Reluctantly, I lower the binoculars as if keeping my eyes on the destruction will stop it from spreading.
“What the hell does he want with her?” I force past the knot in my throat.
“The girl? Nothing. He only wants you, Seth. Surrender, and she’ll be free.”
“How did Isaac find me?”
Daniel’s eyes harden at me using Zeke’s brother’s name. “TheSaviorhas searched long and hard for his most precious sacrifice. No stone was left unturned.”
“Bullshit! Someone tipped him off. Who?” As in, who do I have to kill after I rip out Daniel’s intestines and wear them like a lei?
“I am not at liberty to discuss that information, but if you come with me, I can take you to the Savior.”
“You’re unable or unwilling to give me answers?” I echo for clarity as I glance behind him.
“I am forbidden.”
“What you are,” Thorin snarls, “is useless.”
The twin shadows converging behind the deputy split apart and then take form on either side of him. Khalil shoves Green onto the ground until he’s kneeling, and the deputy doesn’t try to fight or beg for his life.
Why?
Because he believes Zeke’s brother’s lies. He truly believes he cannot die.
“Who the fuck are you?” Thorin demands as he moves to stand in front of the deputy. “You’re not a real cop.”
Deputy fucking Green smiles. “I am Undying Daniel. A disciple of the Savior. A child of the Seeds—”
“Good enough for me.” Khalil sends a punch so vicious into the jaw of the deputy that I hear the bone shatter with a sickening crunch. The deputy’s screams are enough to turn stomachs when Khalil lifts him up by his broken jaw until they’re almost eye level. “You want to try telling us what the hell you want with him now? No?”Squelch.I don’t see the knife in Khalil’s hand until it’s already lodged to the hilt in Daniel’s lower stomach. Khalil’s eyes are cold as he holds the deputy’s gaze and slowly splits him open from gut to sternum. “Aight then.”
Everything ugly inside the deputy tries to spill out of him like toothpaste in the tube when you squeeze it hard enough but change your mind at the last minute.
Wrong angle, I guess. That’s disappointing. No necklace for me.
“For someone who’s supposed to be undying, he sure looks dead as fuck to me.” Khalil stands and spits on Daniel’stwitching body and then lifts his gaze, which softens when it finds me. “You okay, Seth?”
“No,” I answer as I steal the deputy’s gun from his holster. “We need to go. Sunshine’s in trouble.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“Isaac has her.” I don’t bother handing them the binoculars so that they can see the fire since that would waste time. I just start running for the ATVs and feel them hot on my heels as I pray we get there in time.
AURELIA
You’re going to have to do a lot better than that, asshole!” Coughing immediately proceeds my shout with my voice barely rising above the roar of the fire. It doesn’t matter. Anyone else would have run from the cabin when they had the chance, which means Isaac is already learning how badly he’d overestimated my will to live.
If living means giving up Zeke and Seth, and even Bane to that monster, consider me one deader than dead bitch. He can’t have them. I won’t let him.
After shoving on my boots and tying my wet shirt around my nose and mouth, I crawl in sports bra and shorts underneath the flames licking the walls and ceiling and head toward the basement stairs. I tell myself not to look back at the destruction, but I don’t listen. My gaze, like my heart, is drawn to the dining table where we shared all of our meals—some rife with tension but most of them pleasant and filled with laughter.
The worn books that I never got to finish reading.
The loft and the first piece of this cabin that I claimed for myself.
And then there’s the view of the wilds that I never came to fully appreciate but hoped one day I would—in time.
Now there is no time left. It’s all gone. Or will be soon.
