Chapter 12
Diesel
I'm already at the door. Already reaching for the handle.
Then her voice hits me through the wood. My name. Screamed. Breaking.
The beast I've caged for fifteen years rips free.
No fight this time. No struggle for control. It surges up and I let it. Welcome it. Become it.
I've spent fifteen years trying not to be a monster.
Today I stop trying.
The door explodes inward.
Wood splinters. Hinges scream. My shoulder takes the impact and I barely feel it.
I'm through before the debris settles.
My eyes find Eden first.
Bent over the counter. A man behind her. Gun at her temple.
His hand over hers. Her finger on the trigger.
The beast howls.
Three hundred pounds of murder aimed at the man touching my woman.
He sees me. His face goes white under the blood—she broke his nose, that's my girl—and he shoves off the counter, wrenches the gun into his own grip, arm snaking around her throat.
"One more step and she dies."
I don't stop.
"I mean it!" He jams the gun harder against her temple. She flinches. A choked whimper. "Back the fuck off or I pull the trigger!"
Another step. The floorboards groan under my weight.
"You won't shoot her."
Not my voice. The voice of something that crawled out of the camps and never stopped fighting.
"She's your leverage. She's your only play." Another step. "You shoot her, there's nothing between you and me."
He glances at the door behind me. The broken frame. The splinters. Looking for a way out.
There aren't any.
"And I think you know what happens then." My voice drops lower. "You saw what I did to that door. Your body's next."
The gun wavers.
"Stay back—"
"He killed Carver!" Eden's voice cuts through, raw and desperate. "Diesel, he killed him—"
Daniels jerks her back. "Shut up—"
But I heard.
The blood on his coat. Fresh. Not hers.
Carver.
I step forward.
He panics.
I see it—the moment he realizes his leverage is worthless if he can't use it.
The gun swings toward me.
The shot cracks through the apartment—punches into my shoulder. Hot metal tearing through muscle. Then numb. Then a deep, grinding ache that spreads down my arm.
I stagger, left arm going dead.
I don't stop.
Daniels' eyes blow wide. He expected me to drop.
He doesn't know orcs.
Orcs survive.
I close the distance in two strides. My good arm hooks around Eden's waist. She goes stiff. I shove her sideways. Hard. She hits the floor, rolls clear, out of the line of fire.
Then I slam into Daniels with everything I have.
We go down hard. His back cracks against the tile floor. The gun spins loose. My hand closes around it before he can react.
I throw the gun across the room. It clatters against the far wall, disappears behind the couch.
A bullet is too good for him.
I stop thinking. Just become what I am.
The first hit lands on his already-broken nose. The cartilage gives further under my fist. Blood sprays across my knuckles. The second puts his head against the floor with a crack. The third, fourth, fifth—I lose count.
He's fighting back. Cop training. Combat instincts. He knows how to throw a punch, how to defend, how to create space. His fist catches my jaw, snaps my head to the side. His elbow drives into my ribs.
Then he finds the bullet hole.
His thumb digs in. Twists.
White-hot agony rips through my shoulder. My vision strobes. For one second I'm back in the camps, back in the pit, back in every fight I ever lost—
I grab his wrist and break it.
His scream snaps me present. He's still under me. Still breathing.
Not for long.
He put his hands on her throat.
I drive my fist into his solar plexus. The air explodes out of him.
She was screaming my name.
Another hit. Something cracks. Teeth scatter across the tile.
Screaming while he held her down. While he forced her finger on the trigger.
"Diesel, his ankle!"
Eden's voice breaks through. I see it: his good hand clawing toward his leg, toward the backup piece.
Too late.
The gun is in his hand.
The shot catches me in the side. Pointblank into the meat of my flank.
A branding iron shoved between my ribs.
I grunt. Keep hitting.
He fires again. The bullet goes wild—into the ceiling, plaster raining down.
I wrench the gun from his grip. Throw it across the room.
He rolls, tries to get out from under me. I let him—just far enough to get his arm extended. Then I grab his wrist. Twist.
The sound his elbow makes is wet. Splintering.
He screams.
Good.
I pin him flat. Nose crushed, one eye swelling shut, blood everywhere.
My hands find his throat.
They close around it. I don't squeeze hard. Not yet.
The beast wants to tear. To crush. To end this in seconds.
I hold it back. Not to spare him—to make him suffer longer.
"You had a gun to her head." My voice comes out low and rough. All beast.
He claws at my fingers. Black leather gloves scraping against my wrists. Tries to speak. Nothing comes out but a wet gurgle.
"You put your hands on her throat."
Tighter now. Cartilage shifts under my palms. His windpipe starting to collapse. The bullet hole in my shoulder grinds—bone on metal—but I don't ease up.
"She was screaming—" I lean down, my face inches from his. "—and you didn't stop."
His eyes bulge. His mouth works, opens, closes. Red to purple. Purple to something darker. A crackling sound under my fingers—the slow crush of things that aren't meant to bend.
"What—" He forces the word out. A rasp. A wheeze. "What are you?"
I don't answer. Just squeeze tighter.
"And Carver." Tighter. "You killed Carver."
His gloved fingers scrabble at my wrists. Weaker now. His legs kick against the floor. Each breath he fights for comes out rattling, wet.
I could end this instantly. One sharp twist and his neck breaks. Quick. Clean. Over.
I don't.
His pulse flutters under my palms. Fading. His eyes glaze. His hands fall away from my wrists—too weak to fight anymore.
I've got him. He's done.
Footsteps behind me—soft, deliberate.
I don't turn. I don't stop.
