Page 36 of Soulless Angel

He fell down on his face, groaning as Jet grabbed the back of his neck, jerking him upright. Cash, Blaze, and I hung back. This wasn’t our problem. Jet was on his own here for the most part.

“I told you to stay away from my girl, douchebag. Maybe you should have listened.” Jet shoved Ryan along, making him fall again. This time he hauled Ryan up by his hair.

“She chose me,” Ryan spat, doing his best to remain fearless despite the way his shoulders quaked. “Obviously, you weren’t man enough to handle that.”

Jet’s fist slammed into the back of Ryan’s head. “Did you touch her, asshole? Do I have to break your hands before I kill you?”

That seemed to change Ryan’s attitude. “Kill me? Are you serious? Come on, man. This is crazy. If you want me to stay away from Lyra, I will. Just let me go.”

“It’s too late for that. I warned you, and you told me to go fuck myself. Remember that? I am way beyond letting you go.” A twisted chuckle came from Jet, making me do a double take.

Maybe he was the real deal. A crazy fucker capable of giving the rest of us a run for our money. I’d thought maybe he was all talk. Looked like I was wrong about that.

Ryan turned around to face Jet. Even in the low lighting, I could see the whites of his eyes as he gaped at his captor. “I’ll do anything. I won’t even look at her again. Please, don’t do this.”

“Did I say you could stop moving?” This time Jet punched Ryan in the face. He didn’t stop there. Several punches knocked Ryan to the ground. He let out a pained shout before begging for mercy.

When Jet got him up again, I saw that he’d been stabbed in the side by a pointy tree branch or maybe a sharp rock. It was hard to tell in the darkness. Ryan limped along as we continued deeper into the forest.

“This is probably good enough,” I said, drawing the group to a halt. We’d reached a small brook that ran through the forest, driven by the river in the distance. “There’s always the chance of a hunter finding what’s left of him, but if you take the teeth, they may not be able to identify what’s left. You can also toss the bones in the river. Your call, Jet.”

Ryan had a meltdown then. He turned to the three of us pretty much screaming. “What the fuck is wrong with all of you? How can you do this? I don’t even know you guys. What did I ever do to any of you to deserve this?”

I’d done this kind of thing enough times in the past that I had very little emotion when it came to begging and pleading. Unless it was Clover, I really didn’t care. I’d learned long ago to detach myself from such situations. I wouldn’t be able to do what I did if I hadn’t.

“It’s nothing personal,” I said. “We’re not here by choice either.”

Ryan put up a fuss then, begging and flailing, doing all he could to get Jet to grant him mercy. Jet was entirely unmoved. In his mind, Ryan had committed the greatest sin, and there was no coming back from that.

We stood back and watched while Jet took out his rage on Ryan. The beating went on a little longer than I thought necessary, but hey, it wasn’t my vendetta. Finally, Jet tired of his efforts when Ryan lay sprawled on the ground and made no effort to get up. Not that he could do much with his hands tied behind his back.

That’s when Jet pulled a large hunting knife from his hoodie pocket and slashed it across Ryan’s throat. The blood began to pour, pooling beneath him. He wasn’t even dead yet when Jet began to pour gasoline all over him. Lucky for Ryan, he was dead by the time the fire was sparked.

Flames engulfed the body. I’d chosen a spot near the water for safety purposes. Starting a forest fire sure wouldn’t help us keep this on the down low. The fire seemed isolated to the body itself. We would stay until it went out and then deal with what remained.

When all was said and done, Jet decided to take the skull so he could remove the teeth later and dispose of the rest on his own. Or so he said. For all I knew, he would be using it in his creepy cult activity. The body he kicked into the brook, submerging it in a deep area, where the current would take it back to the river.

“We are done now. Anything that happens from here on out is on you. You will not throw us under the bus with you if this comes back to haunt your ass. If you get caught, we are not going down with you. I will fucking kill you before they can ever lock your ass up. Got it? I want proof that video has been deleted, and you don’t keep a single copy stored anywhere. I fucking mean it, Jet. You’ve gotten as far as you can go with us. Fuck with us again and you’ll be the next body in the woods.”

I was in Jet’s face all the way back to the city. He smiled and nodded, incredibly agreeable. He seemed to be riding the high of the kill.

“For sure. No worries. The video is gone as soon as I get back to my phone. I needed to make sure this was done right. I didn’t want to get carried away and mess something up. Your help was valuable. We’re all good.” Jet sped down the highway toward home once we’d left the country roads behind. His mood had changed considerably. Now he was grinning and relaxed. Fucking maniac.

Was this his first kill? That kind of thing changed a person. Some people fell into it, like an addiction. Others lived with guilt and shame. Jet struck me as the kind of guy that would be the former.

For me, it was a necessary means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less.

When we got out of the Escalade in the grocery store parking lot, I paused to add, “Do not ever try this again. You’ve pushed us as far as you can. Do the smart thing and stay the fuck away from us.”

I slammed the door shut, not giving him the chance to reply. I’d had more than enough of him. He could’ve handled this on his own. Maybe he didn’t trust himself not to leave evidence behind, or maybe he simply wanted to exert some power over us. It all felt like mind games to me.

Jet rolled down his window, his smirk a mile wide. “One more thing. There is no video. I never had a spy cam. That was just a regular necklace.”

“Are you serious?” Blaze gaped at him in disbelief.

“Hell yeah. I needed a job done, and I didn’t want to bear the burden alone. So I did what I had to do to get it done. Thanks again, boys.” Jet put the car in gear, but I was already tearing him out of the driver’s seat.

I flung him to the ground, reaching in to slam the car into park before it rolled away. Right there in the empty grocery store parking lot, the three of us took turns beating the shit out ofJet Reinhart. The manipulative bastard had conned us into this entire thing. In some way, it came as a relief to know he didn’t have any footage of Clover, and yet, that somehow only made me want to kill him more.

---