8. Ember #2
“Then let’s keep this simple. Hand over Tom, and let’s go.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Compliant isn’t a word I’d use to describe you.” Carlos looks down at Tom’s still body. “However, the sooner I’m out of this cesspit, the better.”
“Then give me what I want.”
“Ember!” Hyland calls my name.
Biting my tongue, I glance over my shoulder at their frozen statures. Only Blaine wears an unreadable expression while the others boast matching masks of conflict and terror. None of them have dared to move an inch.
My lips mouth a single command.
Be ready.
Hyland angrily shakes his head from side to side.
Trust me, I mouth.
As defeat sinks into Warner’s baby blues, I don’t give them the opportunity to protest. Carlos is muttering to his men when I turn back around. To hold my nerve, I refuse to look at Tom on the ground. I’ll only want to collapse beside him.
“Are we doing this or what?”
“Very well.” Carlos straightens to attention.
“Then let my team have Tom, and we can be on our way.”
“One move otherwise, and I’ll send them all to an early grave. Is that understood?”
“Loud and clear.”
Two of Carlos’s men hoist Tom up, dragging him into the no man’s land between our two factions. I ignore Hyland, shouting like a madman and move to meet them. A single look warns the approaching assailant to keep his hands off me.
“If you want to keep those attached, I wouldn’t do that. I’ll walk alone.”
“Suit yourself.” He shows me his palms.
The idiot rightfully backs off, indicating for me to follow them into enemy territory. I keep my chin held high, shoulders back and muscles tensed while walking straight into Carlos’s orbit. Each step closer feels like battering another nail into my coffin.
“Hello, 768.”
“You got what you wanted after all.”
“Wasn’t that easy?” he preens, eyeing my approach. “Good choice.”
I halt in front of him. “Lower the guns on my friends.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Tom needs medical attention. Let them go.”
“Do you think I’m that foolish, puta ?”
“You already have me,” I snarl. “They’re unarmed. We’re still outnumbered. Lower the guns, and let them see to my brother.”
“You’d do well to remember that tone never worked on me.”
When Carlos darts forward, the heavy strike shouldn’t be a surprise. He always did teach with his fists. I don’t move to dodge the blow, allowing it to smash into my cheek so hard, I know his knuckles will be imprinted on my skin.
Blood seeps across my tongue as my teeth clack down, and the punch’s force sends me crashing to my knees. My neck wrenches to the side, eyes streaming and skin burning from blood rising to form a bruise.
“Ember! Em!”
Hyland’s yelling reaches a fever pitch, cutting into the ringing that fills my ears. The full force of Carlos’s strength is enough to shake loose bones and teeth. And I haven’t taken it without a fight for so long, I almost forgot what it’s like to absorb his anger.
“Don’t touch her!” Hyland’s yelling is anguished. “Fuck! Ember!”
“You’ve cast a spell on them.” Carlos tsks above the enraged yelling. “That one would risk a bullet just to keep you from me. Shall I put one in him?”
I blink through the hazy fog infecting my sight. “Of course, you don’t understand the concept of loyalty.”
“I understand it perfectly well. You ran from us. How is that loyal?”
Carlos’s leg extends to deliver a hard kick to my chest. Pain cracks across my breastbone, sinking into my muscles. The momentum pushes me backwards onto my spine where I let myself crumple.
A kick to the ribcage follows, causing my bones to creak and groan. The flaring of painful heat in my torso is acute, and the blood that’s gathered in my throat erupts, spraying across the ground. Carlos seems to relish in the shouts his beating is creating.
It’s like he wants to provoke them. He wants an excuse to tell his men to fire. For each kick and stomp he lays out on my defenceless body, I can imagine Hyland battling to escape his teammates’ restraints. One step and those red dots will seal their fate.
“What? No fighting back?” Carlos goads me.
All I offer is a grunt as he takes his pound of flesh. Not the first time he’s beaten me stupid.
“You disappoint me. I thought you were better than this.”
Let him think that he’s winning.
Each time his limbs slam into me, my determination solidifies into an invisible dagger. One I’ll soon slip between his fucking ribs. I want him to relish in beating me down one last time before I show him that now… he isn’t the one in control.
I am.
Staring up at the greyscale sky allows my vision to settle, the fuzz at the edges receding after a few short breaths. I don’t make a sound when Carlos hauls my floppy body up, wrapping his big, hairy hand around my throat.
I’m pinned like dangling prey, blood seeping from my nose and mouth. My throbbing body is already going numb. In the aftermath of a fight, I learned to tune everything out. The injuries were the price of success.
“That’s better. You need to relearn your place.”
A whimper sneaks through my blood-stained lips.
“If you survive Senor Gael’s punishment, perhaps you’ll be allowed to live and fight again. But you have to prove your worth to our operation, 768. Earn back his trust.”
I’d rather die.
Right here, right now.
“You may approach now,” Carlos calls to my team. “Take your prize and go.”
One by one, the guns are lowered. Targets disappear. Relief burgeons in me at the sight of Warner releasing Hyland, but not before whispering in his ear. I can see Hyland’s reaction from here—throat bobbing, jaw clenched, nostrils flaring.
As a silent unit, they approach Tom’s lifeless form. Each movement is jerky and tentative, prepared for the scene to ignite at a single move in the wrong direction.
“Watch them abandon you.” Hot breath tickles my ear, driving the torment home. “Now that they’ve got their boy back.”
Kneeling beside Tom, Warner clasps his slack face between his hands, murmuring his name but getting no response. Hyland stands over them in a protective stance, his dark gaze locked on me. Then I find Blaine’s stare.