Behind me, metal scrapes tile—one of the guns I threw.
Eden steps into my peripheral vision, the weapon in her hand.
She walks up. Stops beside us. Crouches down—one knee, one foot planted—and presses the barrel to Daniels' temple.
No hesitation. She decided before she drew.
He looks at her. Terror flooding what's left of his face.
"No—" he chokes out. "Please—"
"It's not going to hurt." Her voice is so calm it doesn't sound human. "One second you're here. The next—"
POW.
The sound erases everything. The violence. The rage. The red I've been lost in.
Daniels goes still. Instantly. Completely. His body jerks once and then nothing.
What's left of his head hits the tile.
I freeze.
My hands are still on his throat, but there's nothing to hold onto anymore. No pulse. No struggle. No life. Just meat and bone and fading heat.
Eden is still crouched beside me. Blood on her face. Her hands. Splatter she doesn't seem to notice. Gun still pointed at what used to be his head.
She stares at what she did. Needs to see it. Needs to know it's real.
She's too still. Too calm.
The gun trembles in her grip. Just once. Then her hand locks down. Wills itself still.
I let go of Daniels' throat. Sit back on my heels.
The bullet wounds throb. Grind. But I can't look away from her.
"Eden."
She doesn't move.
"Eden. It's over."
Her gaze clears. She comes back from wherever she went.
I reach for the gun. Gently. Just covering her hand with mine.
"You can let go now."
She looks at the gun. At Daniels' body. At me.
Then she lets me take it.
I set it aside. Far from both of us.
Neither of us moves. Just breathing. A dead man between us and blood drying on her face.
"You didn't have to do that."
"Yes." No waver in her voice. "I did."
"I had him."
"I know."
"Then why—"
"I wasn't saving you from him." She looks at me. Her eyes sharp now. Present. "I was saving you from yourself."
She sees it in my face.
"You kill a cop—even a dirty cop—you're a dead orc walking." She doesn't waver. "An orc strangling a police officer to death? They'd never stop hunting you. But me?" She glances at Daniels' body. "I'm a traumatized witness who stopped her attacker. Self-defense."
I can't breathe.
"Eden—"
"You've been saving me since the day I showed up at your door." Her voice cracks. "Let me save you back."
I pull her into me.
She reaches up. Touches my face. Her fingers trace my jaw, the scars, the tusk.
The tension bleeds out of me. My fists. My jaw. The thing behind my ribs that's been howling since I heard her scream.
I hold her. Her ribs expand with each breath. In and out. In and out.
Her thumb brushes my cheekbone. I lean into it. Can't help it.
The blood soaks through my shirt, warm and wrong. But I don't let go.
"You came." Barely a whisper. "You actually came."
"Yeah."
"You said there was no we." Her voice cracks. "You called me an assignment. You said—"
"I know what I said."
"Then why?" Tears now. "Why did you come?"
"Because I was wrong."
Silence.
"About all of it." The words scrape out. "Pushing you away—I thought I was protecting you. Thought the best thing I could do for you was disappear."
I cough. Copper on my tongue. Keep talking.
"But you almost died because I wasn't here. Because I left you alone. Left you trusting the wrong people because I was too chickenshit to be the right one."
Her hands find my face. Cup my jaw.
"I was wrong, Eden. My absence isn't safety. It never was. Just me running."
"I know." Her forehead touches mine. "I don't care. You're here."
"I should have stayed. Should have fought for us—"
"You're here now. You came back."
"Broke every speed limit between Shadow Ridge and Atlanta."
"Good."
She laughs—or sobs, I can't tell which—and her body shakes against me.
I hold her tighter. The price registers in my shoulder, my side. Don't care.
"Don't let go," she whispers.
"Never."
"Promise."
"I don't deserve to make you promises."
"Make one anyway."
"Not again." My arms tighten around her. "Never again."
Then she stiffens.
"The note."
"What?"
She pulls back. Her jaw tightens.
"He had a note. In his pocket." She's already crawling across the floor toward Daniels' body. "A suicide note. In my handwriting."
She reaches into the dead man's coat and pulls out a folded piece of paper. Blood-soaked. She crawls back to me.
She unfolds it. Holds it so I can see.
The handwriting is hers. The loops, the slant: perfect. Blood creeping across the margins.
"'I can't live with what I've done.'" She reads without inflection. "'Detective Carver tried to help me, but I couldn't take the pressure anymore. The things he made me do to keep me safe. The way he touched me.'"
My hands curl into fists.
The way he touched me.
"'I told him to stop and he wouldn't. So I stopped him. Now I have to stop myself.'"
She lowers the paper. Looks at me.
"Carver never touched me. He was the only one who believed me when no one else would." Her voice wavers. "He killed Carver because Carver cared about me. Because he was trying to protect me." Her eyes find mine. "I get it now, Diesel. Why you pushed me away."
I can't speak.
I look at Daniels' body. At the hole Eden put in his head.
If I'd known about this note, I'd have made him last for hours.
"He practiced my handwriting. Used my interview notes." She stares at the paper. "He was going to put the gun in my hand. Make me pull the trigger. And when they found my body, they'd find this."
I stare at the note. At Carver's name.
"He killed Carver and framed him as a rapist. Would have killed me and made me the murderer." She lets the paper fall. It lands in the blood between us. "Tidy. That's what he called it."
She comes back to me. Fits herself against my uninjured side, her hand pressing over the wound in my flank. Applying pressure. I hiss through my teeth.
"They'll call it self-defense," she says.
I look at her. "Was it?"
She holds my gaze. "Does it matter?"