Page 60 of Looking Grimm

“Tenacious bastard,” he spat.

Nash landed another hit that snapped Avery’s head aside, and his cries became garbled. As the smoke dissipated, I caught a glimpse of Nash’s face, contorted in rage. He swung down again, and I heard bones crunch. If he kept going like this, he’d kill Avery with his bare hands.

It wasn’t that I objected to Avery’s death. I should have craved it since he’d tortured me the same as Grimm, just in a different way. But the sight of his blood speckling Nash’s cheeks and slicking his knuckles gave me pause.

Donovan used his Hex mark on a man who meant to shoot me. He’d earned his passage into the gang by protecting me. His innocence was lost for my sake because the one thing I couldn’t protect him from was me.

“Nash, stop,” I croaked. The next punch made me cringe, and I called over louder. “Stop!”

Nash glanced at me. His eyes were narrow, and his jaw clenched with such determination that I was surprised he paused at all. Lines striped his features from Avery’s fingernails, and a chunk of skin was torn off the bridge of hisnose, all of it beading with red.

“He’s a sick bastard, and he deserves this,” he said, his voice gruff.

I knelt on the floor, soaked in blood myself and spiraling in pain while I shook my head. “Let me do it.”

My uninjured hand curled a loose fist, and I channeled a single, powerful thought. My mental threads wrapped around Avery’s skull and squeezed until something gave way.

He was past the point of verbal protest, so his body twitched silently as bone broke and gray matter mingled with the blood pooling on the hardwoods.

With a final shuddering kick, Avery’s body went still.

Nash looked down atthe dead man pinned beneath him, his face reduced to pulp. He stared, his chest heaving in the aftermath of exertion, until I said his name again.

“We gotta get out of here,” I told him. “There’s more. He wasn’t alone.”

Nash pushed to standing, then moved to where I hunkered. My body ran warm and cold as blood pasted my shirt to my skin.

The shock on his face told me I must have looked as shitty as I felt.

“Christ,” he whispered.

“But did you see the other guy?” I tittered a weak laugh.

The attempt at humor fell flat as Nash crouched before me. His hands hovered like he wanted to grab me but wasn’t sure where was safe to touch.

“I’ve got some stuff behind the bar,” he said. “Quick patch, but we have to stop this bleeding.”

I shook my head and started to stand. “No time—”

“Yes, time.” Nash planted his palm in my chest, halting my advance. “If you black out, I’ll have to carry you, which will slow us down even more.”

I couldn’t feel my right hand and couldn’t move my left arm without nauseating pain, which meant I also couldn’t argue with his logic. I swayed on my feet, and Nash crowded in, sliding his arm around my waist to steady me. When he jostled my dead arm, I grunted complaint.

Nash winced apologetically, then muttered, “Plus, I don’t want you leaking blood all over my damn house.”

The bar felt like a cage as we hurried through it. With my injuries only from the waist up, I could get around well enough but found myself leaning heavily on Nash anyway. I’d been in close scrapes before and with wounds more grievous than these, but I’d never had someone beside me in the thick of it. I worked alone and always thought I’d die alone, too. Not that dying with Nash was a comforting thought. Well… oddly, it was. But not today.

He led the way to the bar counter and left me on the outside while he stepped between the swinging doors and hurried to the corner by the wall. Dipping below the copper countertop, he pulled out a white metal box stamped with a red cross. Full-blown first aid kit. I chuckled as he slid it toward me.

“I think a few butterfly bandages should do it,” I said.

Before he rounded to my side of the counter, he grabbed a stack of bleached white bar towels from the wall shelves and piled them next to the medical kit. Coming alongside me, Nash grabbed my waist and eased me down to sit on the nearest barstool.

I glanced over my shoulder at the entry hall we’d vacated.Avery’s backup must have been outside, expecting his triumphant return. How long did they expect his murder mission to take? And what would happen when they got tired of waiting? If they invaded this place, we would be rapidly overrun.

Facing forward again, my brows pinched as Nash turned to the white box and flipped the metal latches on its hinged lid. He was rapidly rifling through it, but every motion felt so damn slow. Even my pulse was sluggish, like a dull throb that seemed to come from everywhere.

“Nash,” I began, trying and failing to catch his attention.

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