CHAPTER 23 #2
I stand frozen over the twitching corpse.
My hand is shaking uncontrollably. I wipe a smear of hot blood from my cheek, smearing it further into my skin.
I look up. Across the chaotic, smoke-filled room, Damon and I lock eyes.
For a split second, time stops. We stare at each other through the absolute carnage.
He sees the dead man. He sees the blood on my hands.
He sees exactly what I have just become.
He doesn't look horrified. He gives me a small, bloody nod.
It is a terrifying, absolute endorsement of my violence.
"Good girl." He grunts, taking a hit to the shoulder. "Margarita, get out of here!"
But there's no going back to the clinic now. I am irrevocably his.
That single moment of connection costs him everything. Three more men swarm him from the blind spot, hitting him from all sides. They use the sheer weight of their bodies to bear him down to the deck.
"Stay down, Locke!"
"Pin his arms!"
Damon fights like a cornered animal, throwing one man off into the wall, but a second mercenary brings a rifle butt down hard.
The metallic clack of the polymer stock hitting his skull echoes in the room.
Damon's fingers claw furiously at the metal deck, leaving long, bloody grooves in the rust as he’s finally pinned.
I want to scream, but the air is completely gone from my lungs.
Before I can even step toward my dropped knife, a second wave of men floods the room. One of them tackles me straight from behind. The heavy impact knocks the wind right out of me. I hit the deck face-first.
"Got her!"
"Don't kill her, Cole wants her whole."
My face is pressed violently into the cold, bloody metal. I taste the freezing iron of the deck mixed with the blood of the man I just butchered. A heavy knee drops right into the small of my back, pinning me like a specimen to a fucking board.
Hands are everywhere. They haul me up by my hair again, dragging me backward out of the cabin and onto the main open deck of the freighter.
The rain is a torrential, freezing downpour now.
It immediately soaks through my oversized jacket, blinding me as it plasters my hair to my face.
The shipyard around us is a miserable, skeletal landscape of rusted cranes and black, churning water.
"Damon!" I scream, fighting the grip.
"Keep moving, bitch," the guard grunts.
The stinging cold of the rain and the roar of the wind through the shipyard's structures drowns everything out.
The smell of salt, decay, and oil is suffocating.
I kick wildly at the deep puddles on the deck, trying to trip the men dragging me, but my legs feel like lead.
Every foot of distance between me and that cabin feels like a physical tether snapping inside my chest.
They throw me down onto the wet metal deck. I land hard at the feet of a man standing perfectly still under a massive black umbrella. Cole Holt. He looks absolutely pristine. His expensive wool coat is bone dry. His eyes are filled with a terrifying, calm, corporate triumph.
"You look like hell, Margarita."
He reaches down, the absolute audacity of this prick, and tips my chin up with the toe of his polished Italian leather shoe. I glare up at him, breathing hard.
"Where's Damon?"
The sharp, expensive scent of his designer cologne clashes horribly against the smell of the dead ship and the blood on my hands.
The rhythmic tapping of the rain against his umbrella is infuriating.
He looks so clean while I am covered in the gore of his men.
I hate him more than I ever thought I was capable of hating a human being.
Cole doesn't answer. He just smiles that empty smile and gestures lazily toward the cabin. Through the open, hanging door, I can see the men still systematically beating the absolute shit out of Damon. One of them steps back and intentionally, precisely, kicks him right in the surgical wound on his right side. Damon’s scream is a raw, jagged, horrifying sound that rips straight through the sound of the rain.
"Stop it! Please!" I lunge toward the cabin, completely feral, but the mercenary standing behind me wraps a massive hand around my throat, choking the breath out of me and lifting me onto my toes.
"He's had enough, Cole."
Damon tries to stand one last time. His face is a ruined mask of blood, grit, and swelling flesh.
He gets up to his knees, his dead eyes desperately searching the deck for me.
A guard steps up and delivers a final, brutal kick right to his jaw.
The dull thud of the impact makes my stomach heave.
Damon's head snaps back, his massive body finally going totally limp on the metal plates.
The rain washes his blood into the scuppers.
"Locke is out."
"He's still breathing. Barely."
His hand twitches toward the door, toward me, one last time before his eyes roll completely back into his head. The gravity that was Damon Locke just vanished.
"DAMON!" I scream, the sound tearing my throat and breaking into a pathetic, violent sob. I thrash wildly in the arms of the mercenaries.
"Shut her up."
My combat boots scuff and scrape the deck as they begin to drag me backward toward the gangplank.
I reach out toward the cabin, my fingers splayed wide as if I could somehow grab him and pull him back to me with just my mind.
I am not a doctor anymore. I am just a severed limb being dragged away from the body.
They drag me down the steep, swaying gangplank.
Cole follows closely, his umbrella shielding him from the reality of his own violence.
I look back over my shoulder one last time.
I see Damon's unmoving, massive form in the doorway of the cabin, just a dark heap against the flickering yellow light.
On the metal doorframe, right where they pulled me out, I see a single, perfect bloody handprint. Mine.
"I'll kill you, Cole! I'll kill you!" I scream into the rain.
"You'll try, Margarita," he says smoothly, not even looking at me. "That's what I like about you."
We hit the bottom of the gangplank at the shipyard dock.
A black, unmarked van is waiting there, the engine idling low and steady.
The heavy side doors slide open like a yawning mouth.
They don't bother being gentle; they just throw me inside.
My body hits the carpeted floor with a painful jolt, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact.
"Don't let her move," a voice orders from outside. "Drive."
I scramble up, lunging for the open door, but the mercenary slams it shut right in my face.
The heavy mechanical slam echoes like a gunshot.
The darkness inside the van is absolute.
The smell of new leather and rubber floor mats replaces the rain.
As the van peels out, the tires slipping slightly on the wet asphalt, I press my face against the heavily tinted glass.
I can't see the ship anymore. I can only see the blurring, distant lights of the industrial shipyard bleeding through the rain.
I sit back on my heels and clench my bloody hands into fists, my nails biting into my palms. I can still feel the phantom weight of that knife grip in my hand. I reach up slowly in the pitch black and touch the spot on my cheek where Damon's blood has dried tight against my skin.
"I'm coming back for you," I whisper to the empty van. "Wait for me."
The chassis hits a pothole, rattling my teeth. I lean back against the vibrating door and stare at the dark ceiling. Cole really thinks a locked door is going to keep me out.