72. Rory
Rory
“TIME FOR BIG RED TO TAKE CARE OF SOME BUSINESS.”
Citizen Soldier Playlist
“Without You”
We arrive just before dawn.
The sky is like a fading bruise, quiet, before the world remembers it’s alive.
Easthaven’s a damn fortress, gates like steel jaws clamped shut, snipers dotting the rooftops and towers like ticks on a fat dog.
I tap the side of my ear to make sure the comm’s still working and glance toward Raphael and Vincent, both scoping the place out with night-vision binoculars that cost more than my first flat.
“Snipers on the north tower and eastern perch,” Vincent murmurs. “Watch patterns reset every seven minutes.”
“Steel gates on both entrances,” Raphael adds. “Back gate’s got heavier coverage. East wall has a tunnel hatch. I can see the lock system. If we can draw enough guards off it—”
“We need a diversion,” Jude mentions.
Seth smirks, jerking his head to me. “We should pack Rory into a glitter bomb, toss it over the wall, and see who survives.”
I blow my irritation through my cheeks. “Or ye could show up shirtless with your axe over your shoulder and ask if they need their logs split. Always works on me, Paul Bunyan.”
Seth snorts. “Not denying it.”
While they bicker like old ladies at the market, I slip away. No one’s watching me. Just proves how much they’d be lost without me. I chuff a quiet laugh, duck, and pull my cleaver from its sheath. My silenced Glock’s already cocked. My cleaver primed. No ceremony. Just work.
Bulky figures roam the woods, patrolling. My veins fill up with bloodthirst.
This is how Rory Conor takes the edge off.
Quick and quiet, I come at the first guard from behind. Big, dumb oaf doesn’t even turn. I slice through flesh and bone. He goes down with a gurgle. Blood sprays my hands, warm and wet.
Second guard—silent and quick bullet to the brain.
I strip both bodies for ammo and weapons. Always wondered why movie heroes leave fully loaded guns behind like they’re allergic to efficiency.
I move like a beast with rabies and a bad attitude, stacking bodies, messy but quiet. Each kill gets me closer to the front gate. Closer to her.
If it were Sethy boy and me, we’d be crowing and cackling, working wild.
Then I reach into my bag and see my babies—two hand grenades, fat and gleaming in my hands like they know what’s coming.
In my ear, Seth breaks through: “Where’s Rory? Rory?”
I grin. Pull the pins. Toss them straight at the gates. “Heads up, lads. Early delivery. Merry Christmas, ye filthy animals.”
Boom.
The explosion thunders through my body. Fireworks flare across the sky, steel screaming. Guards scatter like roaches under a kitchen light.
Vincent mutters, “Never mind.”
I key into the comm. “If that doesn’t pull attention from the east wall, I’m an English harp player,” I smirk, remembering what Briella once said to me, my black heart raging for her.
So close, I can almost smell her.
If there’s one motherfucking mark on her, I’m splitting that religious shite’s carcass open and strangling his balls with his own intestines.
“Rory, get your William Wallace–impersonating ass back here. Now,” Seth barks.
“Aww, wood boy, ye miss me?”
“I mean it, Rory—”
But I’m already moving. Trees shift. Boots pound the earth. Guards coming fast. I’ll take out every goddamn one of them.
“Sorry, Lads,” I mutter, raising the automatic rifle I swiped. “Time for Big Red to take care of some business.”
And get my woman back.
I cut the comm before Seth can go full lumberjack on me. Gunfire erupts. I become a hailstorm of lead, teeth-gritting and glorious. Bullets rip through bodies. My cleaver swings wide, catching throats, clavicles, flesh, and bone. Blood sprays warm on my face, soaks my fatigues.
Then—
Pain. Like lightning on my spine. My body locks, legs buckling. Fuckfuckfuck!
I go down hard, getting tased. Again. And again, until I’m twitching in the dirt, the smell of ozone and blood thick in my nose.
“Bring him to the Prophet,” someone growls.
I peer up at the blurry figures closing in, face slick with blood and rain and the high of carnage.
“Perfect,” I rasp, laughing through gritted teeth. “Parley and take me to the mothership, you motherfuckers.”
They dump me like trash.
Hardwood bites my knees as I hit the floor, wrists cuffed behind my back so tight, they’re going numb. Got countless bruises from their blows. Guess they weren’t too happy with how many I took out.
Blood from a cut on my lip hits the floor before I do, and I lift my head just enough to see the Prophet’s office. Ornate rugs. Gaudy gold-framed mirrors. A silver circle above his desk. And fuck me if he doesn’t have animal masks with crowns lining the damn walls.
