Chapter 8 #2
On the contrary, it would just be the beginning.
We approached Church and waited for Breaker to reach up to the keypad on the wall and tap in the sequence of numbers that released the locks with a loud click. He shoved his shoulder against the door and pushed, except it wouldn’t budge.
Cash snorted and shot finger-weapons up toward the ceiling, like Bear needed pissing off any more.
I heaved out a breath and ordered, “Out the way.”
They parted like the Red Sea, allowing me room to lift my booted foot and smash it against the door.
It stayed glued firmly closed.
Hmm, it looked like I needed to use my imagination.
I lifted my boot again, landing it smack-dab in the center of the wooden door until, after a few hard kicks, my boot went straight through. On and on I went, smashing my boot through the wood until the bottom was busted up, and I’d created a hole big enough for us to get through.
Stepping aside, I swept a hand out in invitation and said to Cash, “Ladies first.”
He barked a laugh before ducking down and maneuvering his body through the hole, quickly disappearing into the room. Layla went through next, and then Breaker, with me going last.
The second I got my bulk through, I knew something weird was happening in that room. It was glowing with an eerie light, and the air was filled with so much electricity that I could feel it playing across my skin.
As I stood to my full height and looked around, my lungs seized inside my chest. My chest twisted so tightly that I felt it in my ribs.
A strange, blue-ish white light burst from the ceiling, shining on the cut, which was still pinned to the wall where Cash had hammered it years before. It reminded me of the scene from the Poltergeist movie.
The screens that filled the wall flashed on and off, displaying black-and-white static and throwing white noise out into the room so loud that it took me a few seconds to get used to the volume.
Breaker dived for the electrical outlets on the wall where the screens and computers were plugged in, and tugged the wire to disconnect everything, but nothing happened. The power keeping those screens flickering wasn’t coming from a normal source.
“Get the cut,” I ordered through clenched teeth. “We need to get rid of that thing before it blows up the entire fuckin’ clubhouse.”
Breaker, who stood closest to the wall, turned to make a grab for it, but something propelled him onto his back foot. He let out a grunt, lowered his head, and pushed forward again, letting out a low grunt as he used all his effort, but he couldn’t move an inch.
Emitting a low growl, I decided to make a run for it.
I charged, reaching up to rip the cut off the wall, but as my fingertips brushed the leather, I was hit by what felt like a bolt of lightning.
Something pummeled me square in the chest, and I felt myself flying backward through the air until I hit the opposite wall with such force that my breath whooshed from my body.
Every muscle seized at once, and my jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth would shatter as white-hot pain shot down my spine and I landed in a crumpled heap on the floor.
My body started to convulse, and as my eyes blinked up in shock, the last thing I saw was that fucking Sinners’ cut, all lit in a ghostly light, before everything went black.
—————
Breaker
“Did you fuckin’ see that, Break?” Cash breathed, his eyes round and huge. “It threw Atlas through the air as if he weighed nothin’, and we all know that fat bastard ain’t no lightweight.” His stare fixed down onto the SAA, who by then had passed out in a crumpled heap on the floor.
Layla released a small cry and rushed over to him, getting onto her knees and checking his vitals. “He’s got a pulse,” she confirmed, her voice tight with fear. “I think whatever it was gave him an electrical shock that would’ve taken down a horse, but he’s alive at least.”
Cash and I glanced at each other, our single look saying a thousand words, and I watched his mouth pull into a tight line. “Layla, get out of here,” he ordered, his voice low and full of authority. “Go get help. Wake Bowie up, and get him down here, now!”
Layla looked up from her spot beside Atlas and nodded silently, before scrambling toward the door and slipping through the hole the SAA had kicked in it just moments before.
My neck twisted back toward the cut, and I let out a snarl.
Bear, the fucker, was going down.
With a roar, I hurled myself at the cut, ignoring every instinct in my body that screamed at me to retreat. The mark of a good soldier was to always listen to your gut, but my gut right then was churning and flailing so fucking forcefully that I wanted to throw up.
The ghostly light surrounding the leather pulsed like a living heartbeat. Bear’s ugly shark-toothed grin seemed to flicker around the periphery of my vision like he was somehow controlling my mind, but my monster just roared from inside me.
