Page 67 of Out for Blood
The strange part is, I think this is healing me. Hunting these monsters.
Healing for me looks more like destruction now.
It has become bruised knuckles, gunpowder residue, and traffickers dragged screaming into the light.
Turks and Caicos was supposed to be temporary, a hiding place so the Fraternity couldn’t find us.
But somewhere between the missions, the training, and the bodies we’ve left behind, something changed.
Out here, monsters don’t hide behind fraternity houses and fake smiles.
They hide in plain sight.
You pass them on the shipping docks, the shopping plazas, or they could be your next-door neighbors.
Nightclubs packed with tourists, too distracted to notice people being taken through back exits.
And every time Tyler and I destroy one of these operations, something inside my chest loosens, but not for long.
Here I’m not helpless anymore. I’m not enslaved. The pain has a purpose now, and that purpose is the only thing keeping me together.
I’m rebuilding myself molecule by molecule into something they can never touch again.
I stopped being prey a long time ago.
Part of me died in that warehouse. There’s a clear divide between the girl I was before it happened and the version of me that crawled out afterward.
I lean back against the counter behind us while Tyler tracks every shift in my demeanor, he clicks the safety on my gun.
“I think killing them stitches the wounds they left behind, like digging glass out of an infected wound with bloody hands.”
The confession hangs over us like smoke.
Tyler’s molars move back and forth, but he doesn’t deny it since he has seen it first-hand.
He’s been exposed to the way violence settles naturally into my bones now, like I was always meant for this and just spent years pretending otherwise.
At first, every mission wrecked me afterward.
Every scream chased me home for days.
Every dead body stayed branded into the backs of my eyes.
And now I sleep easier after hunting.
Now, when blood hits the floor, I revel in it.
Some dark part of me craves the moment predators finally understand they can bleed too.
That part keeps escalating, and I have this overpowering feeling it needs to be fed.
I think Tyler picks up on it more every day.
This island has changed him too.
The change in him shows in the ruthless focus he carries during missions, in the seamless way he arms me without hesitation. In how synchronized we have become, dismantling traffickers together like we were built for this kind of destruction.
Out here, we’ve become something brutal and necessary. Two emotionally damaged people chasing predators before they can destroy someone else.
