“I’m fine! Let’s kill these fuckers!”
I’d used a gun many times in my life. I’d practiced in dark places. I’d shot at small targets.
But until now, I’d never quite understood what the fog of war meant. How quickly a sensory overload could make maintaining awareness of my surroundings damn near impossible. How quickly it all just seemed to blur together. Directions didn’t mean anything.
But Patriot, Butch, and the rest of the Black Reapers held us together. They gave clear instructions. They had us circle the enemy and land fatal shots. They knew what they were doing.
They, more than us, were defeating the King’s Men. They, more than us, were the reason that what could have been a catastrophic situation turned into a winnable one.
They were fighting a battle they understood well. We were fighting a battle we talked like we knew, but very clearly did not.
We needed them.
The implications of the thought didn’t stay long. They didn’t have time to. We had to wipe the floor clean of these bastards, and that was what I focused on.
That was, until out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure streaking toward a room in the back, a room previously untouched or unexamined by any of us here.
The battle was turning in our favor enough—even though we’d lost three men to this point—that I felt like I could pull away and head into the room in question. Whoever had gone in there had broken away from the main fight, a retreat that suggested either they were someone of importance or just a coward. Either way, it was a lead worth pursuing—perhaps it could lead to more information.
I got to the door and raised my gun, yelling, “GET DOWN!” No one answered.
And then, with barely any time to consciously register why, I ducked.
I had a feeling someone was behind me and about to hit me. Sure enough, I just barely dodged a baseball bat being swung at my face, a hit that would have knocked me out if not killed me. In the time that I ducked, I lined up another shot, but the bat came back around and knocked it out of my hands.
I drove and tackled him against the wall, knocking the bat from his hands. A brawl ensued. It was too dark to make out much about the King’s Man I was fighting, but he was tall, muscular, and a surprisingly tenacious fighter for someone who had run in the first place.
I landed some good punches to his gut and face, but it felt like he had a skeleton of steel. Punching him seemed to fucking hurt me more than it hurt him. I could fight like hell, but I’d never met anyone who could not only take a punch, but make me hurt as much as whoever this guy was.
In fact, after a few solid punches, it almost seemed like he wasletting mehit him. He didn’t seem to be trying to dodge them. He was fucking toying with me.
And then he delivered a punch that hit me in the gut. Hard. Hard enough to knock me to my knees.
“Sonny!”
Spawn’s voice came from a distance. I felt my hair being yanked up. The man who had cornered me glared at me.
“I’ll tell King you said hello,” he said. “Tell your friends Crush said hello back.”
With that, he slammed a knee in my face that knocked me out.
* * *
I was in a bedroom in the clubhouse.
Wait…
How the fuck…
How’d I wind up here?
I jolted out of bed, only to wish that I’d remained down. My face pounded with pain, and when I raised a hand to it, the whole damn thing felt swollen as hell. Just placing a finger on my nose was enough to cause me to grimace.
But I needed to know what had happened.
Grimacing before stopping because that caused too much pain, I lifted myself off of bed—at least nothing else hurt, though my knuckles hurt from the fight—and made my way to the door. I could hear people talking in the main room of the clubhouse, and I recognized the voices of Spawn and Cole.
Promising.
