It was four on three, but the Horsemen weren’t bothered. Wraith took on the two easily, a right hook slamming into one jaw, while he ducked from the second guy’s punch. Raze took the guy with him to the ground, smashing his head into the asphalt. Lock played with the other guy. Dodging. Dancing.
I started to relax. They had this?—
Suddenly Lock was on the ground, a knife to his neck. I spun around—was someone going to help him? Raze had someone pinned to the ground. Wraith was still fighting two people.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I ran to Lock, taking off my shoe as I did, and slammed it over the guy’s head. It didn’t take him down, but it was enough to startle him. Lock reversed the pin, the guy getting a slice at his shoulder first.
“Thanks, princess.” Lock shot me a smile, then sliced the guy’s throat.
Wraith finished playing with his prey. Then it was over. Five bodies lay on the ground. Lock’s arm bled red rivers down the muscles in his biceps, across his ink, but he laughed. They all laughed. Like this was nothing.
A moment later, the rumble of a car engine sounded.
“Shit,” Raze cursed. Our eyes followed his, to the source of the sound—a car driving away.
“Whoever it was will take back the message,” Lock said.
While Lock and Raze joked about something I couldn’t hear, Wraith walked up to me. I braced myself for anger. He thumbed my cheek, swiping blood I hadn’t realized was there. It was…sweet. That terrified me more than anything. The Horsemen weren’tsweet.
“I told you,” he said. “You don’t get to die.”
FORTY-THREE
GEMMA
I dabbed antiseptic onto Lock’s shoulder. Grim had arrived ten minutes after everything went down, helping to clean up. Now they all joked as bodies dissolved in acid. There was a tension in Grim even as he laughed with them. He’d dragged a chair next to me, one hand wrapped around my upper thigh, as if making sure I was still here.
I looked through the kitchen door, brow furrowing at the gallon-size drums in the hallway.
Like five men didn’t just try to kill them.
Like they weren’t covered in blood.
I pressed more of the cotton into Lock’s gash. I felt a strange combination of numb and wired, like an electric wire shoved into cotton.
“Where did Gemma Crowne learn how to clean a wound?” Raze asked.
Raze had a cut under his eye that I’d managed to clean.His knuckles were bloody, and I’d had to take out the individual pieces of gravel. I looked at the abrasion on his knuckles, remembering him shove a guy to the asphalt. The head breaking open on the gravel. His grip white-knuckled.
“Yeah, I’m curious about that.” Lock tilted his head to find my face.
I remembered my mother on the bathroom floor, shattered glass surrounding her. It was hard to tell if she’d dropped the vase because she was high, or if getting hurt was the point.
“Camp,” I lied.
“Camp?” They laughed, like that was the most insane thing in the world.
While they laughed, Grim stared at me. His head slightly tilted, a softness in his eyes.
Like he could somehow see my mother bleeding.
“Sabrina is on her way,” Wraith said, coming back into the kitchen. “Should get there in three hours.”
Wraith was the least injured, but his lip was still bleeding, and he’d probably have a black eye, even if the ink hid it.
“She must be stoked,” Lock said. “She hates winter.”
“Zabby is leaving?” I asked.
