Page 20 of Scars Run Deep

Blood spurted. Sprayed everywhere.

A gurgled scream sounded.

It dropped out of sight.

But the bloodied blade remained.

My blade.

It was mine.

I’d done this.

And that wasn’t the end of it.

A haze of rage and determination propelled me onward.

Flesh ripping, bones breaking. Shrieks and pleas inundating me.

But I couldn’t stop.

I couldn’t take pity.

I couldn’t show mercy.

They were the enemy.

They were here to hurt me, to hurt my men.

They’d come for us.

All our enemies were monsters.

And you could be nothing less to defeat them.

More! More! More!

Fall! Fall! Fall!

I came out of it to find that I was digging my nails into my palms so harshly that I’d left red raw semi-circles in their wake. I’d only been just shy of drawing blood.

Blood.

“Stop it,” I hissed at myself.

I grabbed another towel off one of the rails and dabbed at my hair, towel-drying it, as I approached the mirror.

I winced at the bruising all over my face, the cuts.

My body hadn’t escaped it either.

But I was honestly lucky that it hadn’t been a whole lot worse, that I hadn’t sustained any severe injuries.

Well, lucky was a stretch.

I’d trained like an obsessed freak for three years to be able to hold my own in situations just like that. I’d really been learning how to fight since I was a tween, but the intensive, harsh and particularly brutal training had only come in the last three years, since my dad had died—well, disappeared and faked his death.

Without all that under my belt, I wouldn’t have even made it out of that basement.

---