by Ace Gray
A small flashing light from the alarm panel caught my eye as I circled the stairwell. The digital words almost stopped my heart. Alarm sounded. Police en route.
“What the fuck?” I murmured only to realize the only person in the house with me was already dead. My heart shuddered as I caught the shape my spotlight had landed on. A bloodied and bulging corpse was stabbed straight through the heart. He’d been there long enough to attract flies.
The longer I looked, the more I noticed. The countless bodies I’d sent to their early graves flashed before me. The knife sticking straight from his heart had a familiar handle, inscribed with a Celtic cross. But it wasn’t the knife that worried me, it was that it had been used to pin a note to the man’s chest, I’d been left a message.
I had maybe five minutes if the alarm had been set off when I entered the house, less if it was all some intricate plan. I carefully tiptoed toward the man, suddenly aware of every sliver of DNA I may have left laying about the place.
I didn’t need to.
I’m Cole Ryan and I slay villains in their sleep.
I’m Cole Ryan and I’ll make both good and evil weep.
The note was written in script far too fancy to ever be mine, something closer to my tattoo script, but my name staring back at me was all the message I needed. My number was up. Or at least someone thought so. And this was supposed to be an easy job, the hardest part was going to be dragging a body without Horse.
The wail of the sirens started to moan far away and the familiar red that glazed my vision and kept me calm around death and destruction coated my being. I holstered my gun and slung the body over my shoulder in a swift move. I ran back out the gaping open front door to my car. When I fumbled with the keys at the trunk, I swore under my breath and slung the limp sack of a body into the backseat instead.
Sirens wailed closer, red and blue started to flash at the far end of the street. I took a deep breath as I slid my guns under the seat, started the engine and prayed to the only goddess I really believed in.
Elle. Ladylove. Elle.
Before the cop cars could get too close, I pulled out and started down the street, facing them head on. The dark of night was my friend one last time, hiding the crimson soak of my shoulder, as I pulled to the side and pretended to gape at police cars racing by. Only once seven strobe cars flew by did I pull back on the road and creep away. Each roll of my tires felt like they were ticking years off my life.
But the moment I turned the corner, I gunned it toward the warehouse. The streets turned into a grid that I only navigated on muscle memory and sheer will. I couldn’t devote brainpower to directions when it was busy scrolling through the who. Who was the corpse in my backseat? Who had killed him? Who was sending me a message?
It had been eight days since Vinny had come to see us. He didn’t know about Elle’s breakthrough. Had he…? But he’d threatened Elle, not me. Why would he change now? If he wanted the ledger, he would have gone after her…
The realization crashed into me like storm fueled waves buffeting against a concrete slab, desperate to destroy it. It wasn’t a question of who was sending a message to me but who this message was keeping me from.
I yanked on the steering wheel and my tires screeched as they burned on the pavement. The engine snarled loud enough to swallow up the street around me as I cut through oncoming traffic to get to her. Every light I could chance, every intersection I could bulldoze through, every single mile I could speed, I did, consequences be damned.
The car lurched forward when I flung open my door outside the shop, not even bothering to throw it in park. The rotting flesh was still draped across the bench seat as I sprinted toward my apartment. In a horrifying mirror to the brownstone I just left, the door had splintered off its hinges and lay like a welcome mat to my apartment.
Elle was nowhere to be found.
25.
Elle
There was only a single warning creak before a loud and otherworldly groan loosened our front door from its hinges. The wood on either side of the door protested for a split second before it exploded into small shards and the door fell with a deafening thud into the apartment.
I jumped from the couch only to skitter and slide on the printed sheets of twenties carpeting the floor. The moment the demonic face that partnered the brutal boot printed on my door was framed in the entryway, I froze.
If Mickey Maloney was terrifying in that dark den of all things unholy, he was absolutely soul-liquefying in my loft.
“If it isn’t everyone’s favorite little fox. Quick, cunning, deceitful and ripe for the hunting.” Mickey’s voice was from the bowels of hell itself as he stepped across the splintered door and toward me.