“Well,” I grin through bloodied teeth, looking up at the man sitting in a royal purple wingback chair behind the large desk in front of me, “someone’s got a god complex and a shite interior decorator. What, no velvet Elvis?”
The Prophet—tall, dark hair, and way too good-looking for a piece of shite like him—smiles thin and humorless. He wears all white, like some bastard saint. The robes make me itch just seeing them. Can’t wait to turn them red.
“I should’ve known the drone was ineffective.” He rises, circling me like a vulture. “You’re clever little rats. Slipping through cracks. Multiplying.”
“Yeah,” I grunt. “We’re everywhere. Crawling up your ass like radioactive rodents.” I give him my best twisted grin because he’s invited me into the belly of the beast. Not knowing I’m the bigger beast. And I’ll goddamn devour him from the inside out. “Where’s my woman?”
He stops behind me.
I don’t like not being able to see his hands.
A hum cuts through the air, rising.
Then, searing pain stabs into my neck from the cattle prod he presses to my skin. Just the lowest setting, but it’s enough to light up every nerve from the base of my skull to my fingertips. Pins and needles dipped in acid erupt through me.
I grit my teeth and exhale sharply through my nose. No scream. No satisfaction.
“Where are they?” he demands.
“What’s the matter?” I croak, blinking through the static fuzz in my head. “Your hand trembled. Try again, maybe you’ll pop the cork this time.”
He zaps me again, fucking bastard. Can’t even bother to get his hands dirty.
“Ye like a bit o’foreplay, Mr. Messiah?” I say through gasps. “Cause ye gonna need more voltage than that to light me on fire.”
I groan through the next jolts, my muscles a’jerking, the pain firing through every nerve ending in my body.
He squats beside me, leans in close enough that I smell cloves and copper on him.
“You think you’re brave,” he murmurs. “But we have other ways to make you talk.”
“Ack, what a cliche. Ye gonna share your tragic backstory monologue while petting a black cat next? Where is my Lass, motherfucker?”
He straightens. Snaps his fingers. “Bring him to the Circle.”
My stomach knots. Not from fear. From rage.
Two grunts grab me under the arms and haul me to my feet. I drag my boots like dead weight just to spite them. Down winding hallways, underground, past stone walls that smell of mildew and old blood. My head swims, but I don’t stumble.
Then the doors open.
The Circle.
It’s an amphitheater. Ancient. Cold. Stone seating all around, rising tiers like some twisted coliseum. Ripples of conversation surge through the audience. Mostly men. Some women. No children. At least that’s a blessing.
Then, I lift my eyes to the center: a cross. Not symbolic. Not spiritual. Functional. Brutal.
And she’s bound to it.
Briella.
Wearing nothing but a thin, transparent white dress. Making my she-wolf seem like some goddamn sacrificial lamb. Blindfolded. Wrists and ankles lashed to the beams, skin chafed raw.
I stop breathing.
Even before I make a sound, she flinches. Her head snaps up. Her whole body leans toward me like a sunflower hunting light.
She knows I’m here.
Something in me detonates.
I wrench against the cuffs, spit flying as I snarl, “YOU SICK MOTHERFUCKING BASTARDS!”
The guards yank me forward, but I kick and thrash, aiming for anything soft, anything breakable. I catch one in the knee. The other in the gut. Then a rifle butt crashes into the side of my skull, and the world goes momentarily white.
“Rory!”
It was a whimper, but I still heard it through the crashing pain.
I drop to one knee but keep glaring, blinking away stars. I growl to the Prophet, who stands next to me, hands lifted, fingers steepled, “If you touch her again,” I swear, my voice thick with venom, “I’ll burn this whole fucking cult to ash. Burn your goddamn dick off and shove it up your arse!”
They haul me upright again.
Briella’s breathing fast now. Her lips parting. Tears sliding down her cheeks. But still she doesn’t scream.
She waits. For me. “Rory, don’t fight,” she pleads softly, weakly. “Please, I need you…God, I need you alive, Red.”
“Let her go,” I snarl.
The Prophet steps into view, hands clasped like some benevolent executioner. “She’s a catalyst. You, the trigger. I don’t need your words, Rory. I only need her pain. And redemption.”
“Ye don’t know the meaning of pain, ye Beelzebub bastard.” Thank you to the years of Catholic elementary school, and those priests with their dreaded ruler sticks. Was quite a bit o’fun shoving one up the prick’s arses.
I’ll do the same with this one.
I’ll rain down the apocalypse on his pretty preacher head.
And it won’t stop until I rip him apart, piece by holy piece.