59. Julian
Julian
The line went dead.
She is perfectly safe, brother. I’m taking excellent care of her… Goodnight, Julian.
The heavy, military-grade plastic of the satellite phone groaned in my hand. A second later, it shattered. Shards of black plastic and sparking wires dug deep into my palm, drawing thick, dark blood, but I didn’t feel a single ounce of pain.
I couldn’t feel anything except the sudden, apocalyptic roar of the beast I had spent a lifetime keeping chained inside my chest.
“Cain,” I breathed, the name ripping out of my throat as a feral snarl.
My vision tunnelled, the edges bleeding into a deep, untamed predatory rage. He was in her room. He was sitting on her bed. The suffocating terror of knowing exactly what my brother was capable of doing to her hit me like a punch in the stomach, threatening to drop me to my knees.
I am going to tear his head from his fucking shoulders.
The carefully constructed, disciplined human facade I had worn for this entire deployment disintegrated.
I didn’t care about the military. I didn’t care about the chain of command, the treason, or the consequences.
I had spent a hundred years running from my past to keep her safe, and Cain had just ripped the doors wide open.
I dropped the mangled remains of the phone onto the concrete floor.
I grabbed my tactical vest, my sidearm, and a combat knife, strapping them over my black t-shirt. Every single muscle in my body was tense and vibrating with a lethal, world-ending fury.
I kicked the heavy metal door of the barracks open so hard it dented against the exterior stone wall, the sound echoing like a gunshot across the quiet, mist-shrouded courtyard.
“Blackburn!”
A voice barked from the shadows near the motor pool. Sergeant Miller, a massive, heavily built man who strictly adhered to protocol, stepped into my path, his hand resting cautiously on his holstered weapon.
“Blackburn, what the hell was that? Where do you think you’re going?”
I didn’t even slow down, I don’t have time for this shit.
“Out of my way, Sergeant,”
“You are confined to the sector until the withdrawal orders are finalised,” he warned, stepping squarely in front of me, squaring his shoulders. “I need you to stand down and—”
I closed the distance between us before he could finish the sentence, before he could even blink.
My hand shot out, wrapping around his thick throat. I lifted the deadly trained soldier effortlessly off the pavement with a single arm, slamming his back against the stone pillar of the cloisters with bone-fracturing force.
Miller choked, his eyes rolling wide in shock and horror. He grappled desperately at my arm, his boots kicking empty air, but my grip was like a bear trap.
I stepped fully into the pale wash of the security floodlights, and let the sadist to the surface.
“You are going to look the other way,” I said, my voice a deadly whisper that promised nothing but violence. “If you try to call this in before I clear the perimeter, if you try to follow me, I will rip your heart out of your chest with my bare hands. Do you understand?”
Miller couldn’t speak or breathe, but he gave a frantic, jerking nod, his face turning a deep, suffocating shade of purple.
I released him, letting him crumple to the cold cobblestones, gasping for air.
I didn’t look back. Deserting the battalion meant nothing to me now. I broke into a supernatural run, dissolving into a silent, terrifyingly fluid blur as I slipped past the perimeter fences and vanished into the foggy ruins of the city.
The blind rage in my blood locked onto the magnetic, invisible pull of the girl across the world.
Just hold on, Sage baby… The deadly promise burned in my chest as the shadows of the cathedral fell away behind me. I am coming.