I’d dealt with worse souls than this bastard, living and dead; hell, my humanity was more blackened and charred than Bear Rawlin’s one would ever be, and I would not be denied this kill.
My boots skidded on the smooth floor as I fought against a wave of freezing air that seemed to blast through me. Then I reached up and wrapped my fist around the greasy leather.
For a split second, I smelled blood and an overwhelming stench of tobacco, so strong that it made my eyes water, then I felt something inside my head—a jab of searing pain, as if somebody had driven a railroad spike through my skull.
Still, I held on tight and pulled, and the cut came away in my hand.
Despite the pain, I emitted a victorious shout and spun around, and that was when I saw them, all the tortured dead souls, dozens of them lined up in rows before me.
My heart jolted inside my chest, and I dropped to my ass, scrambling backward like a fucking crab, and breathed, “No.”
The pain in my head was off the scale. It ripped through me like a wave, so hard that I thought my heart would give out. The room flashed white, and then everything turned black, all except for the dozens of tortured spirits standing in line formation, staring at me.
At the front stood Benny, Espinoza, and Kyle Simmons, but they didn’t look anything like the ghost of Ben that I’d spoken with earlier that night. No, their bodies were charred black, the skin peeling away from their burnt flesh as they stared at me with shadowed voids for eyes.
“You did this,” Benny’s voice rang through my head. “This is your fault.”
Then suddenly, my mind filled with a riot of voices, screams, pleading, curses in tongues I didn’t even speak. I recognized a few words spoken in Farsi and Uzbeki, but the muddled noises meant that I couldn’t make out much more.
The room began to shrink until it became a single pinprick, receding before my very eyes, the same way the world used to be whenever I psyched myself into the zone before a kill.
Then, all I could see were the faces of the people I’d murdered, some blackened and burnt by the bombs I’d made to blow them up, others with their throats slit from where I’d run a blade across the soft, pulsing skin of their necks.
The thing was, I knew every damned one of them from the twisted, evil face of the Afghan insurgent who ran at me and my unit with a suicide bomb strapped to his chest while his fellow villagers rioted around us, to the young woman who I stabbed to death in a basement of her house in a small UK town as she built a bomb with her boyfriend who, incidentally, stood wailing pitifully beside her.
Men, women, children, even a group of Burning Sinners stood staring at me, their voices screaming and moaning their pain, all ghost-like inside my mind.
My mouth filled with what tasted like battery acid.
I wanted to turn away and block out their demented faces, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from them.
It was like looking into an abyss, which apparently was all too happy to look back at me and see everything I felt so deeply.
Honest to God, it felt like my insides were being ripped out for their viewing pleasure.
“You did this,” Benny repeated, his voice full of hate as he stared down at me on the floor like the low-life I was. “And you keep doing it.”
He was right, and I knew it. I’d made my choices and stacked up my body count.
I tried to justify my actions by telling myself that the people I took out were evil stains on humanity before locking my sins away in a tidy box until the next time I needed to kill, but I knew deep down why I didn’t stop.
I liked it.
I blamed the monster inside, but the monster was me, and it always had been.
It was what I was.
Wrong.
—————
Layla
Heart racing, I ran down the corridor toward the bar so I could head upstairs and alert Bowie to the utter shit show happening in Church. Seeing Atlas fly through the air like that had unnerved me, to say the least.
A man like Atlas was a tough adversary, so the fact that he was bested so easily put the fear of God into me because I was starting to understand that what we were up against was certainly no trick of the mind.
Honestly, I didn’t know what Bowie could even do, but I knew with the same certainty that the sun would rise in the morning, he’d protect me, the kids, and the club with his life.
It was something I never doubted, and it made me feel safe, but at the same time, it frightened me because what if it actually came to that?
Could I even survive without my husband?
And more to the point, would I want to?
I hit the bar and raced toward the corridor leading to the stairs, but instead found myself in the kitchen.
My steps faltered.
Huh?
I spun around and took in the familiar surroundings. My eyes fell on the stove and then swung to the refrigerator and the large table we all sat around chatting while Iris cooked, and my face twisted in confusion.
This isn’t right.