Page 73 of What I Should Have Done

A single wail rent through air.

Scuffling and grunts echoed the still thundering shriek.

Something sharp sliced with a hiss outside the room.

Straining against my cuffs, I attempted to peer around the four bulky men standing in the doorway.

“What’s going on?” my captor asked, still crouched between my legs.

“We don’t know,” Macavoy replied, shouldering a rifle.

A blanket of utter silence cocooned us.

Not even the insects that lived within these walls dared to scuttle about. There was nothing. My heart hammered against my ribs. Anxiously awaiting with a drawn breath whatever death stalked my way. My nerves awakened.

As if the darkness itself became a tangible liquid, shadows emerged from the corners of the room. But no one was there. Not yet anyway. Or at least not that I could see.

And then metal clanked. Links hissed through the air. My eyes widened as a chain wrapped around the throat of one of the few men outside of the room that I could see. His hands flew to the iron and then he was jerked off his feet and disappeared into the black mist.

Within the charged suspension, not a soul stirred.

I dared not breathe for fear of what might happen next. And then a soft click broke the stillness. Rolling out of the darkness was a single, decapitated bloodied head. Footsteps stumbled, backing away from the gore plunking across the floor of the hallway.

The shadows swirled and before anyone had a chance to fire, five shots cracked through the air. Though I couldn’t see it, there were several wet thuds of bodies slumping to the ground. The four men standing guard in the doorway raced out into the hallway and then froze.

Morphing from the darkness was a towering figure. Stalking forward with steady threatening steps, he wrapped an arm around one thick man’s neck. Bloodied fingers gripped the assailant’s chin and jerked, hard. The crunch of bones seared into my ears as the figure pointed his handgun at a second combatant and fired. The enemy dropped to the ground just as a third man engaged this strange, rage-filled creature.

No, not a creature.

Mikey.

In a fluid movement, Mikey hurled the dead man still clutched in his hand across the room. It rammed into Macavoy, knocking him down. Mikey ducked, the third enemy’s shots skimming over his head.

Rolling onto his feet, Mikey sprinted the last couple feet and jumped, slamming a knee into a new assailant’s chin. Swiftly, Mikey stomped on the now prone combatant’s face with a squelch and threw a knife at Macavoy just as Macavoy shoved the dead man off him.

Blood pooled from the eight bodies strewn on the floor just outside my cell. My heart raced, watching a man who encapsulated the grim reaper himself leave nothing to mercy, all to rescue me.

Covered in dark stains, rage twisting the visible features on Mikey’s face, he rushed toward Macavoy, who ripped the knife from his arm.

Mikey’s fist crunched into Macavoy’s jaw, sending teeth flying from his mouth. Quickly parrying the incoming jab away, Mikey snatched another knife from his belt and jabbed it into the side of Macavoy’s throat.

With a gurgle of blood, Macavoy dropped the other blade and clutched the protruding hilt. Mikey raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger. Point blank through his forehead. Blood splattered back on Mikey’s face, mixing with the droplets already coating his skin. He’d been carelessly exposing his identity this entire time.

Wait, Mikey was a lot of things, but not careless.

My eyes widened as he snatched up the blade from the ground and slowly turned.

He wanted them to know who he was.

The moment that Mikey’s eyes connected with my captor’s, all fear that had held Merlin frozen between my legs zapped him into gear. He scrambled down from the table as Mikey stalked into the room.

Like thunder that roared through a black sky, at this moment, Mikey commanded even the fabric of time.

“Please,” my captor begged, raising his palms in submission to Mikey as he stopped in the doorframe.

Mikey tipped his head. “Why are you begging? I haven’t done anything to you,” he growled, his voice sending a lurch of excitement through me. “Yet.”

“L-L-Look, I was just doing my job,” Merlin stammered, plastering himself as tightly to the wall as he could.

---