Waiting for the Dark #2
Crispin sucks in a sharp breath that never finishes. It turns into a thin, wet wheeze, and I feel something give under my knuckles on the last one. And I smile, praying that broken rib just punctured a lung.
And now I want that jaw.
That smug, chiseled, magazine-cover jaw. I set my feet and I bring an uppercut straight up into it, all my weight rising through my legs. Crispin’s head snaps back the second I make contact. His knees instantly quit on him, and he goes down hard.
I'm on him before he can blink.
Then I unleash hell on the fucker.
I hit him until his face stops looking like a face.
Until his smug smile is gone and there's only red and swelling and the wet sound of leather hitting flesh.
His hands come up at some point and get two weak fistfuls of my shirt, but they don't pull.
They hang on to me, the way a man will hang onto anything when he's about to go under.
The asshole tries to talk, but his words come out ruined, pushed through broken teeth and blood.
"Anything," he manages to say and a red bubble rises. "Whatever you want. Name it. I'll make you rich. Richer than you can—" He coughs, and it sprays wet in dark. "Anything you want."
I love a desperate man on the verge of death.
Taking a deep breath, I sit back on my heels and peel the mask off my face, dropping it on the floor next to me. Then I fist both hands in his suit jacket and I haul him halfway up off the concrete so he can see me clearly.
One of Crispin’s eyes is already swollen shut, a fat purple seam. The other one rolls, loose and unfocused, and then it finds me. It drifts over my bare face, still trying to figure out who the fuck I am.
"You hurt Lyra," I growl softly.
For half a second, he doesn't react, then his one good eye goes wide, wide enough that I know he finally understands what he did.
"That’s right, motherfucker." A slow, wicked grin spreads across my face. "You made my sweet Lyra bleed. Then you attacked my beta." I snarl, "This is what happens when you fuck with a pack." I release his jacket, letting his upper body fall back onto the dirty ground.
He shakes his head and his mouth opens, but all that comes out is a wet wheeze and thick bubbles of blood.
I can’t help but laugh. "Now," I pull one fist back, "are you ready to die at the hands of a fucking commoner?"
My gloved fist lands hard near his temple. His head snaps to the side and the fight finally goes out of him, his body going limp against the concrete.
I don't drag it out. I’m not taking any pleasure in this. This is simply what I have to do to keep my mates safe, and I happen to be the one built to do it.
Leaning forward, I get a hand under the asshole's jaw and one at the back of his skull. His body is dead weight, knocked completely out.
"This is what you get for hurting my omega and hitting my beta," I tell him, quiet.
Then I twist, sharp and clean, and the crack of his spine echoes off the concrete. His breathing stops, and it's done.
I take a minute to collect myself, my breath sawing in and out. My hands are wrecked, shaking hard within my leather gloves, but I can't feel them.
“Get moving,” I tell myself, then I stand up, trying to force my knees to stop shaking. The adrenaline in my body is riding me hard, but I’ve still got a lot of work to do.
I dig the burner out of my pocket. It's a cheap, flimsy little thing that feels like a toy in my busted hand. It takes me two tries to make my fingers work the button. The screen lights up dim in the dark.
Seven minutes.
That's all it's been. Seven minutes since Crispin walked out of that elevator.
It feels like I've been down here half my life.
I stare at the time a second longer because it doesn't seem possible that a man's whole account can come due in seven minutes, but then I put the phone away and force myself to focus.
I pick my mask up off the ground and pull it back down over my face, making sure my hair is tucked.
Stick to the plan, I say as I scan all around me, trying to find my damn pipe. Then I see it, not two feet from me, right next to Crispin’s shitty car.
I pick it up, then turn my attention to the ceiling.
Right over Crispin’s dead body is a sprinkler head tucked up in the concrete.
Perfect.
Gripping the metal pipe, I climb up onto the hood of his car. My blood-soaked shoes slide on the paint, and it takes me a second to steady my feet. Then I swing the pipe at the sprinkler head over his body and it shears clean off on the second hit.
A trickle of water flows from the hole in the pipe, but it's not nearly enough. Glancing around, I look for the fire alarm.
Fuck, where is it?
It takes me a second to orient myself, but then I see it.
On the wall by the ramp, is the fire alarm pull, and next to it, bolted to the block, the fat vertical run of a standpipe with a valve wheel at chest height where the whole level is plumbed for sprinklers.
Moving as fast as I can, I rush to it and get both hands on the valve wheel. I lean into it with all my strength, but it fights me, stiff from years of nobody touching it. Then, it breaks loose and turns.
The squeak is horrible as I crank the damn thing as far as it will go.
Somewhere overhead the pipes shudder and start to fill, a deep groan running through the ceiling. Water drips from a few sprinklers, then I reach over and I haul down on the alarm pull.
The whole level comes alive at once.
Every sprinkler head in the ceiling opens up, and the water comes down in hard, hissing sheets, cold and loud, and an alarm starts hammering off the concrete somewhere up the ramp.
The broken pipe over Crispin's body dumps its whole load straight down in a solid, roaring column, landing dead center on his ruined face. The water pounds into his swollen face, and blows back off him in every direction.
It hammers his open mouth. It fills the collar of that perfect white shirt and runs off the ends of his fingers.
Within a few seconds I'm soaked through.
The water sluices across the floor, finding the low spots and starts carrying all that dangerous evidence straight to the drains.
Within a minute the water's rising fast around my shoes, climbing up the tires of that stupid car. It’s amazing how fast an underground lot can flood.
I make myself take one last look at what's left of Crispin Maleth, laid out in the rising water under his hundred-thousand-dollar car. I can’t count the number of times I stood like this over a man I was paid to kill.
Except I wasn't paid to kill this one.
I did it to protect my mates, and that’s when the fear finally catches me. I’m not scared of the police or the cameras or even getting caught.
I’m scared of Lyra.
If I mark her, if I let her that far into me, is this what she'll feel?
Will she know the monster I am?
Will she feel the murderous rage pumping in my veins right now?
Or will she only feel the good?
I’ve locked up so much pain and gore, and the last thing I want is to push that into a bond with my mate.
Maybe I'll get lucky and it won’t take, the way it didn’t with Owen, and then she’ll never know.
Maybe.
I turn my back on the asshole’s missing face, then I head for the stairwell, and I climb up out of the dark.