Page 63 of Pretty Little Assassin

One of them comes crashing through the door.

19

VIKTOR

I rip out the first one’s throat before the doors finish closing behind me.

Blood spills down his shirt and spatters the marble.

Eleven more stand between me and the room Valentina entered. Their hands disappear inside their jackets. Then a second red thing arrives at my elbow, uninvited.

Alley Cat. She was told specifically not to come.

I glance quickly down at her crimson tutu.

“It hides the bloodstains better,” she says with an indifferent shrug.

A small, feral shriek—like that of a savage child who has just accidentally killed a bird for the first time and finds it surprisingly delightful—and Alley Cat launches herself into the crowd of party guests with fists full of knives.

“What the actual—” Donnie doesn’t finish the sentence with the fuck that is supposed to land there.

Everyone switches into mobilization mode.

“We’ve still got comms. Valentina isn’t answering. I think she’s silenced us. I don’t know if you’re all busy where you are—not sure what all the slashing sounds and grunting and spurting is, but it sounds kind of busy—but I’ve been monitoring what’s going down with Valentina, and it’s not good.”

His words batter against my ear. I don’t try to steady myself. I don’t try to hold onto patience.

A gun in one hand. A desire to feel the kills in my other bare hand.

I mow through the crowd with efficient determination.

A man in a tuxedo bolts past me toward the ballroom. I let him run.

The woman behind him reaches beneath her red dress and pulls a gun.

I catch her before she can raise it and wrench her head sideways until her neck gives.

That is the rule. Run and live. Reach for a weapon and die.

Not everyone here belongs to the Primacy. Some are merely rich and stupid. I have no reason to kill them.

The operatives within reach die at my hands. Those farther away get bullets.

Without turning my head, I keep track of Alley Cat. She doesn’t die today. Not on my watch.

She’s surprisingly and frighteningly useful.

“Fuckers!” she squeals as she jams a handful of knives into a single face. “Die, die, die!”

Violent little kitten.

“Who unleashed Alley Cat?” Donnie asks.

I can practically hear his stomach turning over as he watches this bloodbath on the security camera feed.

“Does anyone ever unleash Alley Cat?” Zero says. Her breaths are ragged as she cuts through Primacy guards with her katana that she somehow managed to hide under her dress. “She unleashes herself most of the damn time.”

“Is Valentina still alive?” I growl as I kill another alpha, and then another. I, who can keep track of death in six languages, am relying on Valentina’s chosen family to track her while I single-mindedly kill my way to be with her. It is unprecedented. I trust them.