Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
PERILOUS
She keeps looking at me. I can only imagine what my face looks like right now. The aftermath of a fight is usually brutal, but being chained up and beaten, stabbed, and zapped with a stun gun a few times…
Annika keeps bumping into me. She’s nervous because of where we’re walking right now. On a path that’s overgrown and rarely used. Old stones under our feet from a time that we both can’t comprehend. Not decades ago but hundreds of years ago.
Who knows what occurred on these travels. What kind of ceremonies or what the Legion meant back then. What the Perg represented. That’s the beauty of power. The way it finds its hold into the future. Serving as the foundation for generations to come.
And here I am walking alongside of Annika Alistair as she wears an oversized hoodie again, the hood pulled up, sunglasses on her face. She’s freshly showered for a second time, washed away of my blood and my cum.
I can smell her hair and skin and it’s driving my nose and my cock crazy. Like honey and roses mixed together. A heavenly tincture that does not belong in the version of hell I exist in.
But here we are. I can easily at any moment end this thing.
Strangle her to death.
Throw her against a tree over and over until…
I step in front of her and place my right hand to her neck. She doesn’t move an inch. She doesn’t even try to fucking defend herself from me.
I reach with my left hand and take her sunglasses off. Her eyes are that same lustrous color. Tempting and… sweet .
“You’re not telling me everything,” I say. “There’s more. Even if you don’t realize it.”
“More…?”
“Much more.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Peri. Is what happened to you because of me?”
“What the fuck do you think, doll?”
Her eyes fill with tears. “Why is this happening to me? To my life?”
“Oh, Annika, you do realize that at the end of life there’s death, right? No matter what happens, you fucking die. For some that’s comforting. For others it’s terrifying.”
“What about the in between?” Annika whispers.
“Who the fuck knows.”
I tighten my grip a little. She winces. This fucking adorable wince.
I lower my mouth down to hers and kiss her.
What the fuck are you doing, Peri?
Redemption. That’s all Annika is to me. She’s my redemption.
After our short-lived kiss, I place her sunglasses back on and we continue our walk. I have to take her to another building. I know right where to go. So far back on the property, covered in hunter green moss, rarely used ever.
If someone were to visit the building, it would be for the second floor only because of the library. Thanks to technology, the library stands as a dusty relic. Sometimes people go up there to snoop around for old books after reading conspiracies online that old books have information that new books don’t.
Others dare one another to sleep in the building to see if it’s haunted. Or they get drunk or high and fuck on the first floor.
Just like the other very old buildings there’s a basement with separate rooms that are livable. Clean enough. Air filtration. So many places around the world for the most powerful to hide. Places average people could never understand. Could never comprehend. Stuff they could only make sense of if it were part of a movie.
We approach the old, castle-like building.
“Peri… are you setting me up right now? Am I going to die in this building?”
There’s tension in her voice. Fear. She doesn’t trust me. Yet in some ways she does trust me. Her mind and heart are all fucked up. I’m probably the last person she needs in her life but I’m the only one who’s helping.
“We can all die at any time,” I say.
An absolute stupid cliché thing to say to her.
We remain in silence for the rest of the walk. We enter through a mossy side door and go to a metal staircase that stinks of age. As we go down the stairs, Annika starts to shake. She thinks I’m going to kill her. More than ever.
When we reach the bottom of the stairs I pull the hood down on her hoodie and grab her hair and pull. I take the sunglasses off her face and look into her eyes again.
“Peri,” she whispers, sounding so fucking desperate.
I pull at her hair, forcing her to jump up to her toes. I drop my mouth down to hers and I’m kissing her again. A deep kiss. A wild kiss.
What the fuck am I doing?
Is this… redemption…?
Or maybe I just enjoy the way her tongue shivers when mine touches it. Or the way her knees bend. Or that I know for a fucking fact that her cunt isn’t just wet. And it isn’t just soaked. I know for a fucking fact that right now her cunt is dripping .
To prove the point to myself, I lift the oversized hoodie up and slide my left hand down into the front of her pants. She whimpers into my mouth, sending signals that have my cock ready to release a warm load of cum anywhere on her body I fucking please.
My fingers slide through her stubbly patch of pubic hair and I slide along her swollen wetness with ease. One stroke of my fingers and I pull my hand free. My fingertips are glistening as though I’ve dipped them in tepid honey.
I lick my fingertips, torturing myself with her beautiful pungent taste. She’s worse than a drug and just as fucking deadly. My entire body aches from the beating I took because of her.
My face is swollen and throbbing. My ribs feel like chewed up burger meat. Every single place where a needle entered my skin stings. And my body can still feel the electric jolts from the fucking stun gun being used on me over and over.
I stop kissing Annika and take her to our room.
When I open the door, someone is waiting for me.
* * *
“What the fuck, Ty?” I ask.
The bathroom door opens and out steps Demo.
“There you two are,” he says.
“Jesus, they really fucked you up,” a voice says to my left.
Vic is standing with one foot up against the wall. I hadn’t seen him standing there.
