Chapter 25
Saint
a grave mistake - ice nine kills
Regina comes through in my earpiece. “Sending you what I found.” Whilst Rex, Dawson and I split up to direct Ultio to each of the three locations, Regina got busy studying the coastal home.
My phone lights up with her text, and I instantly open it. “Got it.” She took a screenshot of the maps. Right at the coast is a banked road, the undeniable markings cutting off from the pebbled cove cut into the cliff’s edge.
Bastards.
It’s unseeing to the naked eye because the greenery swallows the rest, so fucking obvious now I’m looking at it, yet it’s hidden well.
Just like everything surrounding these fucks.
It’s the only evidence Conrad’s allowed. I can’t get a digital view of his home; as soon as you zoom in, it’s automatically blurred.
It took a couple of hours to get here, having to unload a couple miles out from the area, making our way on foot through the forest.
Rex has taken the manor, and Dawson took the Harriston home.
We’re spread too far apart to communicate with each other, and Regina is our overlord to pass information to each other as she remains at the Pit.
She’ll tell me if they locate the tunnels, and we’ll make sure they’re not standing when we leave.
We’re going to blow them all to shit.
Kingstone is the perfect place for a society like Omnia; the entire state is eighty percent woodland. They hide in the shadows.
Too bad I’m the darkness that fucking owns it.
I’ll stop at nothing to get Indie back.
The more time that passes, the more my sanity threatens to crack. The control I’ve managed to maintain over the journey is slipping again.
If I don’t keep my mind locked down, images of what they’re doing to her pierce through my fortress. The sick and depraved part of me wants to let them through. It just fuels me.
It adds to every single way I’ll torture them for what they’ve done.
Because Indie Kent is mine.
Mine to break.
To cause fear.
To mould together again.
She always will be.
I’ll chase her through ages and eras. I fucking ache to be with her. To have her in my arms, to stare into those mind-bending blue eyes.
They’re like a clear winter morning, the blue so pure, it’s a glimpse of what heaven could be.
I jerk when an image of them cold and lifeless violently flashes behind my eyes, and I rapidly blink it away.
My hand snakes across the knife strapped to my bicep. I’m going to carve her name into each of them.
“Louisa’s house is still empty,” Regina says in my ear.
Good.
I hope she’s still here, along with Morgan. We’re about to have an overdue family gathering.
Shame Barry can’t make it.
I nod to one of my guys, letting him move ahead to take a team and search the house, watching as they break off deeper into the woodland.
These guys are highly trained killing machines; they know to stay quiet and keep low. My technical skills are nothing compared to theirs, and yet, they obey my silent commands without a second thought.
Greg and Holly stay with me as we head towards the tunnel entrance. A streak of orange slices across the sky with the early dawn, and the waves crashing against the cliff rumble ahead, letting me know we’re getting closer.
The night sky was so clear on our journey over, the kind that Indie would stare at for hours if she could.
I can hear her voice dancing around my mind, mindless rambles about planets and fucking stars I never used to give a shit about before her.
But when she talks, the whole world should stop and listen.
Her eyes light up when she looks at them, and whatever she loves, I fucking adore.
She deserves every single one of them, and if I could grab them out of the sky, I’d hand them to her until she possessed them all.
She deserves nothing less.
We keep moving as the salt in the air thickens, a clearing eventually approaching as the spray from the sea below scatters through the air like confetti.
When we walk down the banked road, I note the drop from the cliff is at least forty feet, and the trail is wide enough to have large vehicles travelling through it with ease.
This is how their operation hasn’t been uncovered, lurking beneath the feet of the public. The people of Kingstone walk above ground, having no idea of what hell slithers underneath them.
I snicker.
My hell is within the pits of it all, an endless abyss that will make all this look like a fucking waltz.
Greg comes up beside me. “There’s a camera on the entrance. We shoot that out, it’s gonna raise the alarm.”
The muscles in my jaw flex as I slam to a halt. “Gina, the camera,” I murmur, waiting for her response as my gaze travels along the archway of the tunnel entrance. It’s big enough to allow trucks to travel through seamlessly.
