Page 111 of Tyrant

I stand up in my dream, still looking up to the sky. A weird sensation hits and I start to blink in my dream, which also makes me blink in real life. The dream fades and reality settles back in.

“This wasn’t the plan,” a voice says.

By the time I find the strength to follow the voice, all I see is a leftover quick shadow of a black figure leaving the bedroom.

“You’re mine now, bitch,” another voice says.

A woman’s voice. I look forward and there is something standing over me, but all I see are big blue eyes and well-kept eyelashes showing through the uneven cut holes in a white winter hat that’s been pulled over her face.

“Stand and walk or you die,” she says.

Evidence of her statement comes in the form of a gun in her right hand. A gun now pointed right at me. I realize then my hands have been taped at the wrist.

“Ty,” I moan, wanting to yell for him. “Ty… where is… Ty…”

“Oh, how fucking cute you are,” the woman says. “Calling himTy. You want to see your precious fuckingTyright now?”

She grabs my hair and pulls with force. It hurts and doesn’t help that she’s pulling the hair close to where the staples in my head are. I slide and wiggle off the bed as fast as I can withoutthe use of my hands, not to mention it’s not easy to just wake up and feel restful and perky after being drugged into sleep.

Once I’m standing, the woman presses the gun against the back of my neck and orders me to walk. We’re leaving the bedroom and I obviously have no idea where our next destination is.

Out in the hallway, the masked woman pulls at me, hard, and I trip over something and stumble into her. I feel the gun slide from the back of my neck down toward my back. I have this sudden image of me throwing my shoulder into this masked woman’s face. Then slamming my head into her face. I could run then and get help. I could find…

My eyes look down at the object I just tripped over and I freeze in place.

“Tyrant,” I manage to say before the hallway starts to blur and spin.

I let out a loud scream, completely forgetting and abandoning my plan of attack. The woman in the mask hits me in the back of my head and it’s a whole fresh, familiar sense of pain that makes my knees go weak as I fall to the floor. A second away from darkness totally consuming me. And my last image?

Tyrant on the floor, face down, with a knife handle sticking out of his back.

Chapter Forty-One

TYRANT

I don’t knowwhere the fuck reality begins or ends. I don’t know what the fuck a dream is made up of or what the fuck a nightmare is. Everything means nothing, the same as nothing means everything.

A red hot yet icy pain soars through my back. I suck in a breath and it feels like someone is stabbing me.

Stabbing me.

Fuck.

Oh, fuck.

My eyes open and I all but throw myself from the infirmary bed that I’m in. I tear at IVs stuck into my hands. Blood squirts in thin, long streams, hitting the perfectly white, clean floors.

The door to the room opens and nurses stand there, shocked. They’re young nurses. Ones just graduated and some nursing students who are learning as they attend classes.

I know where I am. The far northern side ofSA. There’s a small medical campus there, mostly used for things like stitches, sprains, getting tested for the flu…or some STDs…

One of the nursing students lets out a scream.

“Get the fuck out of my way,” I growl. “I have to find her! Where is she?”

My voice starts to bellow. Behind the nursing students, Demo and Vic appear. They push through and hurry toward me.

I throw a punch at Demo, clocking him in the jaw. His head barely moves and he launches his right hand forward, grabbing me by my throat and driving me back toward the bed.

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