by Amy Braun
“Fancy seeing you again.”
I froze the second I heard his voice, then spun and planted my feet in a fighting stance. Drake was standing in the alley on my right, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest, smiling like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“I was wondering when I’d run into you next, chica. Been thinking a lot about you.”
“Me too,” I replied. “I’ve been thinking about how much you’ll scream when I cut you to pieces.”
“Ooo,” he said, edging off the wall and slowly walking toward me. “Someone’s feeling nasty. Is that ’cause you’re missing your little gang? Where oh where could they be, I wonder?”
I tensed, watching him get closer and thinking about how I could attack him. Throwing my knife would be the best way. I had extremely good aim, and could hit him from here.
But Drake was a chatty bastard. If I kept him talking, I might be able to figure out what he wanted me for.
And maybe he would let down his guard so I could kill him.
“They can’t be far,” he said through his smile. “You never let your sister out of your sight any more than that scrawny brat or that uptight angel do, and Johnny-boy would probably tear the city apart if he knew you and me were having a chat. So where did they go?”
“What do you care? They aren’t your targets right now. I am.”
Drake grinned. “Bet you feel pretty special, don’t you?”
I glared in reply, trudging past his words. “You said Lucifer has plans for me. Things that even Mateo can’t get between. What does that mean?”
Drake shrugged. “I never was good with the details. Your old boy toy knows. He can tell you more, but I think he needs to vent a little first.”
It took me a second too long to understand what he meant. That second was when I felt hands snare the back of my shirt and yank me onto the ground.
I hit it with a jolt, rolling to the left and getting up on one knee. I was almost kicked in the face, but leaned away and brought up my hatchet. The booted foot knocked against my wrist, sending the hatchet flying out of my grasp.
Cursing under my breath, I slid back to get distance and got onto my feet. He was on me just as I stood up.
I blocked his furious punches and kicks, trying to get in some shots, but his defense was as good as mine. Maybe even better.
But I still had a knife.
He threw a punch toward my chest that I batted down. I held his arm and stabbed for his neck. He caught my wrist and twisted it until I was forced to drop the blade.
So much for the knife.
I kicked for his knee, but he stepped back and jerked me against his chest.
“You’re so fucking predictable,” Mateo snarled.
He slammed his forehead into mine. Stars exploded behind my eyes and the world spun. I tried to get my bearings, but Mateo was at the top of his game. He shoved me away so hard I stumbled, unable to stop the powerful kick that slammed into my chest. I landed on the road hard, my head cracking against the concrete and nearly blacking me out.
“That was disappointing, chica,” Drake’s voice said from…somewhere. “Thought you had more fight in you than that.”
Even while the asshole had been talking, I was reaching for another knife. I was just about to grab one when Mateo appeared over top of me and raised his foot above my chest. I crossed my arms at the last second, keeping the full weight of his foot away from my body. My arms were still crushed into my chest, but nothing had been broken. He stepped off my arm and aimed another kick for my head. I rolled away and reached for a knife. I got to my feet and aimed another stab at him. Mateo grabbed my wrist and turned it around my back, launching my arm up and exposing my side. He punched my vulnerable ribs and kidney. Every hit was filled with anger, and if I couldn’t stop him soon, he would break every bone in my body, promise to Lucifer or not.
I threw back my far elbow, managing to catch Mateo in the side of the head. He let me go and I spun my recently freed arm in a loose backward punch. It was a sloppy strike, but the back of my fist still crashed into Mateo’s cheek. His head snapped to the side, giving me the chance to kick him in the stomach. I still had my knife, so I dove in for the kill–
Just as huge arms looped around my chest and pulled me off the ground. I screamed furiously, lashing and kicking back. The arms tightened and squeezed air out of my lungs. I reversed the grip on my knife and stabbed back, aiming for whatever I could hit.
The knife sank into my captor’s bicep. Not a lethal stab like I wanted, but I still got a bark of pain and one of the arms on my chest loosened. I was dropped onto the ground, my fingers slipping from the knife as the big man thrashed. I grabbed the far fingers of his other hand and pulled them away from my chest. I spun under the man’s arm while holding it away from me. Drake snarled at me, but I started kicking him in the ribs as hard as I could. He was a huge man, so his body absorbed the kicks pretty well, but it was better than nothing.
At least until I was kicked in the back.
I stumbled from the unexpected hit, and barely had time to lift my head when Drake’s fist sailed toward me. The punch connected with my collarbone, sending a fierce wave of pain through it. I lurched back, someone coming up behind me and looping their arms through mine. I tried to slip away, but his grip was too tight. He lifted his arms, bending my shoulders back until they strained in they sockets. I winced and arched my back to relieve the pressure, but it didn’t matter.