The once bleached stone is weathered as the spray from the sea batters at one side of the underground passageway, moss eating away at the crevasses. It looks old as shit, and the Omnia are over a hundred years old. They’ve likely been using this the entire time.
A camera is something I anticipated, but the length of that tunnel isn’t something we can accurately calculate. If it’s the seven miles from the distance of where the house is, I could make it in under an hour if I didn’t have the tactical gear weighing me down.
Running for the woman I love?
I’d break a world record.
Regina’s silence grows until she delivers a blow. “I can’t get in, Saint. It’s completely blocked.”
A huff of hot air leaves me.
I need to make a decision.
One that could potentially cost me, but the longer I stand here, the more that’s a guarantee.
Regina’s voice pitches through my earpiece again. “Dawson’s guys located the tunnels. Both of them are headed in.”
I don’t believe in an almighty power. If anything, I only believe in a darker force, and it clearly saw the devil was in need of a helping hand. “Shoot it out, Greg.”
His gun’s scope is at his eye within a second, firing one bullet into the camera’s watchful gaze, shattering the glass.
I move like lightning, footsteps thundering downwards until we reach the entrance. The archway looms above us. There’s faint lights dotted every few hundred feet but after that, it’s eventually swallowed by the darkness.
“We’re going in, Gina. Might get blocked out,” I say, tugging my gun around on the strap, hands white-knuckling around it.
The earpiece crackles. “Get her back, Saint. Please.”
Greg and Holly follow me, slowly edging forward as they check the route. My body screams to run in headfirst, keep fucking running until I get her.
She’s so close I can feel her, my heartbeat roaring in my ears.
I don’t know how much time passes, but it already feels like I’ve been in this fucking passageway for hours, Holly and Greg having us stopping to drop some explosives they brought with us. Once we get Indie out of here, we’re collapsing this fucking tunnel and the house.
The archway behind us has shrunk in size with how far we’ve moved through. There could be a fucking battle going on above us, and we wouldn’t even know.
If my people get to her first, they know to destroy the place. Grab her, kill the vermin and keep the ones we’re interested in. The orders are non-negotiable. I already lost Indie once. I don’t know how I survived six years without her.
Twenty-four hours is ripping me apart layer by fucking layer.
None of us speak a word as we pace through; any loud sound just travels right down to the end, and we have no idea what could really be waiting for us.
Some of the overhead lights are out. Water gathers in puddles as potholes have formed, the heavy thuds of water dripping into it from above us.
Greg stops dead in his tracks, throwing his arm across my chest to stop, and I do the same to Holly.
I don’t even breathe. He’s trained to hear the slightest bit of unfamiliar noise.
Me?
All I can hear is my pulse roaring, the bones of the Montgomerys snapping in my ears like twigs.
All I see is a pathway of blood as I tear them limb from limb.
Then I’ll come for the rest of them.
None of them get the gift of a quick death.
I want their minds so broken, they can’t even speak.
The only begging they manage is through the emotions in their eyes.
And even then, I’ll only prolong it.
I don’t do mercy.
Not even if Indie pleads for me to stop.
This is my vengeance now.
“Are you going to get pissed if I tell you I’ve already killed someone for you?”
“No.”
I smile as the flashback hits me, her brows bunched as she fought between the fear and the pleasure. I wanted to wipe every harmful memory from her mind. She gets a trigger, I’ll pummel through it.
If I could have her living a life free of harm, I’d burn the world of any threats, no matter how small they were.
She’s going to be pissed when she finds out what I’ve agreed to; it’s risky as fuck.
Either way, I’ll make sure she knows how much I love her with the time I have left. But none of it happens until I see those blue eyes stare back at mine, knowing she’s okay.
The next step I take holds me in place, and the light above us groans, flickering until we’re cloaked in a deathly black.
There’s a bang, and the silence is shattered by an ear-splitting scream that takes my heart with it.
The echo lasts forever. It’s one of pure terror, vibrating my bones and curdling my blood so thickly my limbs feel like they’re made of stone.
I slam my gun around my back, swipe the knives against my arms, and run like fucking hell.