CHAPTER 12 THE DEVIL’S DESIGN POV THAYER #2
"Keep moving," I grind out, the words tasting like copper on my tongue. I force myself upright, completely relying on the raw, burning adrenaline of my obsession to fuel my failing muscles.
I cannot drop here. If I drop here, she is trapped underground with a corpse.
I push forward, dragging her with me. The incline grows steeper, the physical exertion completely draining the remaining reserves of my strength. The blood is soaking through my pants now, trailing in dark, heavy drops onto the dirt floor.
After what feels like an eternity of agonizing, blinding pain, the beam of the flashlight catches the heavy steel grate sealing the end of the tunnel.
We made it.
I release Sybil’s hand, staggering forward.
I reach up with my right hand, gripping the heavy locking mechanism of the grate.
It requires massive physical strength to disengage.
I grit my teeth, a feral, animalistic snarl tearing from my throat as I throw the entire weight of my body into my right arm.
The metal groans, the rust breaking. I shove the grate upward and outward.
The moment the steel gives way, the violent, freezing wrath of the storm completely invades the tunnel. Torrential, icy rain lashes across my face, accompanied by the deafening roar of the wind tearing through the ancient pines.
I climb out of the hole, my boots sinking ankle-deep into the freezing mud of the forest floor. The cold is a catastrophic shock to my system, instantly biting into my bones and completely exacerbating the shock of my blood loss.
I turn back, reaching down into the darkness. "Take my hand."
Sybil reaches up. I grab her forearm and haul her out of the earth. She stumbles into the freezing rain, the heavy tactical jacket instantly plastered to her small frame. The forest is entirely pitch-black, a terrifying, endless ocean of towering trees and violent weather.
I reach down with my boot and kick the steel grate back into place. I drag a heavy layer of dead branches and mud over the metal, completely concealing the exit.
"Where are we going?" she yells over the roar of the wind, her hands coming up to shield her face from the biting rain.
"North," I command, shouting to be heard. "There is an extraction point two miles from here. An abandoned hunting cabin. We move."
I don't wait for her. I start trekking through the dense, unforgiving brush, my flashlight cutting a frantic, bouncing path through the trees.
The journey is a descent into absolute physical hell.
The mud is slick, grabbing at our boots like liquid concrete. The rain is blinding, a relentless barrage of ice-cold needles. My left side is completely numb, the bleeding unabated, the dark crimson completely washing away in the heavy downpour.
A mile into the trek, my body completely fails.
The darkness at the edge of my vision violently collapses inward. My legs turn to lead. I don't stumble this time; I simply stop functioning. My knees buckle, and I crash heavily into the freezing mud, the tactical flashlight slipping from my grip to illuminate the wet roots of a massive pine tree.
"Thayer!"
Sybil is on her knees beside me in an instant. Her hands are on my face, completely frantic, completely desperate. Her thumbs wipe the freezing rain and the mud from my eyes.
"Get up," she begs, her voice completely shattered, sobbing openly now. "Please, Thayer. You can't stop. You have to get up."
I look at her. The midnight blue of her eyes is entirely wild with terror. The fragile, broken girl who walked down the aisle twenty-four hours ago is completely gone. In her place is a woman who refuses to let the monster die.
"I can't," I rasp, the absolute truth a bitter, humiliating defeat. "I'm bleeding out, Sybil."
"I don't care!" she screams, the volume of her voice cutting sharply through the roar of the storm. It is the first time I have ever heard her scream in pure, unadulterated defiance. "You don't get to leave me! You told me you would never leave me! You promised!"
The sheer, demanding force of her words is a violent electrical shock straight to my dying heart.
You promised.
She grabs the collar of my ruined tactical shirt with both hands, using every ounce of her small, fragile strength to pull me upward.
"Get up!" she cries, her tears mingling with the freezing rain on my face.
A dark, feral surge of possessive rage detonates in my chest. I cannot leave her to the wolves. I am the only wolf who gets to keep her.
I plant my right hand in the mud and push. I force my massive frame upward, completely ignoring the blinding, agonizing scream of my torn muscles. I stagger to my feet, swaying heavily.
Sybil immediately steps into my left side, throwing her arms around my waist, wedging her small shoulder directly under my armpit. She becomes my crutch. She takes the heavy, agonizing weight of my failing body, wrapping her arm tightly around my back to keep me upright.
"I've got you," she breathes, panting from the exertion. "I've got you. Which way?"
"Straight ahead," I murmur, my head dropping heavily until my chin rests on her wet hair.
We walk. The role is completely reversed. The captor is entirely dependent on the captive. We move at an agonizingly slow pace, fighting the wind, fighting the mud, fighting the inevitable darkness pulling at my consciousness.
Sybil is a revelation. She doesn't complain. She doesn't stop. She drags my heavy, bleeding body through the frozen hell of the northern woods with a sheer, terrifying willpower that I never knew she possessed.
Finally, a dark, jagged silhouette emerges from the trees.
The hunting cabin.
It is a small, dilapidated structure of rotting wood and rusted metal, entirely forgotten by the world. It was built by my father decades ago as a dead-drop point, but it still holds emergency supplies.
We stumble onto the rotting wooden porch. Sybil practically kicks the heavy wooden door open, dragging me inside.
