“No, I swear—”
“Second, and this is the most important part, so listen up, motherfucker.” I raise his trembling body off the asphalt until his ear is next to my lips. “That woman you were watching…？”
My fingers tighten around his throat as he desperately nods.
“She is mine.”
I’m sure he begs. But I don’t hear his pleas. They’re fucking useless words that won’t save him now.
I drop Francis on the pavement and tumble after him into madness.
My first blow hits his jaw. The next strikes his temple. One fist after the other. Jaw. Temple. Jaw. Temple. I miss and shatter his nose with a satisfying crunch and he wails. Blood spews from his nostrils to coat my knuckles. His jaw breaks next with a pop. Broken teeth slice his lips and fall to the driveway like chips of porcelain. Like memories I want to forget. So I fight them away. I grit my teeth and hit harder.
The scent of blood and piss and asphalt. The gurgle of choked breaths. The slip of his split flesh against my fists. It’s fucking fuel. I think of him watching her. I think of her face. And I keep hitting. Even when he seizes. Even when he drowns in his blood.
Even when he dies.
I’m beating on a hunk of ruined flesh when I finally stop. Breaths saw from my lungs as I place one hand on the warm asphalt and stare down at my knuckles where pain throbs with every heartbeat. It’s a welcome sensation. Not because I deserve it, but because he did, and I fucking delivered. Destruction with my bare hands. Suffering where it was meant to be found.
Only now does a sliver of fear burrow into my chest.
“Sloane,” I call to the shadows.
I’m met with only silence.
“Sloane.”
Nothing.
Shit.
Shit shit shit.
A fresh wave of adrenaline floods the chambers of my heart as I lean back on my heels and scan every shade of darkness that surrounds me. The excitement of the kill is washed away as a tidal wave of panic rolls in.
I’ve fucking scared her off.
She probably ran back to the hotel to grab her belongings and book it out of here. The screech of car tires will likely be the next thing I hear as she leaves and never looks back.
And can I blame her?
We’re both monsters, after all.
Different monsters, thrust together in the cage I’ve created.
Sloane is calculating, methodical. She waits and weaves a web and nets her prey. And while I like to stage a scene from time to time, to display some theatrics, this kill right here? This mess of torn flesh and exposed bone? This is in my soul. I’m fucking feral at the core.
Maybe it’s best that she gets as far away from me as she can.
Even still, it burns in my chest, a hot needle that’s slipped between my ribs to lodge in the very center of my heart. It’s a place I never thought could feel pain or longing anymore. But it does.
I drive a sticky hand through my hair as my shoulders fall.
“Goddammit, Rowan, you feckin’ eejit.” My eyes press closed. “Sloane…”
“I’m here.”
My gaze meets the shadows as Sloane emerges from their grip. The breath I take feels the same as it does after you dive too deep, unsure if you’ll reach the surface in time. The relief is cellular when the air hits my lungs.
I don’t move as she comes closer, her steps tentative, her body illuminated by the dim light that spills from the ruined car, her throat still streaked with my blood. Her gaze takes in every detail, from the film of sweat on my face to the swollen flesh of my hands. Only when she’s assessed me and stopped by my side does her attention fall to the cooling body on the driveway.
“You okay?” she asks. She looks to me with a flicker of a crease between her brows.
I want to reach for her, to feel the comfort of her unfamiliar touch. But I don’t. I just watch.
“He looks like a Picasso,” she continues as she nods toward Francis’s destroyed face. Her hand flows in his direction with bird-like grace. “Eyes over here, nose over there. Very artsy, Butcher. Embracing your Cubism era. Cool.”
I still don’t answer. I don’t know what to say. Maybe it’s the mounting physical pain. Or it could be the waning adrenaline. But I think it’s just Sloane. The echo of the loss of her and the relief of her presence.
Sloane gives me a faint, lopsided smile and lowers to my level, her eyes soldered to mine. Her grin doesn’t last. Her voice is quiet, nearly a whisper when she says, “Cat got your tongue, pretty boy? Didn’t think I’d see the day.”
A breath shudders past my lips as a drop of sweat falls from my hair to slide down my cheek like a tear. “Are you okay?”