“Wha… wha… what are you doing here Mickey?” Fear swallowed my words and made me stutter.
“Collecting my ledger, my plates, and my prize.” He lunged for me, his hands wrapping around my throat.
“I. Don’t. Have. The. Ledger,” I gasped for air between each dripping word of my lie.
He didn’t answer. He also didn’t squeeze. He simply spun with my body. My toes scrambled for purchase but I couldn’t find any. My hands were busy clawing where he gripped on my throat. I was desperate the longer he controlled my body, trying to cling to the couch, to pillows, a lamp, desperate for anything to anchor me…
But I couldn’t get hold, I couldn’t stop his momentum. All too fast, my head smashed hard and fast into the exposed brick of our wall. Warmth spread at my temple a moment before the whole world went dark.
26.
Cole
There’d been blood on the wall. Not a lot but enough for me to know she’d been taken rather than slipping out for some unknown reason. The crumpled twenties and scattered pillows told me she’d put up a fight.
I couldn’t tell if my heart was racing or had stopped completely. I couldn’t breathe. Instead choking on fury and fear. Red filtered into my vision.
They’d taken Elle. They’d taken my bright, shining dove. My Ladylove. I roared feral and wicked into the darkening night, hoping they could hear, hoping that the fear of a real and final death gnawed at their hearts. That’s what they were getting this time, whatever the cost to me.
I searched the apartment for a note, a warning, answers, hints, anything that would tell me who had taken her and where they’d gone. When I turned over every single fucking thing in my apartment, I snarled again.
She’d been a beautiful mess when she’d woken me from the couch. Her hair had been piled up and she’d been snuggled up in my shirt that was far too big for her. I needed to see the adorable furrow of her brow as she studied the ledger again.
The fucking ledger.
I started tearing at the couch cushions, throwing them in any direction behind me. Then shoving and shuffling the twenties near where she’d been sitting. It was gone. The paper she’d written her decoded messages on too. It was what was missing that answered all my questions.
Mickey.
I sprinted down the stairs and let my car door slam, vibrating the car and the Jell-O corpse in the backseat. With any luck, I was going to add many, many more to the pile by the end of the night.
My lips set into a thin line and my shoulders tensed up to my ears. The vise grip on my chest wouldn’t release. I didn’t fucking want it to. It took every inch of my fraying self-control to stop from reaching for my gun and unloading it into the night as I drove. I knew where they’d taken her, I had a hunch it was part of the plan for me to find out.
The moment I pulled into the warehouse I took a breath.
I am her dark knight. I am her sunrise. I will protect her. She is my everything.
Word after word, I repeated that mantra. I couldn’t stop to think about the fact that Elle was here, with The Butcher. Or that her blood colored the brick of my loft. I couldn’t let the rage, or the fear, consume me.
Instead I grabbed the potato sack body from the backseat and draped him as best I could across my chest. His l
imbs were both limp with death and rigid with rigor mortis—all the better to hold him as my fleshy shield. One arm wrapped around his flabby torso and the other grabbed the blade from my boot. Elle flooded my senses and I prepared to live and die saving her. I thought I was prepared for anything.
But then I slid in the side door…
Nothing in the entire world could prepare me for the sight in front of me. The body slid from my torso just before my knees hit the pavement. My knife fell from my debilitated grip and clattered to the floor. The vise grip on my chest squeezed so tight that I was sure my heart would vaporize.
Perfect, pale skin almost glowed in the dim and flickering fluorescent lights. My perfect, pale skin.
Elle’s wrists were bound with rough, fibrous rope. It was so tight that her fingers were tipped in purple where they curled limply around the silver meat hook she was hanging from. Naked. Small drips of blood had made rivers down her forearms toward her wrecked and ravaged hair. One or two made their way to small spatters on her perfect peach tits. Tear stains streaked her cheeks in haphazard and wild trails, crisscrossing until every inch glistened.
