Page 9 of Justice

“Just looking out for my brothers is all.” His eyes roamed over me. “What is your intention with them?”

Ellis spit out the sip of water he had just taken, spraying droplets over all three of us. “You’re fucking with us now, right?”

A slow grin spread across Ramsey’s face. “Maybe a little.”

With no hesitation, I spoke, “I plan to degrade them. All three of them. Single. Together. It makes no difference to me.”

Ramsey’s eyebrows shot up, and he coughed, trying to hide the smile I knew was there. “Well, then, if you need any extra –”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Oak said, cutting him off. “If you touch her, I’ll stake you myself.”

Oak’s threat got no reaction from Ramsey. Instead, Ramsey turned to Ellis. “Is this the type of hostility you brought me into?”

“You’ve known him to be more hostile.” Ellis’s voice didn’t give off any emotion as he said the words. “Besides, we don’t fuck around when it comes to her.”

I bit my lip. “I mean, you kind of do.”

All eyes turned to me. Ramsey’s danced with laughter while my boys’ gave more of a glare. Finally, when the atmosphere grew stifling, Ellis broke the silence. “Are you going to help or not?”

Ramsey’s eyes caught mine, staring intently for a moment longer than necessary before he threw his hands up and shifted his shoulders. “Sure, I’ll help. Not because of you bastards, though, I’ll help for Liberty. But it would be a bald-faced lie if I said I wasn’t curious to see how this -” he used one finger to do a circle, pointing at each of us in the process, “plays out.”

Oak growled again before grabbing a chair and turning it, taking a seat. “Great. Now that we have that out of the way let’s get this shit planned out.”

As it turned out,you don’t really need much of a plan when you hang out with a bunch of vampires. Their plan? Park a mile away, super speed it to the cave entrance, slip past the singular guard, and head into the unknown. Good news? They agreed to use flashlights. Bad news? Spiders. Chances were we’d find tons of spiders. I wasn’t a huge fan of the running part, either. Even with the boys suspecting I had super speed like them, a mile is a damn mile, and how’s a girl going to appeal to three hot vampires if she’s covered in sweat?

Oak pulled the car into a wooded area, overgrown with brush, and parked it. As everyone got out, he reminded us of our main objection. “Get in, find the necklace, get out. Be careful. We know that at least four of us can’t die, but Liberty is human. Partly. And I don’t want to test it today. Got it?”

We all nodded, but when his eyes fell on me, I was giving my best puppy dog eyes and sad lip. He sighed in defeat. “What is it?”

“I don’t want to run.”

“Mo chuisle, running has never killed a person.”

I was sure that fact wasn’t true. Still, I didn’t get a chance to point that out because Ramsey’s laughter filled the night. “Mo chuisle? Really. Love, you’ve got that noose hard around those balls, don’t you? You know what? I’m a team player. I’ll give you a fucking ride so that I can see the looks on these fuckers’ faces.”

He knelt in front of me, offering his back for me to climb onto, and I was not about to let this offer go to waste. I stepped closer, ignoring Oak’s warning, “Liberty, don’t you –”

I wrapped my arms around Ramsey’s neck as Sterling chimed in, “Come on. I’ll do it. We just wanted to see if you had speed first.”

I shook my headnoas I hopped onto Ramsey’s back, his large hands grabbing my thighs to hoist me up as he stood. Ellis tried as a last resort, “Babe. Honey. Come on; we said, you wouldn’t have to run.”

“Must be a golden pussy,” Ramsey mumbled as I slowly raised my fist in the air before popping up my middle finger and whispering for Ramsey to start moving. We didn’t have all night, after all.

We made the mile in under two minutes and the guard, who was reading a book at the time and not paying nearly enough attention to his job, was a non-issue. He didn’t even blink as we passed, even though the pages to his book fluttered with the breeze our movement created. The boys didn’t stop until they were already deep inside the cave where not a single flicker of light would be seen if the light was turned on.

When they stopped and Ramsey put me down, I was clawing at whoever was closest. Super seeing eyes. Nope. We could mark that off the list of maybes. Oak turned on his flashlight first, and I jumped from whoever I clung to toward him, taking his hand and hugging his arm. He didn’t seem one bit bothered by my clinging; instead, he squeezed my hand as he put his pack back on his back and waited for everyone else to get situated.

“Do you know where we are going?” I whispered.

“Nope.”

I turned to him. “But you’re the planner. Shouldn’t you have a map or something?”

“No map.” He squeezed my fingers again, a motion that I assumed was to try to comfort me, but I wasn’t feeling comforted. “We go in, get the necklace, and get out.”

“What’s this necklace supposed to do, again?”

“It strengthens you. Somehow. We hope,” Ellis said as he flicked on his lamp.

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