Damien kicked my leg, and I fell to the ground. He tried to scramble away, but I lunged towards his neck again. Sharp aching pain blossomed in my stomach. Being stabbed felt exactly as one would expect.
“Shit,” I ground out, then bit him. I injected him with whatever it was in my fangs and pulled back. A letter openerfrom his desk was in my gut. He must have grabbed it when I was using the phone. Damien looked up at me in a daze, mouth hanging open.
I knew you weren't supposed to pull it out. But damn it, it hurt. Every micro movement made my vision go black. It needed to come out, and honestly? It didn’t matter either way. This was it. The amount of blood I’d lost was too much. I didn’t even have a full amount to begin with. The only reason I was still moving was that if I didn’t keep going, then my whole life would be pointless. I needed to guarantee Bree, Nemo, and Orson were safe. That was my purpose.
I grabbed the end of the weapon and pulled it out. It clattered against the floor. Black-green blood gushed out, and my fingers went numb. I steadied my swimming head with my hand.
Damien looked paralyzed, but he wasn’t dead. I needed to get the strength to end this. I punched him. Damien groaned, his face flushed. I hit him again and nearly fell over on top of him. Damien laughed.
“Fuck,” I sighed. Damien’s hands landed on my thighs, squeezing. I ripped myself off him and grabbed his desk, pulling myself up enough to peer over the edge.
My eyes landed on the stone paperweight. It was a globe about the size of a human head. I looked over my shoulder. Damien was watching me with half-lidded eyes, unable to move.
“I’ve killed a lot of people with my bare hands,” I panted, getting my feet under me.Almost done,I promised myself. “But never with brute force.” My arms shook as I raised the heavy object. I could barely hold it and I could hardly stand on two feet. I let gravity handle most of it.
Damien’s eyes widened as I held it above his head. Then I dropped it. There was only a dull thud. Well, and his head exploded. Kind of like a firework celebrating a job well done.Good job, Baz! You did it!
I fell over on the ground next to Damien and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Bree and them better never say I didn’t do anything for them.
Wait, there was one other thing. The phone was a few feet away. I lifted my head to read the screen. The detox progress bar was green. My head flopped back down to the ground.
Now, I could take that nap I wanted. My consciousness began to slip away. I was so tired.
24
OBLIVION
ORSON
Acouple of hours ago, Supra headquarters had 20,000 people inside—scientists, receptionists, managers, an accounting department, HR, you name it.
Nemo, Bree, and I knew the numbers were ridiculous. However, ridiculousness never bothered any of us. Nemo, in fact, was particularly delighted by the numbers we’d have to kill.
I hadn’t given Nemo much thought when I was head psychiatrist at Verfallen because he wasn’t a patient of mine and spent most of his captivity in the basement, separated from the others. Once I did get closer to him, all I saw was a standard alpha werewolf. Yes, he had apparent enhancements, but he had no agency.
Now I was reconsidering my assessment. He’d salivated over the visceral daydream of ripping every employee limb from limb. Nemo could claim it was for Baz all he wanted, but I could see that it was distinctly personal. Underneath the basic drive to protect his miniature pack, there was rage, confusion, and a blooming sense of individual identity outside of what his role was to others.
Out of all of us, the asylum had clearly stunted him the most. Already, I could see the lifelong restraints slowly being forgotten, and I found myself curious about what the future had in store for our freshly self-appointed leader. And of course, I was most intrigued by his interest in gore, considering it was a peculiar pastime of my own.
Of course, Bree didn’t care about the odds inside Supra either and was just as confident in her power as Nemo.
Twenty thousand office workers to three murderous monsters? For better or worse, I thought we actually had a chance.
Although we weren’t entirely delusional. Or I should say, I wasn’t. While Nemo and Bree imagined kicking down the front door and succumbing to berserk bloodlust for a few hours, I expected this to be a marathon, not a sprint. Realistically, it was going to be a small war with multiple battles because, office workers or not, the numbers were staggering.
And we couldn’t forget this wasn’t an ordinary company. They had a small militia force, everyone was likely supernatural, and Supra was the leading company for illegal medical experimentation. Lucky for us, their central location of said experimentation had burnt to the ground, and we had been what crawled out.
But imagine our surprise when the big fight to end all fights was already over before we arrived. We stepped into a tomb. The entirety of Supra, in a short time frame, had gone from walking the halls and chatting at the water cooler to completely dead.
“What happened?” Nemo asked.
“Do you really have to ask?” I said, looking at black eyes and green veining.
“I know it was Baz, but … was it an accident? Can they not contain his power?” His eyes slid to Bree.
I scanned the hall. We were only just barely in the building. After noting the lack of beating hearts, we’d simply gone in through the front door. Which had been difficult because there were a lot of people piled up at the entrance. It was as if they’d seen something and tried to run, but couldn’t make it out in time.
That didn’t tell the story of an accident, but I was struggling to believe the alternative. In less than two hours, Baz had killed about a hundred and seventy people per minute, and that was assuming he’d taken a full two hours to do it. It was logistically baffling to grasp.
