Vale
“Please, you don’t have to do this. I have money. I have power. God, please!” he stresses. “I can give you anything. You want my daughter? Fine, she’s yours!”
I snarl behind my mask; the sound coming out guttural and fierce, but worse is Rory’s dark laughter, which sounds deeply insane and sadistic. The promise of death is in the sounds we make.
“Why would we want anything of yours?” Dakota purrs.
Linus Wade flinches back, knocking his head hard on the wet stone. He’s covered in sweat, and his eyes are red-rimmed, but he’s still far too much alive for my tastes. We’ve let him run himself to exhaustion inside a warehouse of traps and things that like to cause pain. Cyn is all about prolonging their fear and inducing agony, making it stretch out. He would take them for a month and take bits off them piece by piece until there was nothing left, but we are a pack, and we share our kills.
Cyn leans against the wall, his arms folded, the smiling expression on the black leather mask hiding the bored one I know he’s wearing.
Perhaps we should have just given this bastard to Cyn. But alas, we are short on time. I lift up the hammer I’ve got in my hands. It’s a classic. The sadistic partof me is fed by the brutality that comes directly from the amount of pain I can cause. I am nothing if not methodical in my destruction.
“I don’t want your money, and your power is nothing,” I say coldly, advancing on him. “As for your daughter, well, it just shows what kind of pond floater you are, trying to save your own neck by giving up hers.”
He cries out, wordless sounds that cause snot to bubble out his nose.
“Gross,” Dakota growls. His mask has its mouth open in a roar. Kota likes killing up close and personal. A garrote, evisceration, strangulation. He likes to look into their eyes and watch the souls float away.
“Don’t you have an omega? A beta? Someone who is yours?” Linus cries.
I chuckle. “Absolutely not. Can you imagine some poor omega being stuck with the four of us? We’d destroy her. She’d have to be extraordinary to get us to change our ways, and no such beast exists,” I say in a musing tone. The idea of finding an omega is laughable. It’s ridiculous. We’re not just violent when we kill; we’re violent in bed, our heads are dark places, our version of fun is terrifying.
No, an omega would spell absolute ruin for us.
“Nice diversion tactic,” I murmur with a chuckle.
Rory lunges for Linus and grabs his hair, dragging him towards us. Before I can protest, he jabs him with a cocktail of whatever the fuck he’s mixed up this time.
“Really?” I growl, frustrated with my erratic and highly dangerous pack member.
“You can still kill; I want to see if this works first, though.”
“Rory, we discussed this. You can’t just go jabbing them with things. It’s not fair on the rest of us.”
“Fair?” Linus croaks. “None of this is fair!”
“Shut up!” Cyn hisses and steps towards him.
Linus’ expression turns to one of pure terror, and he scrambles backwards. Cyn is terrifying, everyone says so.
“Look, the last time you jabbed someone, you did it with enough electricity to melt their face.”
Linus squeals.
“I was curious,” Rory mutters and casts me a look that I know is full of reproach. I did promise not to bring that up again.
“It was disgusting. And there was the time before when you poured that acid stuff on his torso and it ate a hole straight through and killed him before the rest of us had a chance.”
Rory folds his arms over his chest. “So, what are you saying?”
“Share, Rory. Don’t be a greedy little killer.”
There’s a hysterical whimper that we ignore.
He comes to me with feline grace, and I cup the side of his masked head and touch our foreheads together.
“I love you, but you need to share.”