“Don’t move.” The voice behind me wasn’t even a voice, it was a maniacal laugh coloring words.
Sheer terror mixed with unadulterated hellfire inside me as Mickey circled my Ladylove and The Butcher pushed a silver meat hook against the back of my head. I reached for my gun only to find I’d been so focused on Elle I’d never put them back in their holsters.
This was the moment. The one where I either let desperation take root as I crumbled or determination blossom as I rose.
“On your feet, Cole.” The Butcher’s voice prodded at me every bit as much as the sharpened tip of his hook. “We have a toy to play with.”
The growl that rumbled my chest filled the space with a primal echo.
“Oh, Cole, come now.” Mickey shoved his hands between Elle’s naked thighs and rubbed. She didn’t make a sound, biting roughly on her lip to hold in any wayward sound, but her tears doubled down her cheeks and splashed on her naked chest. I knew what it was like to be shot in the heart.
“I will kill you, Mick.” My voice was icy smooth and cut through the darkness and the sick, rancid hanging flesh. “I will save you, Elle.” I tried to caress her from across the room with my voice.
Mickey laughed and I lunged, ready to strangle him with my bare hands, only to feel the sharp sting of metal piercing into the side of my neck and bringing me to my knees. I choked on the pain as The Butcher’s hook spliced the skin above my collar and dragged me down. Heat flooded out and down my neck but I didn’t flinch. I watched as Mickey’s hand slid up and disappeared between Elle’s legs.
She bucked against him, trying to get enough leverage to shove him away. Fresh blood dripped from the knotted rope at her wrists but nothing shook him from where he grasped onto her. I felt her fresh blood burn my skin far more than my own. Mickey’s hand moved all the more demanding as she bled. Finally, Elle broke, making the first noise since I’d arrived—a raw and savage sob—when he pinched on the bud of nerves between her legs.
I pressed into the blade at my throat and pulled both it and The Butcher holding it forward toward her. I managed to drag him three steps before a second hook found its way into the already ruined meat of my opposite thigh.
Elle’s scream was blood curdling and I looked up to reassure her. Nothing, no wound no blade, would keep me from pulling her down from that hook. But she wasn’t screaming because of the blades buried in my flesh. It was the one Mickey had materialized and was dragging across her inner thigh. Cool steel mingled with dark red blood as it pooled against the blade then poured down her leg and dripped in far too fast drops to the floor beneath where she hung.
“No!” I roared as I started walking against the violent wounds in my sides toward her.
The Butcher yanked on me again, this time twisting as he shoved in deeper. My vengeful howl betrayed how much pain I was in, but even I didn’t know if it was because of Elle’s wounds or mine.
Please and no dripped off her tongue the same way blood did down her leg.
“Aren’t you going to beg me to stop, Cole? Aren’t you going to tell me you’ll do anything?” His gaze cast sideways for just a second to watch me. I made sure only solid stone met his demonic look. “Come on, pledge me your unwavering loyalty. Again.” His voice was a sharp crescendo. “Lie to me. Again!” In time with his words, he dragged the knife up Elle’s leg without breaking skin, collected blood and slathered it across her perfect pussy.
His fingers replaced it a moment later, swirling in the blood he’d made sure coated her most intimate bits. Crimson fingers circled on her then shoved in. She hadn’t stopped crying this time, begging and pleading. I lunged again and this time the world blurred and spun the slightest bit. When I went woozy, I looked down to find thick, sticky blood in a matching pile beneath my feet. Seeing it zapped the strength I’d found to fight my own pain and I faltered.
“I will kill you,” I repeated as I slipped on the slickness and crashed back to my bruised and now bloody kneecaps.
“If you haven’t yet…” Mickey trailed off as he smoothly flipped the knife in his hand and, holding the blade, pressed the hilt in between the folds of Elle’s sex. He teased her twice and flicked her clit, then pulled the knife away and flipped it again. Seamlessly, he pulled the blade across her other inner thigh, back to the front again, and blood started flowing just as richly, just as morbidly as the other side in a matching gash. Her scream made my blood run cold.