Annika clings closer to me. For sure now she thinks we’re going to kill her. I ease my right hand around her body and hold her hip, keeping her against me.
I have this sudden awful feeling that maybe my brood has turned on me. Which if they did, I would not blame them for. Orders were given. I’ve broken the orders.
“Your brother wanted to say hello to me,” I tell Ty.
“He really wants her dead,” Ty says as he looks at Annika.
“Being here is trouble for all of you,” I say.
“You need to be careful, brother,” Demo says. “You need a plan.”
“We need a plan,” Vic says. “We’re all part of this now.”
Fuck.
I glance down at Annika. I need to speak with these guys in private, but I can’t let Annika out of my sight.
Vic reaches into his back pocket and takes out a small container of liquid. He shakes it and nods.
“Time to drink up, doll,” I whisper to Annika.
Her body starts to give out and I hold her tighter against me.
“It’s not going to kill you, Annika,” I growl through my teeth. “I need you asleep. You cannot hear what we’re going to talk about. Do you understand?”
Her teeth chatter and she nods. She fucking knows her place right now. It almost pains me a little as I take the liquid from Vic and hand it to Annika.
She keeps her stare right at me. I’m the last thing she sees as she downs the GHB . After that, it simply becomes a waiting game. Watching the drug work its way throughout her body.
I pick her up and place her down onto the bed and stand there, staring down at her, watching her drift off. Swallowed up by darkness. She’s as vulnerable as ever. Anything can happen to her. The way I feel right now…
… I’ll fucking kill someone—including my brood—if they even as much as look at Annika.
* * *
“Man, they got you good,” Demo says. “I’m not used to seeing you like this. Getting the shit kicked out of you.”
“They drugged me,” I say. “Let that be known.”
“Luc drugged you?” Ty asked.
I take a breath and recount the highlights of the story. No need to go into fucking detail.
“Fuck,” Vic says. “They really wanted to send a message.”
“No they ,” I say. “It’s him . There’s something to this.”
“And you’re going to take your stand?” Ty challenges.
“Looks like he already has,” Demo says as he nods toward a sleeping Annika.
“Or not,” Vic says.
A second later he has a huge knife in his hand. He spins it around, leaving the blade resting against the palm of his hand.
He nods at me. “Take it, Peri. Do it right now. Slit the cunt’s throat. Cut her fucking heart out of her chest. Send a message right back to Luc. Don’t just kill this bitch. Annihilate her. Gut her. Make it so fucking disgusting that Luc vomits. Send a fucking message, Peri.”
I grab the knife from Vic and throw a punch with my left hand, hitting him in the jaw. I then toss him against the wall and put the knife to his throat.
“Peri,” Demo calls out.
“Let him,” Vic says. “It’s all good. We’re just talking.”
Vic’s eyes stay on me.
Fucking prick.
“You think I won’t?” I ask him. “You know what I’ve done before, right? You think I won’t slit your fucking throat? And then slit her throat? Huh?”
“I say go for it, brother,” Vic tempts. “Let’s go.”
I’m letting Vic get under my skin. The way he talks is just so smooth yet so cocky. The guy shows zero fear.
“Go ahead,” Vic whispers. “I’ve lived a good life. Remember Darla? What was her last name? Sparks ? Almost like a stripper’s last name. Remember when I tongued fucked her ass. That was a great time for me. Then you showed up and took over. I never saw a woman squirt from having her ass fucked.”
“Why the fuck are you talking about this right now?”
“We’ve got a sleeping cunt over there, Peri. Let’s give it one last ride before you start killing people.”
I step back from Vic. He’s calling my bluff and I’m a fucking mess right now.
“Can I taste her sweet tight ass?” Vic asks.
I spin around and throw a punch. Vic knows it’s coming and he steps out of the way. My fist smashes against the wall. I drop the knife. I lower my head.
“You’re broken,” Ty says. “They finally broke you, Peri.”
“It’s not they ,” I growl.
It’s… her …
Vic picks up his knife. The room remains in complete silence.
Demo breaks the silence. “I hope she’s fucking worth it.”
That comment is why this brood functions the way it is. There’s reality we all see when others can’t.
“There’s a war within the Legion right now,” I say. “I’m sure there have been wars all along. I’m sure this kind of thing has happened before. I should just kill her right now. Then what? What happens next? When is enough… enough…?”
“Don’t sell it to us, brother,” Vic says. “We’re already here. You need to sell it to yourself. Once and for all.”
“And to be fair,” Demo says, “if you’re not going to do what needs to be done, then I’m going to help myself to a little snack.”
He takes a playful step toward the bed and my eyes go wide with rage. They’re all fucking with me. Pushing me. They all know what I’m refusing to acknowledge.
There’s a war inside the Legion , which really doesn’t concern us. It’s the war I’m fighting that affects us all.
I look at the bed. At Annika as she exists in her drug induced slumber. I know what I have to do. Inside my heart, I fucking know.
I hold out my left hand. “Vic, give me the knife. I have no choice.”
“It’s about fucking time,” Vic growls.
And he hands me the knife.