Page 34 of Ravage
It’s terrifying and…I’m so turned on by him.
Definitely broken.
The man is bawling now, his entire body wracked with sobs. “P-please no! I’ll tell you! Anything. Just—” Another sob. “Not that. Not that!”
Jackson pats the man’s cheek with a condescending smirk. “Good man. Let’s hear it then.”
“235 West Fillmore Avenue,” he sputters as blood, snot, and tears hang from his face and lips. “That’s the next drop off location. The burner phone they contact me with is there, on my desk. W-will you let me go now? I have nothing else. I swear it!”
Jackson stands back and nods. “I believe you.”
Kellan steps up in front of the man to draw his attention. “You won’t speak any of this to anyone. If I hear so much as a whisper that you opened your mouth, I will personally hunt you down. And believe me, there’s nowhere you could go—”
I can’t believe they’re going to let this man go just like that. They’ve broken three bones and he’s seen their faces. I learned the hard way, more than once, that leaving someone alive gives them the opportunity to go after you or rat you out. It’s also how GE came to find out I was still alive and is now looking for me. I came this close to being killed because of that mistake.
I won’t make it again.
Kellan’s speech is the perfect distraction for me, so while he’s reading him the riot act of how exactly he’s going to get all of us in trouble, I take my dagger and drive it up and through the back of his neck and out his eye.
It takes strength to get it in there, but as long as you hit the spot right, it slides right through.
The man is dead in an instant, which is nice, considering the circumstances. I could have used my gift just as Jackson explained, but I don’t know the full extent of his involvement in the organization. Being involved gets him dead. But only certain involvement deserves my gift as punishment.
There’s a roar, and when I look up after tugging my knife out, a body slams me to the ground. Pain blooms into my side at the same time the wind is knocked out of me, and all I can focus on is trying to breathe.
“What the fuck?!” Kellan shouts in my face. “He was just a lackey. We were letting him go.” I gasp for air. He pulls back the slightest bit when he realizes I can’t breathe. He doesn’t apologize, just glares at me with what looks like betrayal and disgust.
Right.
I suck in air and cough until I can get my lungs working again. “…kill you…later,” I wheeze, trying to explain that the guy will come back or tattle which will get them killed later, but then I’m coughing again. Sharp stinging pain stabs into my side again, and I glance down. There’s just enough space between us that I can see my knife is stuck between us, the blade on either side digging into each of us.
He hasn’t even noticed. Or, at least, he’s so used to the pain that he isn’t even affected by it. But our blood is slowly joining and then running down my side to the carpet beneath me.
Fuck.
Evidence against us.
“Kill us? I thought you said you were after GE or are you here for us too? You just murder everyone you don’t like now? Is that part of this promise that’s so important to you?”
I pinch my eyes closed so he can’t read the pain in them.
Murderer.
Monster.
Villain.
His weight is suddenly gone, and when I open my eyes again, Jackson’s pulled him up and has stepped between us. His eyes are narrowed at the blood leaking from my side and the pool of our DNA now soaking into the carpet.
Fucking Kellan.
I yank my gaiter off to press into my wound to stop the bleeding, then groan and curl onto my side. My other hand presses into the blood-soaked carpet. My eyes close when the steady burn of my gift returns. I try to focus on the bloodied area of the carpet, but my control over my gift isn’t what it used to be and it clears out a wider area than I’d planned.
Well, hopefully it’s good enough.
I at least got to it and the padding beneath before any blood reached the floorboards, so aside from having no good explanation for why a chunk of his carpet is gone, at least our DNA isn’t all over this crime scene.
I slowly make it back to my feet, retrieving my knife and wiping the guy’s and now our blood on my pants before putting it away. There goes another pair of pants that I’ll have to destroy and replace.