The interior is pitch-black, smelling of dust, mildew, and stale air, but it is entirely shielded from the violent, freezing wind. Sybil guides me toward the center of the room, and I completely collapse. I hit the wooden floorboards hard, my back resting against the base of an old stone fireplace.
Sybil drops to her knees beside me, completely breathless. She fumbles with the tactical flashlight, pointing the beam at my shoulder.
The sight makes her gasp. The tactical shirt is completely saturated, the wound still sluggishly pumping thick, dark blood.
"The bag," I whisper, my voice barely audible, my head lolling back against the cold stone. "Open the bag."
She scrambles to the waterproof duffel I dropped on the floor. Her shaking, mud-caked hands tear the zipper open. She pulls out an industrial emergency medical kit.
"What do I do?" she asks, her voice completely frantic, ripping the plastic seal off the kit. "Thayer, tell me what to do."
"Cut the shirt off," I command, my eyes fluttering shut, the darkness completely overwhelming my senses. "Pack the wound. QuikClot gauze. You have to push it deep inside the muscle, Sybil. It is going to hurt."
She doesn't hesitate. She pulls a pair of trauma shears from the kit. I feel the cold metal slide against my skin as she completely cuts the ruined tactical shirt away from my torso, exposing my bare chest and the brutal, gaping mess of my shoulder to the freezing air of the cabin.
She rips open a packet of hemostatic gauze.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, a sob breaking in her throat. "I'm so sorry."
"Do it," I order.
She presses the gauze directly into the open wound.
A blinding, catastrophic explosion of pure agony tears through my entire nervous system.
I roar, a dark, animalistic sound of pure suffering, my body violently arching off the floorboards.
My right hand shoots out, my fingers wrapping completely around her throat—not to strangle her, but a completely involuntary, violent reaction to the blinding pain.
Sybil doesn't flinch. She doesn't pull away. She leans into my grip, her blue eyes locked onto mine, completely fearless, as she ruthlessly packs the gauze deeper into my torn flesh, forcing the chemical agent to clot the severed artery.
"Look at me," she demands, her voice dropping into a dark, commanding tone that sounds terrifyingly similar to my own. "Look at me, Thayer. Stay awake."
My breathing comes in ragged, shallow gasps. The pain is a white-hot fire burning through my veins, but the bleeding begins to slow. She grabs a thick roll of pressure bandages, quickly and tightly wrapping them around my shoulder, completely binding my arm to my chest to immobilize the joint.
When she is finished, her hands are completely coated in my blood.
She sits back on her heels, her chest heaving, the tactical jacket falling off one shoulder. She looks completely feral. A dark, beautiful queen forged in the fires of my violence.
I look at her, the blood loss completely stripping away the last remnants of my civilized facade. The calculated, untouchable Don is dead. Only the obsessed, psychotic stalker remains, lying bleeding on the floor of a rotting cabin.
"You saved me," I whisper, a dark, twisted smile curving my pale lips.
"You're not going to die," she breathes, wiping a bloody hand across her forehead, completely smearing my crimson across her pale skin.
"Do you know why I let them do it, Sybil?" I ask, my mind fracturing, the dark, toxic truth spilling from my lips before I can lock it away.
She freezes, the flashlight casting long, demonic shadows across her face. "Let who do what?"
"Your father," I murmur, my gray eyes completely dilating, burning into her soul. "I knew Arthur Vance was going to betray me. I knew he was meeting with the Commission three weeks before the wedding."
Sybil stops breathing entirely. The blood completely drains from her face. "What are you talking about? You said he surprised you. You said he firebombed your warehouse as a distraction."
"I let him firebomb the warehouse," I confess, the words a lethal, unapologetic poison. "I let him board that plane. I let him sell you out to the Commission."
"Why?" she whispers, horror completely consuming her voice, scrambling backward a fraction of an inch. "Why would you let him do that? They tried to kill me!"
"Because I needed the justification," I growl, my uninjured hand shooting out, wrapping around her wrist, completely refusing to let her pull away. The possessive, unhinged obsession in my blood completely overpowers the pain.
"Justification for what?" she demands, her voice shaking.
"To annihilate your entire world," I whisper, pulling her closer until my bloodied chest brushes against the heavy fabric of her jacket.
"If I just married you, you would always have a connection to your father.
You would always have a tether to your old life.
I didn't want a piece of you, Sybil. I wanted every single, miserable fragment of your soul. "
Her blue eyes widen, the profound, absolute depravity of my master plan finally crashing into her mind.
"I let him betray the Syndicate so that I would have the absolute right to hunt him down and slaughter him," I confess, a dark, victorious satisfaction bleeding into my tone.
"I let the Commission attack so that I could lock you in a bunker and completely sever you from the outside world.
I burned your entire life to the ground, little bird, just so I could be the only one standing in the ashes with you. "
She stares at me, completely paralyzed by the sheer, psychotic depth of my obsession.
"You're insane," she breathes, tears of pure horror pooling in her eyes.
"I am yours," I correct, my bloody fingers tangling in her wet, dark hair, pulling her face down until our lips are a breath apart. "And now, you have absolutely no one else. There is no escape, Sybil. You just saved the monster. You are bound to me in blood forever."
Before she can pull away, the heavy, overwhelming darkness finally consumes me, dragging me down into a black, dreamless void.