Familiar red wasn’t just pooling down her long little bird legs, it was filtering back into my vision, maybe even my very soul. The calm that came over me was a terrifying but welcome thing. I was going to get her down, I was going to get her back, even if I had to die doing it.
My feet slid in my blood for a moment, but then I found my footing and pushed to standing. I caught The Butcher unaware, and I was able to pull him a few steps closer to my Ladylove.
“Stop, Cole,” Mickey warned.
I trudged another step forward dragging the monster behind me as his boots slid in crimson.
“I said stop!” he barked as he raised the knife to her beautiful tattooed arm.
He pressed the tip into the E closest to her wrist.
“Why are you still fighting, laddy?” He pressed hard enough into her ink that the first droplet of blood fell like a tear down her arm. A match to the tears spilling down her face and trembling on her bottom lip.
“You picked the wrong thing to mess with, Mick. Even you shouldn’t take a man’s soul.”
“You lost your soul a long time ago.” Mickey pressed even deeper into the very edge of Elle’s tattoo.
“No, I didn’t,” I snarled. “She’s hanging right in front of you.”
I reached down to the hook in my thigh and with sheer will and bloodlust powering me, pulled it from between my muscles. With a vicious yank, the hook came free from The Butcher’s hand. Even though the one in my neck ground and dug around, I swiveled and threw it like a star at Mickey.
He almost dodged it but the hook still caught the fabric of his shirt where if covered his upper arm. His hand dropped from Elle and he took two stalking steps toward me, almost putting him in reach, but just as fast as he’d turned toward me he spun back. The blade of his knife plunged into the notch he’d already made in her forearm and he pulled. Slowly, and with more blood than my Ladylove had left to give, he destroyed the art that covered her arm.
She and I screamed in unison. Hers a broken, battered cry and mine of a man unhinged.
I ripped at the hook in my neck and finally pulled it free. With a brutal, savage spin, I whirled on The Butcher. The hook that had been sunken in my neck moments before smashed into his temple. He stumbled back and I came out swinging. I smashed the metal into his face, splitting his lip and drawing his hands up to cover his blackened blood.
A wicked smile pulled across my face as I flipped the hook in my ha
nd so the deadly point would crash into The Butcher when I swung. Sure enough the point pierced his skin and sunk into the meat of his chest, loosening an otherworldly howl. While he was off-kilter I threw a vicious right hook and smashed my left elbow across his face. He buckled under the crushing force so I reached for the hook and twisted. He hit the floor only to feel the sharp toe of my dress shoe between his ribs a moment later.
The horrific cry behind me made me pause. Elle called to my very soul. And this time used her grip to cut and shred. She was bathed in blood, weeping from her various gashes the way tears streamed down her face. Mickey was pawing at her breasts, letting blood paint across them with each of his vile touches. She writhed and shook on the hook trying to sway away from him but each movement made blood gush a little bit faster from her wounds.
I heaved, bile rising in my throat, acid burning through my body, and before I could steady or steel myself, I vomited. My stomach jerked as I tried to purge that image from its already permanent etch on my brain. The moment I could right myself I bolted toward Mickey. His neck was mine to obliterate.
But I was crushed into from behind. Caught unaware, my body sprawled forward into the filth coating the ground. A walloping punch landed against my ribs and then the point of the hook was back against my neck, ready to cut a matching gape on the other side. I rolled with all my force to pin The Butcher beneath my heavy body.
The gruesome red of Elle’s debased body flashed above me and the fury churning wildly inside me colored my vision again.
I sprung from my back and barreled off in the direction of the body I’d intended to use as a shield. I ripped the knife from his chest then picked up mine and turned, knowing that the shadow of death would be on my heels. First one blade made contact with his side, then the other with his chest, not too far from where the hook had hung from his flesh. He bellowed again, sending my bones vibrating and bringing bile back up into my mouth.