“Here,” he finally said, manipulating my body as if I were a porcelain doll so I was on my back with my head in his lap.
I felt an obvious hardness beneath my skull that was apparently goin to be the starved elephant in the room.
“We won’t be here long, so we can talk later. You need to sleep now. ”
I crossed my feet at the ankles and snuggled further into his hoodie.
I didn’t feel tired, but I didn’t feel like fallin off his bike because I got no sleep at all. I couldn’t doze off like this, though.
“All I had was silence; I want to hear your voice.” It’s my new favorite sound, I silently added.
When the quiet stretched on, I didn’t think he was inclined to indulge me. I might have been pushing, but I soon found myself with a small smile as he began tellin me about the hospital we were in.
With a gentle hand resting on my stomach, he spoke while looking down at me, and I looked right back at him with something lodged in my throat. Timing was said to be everything, and my reaper had come back into my life at just right the moment.
Face to face like this, everything became meaningless. I forgot where we were. Who I was no longer mattered when it felt like I was staring at myself, seeing something harsh and cold but full of blaze reflected back at me.
It’s like time stopped and then reset with a countdown for somethin much larger than I could fathom just waitin to happen. His pretty, soulless hues were like a bottomless well, and he had no problem dragging me down, straight to the bottom where Tartarus waited.
When I finally started driftin off, it was with the thought that this was one bad habit I didn’t want to ever be free of.
Chapter Ten
When I woke, I saw sunlight.
It streamed through the dirty window and only made the room seem muggier than it had naturally become.
Grimm’s voice came from right outside the door, and I knew he was on a cell. I sat up and tossed my legs over the side of the bed, and then stood.
Stretchin some kinks out, I pulled the hood down and went to the window. Standing on my tip toes, I peered out.
This wing of this hospital faced an old grocery store. I spotted an older man pushing a rusted shopping cart full of crates, and another man beside him with a bat.
“I thought ya’ll took this city?” I asked, sensing Grimm back in the room. “I saw the Sigil on the sign.”
“We saved this city. It was abandoned a little after I turned sixteen. I guess it wasn’t big enough to have been salvaged. It took too many resources that could be used elsewhere.”
“If it’s abandoned what did ya’ll save it from?”
He came up behind me and clamped his hands on either side of my waist, peering out the window. I tensed only a little, swallowing quietly. I wasn’t expecting him to take his time with us, but this would still take getting used to.
“You see how old they are. All they’re trying to do is live in comfort. They were being killed off, bodies left to rot in the open. Romero solved the problem.”
I turned all the way around at that.
“The Savages care about the elderly?”
“The Savages want peace. Only, our version of it is more like anarchy. The elderly in Rivermouth don’t give a shit. They just want to be left alone. Think of it as a retirement community. Those men are taking the crates of perishables and passing them out to others, courtesy of that man you know as the devil,” he said with a smirk.
Now I was full on curious, but he had other ideas than me askin questions. He pulled my body into his, bringin us flush together and dropping his mouth to mine. This kiss was different to the first one. I could damn near taste his own desire on the tip of his tongue.
He slid his hands around to my ass and squeezed the cheeks. The second a groan left my mouth and I pressed further against him, he was pulling away.
“What was all that?” I breathlessly asked.
“I wanted to see something,” he replied with a straight face.
Well, that was ominous. “What—”
A door slammed from somewhere, making my stomach jump.
Grimm’s whole demeanor changed. One second he was right in front of me, and the next he was pushing his gun into my hand and movin away. The gun I’d forgotten about and didn’t know how to use.
“Stay here,” he commanded.
“You can’t…leave me,” I wound up sayin to myself as he disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Like hell I was stayin behind in this rinky- dink room. I slipped out into the hall, the sun allowing me to see everything but Grimm, and I couldn’t hear him, either.
Damn, he was fast.
Chargin ahead, I jogged down the hall through a pair of double doors barely hanging on their hinges.
I popped out on somethin on an arched bridge, overlooking the floor below on either side. Straight ahead was another set of doors leading to another wing.
Voices below weren’t what had drawn my full attention. The fact I was seeing Grimm in front of two men with that unmistakable V and snake tattoo was.
I saw only the men from that room, and I saw Grimm. They didn’t know I was there, but I reckoned Grimm did.
One of the men moved too fast for my liking, and I didn’t even think about what I was doing—I aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.
The pop was louder than I’d expected, and I missed. Both looked up like idiots. I’d barely blinked, and Grimm had one of their throats slit.
Blood went everywhere. I watched the man clutch at his neck, as if that could make it better. An odd sound came flying from his mouth.
A light thump from the opposite end of the hall had me looking away. Another man had just pulled open the doors, pausing when he saw me. He had hair as long as mine and had clearly ran to get this to point, as he was out of breath.
I wasn’t a hundred percent certain he was with the men below, but he damn well wasn’t with me, so I shot at him too. I felt the bullet leave the chamber this time and was prepared, expected the sound it made.
