Page 25 of Velvet Deception

I fought on.

I persevered and didn’t stop.

Not when they got a lucky hit in. Not when that fucker swiped my forearm with that knife. Addled with drugs and exhibiting a freakish superpower sense of adrenaline, the druggies seemed impervious to pain as I kicked their asses, but still, I held on and did what came natural to me.

Not on my fucking watch.

All this time since I’d awakened on the couch and tried to accept that I didn’t know who I was, nothing had felt right. My age came to me. That suspicion that I wasn’t a doctor had developed into a stubborn certainty. Questions swirled and lingered, complicating my best efforts to understand what had happened to me.

But this, this surprising ease with which I could inflict gritty and gory damage to another person. It was who I was. Dark anger blanketed my soul. Sinister rage justified my strength.

In this, I was myself.

I’d done this before. I didn’t dare challenge the thought. I had experience with fighting men. But the injuries I’d had and the lack of understanding of how, precisely, I could be such a fighter held me back from finishing them quickly.

It was still two against one.

It was still a man with a weapon against one with only his fists.

When I would beat down one man, the other would retreat to try to hurt Sofia. Then switching back, to attack him and protect her when her resistance wasn’t enough to defend herself, the other man would lunge back and snatch Ramon.

“No!” Sofia screamed as I pulled the man off her who was trying to stab her in the gut. I flung him back so hard, he smacked against the coffee table that lay on its side and rolled over it.

The other creep had Ramon in his arm, carrying him toward the door. He kicked and flailed, bucking and fighting with all his might to break free before he was stolen out of his home.

Not on my watch.

With a deadly calm, breathing hard and thinking quick, I grabbed the knife from the man I’d tossed back violently. The handle was slick with sweat and blood—mine and Sofia’s coated the blade—but that didn’t stop me. Nothing held me back from raising my arm and throwing it.

With eerie accuracy, flying through the air with a stealthy trajectory, the tip sank into his back. Not his neck. Not on a bone. It pierced his skin and drove into his muscle.

As if I knew not only how to throw it for maximum impact and damage, but also where to aim for the best effect.

I blinked, clearing the sting of sweat that dripped into my eyes from the exercise of fighting.

The man stopped, reaching back to retrieve the blade I’d throw at him. His fingers clawed and groped as he probed for the handle to yank it out. Grotesque and bestial growls and curses left his lips as he strained to get the weapon out of his back. In the window of opportunity I’d given him, Ramon squirmed and wiggled faster until he dropped out of the man’s clutches. He rolled to the floor, then scurried further away from the bloody man.

I didn’t wait, knowing with that unspoken and instinctive muscle memory that time was of the essence. He was wounded, but not dead.

Reaching out to the back of the couch to grip it, I jumped up and leaped over the whole thing, passing Sofia as she cowered into a ball, trying to hide and escape the reach of violence taking over her home. After I launched over the sofa, I grabbed the handle of the knife. First I twisted it, letting the two inches into his backfurther open the wound. Then I wrenched it free, spun the man, and dragged the blade over his neck.

Jerking and fighting, he faded before my eyes. Bleeding out, he sank and grew heavier as dead weight until he was finally just that.

Dead.

I ran back, enraged again at the sight of the other man crawling back up onto his feet. His face was contorted with anger. Lines marked his scowl. Bared teeth hinted at his psychotic delusion.

As he staggered back up, he drew another knife from his pocket and lurched toward the couch. Sofia clung to Ramon, who’d run back to her. She shielded him, hugging him close and laying herself over him. Tucking her head down, she closed her eyes and prepared to take the knife for her son.

Not on my fucking watch!

I roared, venting some of the dark madness that electrified me, and ran forward. Still holding the handle of the knife I’d used to kill the other man, I intercepted the man. Punching forward, I thrust the soaked blade into his open mouth as he bellowed a filthy curse at her.

He choked, gagging and stunned, with the knife in his mouth. Both of his bloodshot eyes opened wide as he stared at me. Unable to speak, unable to breathe, he acknowledged that this was it. He was done. And it filled a sinister chunk of my heart to know that he’d die looking at me, into the eyes of the man who’d killed him.

I yanked the smaller knife from his hand and turned it with an expert, practiced flick of my wrist as I drove it into his heart.Blocking the man from Sofia and Ramon on the couch, I ended this asshole’s life, holding him up by the force of the knives alone. Blood spilled freely, coating both of us, but only when his eyes rolled back and he sank with the burden of death did I carefully turn to lower him to the floor, preventing them from seeing the gruesome sight of the knives wedged into him the way they were.

Catching my breath, I stared at the man.

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