Page 69 of Sunshine & Ink

“Someone stop this man!” he bleats out and takes a swing at me.

Leo is a tall, strong man, and I open my arms wide, the knives dripping with blood on either side of me, and I let him hit me.

Right in the jaw.

I do nothing, letting the little pop of pain sting, see if it cleanses me, see if it’s contrition enough, see if it’s enough pain to absolve me from what I did to Sunni.

It isn’t.

I let him hit me again, really sock me in the jaw, then again as the guards come up with heavy cudgels, trying to knock me out.

“He might. . .tell on us,” she squeaks in my ear. “I don’t want Willow and Elise to get in trouble. They’re very special to me.”

“I swear to you, Sunni,” I say as I charge forward, head-butting Leo and knocking him off balance. “No harm will come to Willow and Elise. If they are your friends, I’ll protect them.”

Then I slice forward with my knives, slitting Leo’s throat as he falls to the ground in a gurgling puddle of cowardly blood.

I plunge my other deep into Leo’s gut, and I twist it in deep, glorying in his death rattle.

One of the guards aims a kick into my ribs and I whip my fist back, just as I see Teacher roll in with Builder and the others.

“Thank you,” she says after a moment, in a small voice, and I goddamn hate that she doesn’t fully trust me, that she feels awkward about coming to me for help.

But there’s nothing to do except the good grind work every day of making sure she can trust what I say.

“Love you, baby girl. I’ll see you in a little bit,” I say, wiping a bright scarlet smear of blood off the screen.

Bloodlust rushes into my ears at the sight of the verdant, flowering green gardens, but I stop myself from killing anyone else.

Builder rolls Leo into a big sack as Teacher wipes his knife on the ground.

My VP stalks over to me. “All good, Prez?”

“Right on time,” I grin.

“What should I do with his body?” Builder asks.

“Take it outside town and let the birds have what’s left of him. I’m not wasting good water.”

The rest of the guards have fled and the temple is locked tight.

I itch to make the rest of the Elders pay for threatening Sunni, but it’s going to take some strategy to figure out how to defeat them. For one thing, I don’t know where their secret holy place is, theirCelestial Abodethat no one is allowed to see,but according to Willow it’s at the junction of the underground water sources. If we could only find where those are.

When we’ve dumped the dead bodies out in the desert, my brothers and I head back.

When we arrive, Sunni is already waiting for me in the driveway, wringing her hands together.

Shit, I hope she won’t be too mad about me killing her baby daddy.

“What happened?” she cries, rushing up to me. “Were you able to stop him? He didn’t tell anyone about Willow and Elise, did he?”

I have never been one for fucking sugar-coating anything, but for a moment I debated breaking it to her gently, pretending like maybe he’d just left town. But I couldn’t find a way for it not to hurt her, so I just told her the truth.

“Yes, I did stop him. He’s dead, Sunni.”

She gasped and covered her mouth quickly, her big brown eyes widening at me.

“Oh my god, is he really dead?”

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