Page 108 of Cruel Games

“Keep that,” I shot at him over my shoulder, dripping blood in my wake as I strode across the lobby. “I have no more secrets I need to hide.”

There was nothing left to protect. Not my life before this, not the lies I’d lived, not even my own sanity.

Let the world burn. Mine was over, anyhow.

FORTY-ONE

JACKAL

She emergedfrom the bank with blood on her dress. Splattered up her arm. Smeared under her eyes across one cheek.

Did she fucking kill someone?

I stalked behind her as she marched down the street with a purpose, oblivious to the looks she drew from everyone she passed by. It was like watching a robot march down the sidewalk, and I tailed her silently, intrigued to see what she would do next.

The blood kept following her, though, so now I was worried the person she’d tried to kill might’ve beenherself.

Did she intend to bleed out and jump into the bay or something?

Whatever her purpose, she was well on her way to achieving it.

I followed her down a dark alley, where she stopped to rummage through some trash bins. Apparently, she didn’t find what she was looking for because she kept moving, her hands empty save for that backpack she held.

She stopped at a pawn shop at the corner and emerged minutes later holding a display case containing a fantastic signed baseball bat. When she rounded the next corner, she smashed the case and pulled the thousand-dollar memorabilia from its scattered remains, swinging it once or twice as if to test its weight.

She was certifiable. Batshit, even.

But she wasn’t even there. Her eyes were cold and lifeless, and something about her movements felt wooden, almost stilted, like they were all forced. Like if she stopped she might turn into a pillar of concrete.

A part of me feltsomethingit shouldn’t. I shook that emotion free and kept on, wondering if I might have to go home and report that she’d committed suicide off the fucking bridge.

The first detour she took was to the seedier part of thisdistrict. She singled out a man who was harassing a group of young women outside of a bar, and in broad dusklight, in front of everyone on the street, she swung that bat at his head and took him down, the resoundingcrackechoing off the brick walls around us. Before I could stop her, she’d hit him while he was on the ground, his head caving in.

She barely stopped to stare down at her handiwork as she stepped over his lifeless body and continued down the street, whistling to herself, that bloody bat dripping in her wake as it dangled over her shoulder.

Fuck.

She was on a rampage, not a suicide mission.

However, if the cops were called, there very well would be a sudden death at the end of this. In her present state, it was likely she didn’t stop even when told to lay down her weapon. And the cops in this town were theshoot first, ask questions latertype. They very much would not hesitate to kill her on the spot if she even so much as hinted at being a danger to the public. Unfortunately for her, even these assholes were part of the public, too.

And if she went down as a member of the Guild, it would bring heat down on the rest of us, too. Heat we didn’t need. Heat that could mean the end of the Neon Dogs, whether we liked it or not.

I couldn’t let that happen.

“Slow down, bitch,” I muttered to myself as she rounded the corner, walking right into the back alleys of the underbelly of West Port Wylde. On either side of us were the doors to several underground betting parlors, fighting rings, and seedier whorehouses that were very much not operating in any sort of aboveboard manner. I waited for her to stop at one, to open a door and stride in, but she never did, her steps never wavering once as I struggled to keep up.

Her next target was around the corner, a man who stood over a girl who looked to be too young and too clean to be onthis side of town, let alone all by herself in a place like this. She cried, wiping snot from her face as he gripped her upper arm and yelled obscenities in her face. Her whole body cringed away from him, and the urge to hurt him myself rose within me, but I should have known I wouldn’t get the chance.

Ivy struck like lightning, her bat flying as she spun on a dime and took him out at the knees. His screams were swallowed by the nearby traffic as the girl met her eyes and ran in the opposite direction, obviously scared of what she found in Ivy’s gaze.

She waited until the girl was gone, then brought the bat down again and again, beating him until she was covered in blood and brain matter, chunks of his skull scattered across the alley cobblestones.

If I didn’t stop her now, there was no telling how far she’d go.

I had to act fast.

She was going to ruin everything.

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