull away.

  “It’s just a scratch,” Gabriel says gruffly and tries to squeeze me back into the hug.

  Bullshit, I think as I wiggle out of his grasp.

  If he’s showing any sign of being in pain, it must be bad.

  “It’s nothing,” Gabriel frowns down at me as I begin to run my hands all over him, searching for the injury.

  I ignore him, finding purpose in taking care of him. My tears dry up as I explore his chest, sliding my palms over his tactical vest. Finding nothing, I cover every inch of his arms. His knuckles are a bit busted up from punching the shit out of Alexei, but otherwise he seems okay.

  Once I reach his shoulders, however, I catch him sucking in a sharp breath.

  Scowling, I position myself until I’m kneeling on his lap so I can see what the hell is going on with his shoulders.

  “Holy fuck,” I growl and yank my fingers back when they run over something sharp. “You have a chunk of metal stuck in your shoulder!”

  Being more careful this time, I gently probe at the big chunk of metal embedded in Gabriel’s flesh just on the edge of his tactical vest.

  “Doesn’t hurt at all,” Gabriel says with a slow smile curving along his mouth. “In fact, I feel better already.”

  “What?” I blink up at him in confusion, then I follow his gaze downward.

  “Oh my god, are you seriously checking me out right now?” I ask as he stares with absolutely no shame at my naked chest.

  Gabriel’s smile only grows wider.

  I’d hit him, but knowing him, he’d probably like it, so I just cross my arms over my breasts. “You need to get that looked at.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel grumbles and once again tries to pull me back in for a hug, but I shrug him off.

  Narrowing my tired eyes at him, I say firmly, “I’m serious.”

  Smile fading, he sighs. “I’m sure Andrew will be around soon.”

  As if saying his name summoned him, Andrew begins to stroll into the room, saying, “You rang?”

  But then he takes one look at me and stops dead in his tracks. “Oh shit.”

  His eyes immediately drop to the ground and he starts to back out of the room.

  “Fuck off,” Gabriel growls, yanking me into his hold and turning to shield me from the door.

  “What seems to be the problem…” I hear another voice drawl out as my face is shoved into Gabriel’s neck. “Oh, I see.”

  I try to push away from Gabriel to see what’s going on, but his arms are so tight with tension it’s impossible to break his hold.

  “Here Gabriel, this should cover your wife.”

  Gabriel grunts as he twists back around only enough to grab whatever was offered to him. Twisting back around, he drapes a dark suit jacket over my shoulders and then clutches the front tight against my chest.

  “May we enter now?” the smooth voice drawls out again, and my brain finally makes the connection of who it belongs to.

  Gabriel’s boss, Lucifer.

  “Yeah,” Gabriel says reluctantly, as if he’d rather they not.

  “Ah… I see you’ve made quite the mess of Alexei,” Lucifer says as he strolls into the room, his eyes taking in the scene with a keen interest.

  “He deserves worse,” Gabriel spits out and his arm tenses around me.

  “Agreed,” Lucifer smirks.

  Something about that smirk of his puts me on edge, and I watch him warily as he walks up to Alexei’s prone body.

  The man is just too beautiful, too surreal, and it fucks with my head. He looks completely out of place in this gory mess, and yet at the same time, somehow he seems to fit right in…

  It doesn’t make any fucking sense.

  Lucifer nudges Alexei’s side with the toe of his expensive leather shoe. “Pity, though, that you couldn’t keep him alive long enough for us to get some information out of him.”

  Gabriel grins that maniacal grin of his. “He’s not dead yet.”

  Lucifer glances back at him in surprise.

  I curl up against Gabriel, wishing that Alexei was dead and all this shit was over with.

  “He’s Meghan’s,” Gabriel says firmly, and my hands clutch at his shirt.

  “Well, I guess the poor bastard couldn’t give us anything useful given the state of his jaw, or rather the lack thereof, anyway,” Lucifer says, inclining his head.

  Then he turns back to Alexei and gives him another, though harder, nudge with his toe.

  Alexei lets out a weak, bubbling moan and Lucifer snickers.

  “Can I enter now?” Andrew asks from the hallway as I bury my face into Gabriel’s chest.

  “Yes, Andrew, please do,” Lucifer answers.

  I sense someone approaching, and after the ordeal I’ve gone through, my body immediately stiffens with apprehension.

  A bag drops on the table and I nearly jump out of Gabriel’s lap.<
br />
  Gabriel lets out a warning growl. “Watch it.”

  “Sorry,” Andrew says, sounding sincere, and I force myself to relax a bit.

