Getting down to my stomach, I crawled under a cloud of smoke, following Vox as he did the same.
I swallowed as we passed the corpse of the man Vox had killed. The man’s spirit was peeling itself away from his body,but Gavin descended on him, forcing the spirit to retreat away from us, for which I was grateful.
The last thing I needed was to be distracted by malevolent ghosts passing through my body while I tried to survive down here.
Vox abruptly made the motion to freeze, then motioned ‘enemy spotted.’
Sure enough, I could see the legs of the men Gavin said were guarding Naomi’s door.
Silently, Vox ordered us to stay where we were. He crawled forward until he was nearly on top of the guards.
Ripping out a tactical knife, he stabbed it roughly through the back of the first man’s ankle. The man screamed as Vox twisted the knife and sliced through his Achilles tendon.
His partner’s shadow turned. I could only make out his silhouette through the smoke as he aimed low, clearly getting ready to shoot Vox.
“Ryan, stay down!” Theo shouted. Without warning, she basically crawled on top of me, forcing my head down.
I heard two deafening ‘pops’as Theo fired into the shadow of the man who was about to shoot Vox. The silhouette of the guard’s head exploded in a spray of gore as Theo’s bullets found their home in his skull.
By the time he hit the ground, Vox had eliminated the other man and was already on his feet.
He shot out the handle in the door and kicked it open. Vox didn’t wait for any of us before barrelling into the room. The door slammed shut behind him, and instead of gunshots, our ears were greeted by the bone-chilling sound of a grown man’s screams.
I moved to follow, but Gavin reappeared and shook his head.
‘Just wait. I don’t think Gnomes is going to want many people to see her like this.’Gavin said, his gaze sad.
I swallowed but nodded, repeating the message to Theo.
Theo was gripping her gun so hard she was shaking. Without taking her eyes off the man she had killed, she asked, “There’s a man in there with her. Shouldn’t we make sure Vox is ok?”
Gavin gave us a dark look and shook his head.
‘Trust me. That man was dead the second he touched Naomi.’
Alexa, play: nameless - Stevie Howie
He was on top of her.
Rage like I had never felt in myliferoared through me as my mind processed what I was seeing.
A fucking gorilla of a man was holding Naomi down on a dirty cot. He had his hand buried under her sundress, and the way he was thrusting his fingers in and out of her broke something in my mind.
I was a dangerous person. I knew that.
But I was always incontrol.
Watching this man violate Naomi…sweet, fiery, funny Naomi…
Every ounce of control I’d ever had shattered into a thousand splinter-like pieces.
The man was practically mauling her face as she struggled to kick away from him, and he tore his mouth away from hers as I entered. His black eyes widened at my sudden appearance.
For the first time in my life, I wished my mouth could still form words because I wanted to tell him I was going tocut his fucking cock off.
Naomi whimpered, and the sound stoked the flames of fury that were already wreaking havoc on my black heart.
I don’t remember moving.
