Chapter 23 #2
Bridger might not have his powers, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still one of the most lethal beings on this planet.
The cop’s hat went flying, and the color of his eyes couldn’t be clearer under the moonlight. This man wasn’t acting on his own free will. He was being controlled by a curse with its own agenda.
“We can’t kill a fucking cop, Bridger!” Vega said a little louder than she might have if the gun hadn’t gone off next to her ear.
The man didn’t stay down long, hopping to his feet with unnaturally fast reflexes.
“I don’t think we have much of a choice if you want to live,” Bridger reminded her, dodging a right hook, acting fast to deliver a punch of his own before the cop rebounded.
His fist didn’t get the chance to connect, and he was on his ass before he knew what hit him. The wind rushed out of Bridger’s lungs when his back slammed into the hard concrete.
Bridger had been attacked without his powers hundreds, if not thousands of times before. Whether from his father’s training or years of torture, he’d learned to fight with less inside him.
He was up, but landed a blow to his gut. Bridger groaned at the pain, hunching over to drive his shoulder into the man and flip him off balance.
The cop’s strength wasn’t like anything normal by Earth standards… and even by Tolevarre standards, Bridger had a good fight on his hands.
He and Bridger rolled, tumbling down the small embankment to the grass field.
Bridger grunted as they came to a stop, grabbed the cop by the shoulders, and threw him down onto the snow sodden ground. They were both covered in mud already.
“If I kill you, she goes too.” His words sounded like a serpent’s, every s slurring with a monotone. “So linked. You two are practically one, but she’s my way out.” The manic laugh he let out told Bridger exactly how gone this man was. “Oh, what you two could have been.”
He was no longer the person he was supposed to be. This man was a cursed killing machine, completely lost inside whatever hold it had on his body.
But Bridger and Vega weren’t going to be taken out so easily. Certainly not now. Not after everything.
Bridger landed a blow to the man’s face, breaking his nose, the bones shifting against his fist. Blood immediately poured from his nostrils, outlining the spaces in between his teeth.
It was as if he hadn’t even felt the crushing blow, using his bodyweight to overthrow Bridger’s position.
His hands slid towards Bridger’s neck, and he laughed again, but the sound was cut short when the blade of a dagger drove through the top of his head.
Life drained from the man’s eyes, and his body went limp.
Bridger rolled him off, jumping to his feet to avoid the blood, not needing to get any messier than he’d already become.
Vega stood with the gun in one hand and the dagger in the other, her chest rising and falling shallowly. Her neck bobbed when she swallowed. “We’re not stopping anymore.”
Bridger took the blade from Vega and wiped off the blood and brain matter from both sides on the cop’s shirt.
“What did he say to you?” she asked, turning to watch Bridger slide the clean dagger into his pants again.
“He confirmed the whole ‘you die, I die’ thing. Said we are so linked we’re basically one.” Bridger couldn’t take his eyes off Vega’s, wondering what she was thinking, wishing he could sneak inside her brain and get a peek.
“That man had to die for no reason. The curse keeps taking innocent people and throwing them in my path.” Vega shook her head, dragging her eyes from the dead man to Bridger and then over her shoulder.
“We need to get out of here.” She held the gun at her side still, examining it before flicking a small piece up and sliding it into her leggings at the small of her back.
“How do you know how to use one of those?” he asked as he followed her back to the car, taking in the empty parking lot with all the doors of the big trucks still closed.
No one had heard them, but it wouldn’t be long before one woke up and noticed the cop car sitting at the edge of the lot or realized the sound they’d heard was a gunshot.
“I’ve lived a lot of lives, but there’s still nothing like a dagger through the skull.” Her smile didn’t light up her face—it pulled the skin around her eyes taut, looking exhausted.
Vega approached the driver’s seat, but Bridger put his hand out. “Let me drive. You need to sleep.”
“No way are you driving. You don’t even know—”
“I drive military vehicles three times this size. I think I can handle following the directions on the little screen in your pocket and pay attention to the speed signs.” Bridger crossed his arms and raised his brow.
“Bridger,” she scolded, looking over her shoulder. “If we get caught near this dead cop, we’re fucked. We need to go.”
Quickly, he slid by her and ducked into the driver’s seat, already adjusting the seat to his height. “Then you better hurry up and get in the car.” He shut the door, leaving Vega to huff and puff before stomping around to the passenger seat.
It took her a second to explain what all the buttons and gadgets did, but Bridger figured it out quickly. He just didn’t realize how touchy the brakes and gas pedal were and rocked them back and forth for a bit until he got the hang of it.
Vega refused to get in the backseat, arguing she wasn’t tired and was too wired to sleep, but it wasn’t long before she rested her head against the window and her breaths turned shallow.
The highways stretched on for hours, and the GPS, as Vega had called it, didn’t make much noise. Bridger rode in silence, the only sound being the repeated words of the last man the curse had consumed, echoing in his mind.
“Oh, what you two could have been.”