  My anxiety only seems to be putting Gabriel on edge.

  “Let’s see what we have here…” Andrew murmurs thoughtfully.

  Gabriel grunts in pain and I decide to finally lean back to see what’s going on.

  “It’s not as bad as I thought,” Andrew says as he examines Gabriel’s right shoulder, “though it’s nasty enough that I’ll have to stitch you up right here.”

  “How long do you think it will take?” Lucifer asks.

  Bending down and rummaging through his bag, Andrew answers, “Only a few minutes.”

  “Good,” Lucifer says. “Simon has given us a fifteen-minute window to depart.”

  “I should be done in time,” Andrew says in acknowledgement, and straightens with a pair of pliers in his hand.

  My stomach clenches at the sight of the pliers and I look away, only for my gaze to fall once again on Alexei’s mangled and broken body.

  Fifteen minutes… Sometime within the next fifteen minutes Gabriel is going to expect me to kill him.

  And I seriously don’t know how I feel about it. I can’t even begin to figure it out with Gabriel hurting.

  “This is probably going to fucking hurt,” Andrew warns Gabriel.

  “Just get it fucking over with,” Gabriel says impatiently through clenched teeth.

  “Alright then,” Andrew chuckles.

  Gabriel’s hand finds mine, his fingers squeezing gently around my fingers. I squeeze back, offering him some comfort, though I doubt he needs it.

  “Has anyone ever told you you’re a big motherfucker?” Andrew asks casually, as if he’s trying to make small talk.

  “Yeah, a time or two…” Gabriel starts to chuckle, but then the chuckle turns into a groan.

  Alarmed, I tear my gaze away from Alexei to look at him.

  There’s this strange expression on his face, a weird mixture of pain and euphoria.

  “Shit,” Andrew grunts and then he goes stumbling back as he yanks the chunk of metal free from Gabriel’s shoulder.

  “Fuck yeah,” Gabriel nearly roars.

  There’s a moment of quiet following the roar, and I think we’re all rather stunned by Gabriel’s reaction.

  Then Lucifer begins to chuckle.

  “You’re a weird fucker,” Andrew mutters and shakes his head.

  With the chunk of bloody metal still clenched between the pliers, Andrew pulls a plastic baggy out of his medical bag and drops it in.

  “That felt fucking good,” Gabriel groans and rolls his shoulders. “Like a fucking rotten tooth getting pulled out.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it,” Andrew says as he drops the baggy into his bag and wipes off the pliers.

  “Simon is now impatiently informing me that we only have thirteen minutes,” Lucifer says.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gabriel grumbles, his good mood vanishing. “Tell that fucker we’ll be out of here before he can get it up for his wife.”

  “I’d rather not,” Lucifer chuckles.

  “It will only take me a couple of minutes to staple Gabriel up,” Andrew says and pulls a plastic device and spray bottle from his medical bag.

  Gabriel frowns and glances over at Andrew. “Staples? What the fuck? I thought you said you were stitching me up.”

  “Yeah, well, the wound is bigger than I originally thought, and this will get us out of here quicker,” Andrew says with a shrug.

  “Fuck, let’s just get this over with,” Gabriel says with resignation and then he looks down at Alexei with a look of disgust. “Every second that cocksucker gets to take a breath is a second he doesn’t deserve.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s suffering plenty,” Lucifer says with a hint of amusement.

  And I find myself saying, “He’ll never suffer enough.”

  The room goes quiet for a moment.

  And then the amusement fades from Lucifer’s face and he nods his head at me. “Indeed.”

  Gabriel takes one look at me, at my face, and says, “Fuck this shit, let’s get this done.”

  “You can’t stop now, you’ll fucking bleed out,” Andrew protests as Gabriel stands up from the medical bed, holding me in his arms.

  “Just slap another fucking maxi pad on it,” Gabriel growls as he gently sets me down on my feet.

  Cursing and muttering under his breath, Andrew drops the bottle and plastic device in his bag then pulls out a white bandage.

  “Here you go,” Andrew says as he literally slaps the bandage over Gabriel’s wound. “But if you bleed out, it’s your own damn fault, you big dumb fuck.”

  “Fucking noted,” Gabriel smirks and then he starts to tug me over to where Alexei is laying.

  Tugging on his hand, I look up at him with concern. “Gabriel…”

  The thought of him dying because he’d rather help me with this is just too terrible to fathom.

  “It’s fine, baby,” he says, and gives my hand a reassuring squeeze.

  I glance over my shoulder at Andrew.

