2. Lynx
LYNX
Dear Diary,
I tried not to kill anyone tonight. That didn’t last long.
Nyah’s screams echoed around the dining hall as MacGregor’s words sank in. My gaze met Dax’s, and realization settled. In an instant, we both understood what we were being commanded to do.
We were no longer men.
We were soldiers sent into a battle; no concern given for which of us came out alive.
I glared at MacGregor. “I’m not fucking killing anyone.”
MacGregor shrugged, picking up the blade Carlos had laid down on the heavy wooden table. “My men don’t share your delicate American sensibilities. You’ll kill. Or you’ll be killed. Your choice, Bodyguard.”
Barclay The Giant had already stripped his shirt and stared at Dax, the smallest of the three of us, like he was a meal ready to be enjoyed. He grinned at him with broken teeth. “Come on!”
“No,” Dax said quietly, just the same as I had. He focused on Carlos, and then Luca. “I’m not doing this either.”
MacGregor laughed. “It’s amusing ye think ye have a choice, Fighter.
Now fight.” He motioned to the guard who’d pistol-whipped Dax across the back of the head earlier.
A trickle of blood still oozed down the side of his neck, and his almost golden eyes were wild with adrenaline.
His fighter’s body tensed, ready to spring into action, even though he clearly didn’t want this any more than I did.
But we had no power here. The guard shoved the gun to the back of Dax’s head and dragged him backward into the open space behind his seat.
Barclay stalked him from across the room, moving his bulky body caveman style. I was surprised he didn’t beat his chest. He looked like he was about to at any moment.
The guard behind me pushed the gun against my head, and I whirled around, grabbing his hand, catching him off balance. “You shove that fucking gun against my head one more time and watch me break every bone in your hand so thoroughly you can’t jerk off.”
The guard blinked at the pure venom in my tone.
For the first time, I realized the man was barely more than a child. Maybe twenty, at best, and entirely terrified.
For a moment, I was distracted by how sorry I felt for him.
It was all Barclay needed to swing a punch at Dax’s jaw. For his giant size, Barclay moved fast. The punch landed with a sickening thud, and Dax stumbled back, blinking dizzily.
Barclay rushed him, his huge body plowing into Dax’s, the two men going down hard on the stone floor.
But Dax never stood a chance. His punches were sluggish, not connecting, probably courtesy of the hit to the head he’d already taken that night.
The soldiers around us cheered, their voices deafening, Nyah’s screaming mixing with all of it. She clutched her belly with one hand, MacGregor’s thick arm across her chest holding her back, the only thing stopping her from throwing herself into the middle of it all.
Her panicked gaze met mine. “Lynx,” she sobbed. “Do something!”
My whole body felt disconnected. If I saved Dax from Barclay, it would be me who had to end him. I couldn’t get into a fight with Dax. I wouldn’t be the man who took yet another thing from her. She’d never forgive me. And I’d never forgive myself.
The only other option was I let Dax kill me.
Which wasn’t much of an option at all.
The violence swirled until it was all I could see. Her cries filled my ears until they were all I heard. Fists and guns pushed and pulled at me, all of it chaos I couldn’t make sense of, a thick red haze falling over my eyes while the grip I had on my self-control begged to be let loose.
A chair clattered to the floor, and suddenly I wasn’t even in the room.
I was back in the prison, a knife in my hand, a man’s dead body beneath me.
I didn’t want this.
I let out a bellow, a shout of my own joining the chaos around me and inside my head. It was all I could see. The blood. The anger.
So much blood.
“Lynx, please! He’s killing him.” Nyah’s voice cut through it all.
Fuck, she was beautiful. And that terror on her face, the fear…I couldn’t stand it.
I tried to resist the rising feeling but couldn’t fight the demons inside me. The ones I’d tried so hard to lay to rest but who never went away, no matter how much I tried to banish them.
Light glinted off the knife in MacGregor’s hand, but he paid no attention to it. All he had eyes for was the fight, his bloodlust making him lazy and sloppy as he screamed for Barclay to finish Dax.
Taking his knife was as simple as plucking it from his fingers. I spun, registering Barclay on top of Dax, delivering punches to his face until Dax’s blood sprayed across the men who’d all formed a circle and screamed for his death.
I hadn’t held a knife like this in so long.
But my body hadn’t forgotten how.
I plunged it into the side of Barclay’s neck once, pulled it out, and then watched the blood flow with the sick fascination of the man I’d once been.
Then did it again.
And again.
Blood spattered across my face, my hands, my chest. Hot and thick, but I couldn’t stop. Now that I’d started, there was no end.
Not until he stopped moving.
And when he finally did, I dragged my blade across his back, carving five marks in his skin.
