Before I could open my mouth to speak, he had a hand tightly wrapped around my throat. He spun me around and pressed his brick chest against my back. I reached up to remove his damn hand when two men came sliding down the embankment much more gracefully than we just had.
“Those lags belong to us,” one of the men said as they approached, unmistakably kin to cannibal Bill.
“Do they?” Romero challenged lazily.
The deep timbre of his voice sent a chill straight down my spine.
“If she belongs to you, why is my hand wrapped around her throat?”
The other man opened his mouth to respond but was swiftly cut off.
“We don’t belong to no bottom feeders!” Arlen yelled, struggling to break away from the dark haired man that was now holding her in a chokehold.
“We don’t want any trouble, Romero. We just want the girls,” the more intelligible one conceded. There was a nervous hitch in his voice that reminded me of how well known the Savages were and how people purposely avoided them at all costs.
“There was a girl with yawl’s tattoo. They ate her. They ate your friend,” Arlen rushed out.
None of the men reacted. Her confession was met with resounding silence from both sides.
“So she’s yours?” Romero asked again, cupping a tattooed hand over my mouth when I tried to speak.
“They both are.”
“Alright then, take her.” He pushed me forward and stepped back. “And her.” He nodded to Arlen.
She barely righted herself from being shoved forward when the man’s companion grabbed her by the hair and started dragging her along as if she were a ragdoll.
“No, wait!” I shouted as I was partially lifted over the man’s shoulder. I hit the back of his head with a closed fist and he let me go. I stumbled backwards, tripping over myself as I tried to get away, landing right at Romero’s feet. The air whooshed out of my lungs and I reflexively grabbed for my side.
With an angry growl he reached for me again, this time going for my ankles. The situation flipped in a matter of seconds.
I stared in confusion as he jerked away and blood began to spill down the front of him. Romero stepped around me and I watched as he pulled a knife out of the man’s chest, shoving him to the ground in the process.
“Go get the other one,” he said to his friends, placing his black boot on the man’s stomach to prevent him from getting up.
Without a word, his comrades walked off after Arlen. Romero looked at the cannibal and began pressing down. The man’s pained scream echoed across the treetops as Romero dug his steel toe into the chest wound. I watched him suffer with a deep feeling of self-satisfaction. The fucker deserved it.
“Stop, ple––”
Romero lunged down and drove the silver blade straight through the center of the man’s forehead, cutting his plea short. His muscles flexed beneath his shirt from the force it took to penetrate the man’s skull.
My lips parted as I stared at them both in fascinated awe. A silent crimson river made its way to the forest ground. The knife made a faint squelching sound and then a ‘pop’ as he removed it.
With a flick of his wrist, something chunky and pinkish-red flew off the blade and landed on a nearby plant. He looked at me then, his onyx hues drilling into mine—dark meeting light—and gave me a beautifully devious smile.
“I changed my mind.” He shrugged. “Finders keepers.”
His words had the breath evaporating from my chest. As I stared into his eyes, I saw myself falling right into the void.
I was so fucked.
An angry scream in the near distance broke me from my tunnel vision. I blinked and looked away, glancing around in hope I would catch a glimpse of Arlen. Remembering my objective, Tito’s voice resounded as a warning bell inside my head.
“They can’t know you found them willingly. They’ll know something’s up and won’t hesitate to kill you.”
Well, fuck. Realizing I’d almost completely screwed everything up, I began to half scoot/half crab-walk backward.
Our eyes locked once more and he grinned, flashing a set of perfect white teeth. Somehow, this smile was darker than the last one because now he seemed to be amused.
