“You’re flirting with fucking death,” I muttered, removing the knuckle duster and stalking over to my bike, checking Winner had done a good job fuelling up.
Justice made kissy faces at me, trying to break the heavy dread hanging over us, and it half-worked.
“Devil,” I called across the garage, my voice a roughened rasp. “How long?”
He knew what I meant. I saw myself reflected in the dead look in his eyes. “Thirty-eight minutes.”
I fired up my bike when the rest of the Knights appeared in the doorway, hard expressions on their faces. Thirty-eight minutes and I’d know if Lynn was alive. Or dead.
25
Lynn
Darkness drowned me, but I’d learned to breathe within it. It was a part of me now. Or maybe it had been for some time. I’d lived in Hell, and taken part of Hell into myself. I never stopped fighting, not for a single fucking minute. I ripped blood and flesh from whatever limbs dared to come near me, kicked and punched and spat even as growls and barks pressed me into submission.
The past and present overlapped. I knew I was drugged and woozy, weak on a grimy mattress in a dark basement, but I couldfeelthe clasp of wood around my wrists. I could smell the dirty hay of the barn. And I drowned. Choked, coughed up black water and blood when I bit my tongue, and I fought. And fought.
Soon.I could stop fighting soon, when the Knights found us, when Cobra found me.
Any minute now.It must have been a full day since these fetid, stinking rapists abducted us. Cobra would be here soon, so I kept fighting, and fighting.
And fighting.
And drowning.
And choking down sobs that built in my chest as familiar pain pulsed inside me, bruises and tenderness painted all over my body.
After an eternity, I let the darkness cover me, let it absorb me, choke me, fill my brain, and then:
“Hey, asshole.”
I sucked in air, clawing my way to the surface.
“It’s me.”
Cobra.He was here. It was over.
It was over.
I punched my way through the darkness, testing the mobility of my body. My mouth was full of blood. Pain blazed in all the places I expected. I ducked in a sharp breath when I moved, pulling my brutalised body upright. My hands shook, but my fingers were whole. Not broken.
My bottom lip caved in, quivering uncontrollably. I waswhole.
I choked back the lump in my throat when I lifted my head and saw Cobra stalking across the dark basement towards me, the scent of leather and rum and blood joining the traumatic scents soaked into the mattress.
“Took your fucking time,” I said, my voice cracking. I could almost hear my threats, my screams, and my sobs in that ruined voice. But it wasover.Cobra swam in my vision until I blinked, and found him closer. “Go help Jessia, I’m fine.”
Our eyes locked. There was no way to read the storm in his eyes, no way to untangle the knot of his emotions. A lump formed in my throat.
Please,I begged him silently.
I’d fought the whole time, but Jessia was different. She’d been silent for hours. Maybe a whole day. And at first, she tried to purr them into being gentler. I was so afraid my friend was broken. So afraid she was—gone.
Cobra clenched his jaw, his body language screaming how little he liked it, but he turned towards the mattress where Jessia lay. God, someone had killed the man who’d been assaulting her. There was a hole blown in his face. Had Cobra done that? Blood covered Jessia as she lay staring at nothing, and for a moment I wanted to scream at the vacantness in her expression, but then her chest jerked with a breath. No, a sob.
I buried my face in my hands, tears scalding my eyes as they slid down my face.
Cobra’s boots scuffed the filthy floor when a low, menacing voice lashed through the basement. I dropped my hands and sniffled, blinking through the veil across my eyes.
