I stopped counting at five.
My body jerked with each hit, pain blooming hot and sharp, then fading to a deeper, duller burn as the holes started closing almost as fast as he could make them.
The gun clicked on empty.
Silence crashed down, broken only by his ragged breathing and the soft, obscene sound of bullets plinking onto concrete as my flesh spat them out.
They slid out of me one by one, fat and deformed, wet with blood before cooling in the open air.
I looked down.
My shirt was a disaster, shredded and soaked, but beneath it, skin was knitting over torn muscle and bone, leaving only faint, angry pink marks that were already fading.
I rolled my shoulders. It hurt. It didn’t matter.
When I looked back up, Joe was still holding the useless gun like a security blanket, arms shaking so hard it jittered in his grip.
“What are you?” he whispered.
I got my feet under me and stood.
Blood dripped off me in sluggish tracks. My hair clung to my face, sticky. My heart hammered, not with fear, but with something wild and electric and very, very eager.
I smiled at him, wide and sharp and full of every awful thing he’d made me feel. “My turn.”
I could have drawn it out; spent hours extracting his teeth one by one, or forcing him onto the Spanish donkey and weighted his shoulders until he split from ass to pelvis.
I didn’t because I was fucking done and had my eyes set on a different prize.
The air whooshed out of him as my foot connected with his balls. Luci was smiling off to the side, his silhouette still shivering around the edges from the rage wrinkling the space between his brow.
It was kind of cute.
Joe screamed as I gripped his hair and dragged him toward my murder weapon.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” I said, maybe a little too giddy. “Luci, if you have a weak stomach, don’t watch!” I called out over my shoulder.
“Where are you taking me?” Joe cried and I could have gotten off to the sound of his fear.
“Right here.”
I threw him down on the pavement by the parking block. Unfortunately, I couldn’t position him and hold him still at the same time.
“Just kidding, Luci! Can you come hold him please?”
“It would be my pleasure,” he responded immediately, prowling over like he’d been waiting to tap in.
“A boot on his back should do, your highness.”
Lucifer’s deadpan stare made me giggle.
He did as I asked and pinned Joe on his belly, face hovering above the parking block. I grabbed Joe’s hair again along with his chin to pry his mouth open. After his perfectly white teeth were biting the concrete, tears and saliva falling all over the place, said, “It was nice to meet you, Joe. Enjoy your time in hell.”
I brought my boot down on the back of his head and didn’t even flinch when I felt the hard line of concrete meet the sole.
“Sorry, Luci. I don’t think the eyeballs are usable.”
I stared down at what was left of my ex-boyfriend. I stared at Joe’s ruined head, the way his jaw hung at a wrong angle, lips mashed and split, nose sideways. His eyes were still open, cloudy and shocked, and teeth glittered in the dark like someone had dropped a fistful of cheap pearls.
