“Are you okay?” he asked, pure panic laced in those eyes of his. “What’s wrong?”
As soon as the question fell out of his mouth, he answered it alone, catching a glimpse of himself in a shard of a disco ball fractured on the concrete floor. He glared at the distorted reflection of himself and battled there in the torment of his mind.
He tore his face away.
“Fine,” Dig spat out the single word to his older brother. “You won, Slash, I’m here, everyone can see me—now what? Leave me alone. Let us go.”
Slash hitched into a gaudy giggle, took out a blade from his back pocket and waved it in front of Dig’s nose. “Now that you look like Daddy, you’re going to show us how you act like Daddy.”
Dig lost his fury, falling into brief confusion and then alarm. “What do you mean?”
“Kill her,” Slash said with venom in his voice.
I did not appreciate the blade pointed at me, nor being sat on a filthy concrete floor when I was pant-less, or that this lunatic and his baby duckling lunatics were causing a great hinderance to my reaching Tommy. Also, the air down here was muddy with too many body odours, and I was absolutely certain this air was not being filtered appropriately. Also, I needed to urinate.
“Excuse me,” I said to Slash, seeing as he was the one in charge. “I don’t much like being here, may I leave now?”
“You’ll leave soon.” Slash grinned, exposing all canines. “In pieces, right after Dig shows us his dismembering skills on a De Astor body.”
It was very difficult to feel intimidated by someone in a sequined pink crop top and tight leather pants. “This seems a like a family problem, I don’t want to get involved.”
“Slash!” Dig’s chest heaved as he looked up at his older brother, unadorned fury on his face. “I’m not killing her.”
“Why not?” Slash asked, a giggle spewing from his throat. “I’ve seen you in action, you’re pretty good and you certainly enjoy it.”
“I’ve only killed people in the Battle because I had to. I don’t want to be Soulless.”
“You’re Soulless.” Slash cut loose Dig’s restraints, setting his hands free and sitting the blade in Dig’s palm. “You kill her, Dig.” Slash patted his younger brother’s head. “And if you don’t show us your talents then I’m going to torture her in front of you and then you’ll be the bad guy for not ending her misery.”
Slash stepped to the side to watch.
Dig glared down at the blade. His fathers’ eyes in his face, widened at the weapon he had been given to end my life.
I picked something out of my teeth. Apple, I think. Did I eat an apple today? Oh, yes, I did, for breakfast.
Dig felt the weight of the blade in his hand, he looked to me, but not to my eyes, his face half-hidden in his black hair.
“Delphine.” His voice a shallow whisper, his shoulders hunched down, soaking with an invisible pain. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“Don’t worry.” I winked at him, finally getting the piece of apple out of my teeth. “I have a plan.”
“I also have a plan.”
“Mine’s better.”
“But—”
“Excuse, Mr Slash.” I waved to him with my tied hands. “You can’t kill me.”
Slash snorted out a laugh. “Why not?”
“My sweet aunty Beatricejustdied.”
“Huh?”
I choked on a sob. “My aunty Beatrice, she died tragically, just the other day.”
Slash’s face fell. “Oh, I’m sorry. That’s sad to hear.”
