I sigh. “Don’t make me repeat myself, Steven,” I say. “It seriously takes away the fun.”
He stares at me with so much anger on his face that it makes me chuckle.
“Keys, Steven – give them to me.”
He flinches as he shifts to grab them from his pant pocket, then hands them to me with a tick in his jaw.
“Wasn’t so hard, was it?” I say, then turn around and throw the keys at Alex, who catches them midair. “Turn on the headlights for me, will you?” I tell him. “The main event needs some kind of…pizzazz, methinks.”
My crew laughs, and Alex hops off the car’s hood to go turn on the headlights.
A few seconds later, the dark alley brightens to gold.
Looking down at Steven’s struggling form, I put a leg on either side of his waist and touch my knees to the ground as I straddle him.
“What are you doing, youfreak?” he asks, and tries to move away from me.
I click my tongue and punch him in the jaw, making him grunt. “Don’t do things that are useless against your fate, man,” I state. “It makes you look far more stupid than you’ve already proven yourself to be.”
“You–”
I punch him again, putting a stop to whatever it is he’s about to say. Then, I sit back on my heels and contemplate my next move.
“Hammer or blade?” I think to myself, then lazily roll my head to the side and look at my crew. “Thoughts?”
Steven jerks under me. “You’re mad!” he shrieks. “You psycho. Let me go!”
I roll my eyes and punch him for the third time, then look at my crew again. “Thoughts, guys; come on. I ain’t got all night.”
“Hammer,” Alex says with a grin, mainly because that’s his weapon.
“I concur,” adds Jayce.
“Seconded,” Varsha agrees.
“Perfect.” I grin and look at Steven. “You see that? We’ve got a weapon picked out for your demise, bud.”
“Dorran…” Steven starts crying in between bouts of tremors. “We can come to an agreement, please. I’ll…I’ll leave Riverside. Yes! I’ll fucking leave this godforsaken place. I’ll go as far away from here as I can. And I…I won’t say anything about what happened tonight toanyone. I promise. Just let me go, man.Please. I–” He stops talking, and ends up gurgling blood when I slit his throat with my switchblade. He was so busy groveling that he didn’t even notice me sliding my blade out of my pocket. Stupid fuck.
Steven cups his throat and starts thrashing wildly, to which Alex sighs and shakes his head.
“I wanted to see you hammer his head in,” he tells me, then purses his lips as he glances at Steven. “Too bad he wasn’t cooperative.”
I chuckle, and reach out a hand towards him. “Give it to me,” I tell him.
Alex’s gaze darkens as he eagerly puts his staking hammer in my waiting palm.
It’s a beautifully deadly thing, with a sturdy wooden handle, and a metal-made head that consists of two ends – one that is clawed, and the other that’s blunt.
I throw the hammer in the air, and catch it as it falls, then look at Steven, who’s barely got any life left in him.
With the clawed end of Alex’s hammer facing forward, I rise on my knees, pull my arm back, and then bring it down right in the center of Steven’s forehead.
A loud, wet crunch of bone and skin breaking under the hammer’s sharpness, hits my ears, and Steven immediately stops moving.
“Okay, that’s super hot,” Alex comments, making me laugh.
I pull my arm back a second time, then hit the same spot on Steven’s head again, resulting in blood and chunks of brain to splatter on my forearm, neck, and face.
