Page 30 of Turn That River Red

Somethinghuman.

I whip around, putting my senses out. The intruder is behind the big metal gym in the training area. I can hear the steady pace of their heart, and I catch a whiff of male pheromones.

“Who’s there?”

A flashlight shines around the corner, bright as the sun. I only have a few seconds to consider my options, which boil down to two choices: hide or kill.

And then the flashlight sweeps across my face, and a man shouts, “You’re not supposed to be out here!”

Kill it is, then.

My blood immediately surges at the thought. All that sexual tension with Mercy has left me hungry for destruction. Seeing Sullivan this afternoon didn’t help, either.

“Sorry!” I call back, pulling the knife behind my back. The flashlight bobs toward me, its owner barely visible behind the glare, even to me. But I know other things about him. He’s not particularly scared. His heartbeat is slow and steady, so he’ll probably put up a decent fight. There’s a faint whiff of metallicsmoke from a gun that is, presumably, resting on his hip. “Sorry, I was going for a walk.”

“All the way out here?” He comes closer, close enough that I can see his face above the sphere of light. He’s older, a little grizzled. “You’re that traveling preacher, aren’t you?”

“I am. I like my night walks.” I amble toward him, fingers tightening around the knife handle. I can leave it alone if I spin a pretty enough lie. But he’ll probably report to Gunner that I was sniffing around the bunker, and that’ll make getting access harder than it already is. Assuming Gunner doesn’t run me off the campus.

“It’s not safe out here.” We meet in the middle of the grass, and the guard lowers his flashlight out of my eyes. “Not with what happened to Raul.”

“He was killed on the campus?” I inject a touch of fear into my voice, hoping I can get this man to talk while I work up my plan of attack. I’ll need to do it fast. This isn’t exactly a pleasure killing, even if my cock hasn’t gotten the memo. Right now, it’s as hard as it was for Mercy when she was in the throes of the first orgasm of her life.

“We don’t know where he was killed.” The guard frowns, and his emotions shift; suspicion wafts off him. “All we know is the devil has come for us. It’s better not to come to the outskirts. The protections are thinner here.”

Devil this, devil that. It’s not the devil these people need to worry about. It’s me.

“Of course.” I take a step toward the guard, and his suspicion curdles into a little burst of fear, delicious in the balmy night air. “I’ll make sure to stay closer to the center.”

And then I dive toward him, swinging my knife out so it’s the first thing that makes contact. I sink the blade into his upper back and press my hand up against his mouth, muffling his shout of surprise. It takes him a second longer to realize what’s happened, and by then I’ve yanked the knife out andsank it into his flesh again, a little lower down, right at the base of his rib cage. His blood gushes over my hand, and I groan at the release of it.

He struggles against my grip, trying to pry my hand away from his mouth. I shove him, hard, and he flies across the field and lands with a hard thud on the dried grass. Then I leap on him before he has the chance to sit up, pressing the blade up against the bottom of his chin to force him to look into my eyes.

“Deceiver!” he rasps, blood bubbling up between his lips. “Satan! You will be struck down! You will be?—”

I slap my hand over his mouth.

“Wrong on both counts.” I leer down at him, dancing my blade through the dark night. “No one’s coming for me. And I’m not the devil.” I lean close, like I might draw his soul into my body. “I’m the boogeyman.”

The guard whimpers, bucking beneath me, his fear pungent and thick. I breathe it in deep, then run my tongue along my blade to taste the fear in his blood. It’s fucking delicious. Pity I can’t carve him up and take him back to my freezer.

His eyes go wide, and he bucks against me. But I’m stronger than any of the men in this place.

“What should I do to you?” I ask in a soft sing-song, pressing the blade against his cheek. He trembles beneath me, his lips desperately trying to move against my hand—to pray or protest, I’m not sure which. Honestly, I know exactly what I should do—kill him fast and hide the body.

But the idea just feels so damn unsatisfying. And I keep thinking of Mercy’s beautiful scream when I first saw her by the river. I want to hear that scream again. I want to lick the terror from her skin.

The man bucks beneath me, his blood pulsing out of him in spurts. “You’re just making it worse,” I tell him.

He lets out a wet, choking sob. I lean over him and breathein his last, panicked breaths. A scene, I realize, just like I’d been planning to do with Raul. I’ll use him to set a scene in the residential area, where she’ll be sure to see it.

No, not just the residential area. Reverend Gunner’s house.

“You’re going to frighten her so beautifully,” I murmur.

And then I plunge my knife straight into his heart.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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