“For real?” I asked aloud when red spread across his chest, staining clean through his brown jacket. I’d been aimin for his head.
“Little bitch,” I heard him gasp, crystal clear. When he ducked back through the door, I caught a glimpse of the V on his neck.
It all happened rather quickly—I’m talking in a span of three minutes or less. So where the fuck had Grimm vanished? There was no sign of him below, and there was only one body.
The man whose throat he’d slit was lying on the floor twitching. I wanted to yell out his name but had no idea how many of these men were in the building. I was too shit of a shot to take on multiple people, and I didn’t know how many bullets I had left to try. If one of them had a gun of their own, I was screwed.
Oddly, I didn’t feel afraid. I was pissed. Me and Grimm weren’t supposed to be separated. With what he’d just told me about this town, I had a good feeling these fuckers had come here specifically for me.
Rushing across the bridge, I pushed through the rusted door the man I’d shot had just gone through. He was using the wall as support, trying to get away. I could’ve gone about my business and let him eventually fall to his knees, sufferin, but fuck that. I wanted him to meet death then and there.
“Let’s see if I can get you dead this time,” I muttered, following after him.
He looked over his shoulder at me and shook his head. “You don’t have to do this, little miss. I’m only doing as I was told.” He coughed, leaving a small dribble of blood on his cracked lower lip.
Little miss? I’m positive the word he used a minute ago was bitch. I glanced at his tattoo and couldn’t help but sneer. He was as pathetic as the others had been.
He stopped hobbling and leaned against the wall, huffin and puffin. I stepped right in his face, getting the eye contact I suddenly craved.
“Well, your shitty boss didn’t have to stick his dirty dick in me, but he must not have been thinkin wi
th the right head.” I pressed the extended end of the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. I saw the life leave his widened eyes as they looked straight back into mine.
I watched the blood and bone splatter on that filthy peelin wall, and the rush that gave me could only be described as euphoric.
I’d seen lives snatched away many times, but I had never been the one to send someone to the afterlife. If this was how Grimm felt, I could understand exactly why he liked his job so much.
That single thought of him had me hurrying away from my first fatality, runnin down the hall. At the far opposite end, something groaned. It sounded like rusted metal, and at least two voices followed right after.
Making a split decision, I veered toward a door that was half bent at the bottom, preventing it from opening any more than it was. I could see a semi-dark stairwell beyond and squeezed through it, knowing Grimm had been on the floor below this one.
I exited right out the door that led to the next floor, bouncing off an old wheelchair.
“Shit,” I hissed, recovering as quickly as I could. “They’re comin.”
I hauled my ass to my feet and took off, away from the dead body Grimm had left behind.
The room I’d found myself in was circular and massive. I had no idea where to go. Grimm told me this place had everything from a chapel to a theater; I didn’t know where he was, or if he was okay.
“Hey!” a voice called from behind me, carrying through the empty building. I heard the sound of footfalls, and poured on speed, dodging old medical equipment.
I swear I felt breath on my neck. Our footsteps sounded like a barrage of thunder coming from every direction at once.
To hell with this.
I darted through the next door on my right and stopped a few feet inside, whirling around just in time to get smacked into by the guy who’d been behind me.
I wasn’t braced enough to take the hit, and he was too close to shoot. We went over the edge of the old in-ground pool I’d barely caught myself from falling into just a second ago.
Who the fuck designed this layout?
Naturally, the pool wasn’t full, but there was enough murky rainwater that had come through the roof to coat the bottom so that whatever equipment had been tossed in was submerged. A drop was a drop, though, and this wasn’t a kiddie’s pool.
It hurt bad enough to knock the wind from my lungs. It smelled terribly, like rotten egg salad. I tried not to think about all the contamination and bacteria I’d just landed in.
I hit the grizzly bear of a man who’d tackled me in the head with the end of my gun as soon as I could steady myself enough to do so, albeit it wasn’t a strong one, due to our new situation.
He cried out and lunged at me, grabbing hold of my wrists, sending me careening into a filing cabinet as we struggled. I internally cursed as my knee resonated with pain.
His intent was clearly to make me drop the gun. Mine was to shoot the fucker and not myself in the process. One shot rang out, hitting a decaying trolley. Another hit where bright blue graffiti was spray painted on the other end of the pool.
The tainted water was a hindrance to both of us. It soaked through my clothes; I tried my best to keep my mouth shut, not wanting to swallow a drop of it, when my feet were swept out from under me.
“You fucker!” I cried out, dropping the gun as my arm bent back at an unnatural angle.
It hit the black water with a depressing plop, sinking to a place I wouldn’t be going to get it.
“Carter?”
“In here!” the man advancing towards me responded.
“I’m co—” Whatever his friend was gonna say ended abruptly, and a familiar voice let out a loud whoop immediately after.
There was another splash, and then Carter was gone. It took me a split second to realize the man with blood smeared on his face and down his arms was Grimm, currently gutting the man who’d tackled me.
