Page 67 of The Girl and the Cobra

The road is somewhat winding; Wolf can only speed so much in the pitch-blackness without putting us in danger. We don’t come across any other cars.

“If I remember correctly, there’s a trailhead a mile or so away. If I have to guess, that’s where he must’ve parked,” Wolf remarks dryly, sounding totally uninterested in the currentsituation. “It does appear that he took her onto a trail, though. It might take a bit to reach them—”

My eyes are glued to the phone screen, my attention so zeroed in on that electronic device that I hardly hear what he’s saying. The red dot blinks, now directly to our right. I can’t tell just by that how far off the road they are, but it doesn’t matter. I yell, “Stop the car!”

Wolf hits the brakes, and the car rolls to a halt.

“I’m going for her,” I say, halfway out of the car already.

Wolf may nod; I don’t know for sure, since I’m not looking at him. “I’ll drive to the trailhead.” By the time he finishes that sentence, I’m already climbing up the short rocky cliff that the road cut into.

My eyes aren’t as used to the darkness as they should be; staring at Wolf’s phone without blinking didn’t help—but I don’t let that stop me from rushing through the thick woods. The trees are mostly pine, the air around me thick with their scent.

If I don’t reach her in time, I’m going to kill the asshole that took her and then I’m going to kill Wolf.

Though in reality it’s probably only a few minutes, it feels like I spend an eternity zipping through the darkened forest with nothing but shreds of moonlight guiding my way. I haven’t moved like this in a long time; if the situation was different, it’d be a welcome change to how I normally spend my time in that mansion. Like picking up a long-forgotten hobby after neglecting it for years.

Except for me it hasn’t been years, so it comes back to me all too easily.

Becoming the shadow. Moving quickly and far more quietly than my surroundings should allow. Almost otherworldly. A man pushed to become the hunter once more, a man who can see only red and who craves the vengeance that can only come with death.

I am death. I am its right hand. I have delivered countless people to its embrace throughout my life—and it looks like tonight I will deliver at least one more man to oblivion.

In the distance, I hear voices, and I immediately slow down so as to not make a sound as I creep closer. A man’s voice mixed with Mabel’s, and the second I recognize her voice, something inside me twists.

Still alive. Thank fuck, but it’s too early to be relieved. I need to separate her from her captor, and then I need to deliver a swift, cold kind of justice.

As I get closer, sticking to the trees, I can now discern what they’re saying.

The man’s voice: “No? What the fuck do you mean, no? If I say to run, you’re going to run—”

Then Mabel’s: “No. I’m not going to run. If you want to kill me, then you’re going to do it right now, and you’re going to have to look at my face while you do it—not my back.” Her words shock me; I’ve never heard her sound so firm before. I would be proud of her, if the situation was literally anything else.

But this? Not the time to stand her ground.

I peer around the tree I’m behind and see that they’re ten feet away now. My eyes have finally gotten used to the darkness of the night, so I can see the hunting rifle the man carries. With only five feet between him and Mabel, they’re far too close for my liking.

The man’s voice is absolutely venomous when he hisses out, “Fine. If that’s what you want, I don’t care. As long as tonight ends with you getting the same treatment your brother got.” He points the hunting rifle directly at Mabel; no possible way he could miss, even if he’s a crap shot.

I think fast. I pick up a stick and whip it as hard as I can off to the side, away from me and away from where he and Mabel are. The sudden noise causes the man to say, “What the fuck wasthat?” And he does exactly what I hoped he would do: he turns away from Mabel and takes the hunting rifle with him, pointing it in the direction of the noise.

I am a man of action after that. I leap out of the shadows and rush him before he can swing the rifle toward me. You can tell he’s not used to this sort of thing in how slow his reaction time is. By the time he tries to point the weapon at me, I knee him in the lower stomach and grab the gun, stopping him from pointing it anywhere.

“Tristan!” Mabel cries my name as I rip the rifle from the man’s grasp and give him a winding kick to the chest, knocking him back and causing him to lose his balance. He falls to the ground, and in the next second I have the rifle’s stock against my shoulder and am aiming it down, directly at his face.

My finger is on the trigger, and I’m literally a millisecond away from ending this miserable fool’s life when I hear Mabel yell, “Stop!”

No one in the world could make me stop. I am the Cobra. This is what I do. Quick and efficient. Cold and merciless. I stare death in the eyes every damn day and never so much as flinch. This is literally what I was made for, what I was raised to do.

To hunt. To kill. To end.

And yet, when Mabel tells me to stop, I freeze. My finger doesn’t pull the trigger. I stand there, ready to kill,wantingto kill—and yet I don’t. I let her stop me. I hesitate for her.

“Tristan,” Mabel takes a step toward me. “Don’t kill him.”

I glare at the man on the ground, at the terror on his face, illuminated by the moonlight. For a man who was so gung-ho about killing Mabel, now that he stares his own death in the face, he can’t seem to take it.

“He was going to kill you,” I whisper furiously. “He deserves a bullet to the brain for daring to hurt you.”

---