“All right, let’s keep moving,” he said as he held out his hand.
I looked at his blood-soaked appendage. “Four people.”
“What?”
I looked up at him slowly. “You’ve killed four people in less than ten minutes.”
He shrugged. “And?”
I swallowed hard. “Are you going to kill me and my sister, too?”
His face softened and he wiggled his fingers for me. “No.”
I studied his face as he uttered those two letters in tandem with one another. I looked for any sign of him lying, as if I’d be able to detect that shit. I wasn’t good at anything. My sister was the one that had all of the brains in the family. That had the future. That had the capability of really being something to this wretched place.
I was nothing.
And yet, my gut told me that Fangs was telling the truth. So, I slid my hand into his bloodied one and tried not to think about all of the mingled DNA against his skin.
“Okay, let’s go,” I whispered.
The second I stepped out of the corner, a roar came out of nowhere. It was accompanied by someone’s flying body, and it knocked straight into Fangs. I watched in horror as he tumbled with the person that had launched themselves at us. I slowly backed up, watching Fangs wrestle with the shadowed man as the lights in the hallway flickered. Thunder boomed outside and rain beat down against the roof, a loud sound that drowned out the tussle going on before me.
I looked up and down the hallway, surrounded by dead bodies, blood, and carnage that Fangs had brought down on all of their heads. And in a moment of desperation, I took off further down the hallway.
Further away from the death that surrounded me.
“Shit. Julia!” Fangs growled.
I leapt over him and barely missed the hand that reached out to grab me. “I’m sorry.”
Was I really sorry, though? I mean, the man was a killer. It didn’t matter why he was killing or who. The fact of the matter was that he had done it four times without so much as batting an eye at the consequences. I didn’t need to be wrapped up in someone like that, and neither did my sister.
I’d find her myself, and then the two of us would get out of that wretched place.
Ourselves.
I resisted the urge to cry out her name as I threw open doors and stuck my head into the darkness. For all I knew, there was someone waiting around every corner, just waiting to take my damn head off with an axe. But that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was getting my sister home.
She was all I had, and if I couldn’t protect her, then what good was I to the world?
“I made Mom and Dad a promise at their funeral,” I grunted, “now come on. Where are you?”
I threw open one of the room doors and heard it slam against something. I walked inside, squinting and looking around as grunts and groans from down the hallway echoed toward me. My foot slammed into something, causing me to swallow every nefarious statement that wanted to fall from my lips. And as I dipped my hand down to feel for what the hell had damn near broken my toe, I came across something cold.
Something hard.
Something metallic.
And when I held it up to the flickering hallway light, thunder crashed above our heads as I gazed at the sparkling crowbar.
“Bingo,” I murmured.
It was then that I found the confidence I required to help find my sister.
“Theresa!” I yelped as I soared out of the room. “Theresa! Where are you!?”
“Where the fuck did you come from?”