I was trapped regardless.
Drake’s face was contorted in a horrible scowl. I’d never seen him so angry before.
“You fucking bitch,” he spat, drawing his fist back.
He practically knocked my head off when the punch hit. I felt my nose break, sharp pain swelling in my face and forcing tears into my eyes. My head lolled forward, but Drake still didn’t stop. He pounded hits into my stomach, ribs, chest and face. He was relentless and merciless, each blow hurting more than the last. At first I tried to kick him, tried to break free from Mateo, but soon I was in too much pain to move.
By the time it was over, there wasn’t an inch of my front that wasn’t battered. Drake finally stepped back, my blood dripping off his knuckles. I slumped forward, watching the ground spin under me. Mateo released my arms and let me collapse onto the ground.
I barely caught myself. My skull felt like it had been covered in cement. My chest might as well have been run over by a tank. My stomach ached every time I breathed, and I felt sick.
Get up, Constance, I told myself. If you can’t fight, you have to run. You barely touched them.
I bent my knee and tried to get up, but my body just wouldn’t respond at the speed I needed it to.
“Sorry you didn’t get more shots in,” Drake said from behind me. “Kinda got carried away.”
“That’s fine. I’ll do the last bit.”
I pushed upward, but a hand clamped onto my shoulder and shoved me back onto the ground. Mateo stepped over me and sat down on my hips. I hissed as the move pulled on the muscles my throbbing stomach, swatting at him weakly. Mateo brushed my hands away and backhanded me across the face. It wasn’t as bad as Drake’s punches, but pain still flashed through my face as my head twisted to the side.
“Hold her arms,” Mateo commanded.
Drake dropped to his knees behind my head, grabbing my arms and pulling them away from my body. I growled and tried to kick and throw Mateo off me, but he positioned himself perfectly to keep that from happening. He just sat there and reached for something on his belt.
I stopped moving completely when he held the knife in front of my face.
This was the first time I fully registered his face. He was as painfully handsome as I remembered.
The last time I saw him, he’d had short hair and stubble, looking more like a soldier than a gangster. He still wore a black t-shirt and dark cargo pants, but his jet-black hair was stylishly smoothed. The stubble was gone, making him look like a bronzed male mod
el until you saw his eyes. They were dark, distant, and hateful. Just as his father’s had been. A solid gold chain hung around his neck. A black leather belt looped through his pants, showing off a gold buckle in the shape of a rose. Both had once belonged to Emilio.
I tried to glare at Mateo, but my eyes kept flicking back to the knife. It was so close I could see my breath misting on the silver blade.
“How does it feel, Constance?” he asked coldly. “How do you like being trapped? Knowing something terrible is going to happen to you, and there isn’t a fucking thing you can do to stop it?”
He must have been thinking about his father, remembering the fight we’d had before I blew Emilio’s brains out. Mateo had watched the whole thing, unable to save someone he loved. His hatred had been growing ever since.
“You didn’t ask last time you tortured me,” I said bitterly, but quickly. It was the best I could come up with.
Truthfully, I couldn’t remember being this scared of Mateo before. Yes, he’d been heartless when he turned me into a punching bag in his father’s basement. Yes, he’d been a barbarian when I’d crossed paths with him a month ago and he tried to walk away with my head.
But he’d still loved me when he’d been “forced” to torture me. Adrenaline had been fuelling both of us when we fought last time.
Now I was defenseless against him. Now he loathed me. Now I couldn’t fight back, and he had nothing but time on his hands.
“I worked hard for this,” Mateo went on, slowly lowering the blade toward my face. “I sent the Blood Thorns to find you. I bribed border guards and cops. I hired the best bounty hunter on the continent. I sided with demons. Now I have you, and you know what the twist is?”
The flat of the knife pressed under my face, just below my eye. I tensed all my muscles, praying that I wouldn’t shake and he wouldn’t be able to see the fear on my face.
“I don’t get to kill you.”
Mateo drew the knife back, leaving just a shallow, stinging cut under my eye. I would have slumped with relief, if Drake hadn’t been holding my arms.
“But he promised to make you suffer,” Mateo continued, reaching into the pocket of his cargo pants. “He said it would take time, and it wouldn’t happen the way I wanted it to, but he promised that you’d endure more pain than you could ever imagine.”
He held something up between his thumb and middle finger. At first I thought it was a piece of obsidian. It didn’t seem that impressive, just a jagged black piece of rock no longer than my pinky finger.
But then I looked closer, and saw that it was nothing that could have been made on earth.
The gleaming black stone had chipped edges, like it had been sawn off a larger rock. Both tips were pointed, sharp enough to stab. Thin red lines creased the shard like broken veins.
