Chapter 26 Scarlett #3
I used the mud to my advantage, pulling my knife out and jerking myself between the person’s legs.
Sliding out from the other side, I kicked the back of his legs, forcing him forward onto his friends.
They fell in a pile, and I scrambled to get up, the mud slick and thick.
I pulled myself to a stand, a piercing pain shooting up my spine. My eyes fell to my right thigh, finding the knife still sticking out of it.
With a trembling hand, I pulled it out and looked up, finding a dozen or more people standing in front of me, every single one of them holding a gun.
A hand wrapped around my arm and I snarled, slamming the spare knife into it, only for another to grab my other arm, and another to rip my blade out of my hand and toss it to the ground.
I struggled and fought, kicking and twisting, but more hands wrapped around me. More people forced me to my knees. Forced my arms out to either side. Forced me to stop.
I looked back, finding five men behind me. Each one either holding my arms or stepping on the back of my legs, the pain in either thigh burning. “Cowards!” I wanted to scream at them as they all lifted their guns and pointed them at my head.
“Enough!” one of them shouted, looking ahead of me.
I whipped my head around, my hair sticking to the side of my face, goosebumps flooding over my skin from the chill.
Azrael stood several yards away, holding a woman by her hair on her knees in front of him.
He slid his blade across her throat, his eyes locked on the male behind me, and I watched as her body fell away.
He tossed her head to the ground, several Initiates still around him, panting, wiping their brows.
He was covered in blood that the rain was quickly washing away, but I couldn’t see if any of it was his.
It was then that I realized one of the other reasons he always wore red and black.
His enemies couldn’t see where they wounded him.
Even so, I looked over him quickly, seeing if I could take stock of what they had done, but between the rain and the shadows of the trees, I couldn’t see much.
His mask was cracked, a chunk missing on his right jaw. I could see bruises already forming, even through the rain pouring down through the trees.
He also had three darts sticking out of him. One in his shoulder, one in his thigh, and the other in his chest.
We were both panting, the energy between us so thick, I could slice it with my knife. There was a rage lingering in these woods. A kind of rage I had never felt before. And Azrael?
He was smiling. I could see it. I could see that evil, demonic smile splitting his face in two. He chuckled, the sound matching his smile.
One of the men holding him at gunpoint glanced at one of the men holding me and back, his fear growing. “He’s laughing. Why is he laughing?”
The grip around my arms tightened on all sides, my knees freezing from the mud they had me pinned in, the rain dousing us both.
The man ripped off my mask and tossed it at Azrael’s feet before grabbing a pair of large pliers. “I don’t know, he’s fucking insane. You knew that,” he replied as another man got down behind me and started patting me down.
Seconds later he found my phone in my dress pocket, pulled it out, and tossed it to the mud.
The man with the pliers walked up to me and grabbed the chain around my neck, ripping it off before tossing it to the ground too.
I kept my eyes on Azrael’s, knowing exactly what they were doing. They were trying to erase him from me. Trying to strip me of everything he gave me. Of everything he had done.
They wouldn’t succeed. They could never succeed. He was imprinted onto my fucking bones. They could never rid me of him. We were eternal.
One of the men grabbed my wrist, and I let him have it without fight. They rid me of my ring, tossing it between me and the man who gave it to me, Azrael’s eyes flashing brightly with a dark light.
Next was my bracelet, and I felt the moment it fell. Heard it hit the mud with a slop, Azrael’s eyes glowing in the darkness, his aura no longer red but pure black. Just black. As if he had summoned the shadows by name.
I knew why he was laughing. Of course I did.
Of course, I knew.
Azrael lifted his chin as they pointed a weapon at him, the same one I had seen one of the men around me holding. A weapon I recognized from training.
He chuckled, not bothering to glance at the people that surrounded him.
He wouldn’t have been able to fight them even if he tried.
Maybe they couldn’t see it, but I could.
He was leaning slightly to one side, blinking more often.
Three darts? His training had been thorough, but not even he could fight the effects of that much of the drug.
“He’s so obsessed with me, but I hope he hasn’t forgotten all the mistakes he’s made so far,” he hummed in a lyrical little tune. “You should kill me,” he sang, his insanity coming through. “If you had any intelligence at all, you would fucking kill me.”
I felt my own smile grow, knowing that it was as much of a promise to me as it was a threat to Malachi.
The fearful male looked up to the one who cut off my bracelet. “Sh-should we?”
“No,” the man stated evenly. “We have our orders. Do it, we need to get back before the roads get worse.”
Before Azrael could say another word, they pulled both triggers.