  Seeing my worry, Andrew nods. “He won’t die. That bandage gives him a couple of hours.”

  Deciding to trust Andrew, I sigh and turn my attention back to the man that’s caused me so much heartache and pain. The man who killed my mother…

  The man who forced me to play a part in killing my father.

  I start to stumble, nearly tripping and falling, as flashes of my father’s brains hitting the car pulse through my head.

  The sound he made as he slid down the side of the car still rings in my ears.

  Grip tightening around my hand, Gabriel keeps me upright, but it reminds me too much of when Alexei forced me to pull that trigger.

  Even now my fingers throb with the ache.

  Lucifer steps out of the way respectfully, and I glance down, taking in the full carnage of what Gabriel did.

  For once, Alexei’s outside matches his inside. He’s so ugly and mangled, so fucked up and broken, I don’t even know how he’s still breathing.

  “How do you want to do this?” Gabriel asks.

  Hysterical laughter wants to bubble up in my throat, but I swallow it back down.

  “What are my options?” I ask him instead, and to anyone on the outside looking in, it might look like we’re casually discussing something, like what to have for dinner, instead of how we should kill this piece of shit.

  Gabriel’s lips quirk with amusement. “We’ve got guns and explosives.”

  I nod my head, figuring as much.

  Such a death seems too easy for him, though. At this point, it would simply be a mercy.

  There’s only one way to go that’s fitting for this asshole, I realize.

  My throat tries to close up as I ask, “What about fire?”

  Gabriel’s eyes gleam and that quirk of his lips stretches into a full grin. “We can do fire.”

  As Gabriel turns to Andrew and starts barking orders for the things we need, I remember the reports I read about my mother’s death. My father tried to keep them from me, but I had to know what happened.

  According to witnesses, she didn’t die immediately. The explosive itself didn’t cause her death.

  It was the fire.

  Good Samaritans heard her screams and attempted to help her, but the car was encased in flames and no one could reach her.

  She suffered a terrible, agonizing death.

  And Alexei deserves no less.

  My need for justice will accept no less.

  I can’t walk away from this, I can’t go on, until I know he’s paid a portion of the penance for all the shit he’s done.

  “Ten minutes,” Lucifer says. “And if we’re going to be burning him alive, Simon wants us to remove his thumbs first.”

  “Fuck… what’s up with the thumbs, man?” James asks as he strolls into the room with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

  “Someone
hand me a knife,” Gabriel demands.

  Lucifer chuckles. “Simon has his reasons.”

  “Probably wants to stick them up his ass,” Gabriel smirks as Andrew walks over with a knife and a big bottle of liquid.

  Andrew snaps open the black tactical knife he’s holding and hands it over to Gabriel.

  Wasting no time, Gabriel drops down and grabs Alexei’s hand.

  Alexei releases a weak, gurgling groan, but otherwise doesn’t put up a fight as Gabriel works at sawing off his thumb.

  I scowl down at him, not liking his lack of reaction. I want him to feel what’s happening to him, and I want it to fucking hurt.

  I want him to experience a moment of my agony.

  “Here’s one, thumb boy,” Gabriel says and tosses the thumb he just sawed off to James.

  “Fuck!” James shouts, fumbling to grab the slippery thumb as it hits him square in the chest.

  Dropping Alexei’s right arm, Gabriel grabs up the left one and gets to work.

  Alexei doesn’t even release a groan this time, he remains perfectly still.

  “Is he dead?” I ask, wondering if I’ve missed my opportunity to make him pay.

  Gabriel pauses halfway through the thumb he’s working on to give Alexei a hard slap on the cheek.

  When Alexei’s eyelids flutter and he moans, Gabriel says, “Nah, but he’s fucking close.”

  Shit.

  I’m probably grasping for straws, but I ask regardless. “Is there any way to wake him up? Make him more aware?”

  If there’s not, we’re probably just wasting our time.

  Gabriel snaps off Alexei’s left thumb and tosses it to James before he looks to Andrew. “You got any of that cocktail stuff Simon mixed up in your bag?”

  Andrew tosses the bottle he’s holding to Gabriel and grins. “Yeah. I got the recipe off him after seeing what you did with it back at the warehouse.”

  “Why do I always get stuck with the fucking thumbs?” James grumbles as Andrew walks back over to his bag.

  Straightening from his crouch, Gabriel shakes his head at James and then gives the bottle he’s holding a squeeze, squirting liquid all over Alexei’s body.

  I take a few steps back, giving Gabriel room to work.

  Once he’s completely doused Alexei’s body, he makes a trail of liquid leading to the doorway.