14. Swing, batter, batter – Seven
14
SWING, BATTER, BATTER
SEVEN
I ’m already halfway to the front door when Atticus finally clues in and shouts after me to wait.
I snatch up the metal bat by the front door as I exit, giving it a good twirl to test the weight. The world outside is a brutally beautiful shade of pulsing crimson as I step into the sun and the car comes to a jarring stop at the base of the main drive.
The man himself exits, leaving the car door ajar as he storms up the drive and I inhale deep, filling my lungs with the scent of dead man.
“Where is she?” he screams, and I can’t fucking wait to hear him scream louder.
“Seven!” Atticus shouts somewhere behind me, and I give the bat another good spin as Eli joins him, shouting my name, but in my delirium their voices are like cheers from the bleachers.
Seven! Seven! Seven!
“Is she fucking in there? Is my fucking girlfriend in there?”
“Seven!”
They’re pumping me up, their applause motivating me, injecting heat and delicious tension into every muscle. Every vein.
I’m halfway to Jesse when he starts shouting again.
“Aurora!” he roars, and I will erase her name from his vile lips. “Aurora, get out here!”
“Hey, batter, batter.” My own low voice sounds foreign, echoing like an announcer in a stadium as I test the bat one last time, swinging it up to press a kiss to the cold metal.
Jesse seems to finally see the bat. See me, and he slows his walk. “Who the hell are you?”
Your worst fucking nightmare.
I imagine his hands on her throat. His fists against her body. His knife on her cheek.
“Swing, batter, batter, swing .”
My body coils for the strike and I get one delicious glimpse of the fear in his beady eyes as he rushes to reach into the back of his jeans for a weapon.
Too late.
The metal connects with bone, making the most beautiful sound in all of existence.
And he knocks it out of the park!
My chest heaves and it takes a second before the red haze in my vision can clear enough for me to see him, like a curtain drawing open to reveal the final act.
Staggering and dazed, Jesse’s jaw is unhinged and pushed off into an unnatural angle as dark red blood falls down his chin and broken teeth scatter to the earth.
Fuck, that felt good.
There’s straight fire in my blood, begging for another swift release that can only come with the breaking of bones and the claiming of souls.
“P-pfeease,” Jesse mumbles through his busted teeth, still fighting to stay on his feet, making him a more challenging target as he lurches and sways.
“Only because you asked so nicely,” I mutter, rushing him with another swing of the bat until his head rings like a bell and the ricochet of the hit reverberates up my arms like the sweetest heroin. Hot liquid splatters over the right side of my face like a sexy slap.
Behind me, a decidedly feminine voice lets out a short gasp and I pivot.
Aurora’s hands fly to her mouth and the instant my eyes meet hers, she bolts back into the house, almost tripping over the doormat in her haste to get away. Ellie barks after her, but doesn’t follow, instead coming down the steps with a feral growl in her throat as she carefully approaches the spasming form of her person’s abuser laying in the driveway.
I put a sticky hand to my forehead, squinting past Eli and Atticus for any sign of Aurora inside, but she’s long gone. I tip my head up to the sun and let out a heavy exhale as it warms the blood on my cheeks.
It’s always a shock the first time.
She’ll be all right.
The rage that’d been singing a violent chorus in my veins takes a softer outro as my body sags.
Atticus rushes down the drive to where I stand next to Jesse, but I throw out the bat, pressing it to his chest to stop him. “Don’t touch him.”
Eli catches up and I give him a hard look. “He doesn’t deserve your help.”
Eli’s face twists as he looks down at the sad, crumpled man at our feet.
Atticus shoves the bloodied bat away from his chest with an angry snarl and wipes his hand over the stubble on his face.
Ellie growls at Jesse, parking herself far enough away that she’s safe, but close enough to have a front-row seat, and fuck if that isn’t a great idea.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Atticus bellows after me when I start to walk away. I wave the bat in a noncommittal motion before going up the steps and back into the house.
I take another quick look for Aurora, but she’s still nowhere to be seen. Either she ran straight out the back door or she’s up in her room. Either way, my bloody face is not the one she wants to see right now.
I make my way to the kitchen, depositing the bat by the back door in favor of grabbing a stool from the island and my plated sandwich from the counter. I carry them both outside, ignoring Atticus’s protests as I push the stool legs into the gravel a couple feet from where Jesse is slowly dying on the ground, and park myself atop it.
“Are you serious?” Atticus demands.
I take a large bite and talk around the mouthful. “Don’t ruin the show for the rest of us, bro.”
There’s a vein about to pop out of Atticus’s thick head as he gets control of himself. “You know what, Sev, you can clean up your own fucking mess this time. Do not ask for my help. By the time I come back out here tomorrow, I do not want to see any trace of that on this property. You hear me?”
“Loud and clear, lieutenant.”
I give him a little salute. Really, I just want him to leave me in peace to watch this fucker die nice and slow while the blood pools in his fractured skull. I don’t want to be distracted and miss the second the light leaves his eyes. Someone should watch it.
It should be her. It should be Aurora out here seeing justice served, but she isn’t ready yet and that’s okay.
I’ll be her proxy.
“She told you?” Eli asks in a small voice once Atticus has left.
I swallow. “She did.”
He nods quietly to himself. “I should check on her.”
“You should. Go.” I already know she won’t see him, but he’s ruining the moment, and I don’t want to miss another second of this fucker’s suffering.
Jesse gurgles unintelligibly, his dazed eyes pleading for help he won’t find here.
Now he knows what it’s like to be made small. To feel powerless.
It takes longer than I thought it would.
By the time the light starts to leak out of Jesse’s eyes, I’m long finished my sandwich, and the sun is low on the horizon, bathing him in shades of angry orange.
I grin, leaning down on the stool at the same time Ellie lowers her head and lets out a soft growl, as if she, too, is wanting a closer look as Jesse pulls in one last ragged breath.
Her growls stop the instant the oxygen leaves his lungs for the last time.
“You hear that, girl?” I ask her. “That’s the sound of justice.”