Page 115 of The Ripper

~ Punch him back!

The blood rushed to my head, and I was about to hit him when Klaus stepped in front of him.

“You need to take a fucking cold shower and chill the fuck out before you ruin yourself for good, Grimm,” he said as he grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the van. “This isn’t how you find her.”

“You know, for a pussy who’s afraid to pull the fucking trigger, you have some strength in you,” I mocked him. “What’s that thing you do? Calisthenics, was it?”

He slammed me against the side of the van faster than I could blink and pressed his forearm to my throat. His hair fell over his face as if he was the black-haired version of Kurt Cobain. He was tall as the devil and too agile for my inebriated state, and I was almost shocked by his reaction, but then again, that redhead he had a crush on must’ve done a number on him and made him grow a pair.

“I’m not afraid to pull the trigger, brother, I’m afraid of what the gun might be capable of in my hands,” he pressed harder on my windpipe for a second before stepping back. “Are you fucking drunk?” he wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“Guilty as charged,” I raised my arms defensively and lit another cigarette, as the last one was taken away from me.

~ Rude.

“Klaus talked me out of sedating you and putting you to sleep for a while,” our father intervened. “I’m still not convinced I shouldn’t just do that, so get in the fucking van.”

“Oh, look at you two, finally talking to each other again,” I said as I made a sad puppy face. “What a fucking happy family,” I scoffed, then spit some more blood on the concrete and got in the van.

I knew I shouldn’t piss him off when he was already angry, because he wasn’t beyond kicking me when I was already down and beating me until I couldn’t stand up anymore.

And death wasn’t an option, because I knew that I deserved to suffer tenfold for allowing them to steal her away from me. I deserved to writhe in agonizing pain for leaving her alone on that cursed day.

I didn’t deserve the quiet of death.

And I also refused to die without seeing her smile once more.

They took me to the warehouse where they treated me like a prisoner in jail. They forced me to take off my clothes and basically waterboarded me. Granted, I didn’t have a cloth over my face, and it wasn’t supposed to be a torture session, but they shoved me into the shower, not without making sure the hot water was turned off first.

They said steam wouldn’t be good for my head.

~ Alcohol isn’t good for your head either.

~ I drank to make you shut up.

~ How’s that going for you?

I tossed and turned in bed half the night, fighting the urge to go back outside and find myself another asshole to pummel to death, since the last guy barely landed a good punch before he lay dead on the concrete.

I slept the other half of the night, almost as if my body caved under the pressure.

When I woke up and looked at the clock on the wall, it was already noon.

~ What the fuck? Is this a fucking joke?

I actually slept for a full, uninterrupted, five hours.

It was still raining, but slower, and somehow, I felt calmer than I had in the last few days. My skin wasn’t itchy anymore, and I could tie two coherent thoughts together without using the word “kill” as a comma.

I put on the clothes hanging for me next to the bed. I slept in the same room she had slept in the first night she came to the warehouse, when she had given Klaus her blood. I made the decision to sleep there in the hopes I would find her scent still lingering around, but that wasn’t the case.

When I walked into the garage area of the compound, which was also the largest space available, there was a long table in the center, the roll-up door was wide open and cool air wafted into the room.

Klaus was sitting next to a young guy I’d never seen before, who couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, and when they noticed me, the boy, who was wearing ripped jeans and a Skillet T-shirt, grinned at me as if he knew me.

Who the fuck?

“Welcome back to the land of the living, sleeping beauty,” Klaus sneered.

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