The chaos fell silent. I glanced up, and every set of eyes was focused on me. The kid, whose fingers I’d threatened to break, stared at me in open-mouthed shock.
He stumbled back so far and so fast, trying to get away from me while he shook from head to toe. “They’re claw marks,” he stuttered, head whipping side to side, like he needed someone else to help him. “He’s carving claw marks in his back! Don’t you know what they mean? He’s the Lynx Killer.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, head pounding so hard it hurt to have them open. It was like my thoughts bounced off my skull, ricocheting around until every part was dented and broken.
“Don’t fucking call me that,” I all but growled. I stared down at myself, at the bloodbath I’d created.
I wanted more. And none of it all at the same time.
My grip on the knife tightened, and the overwhelming need to use it again rose so swiftly it may as well have been a noose around my neck, cutting off my oxygen.
I didn’t want to kill the kid. But he was the closest fucking thing still breathing. I lunged forward, stumbling over the uneven stone floor, my knife needing to make purchase on someone. Something.
“Lynx!”
I blinked, Nyah’s voice the only thing that could cut through the haze.
Everything else was a blur, unfocused shadows of people moving around me, but nobody daring to come closer. No one but her. She reached my side, and instinctively, I wrapped my free arm around her, her back to my chest, holding her close to me so no one could touch her.
“Stop,” she whispered, her warm breath kissing the skin on my forearm.
My body moved in time with hers. My chest rising and falling at the same rate hers did until I could breathe again. Focus. Actually take in the carnage I’d caused while a roomful of men stared at me, guns drawn, all of them waiting on their commander to give the order to shoot.
A slow clap broke through the silence, and MacGregor stood. His hands smacked against each other, over and over, quickening the pace until he was giving me a standing ovation I never wanted.
“Fucking impressive, lad. Fucking impressive. I am entertained.”
I spat on the floor between us, showing him exactly what I thought of his entertainment, the details of what I’d done already so hazy I couldn’t comprehend them. “Fuck you. Go to hell.”
He raised a bushy eyebrow. “After that little display, I think I’ll be seeing you there. Don’t you?”
I was well aware of where I’d end up after I took my last breath. For all I had been trying to turn over a new leaf since I’d gotten out of prison and joined the Slayers, I knew who I was. What I was.
Carlos stared at me with a new interest. Like he’d had absolutely no idea of the things I was capable of.
Nobody did. Nobody except the people who’d died at my hands. And Reaper, who’d found me in a similar state once in prison and had covered my tracks without me so much as even asking for his help.
But there were others, whose dead bodies bore my mark. Left to rot in shallow graves.
My gaze met Luca’s, and he held it for a second, before shaking his head. “I guess I know what you went to prison for now.”
It was almost comical that it wasn’t what I’d gone to prison for at all. That I’d evaded law enforcement after every kill, even though I could barely remember them. But the thing that had been my undoing was a fucking breaking and entering that should have been a simple in-and-out job.
Apparently, my skills only lie in swift, brutal killing. Not in stealing.
MacGregor leaned back with a grin on his arrogant face. “Would it be terrible of me to admit I almost hoped this would be the outcome? The fighter versus the bodyguard. Friend against friend is so much more interesting than foe against foe, don’t ye think?”
I suddenly understood why I didn’t have a bullet in my head.
Dax had managed to get himself out from beneath Barclay’s dead body, but he was covered in his blood. His fingers trembled while he stared at the mess I’d made of his opponent’s back, and then up at me, with my arms wrapped around his woman.
He didn’t beg for his own life. He just whispered, “Please don’t hurt her.”
I would never. I knew that, without even really knowing why. I’d known Nyah for barely a scrap of time. And yet, apart from Reaper, there was no one else in this world I cared for more. No one except her and that little baby in her belly who deserved a fucking chance to live.
I was well aware she thought of me only as a friend, but it had been more than that for me for a long time.
Something passed between Dax and me in that moment. A silent understanding and agreement.
I looked over at Luca and knew my expression told him everything he needed to know.
I was done. I wasn’t going to touch Dax and break Nyah’s heart. And he wasn’t going to touch me. He could fight but he couldn’t kill. We either walked out of here together, or MacGregor’s men ended both of us.
Luca stood. “This is done. We’re walking out of here.”
MacGregor opened his mouth to argue, but Luca cut him off with a glare. “You don’t have a horse left in this race. Any claim you hoped to have on Nyah just became null and void. My father and I will work this out between ourselves. It’s no longer your business.”
His expression dared MacGregor to argue.
He didn’t.
He shrugged and waved a hand at his soldiers.
“He’s right. Let them go. This is between them now.
” He grinned, his gaze switching from me and Dax to Luca and Carlos.
“I’m sure we’ll hear on the grapevine who was left standing.
Son or father. I look forward to doing business again with whoever makes it out alive. ”