Page 95 of Passion and Payback

“Which ispreciselywhat he deserves,” I drew out as I pushed to my feet. Maybe I just had my head in the game, but I was downright impressed with Kai’s efficiency in taking two armed men down by himself. He probably could have handled himself just as smoothly on the stairwell if I hadn’t been in the thick of things, making him worry about me.

Mitchell’s hands were up, but they tightened into fists again. “You rotten, murderous?—”

A nasty laugh was torn out of me as I advanced on him. “That’s fucking rich coming from you, of all fucking people!”

Before he could open his mouth, I slammed my fist into the side of his face, sending him stumbling to his right. The sheer audacity to stand there and pretend he had any right whatsoever to call me rotten or murderous after what he and his friends had done was too much for me to handle. I didn’t even let him recover from the blow before I grabbed hold of him and slammed his face down onto my knee, shattering his nose with a squeal of pain.

With a snarl, I shoved him toward the wall, kicking him in the chest when he tried to get to his feet, knocking the wind out of him. Rage as cold as ice and fierce as an inferno swept through me, and the blade was in my hand as he slumped to the ground. Unlike the others, this time, the blade slid into Mitchell’s side, going all the way to the hilt and making him cry out.

“Remember doing this?” I asked as I shoved my face into his and snarled. “Remember how you and your friends did this to me and Lucas? Do you even remember hisfucking name?”

“I...” Mitchell hissed, trying to push me away but crying out when I twisted the knife inside him.

“No, you don’t get to talk,” I told him, watching the myriad emotions fly through his eyes. They were all the things I’d seen in Damon’s eyes as he realized what was going to happen to him, but there was still that animal desperation as he frantically tried to think of a way to get through this. Sadly, for him anyway, even if he did manage to overpower and kill me before Kai could react, he wouldn’t have much longer to live after that. His muscles were dead, and help was too far away. His friends couldn’t help him, and he would be alone with a grieving warrior who wasn’t afraid to kill. “You and your buddies did plenty of that all that time ago, and now? Now it’s my turn. My turn to talk?—”

He cried out when I yanked the blade out with a twist of my wrist and then a harsh grunt when I shoved it back into his chest. “And my turn to do to you what you four did to me back then. You’re going to die here, Mitchell. I hope you know that. You’re going to die here, in pain, scared out of your mind, and I’m sure if I gave you a chance, you’d probably beg for your life...sound familiar?”

Mitchell’s voice was thin and haggard when I ripped the knife back out. “Please!”

“There we go, see?” I asked, bringing the knife up so he could see it, covered in blood,hisblood. “It does sound familiar. I’m pretty sure Lucas and I said that quite a few times that night. Remember? The night when you and your friends decided it would be great fun to find a couple of people to torture, rape, and murder. Remember?”

“I-I don’t...I’m sorry,” he panted, hand coming up to press against one of his wounds.

“Oh,” I said, eyes going wide. “You’re sorry?”

“Y-yes,” he hissed, eyes wide and filled with tears he’d yet to let loose. “It was...so long ago...we didn’t?—”

I rolled my eyes. “The only thing you’re sorry about is the fact that your past has finally found its way to your doorstep, and karma has come loaded with a fucking knife in your gut.”

“I-I...”

“You know,” I said, turning the knife to make the light in the room play off the blood-soaked blade. “I’m reminded of a song lyric I heard a while back. At the time, it seemed kinda grim, the whole song did, but it stuck with me because, you know, part of me always appreciated a nice tale of bloody, fitting justice. Can you think what it might have been?”

“I-I can give you so...so much money,” he pleaded, either ignoring me or not able to hear as pain and blood loss took over.

“What about you?” I asked Kai, peering over my shoulder. “Any ideas?”

“I have a few,” he said, his face betraying no emotion as he watched me. “You might as well tell us before he goes into shock and forgets everything.”

“I am the righteous hand of God,” I recited, turning back to Mitchell to see him staring at me, mouth agape as he tried to find more words to beg and bargain with. “I am the Devil that you forgot...and you did forget about me, didn’t you Mitchell? Lucas and I both, you forgot us. Well, here’s that Devil, and if there is a God, you can ask him or her if my hand was righteous or not before you’re sent tumbling into hell.”

The look of shock on his face might have been priceless if it hadn’t been so satisfying when I drove the blade into his throat dead center. As much as I wanted to stare into his eyes as the life drained rapidly from them, I didn’t want to coat myself in blood. Instead, I let him flail at the knife as I stood up, watching with a macabre satisfaction when he managed to find the last of hisstrength to rip the knife out of his throat, cutting the time he’d take to die to mere seconds.

At what I thought was a safe distance, I stood and watched as the blood pooled, soaking into the carpet. Unlike Damon, though, Mitchell didn’t put up much of a fight as the end came. None of the ugly scrambling and clawing at the ground, no kicking until the end when his body seized and released as the last breath rattled from his lips. It seemed that in the end, Mitchell wasn’t quite the fighter Damon had been and, in fact, had given in quickly once he heard Death’s wings overhead.

“What movie had the line about how people show you who they really are when they’re dying?” I asked.

“The Dark Knight,” Kai said after a moment. “This one was terrified from start to finish.”

“I wonder what I’ll see from Callum,” I said thoughtfully, carefully kneeling to retrieve the knife and clean it.

“We should get back to the party, maybe blend in with people leaving. Some of them are bound to start doing that now,” Kai said softly. “We could both use some rest.”

“Sure,” I said, tucking the knife back into its sheathe after ensuring it was clean. “I could use a drink anyway.”

I left with him, smiling and feeling a little better about...well, everything, when Kai’s hand came to rest on my lower back as we walked down the stairs. Yet even that wasn’t enough to shake the question bouncing around persistently in my skull.

If I had seen who they truly were as they died, just what had they seen when I had been treading the doorway to death?

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