He nods once. Subtly. Commanding. Full of trust and encouragement. Wiggling my fingers loosens the cuff of the tight black jacket hiding the sheath strapped to my forearm. The same blade he insisted that I wear today.
Cool steel kisses my wrist, sliding free from its hiding spot to nudge my palm. The blade gives me the courage to strain against Carlos’s grip. He peers down at me with a leer.
“Time to go. We have a long journey ahead.”
Lips puckering, I gather saliva on my tongue. Splat . The blood-tinged globule lands in his eye, causing his hand to slacken long enough for me to twist. It’s all I need. The blade is already nestled in my cupped hand.
“I’m going nowhere with you!”
“You little…” Spittle flies from Carlos’s mouth.
Necks are delicate things. Fleshy. Vulnerable. I suppose that’s why they aimed for Josh’s. It’s precisely why I aim the curved switchblade upwards, ramming it into his throat at a perfect right angle.
Soft squelching rewards my efforts as his skin parts like warm butter. Muscles slice without protest. Blood erupts from the wound, granting me immediate gratification as I let the warm moisture spatter on my face like hot oil.
Sticky. Fresh. Sweet.
An unspoiled reward for enduring his punishment.
His arm slides away, body shuddering and lids blown wide open to show the veiny whites of his eyes. I watch every detail. Each second of deathly agony played out in real time. Lips flapping. Saliva bubbling. Muscles slackening.
“You killed the person I was,” I murmur to him. “Now I get to take your life from you too.”
Sliding the blade from his throat, my fingers slip on warm copper. Carlos collapses against me, his nearly-dead weight dragging me to the ground. It’s a welcome defeat. Triumphant. He spasms and gurgles, holding me in an involuntary embrace.
Still, I hold his dying body closer than a lover. I want to feel the moment his heart ceases to beat. When the life drains from his veins, he’ll be in my arms. The woman he tried to break. The fighter he forged in fire.
With palms sliding in the crimson stickiness flooding around us, it takes all my strength to shove Carlos to the side when his jerking ceases. My battered body screams for relief, a familiar form of fierce agony.
When I look at Carlos, glassy vacantness stares back. Two empty pits that once held malice are little more than soulless oblivion now. The confirmation slices invisible strings that have held me hostage since the day I fled, puppeteering my every move.
Carlos is dead.
I killed him.
I fucking won.
Lost in those void chasms, I fail to mount a defence against the heavy weight that cuts short my triumph with a tackle. One of Carlos’s men locks me in a grappling match, two steel-hands attempting to cinch around my neck to choke the life from me.
“Stupid bitch,” he spits in accented English. “You will die for that!”
The instincts I honed across hundreds of battles snap into place. Play dead. Reposition. Attack. My fingers clench around the sticky blade, waiting for Carlos’s brute to roll and flip me onto my back.
His ragged nails bury deep in my throat, miniature razors piercing my oesophagus. Fire fills me from head to toe as oxygen becomes a rare commodity.
“Senor Gael can have your rotting bones!”
The moment I slip the blade into his exposed midriff, I see it in his gaze. His pupils blast open, and his mouth flops with a shocked gasp. I pull back the blade, sinking it into his stomach. Then his side. His torso. Over and over until organs pierce and skin rips open.
I can hardly feel the movement of pushing him aside and wrenching myself up to advance on the next target. Fists flying. Limbs wrestling to gain the upper hand. My blade sinking deep into soft tissue and between bones.
Slash. Stab. Slash.
Blood replaces skin, forming a tight curtain across my whole existence. I’m drenched in it. The warmth. The triumph of unshackling a part of myself I’ve only ever accessed in the ring then buried the day that jet landed back in England.
Slash. Stab. Slash.
Human life shouldn’t be so easy to take. Little more than the snuffing out of a candle. Inconsequential. In seconds, families are destroyed, lives changed, lines crossed. Yet that doesn’t halt me from mowing down each obstacle in my path.
Slash. Stab. Slash.
None of it matters. Not even those watching the return of 768. Her inevitable comeback. The moment she overpowers my body to find a permanent home—one that won’t allow her to be buried again. She’s back and here to stay.
When my knees buckle, carrying me to the hard ground, the blade clatters at my side. Liquid death drips from my face, hands, torso. Coating rapidly forming bruises and mangled flesh. Evidencing the severing of mortal coils without so much as a single regret.
The world flashes in and out. Red-soaked carnage becomes bright strobe flashes, cutting reality into bite-sized trauma. Voices nearing. Footsteps. The blast of gunfire. Strong hands on my shoulders, fingers pressing into my wet cheeks.
“Em?”
I blink. Breathe. Shudder.
“Come back, dimples.”
Amber-orange eyes beg me for recognition.
“Let 768 go now. She did a good job, but I need you to come back to us. Come back to me, babe.”
“A-Ax?”
“Yeah. I’m here now. Sorry I’m late to the party.”
Clenching my eyes shut, it takes monumental effort to fight off the red lens across my vision. All I can see is blood. Everywhere, covering everything. Shredding my morals to the bare bone. Unleashing a monstrous, mind-numbing thirst to rain hellfire on every last threat we face.
The feel of Axel’s hands on my face cuts through years’ worth of conditioning, giving me the chance to claw my way back. Piece by piece. Cell by cell. Retaking control of my brain is a monumental effort, muddled by pain and trauma.
“It’s okay, Em. Tom is safe. Everyone’s alive.”
When I peek at Axel, he’s crouched in front of me, blurred movement zipping all around us. All I can see is his wide ember-like eyes, lashes thick against fear-filled honey.
“Still want to save me?” I whisper brokenly.
“No need. I was wrong. Sometimes… rage does have its place.”