Page 54 of Captive Souls

“Move or I’ll shoot again!” a voice shrieked.

My ears were ringing from my heart pounding, the bang and the gunshot, but that didn’t mean I didn’t recognize the voice.

“Daisy?” I choked out.

Blinking rapidly, I tried to peer around Knox, but he wouldn’t move.

“Piper, are you hurt? Maimed? Essentially changed or injured in a way that can never be repaired?” Daisy’s voice was shrill and dramatic, but that wasn’t outside of the ordinary. She had the same tone when she found a spider in the tub.

Though in that scenario, she was too afraid to even smoosh said spider, yet there she was, somehow holding a gun, waving it around and pointing it at Knox.

And she had fired that gun.

Knox was still shielding my body with his. I stared at his back. He was wearing black, as per usual, but I noticed a wetness spreading over his shoulder. My finger tentatively touched it, then I stared at my red finger pad.

“You’re bleeding,” I told Knox. I stared at my sister, standing in this cabin, wearing a light-pink, wraparound cashmere sweater over a unitard and leggings. She looked as if she’d just come from practice. Which would make sense if we were in Manhattan, not hundreds of miles away.

“You shot him,” I informed my sister.

“I’ll shoot that motherfucker again, right in the head if I need to!” she shouted.

I was trying to compute her words, her presence in this facet of my life that had previously been untouched by any markers of true reality. Her being here, whether armed or not, fractured it all, sent my past and present lives hurtling together in a crash that made my brain hurt.

Knox, having been still and silent during our exchange, proved he wasn’t near death as I feared. He proved that by surging forward. Toward my sister. Who was still holding a gun in his direction, who had proven she was far too trigger happy for my liking.

It was by the grace of God—or his rebellious son, was more likely when Knox was involved—that she didn’t fire again. Likely shocked by the rapid advance of the man she’d just shot.

He ripped the gun from her hand, discharging the clip so bullets clattered noisily onto the floor. He flung the empty gun across the room then grabbed my sister by the throat with a casual violence that socked me in the gut. The same hand that had been tenderly caressing me was now assaulting my sister.

“You fired a gun, without any knowledge of how to do it, and it could’ve gone through me andhit your fucking sister,” he snarled.

I’d never heard such rage leech from every fiber of a being before. Dangerous, murderous rage. Directed at my sister. The control he’d possessed during our time here was now absent, gone, permitting his true, violent nature to show.

I was across the room in seconds.

“Let her go, Knox.” My voice shook as I stared at my sister, her hands clawing at her neck, helpless and dwarfed by the large man holding her.

Knox didn’t comply. “She could’ve shot you.”

“She didn’t shoot me,” I replied, forcing my voice to be softer now that I understood I wasn’t dealing with the calm, calculated killer without a heart. I was dealing with someone else entirely. Someone who seemed to have been triggered into a blind rage at the prospect of me getting shot.

My mind didn’t have any kind of reaction to that because my sister being in danger trumped everything.

Knox, for whatever reason, didn’t hurt me, but clearly, that didn’t mean he’d do the same for the person I cared most about in this world.

“Let my sister go, Knox,” I ordered, my voice shaking.

For a horrible second, as she began to truly gasp for air, her eyes bulging, I thought he wasn’t going to let her go. That he was going to snap her neck in front of me.

Thankfully, he stepped back, and I rushed to catch my sister as she collapsed in my arms, coughing violently.

My eyes found Knox, wishing I could shoot tiny knives into every inch of his skin.

He had been shot, so that was a start.

He didn’t say anything, no apology in his face, no signs of guilt.

This is who he is, I reminded myself.A man who lives with violence every day. Breathes death without coincidence.

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