Those broken veins were glowing red, as if the obsidian contained a fire so hot it was breaking its casing.
Somehow I knew that’s exactly what was happening. Just as I was pretty sure of where the fire had come from.
“Get that fucking thing away from me,” I hissed at my ex-lover, praying he wouldn’t hear the tremble in my voice.
“What’s wrong, chica?” Drake taunted over my head. “You don’t like Operation?”
I started twisting and wrenching, my flight or fight instincts kicking in even though my brain knew it was pointless. These two men had me perfectly pinned, and there was no one nearby to help me. If anyone saw what was happening, they would either run for cover, or stand back and watch.
Mateo flipped up the bottom of my shirt with the knife until my stomach was exposed. I started thrashing around worse than ever. I pulled my arms in, hoping the sweat coating my palms would be enough to let me slip out of Drake’s grasp. But his hands were iron vices, and he crushed my wrists until I thought he would break the bones inside them.
I hissed when knife sliced a line under my ribcage. This time the cut wasn’t shallow. It burned along my upper abdomen, blood sliding around as my body trembled. There was no point in pretending I wasn’t terrified. If that was a fragment, whatever it was going to do to me was going to be awful. It was going to hurt.
I wasn’t entirely sure it wouldn’t kill me.
“You brought this on yourself,” Mateo said in a voice dead of emotion.
He pushed the fragment into the open wound.
It was a tiny rock. Small enough that it shouldn’t have mattered. A fragment.
Yet it hurt me worse than I could have imagined.
It was like being burned by Lucifer’s fire again, but this time I wasn’t burning on the outside.
No, all this pain was coming from inside me.
The fragment exploded like a bomb under my ribs, tearing through my body like lightning. Blood turned to lava in my veins and torched my bones. My lungs shriveled inward, crushing to protect themselves rather than let me breathe. My throat was cracked and parched, saliva drying in my mouth. The fire ripped up my spine, so hot I thought it would splinter. My nerves were alight with agony, an enormous pain thrashing through my skull and trying to punch out of my eyes.
I knew I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything. I thought I would erupt into flames.
The incendiary heat continued to swell and burn, expanding through my body like one giant balloon. Screams choked any attempt at begging for mercy. I couldn’t stop crying.
Then the flames curled around my bones like live wires, taking control of me. My skin was hot and wet, as if it was beginning to melt. I tasted smoke in my mouth. Every time I thought I couldn’t take any more pain, the fragment burst again and filled me with devastating agony.
I prayed that someone would kill me. Mateo could stab me in the heart or Drake could smash open my head on the concrete, and I would welcome it. Anything would be better than this unbearable torture.
A third wave of anguish rolled through me like a burning tide. My body convulsed violently as the pain redoubled, threatening to turn my entire body into a cinder.
Then the inferno scorched its way through my skull and branded my brain. It was like a burning sword had sliced into my skull. I went blind from the pain, and that was when I started to feel…
… better.
All the pain began to ebb way, each beat of my heart absorbing the torture. Embracing it, accepting it as part of me.
Soon it was gone, and I could breathe again.
I sighed, swallowing deep to drag the smoke back into my lungs. It took my body a long time to relax, but eventually it did. I couldn’t feel anything anymore.
I was aware of two men standing over me, but at the moment, I didn’t remember who they were. I didn’t care either. They could do whatever they wanted to me, and I’d let them.
Depending on what they had in mind, I might even enjoy it.
“We’ll see you again, chica,” one of them said. “Try not to have too much fun until then.”
Sleep was coming heavily over my mind. I still managed a small smile and a slurred response.
“No promises.”
Chapter 13
When I woke up, I felt better than I’d ever felt in my whole life.
Sure, I was a little beat up and there was something poking into my ribs, but I focused on the positives.
I was alive, I was awake, and I was ready to do something fun.
I sucked in a breath and sat up. I stretched my legs and stretched my arms behind my back, pulling them together over my head. It hurt a little bit, but pain was okay. I didn’t like the itching burn under my ribs though. I dropped my arms to see what was happening there.
There was some blood on the outside of my shirt, but I ignored it and raised my shirt to see where it was coming from.
An angry red line had been zippered just under my ribcage. The skin around it was a disgusting shade of black, and it looked like something was stuck in the cut. I prodded the skin around it with my finger. The injury flashed with heat and pain, and I yanked my hand back.
Okay. Not t
ouching that again.
I dropped my shirt and pushed myself to my feet. More bruises made themselves known as I moved, but I ignored the pain and started dusting down my jeans.
That was when I noticed someone watching me. I looked to my right and saw three people standing in the intersection at the front of the market. Two middle-aged men and a woman. They didn’t seem to have any expression that I could register. They were just staring at me.