I say gutting, because there was really no other way to describe what looked like a mini scythe slicing right up the middle of the man’s stomach. The skin made a crinkly sound as it was spread apart. The muscles in Grimm’s back and arms flexed from the strain of him dragging his curved blade upward, cutting through abdominal muscle and tissue.
Immediately, a smell much stronger than the stagnant water reached my nose, almost like a burning chemical.
Blood and somethin akin to grease ran down the man’s front as intestines became exposed.
With a small grunt, Grimm all but kicked the man back off his blade. He went down but he wasn’t dead yet. His body violently convulsed, making mini bubbles in the water.
“Ugh, that smell is—”
“Like roses!” a voice exclaimed from above.
I looked up and immediately found a pair of silver eyes.
“Cobra?”
“The magnificent,” he beamed, holding a hand out to me.
I smiled back at him, glancing at Grimm, who was sloshing his way towards me.
He was covered in blood, corpse juice, and tainted water from head to steel toed boot, yet he looked damned good, in my opinion.
“Here,” he said when he reached my side, hoisting me towards Cobra, who easily lifted me the rest of the way out of the pool.
Bless him for not mentioning the way I knew I smelled.
I was sat gently to the side so he could grab Grimm and one handedly help pull him out next. He wasn’t breathin hard or nothin. I sat there feelin like a deflated balloon.
He looked down at me with a storm in his eyes. “Didn’t I tell you to stay put?” he asked, pulling me off the dirty floor.
“I’m gonna go try and get a signal.” Cobra was quick to interject, winking at me before making a hasty retreat. I only then noticed he had blood on his hands too, no doubt the result of that whoop I’d heard.
I stared at Grimm, doing another sweep to make sure he was really okay before shoving him in the shoulder. I put effort into it but he was like an immovable stone.
“You’re a real dickhead, you know that? You can’t hand someone a gun who doesn’t know how to use it, and then poof into thin air.”
“I didn’t think you’d be that shitty of a shooter. You aim and pull the trigger Brat, preferably not to shoot me next time.”
I swiped strands of filthy wet hair off my face and glared at him. “Well, I sure as hell can shoot at close range, and this shitty shooter was the distraction that saved your ungrateful self. Why would you leave me in the first place!? You can’t do that. You’re not allowed to leave me behind, Grimm!” I reckon from the sound of my voice, I was close to hysteria at this point.
I really didn’t like this. Being such a hormonal mess was embarrasin enough, but doing it in front of him was a million times worse.
When it registered that he’d said somethin about me shootin him, my eyes went right to his arm that had the most blood on it.
I didn’t see a bullet hole, but neither of the men he’d shot back at that shithole of a house had gaping holes from where’d he’d shot them.
“I-I shot you?” I rushed forward, feeling all over him, not thinkin this through at all, like I could find the wound and magically heal it with my hands alone.
He had too much blood and was too wet for me to tell what was what. When his body shook underneath me, I stopped and looked at his face to see if he was about to collapse.
“Cobra!” I yelled, a split second before I saw Grimm was laughin.
“Brat, you only grazed me,” he explained when he got ahold of himself with the audacity to keep givin me that gorgeous smile of his that showed all his perfect teeth.
“What happened?” Cobra yelled, bustin through the door like a man on a mission.
“Your friend is a goddamn asshole,” I answered, shoving past Grimm.
“Your gun’s somewhere in that shitty water. Have fun fishin it out,” I called back over my shoulder.
Chapter Eleven
I didn’t get to make a dramatic descent back to the
room we’d been in and perform a miracle on my filthy clothes.
“Brat,” Grimm called. He caught up to me, taking my hand firmly in his. “We need to have a private discussion.” He was pullin me away without givin me much choice in the matter, much to Cobra’s amusement.
“Talk later,” he mouthed at me just before I disappeared back into the stairwell I’d come out of.
“You’re leaving Cobra alone with those men lurkin around?” I hissed, trying to pull away. I was well prepared to go back and kick ass if need be. My muscles protested at that idea, but Cobra was the brother everyone wished they had—unless he was tryna get in your pants; then, he was somethin else entirely.
“You’re doing that pain in the ass thing,” Grimm said. He let my hand go and proceeded to scoop me up at the knees. “He can take care of himself, and actually hit his fucking target.” He slung me over his shoulder.
“What the hell are you doin? Put me down!” My voice echoed in the stairwell.
He ignored my protests and carried me back to the room we’d been in the night before. When he sat me down, he pushed the door shut and caged me between it and his body.
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer me with the first thing that comes to mind. Can you do that, Brat?”
Nervous about where this was goin, I wanted to drop kick him in the balls. Trustin him nonetheless, I slowly nodded.
“What is it I want you to do?” he asked again.
“You want me to answer a question with the first thing I feel and nothin else.” I repeated, and he nodded.
“The man you shot in the head, the one whose blood you haven’t realized is on your face. How did it make you feel when pieces of his brain came out of his skull?”
“Good. Powerful. Alive,” I tossed out all three.
“And how does that make you feel?”
Outcasts (Badlands Book 3) Page 7
