Page 13 of Black Hand
“Brooklyn had nothing to do with it. I did it all on my own.” There was no trace of the broken female I’d found on her knees in the room when Veronica’s voice sliced the air. “I helped the shifter, and she didn’t know anything about it.”
“And she finally confessed.” Very slowly, Isaiah turned to my friend with a look of triumph. “You see, Veronica here denied everything no matter how hard we tried to convince her otherwise.”
I was so aware of their methods of convincing that I was ready to puke all over them.
“I’m still unsure it was all her …” Isaiah cut off with a look of horror and betrayal I’d never seen on his face before when my friend got to her feet, grabbed the pendant hanging around her neck, and ripped it off.
My heart stopped as I watched it dangle from her fist.
“Fuck you,” she spat at the Council as she threw the pendant at Isaiah’s head, nailing him in the middle of the forehead.
It all happened so fast.
All three Council members jumped to their feet, and I flinched away from them. Frederic and Samir roared insults at Veronica, while she stood proudly facing them with a serene smile on her face. Isiah materialized next to her as the guards burst through the doors from all the shouting, daggers clutched in their hands. Veronica’s gaze didn’t leave mine as she mouthed“Love you, Bee.”
And those was her last words spoken. Striking like the viper he was, Isaiah sunk his fangs into her neck and ripped out her throat with a firm shake of his head. Blood sprayed in a wide arch until his face was bathed in it, and Veronica’s lashes fluttered before hiding her warm, brown eyes from me forever. I stood there numb and horrified, my feet glued to the floor while my mind shrieked so loud it drowned out all the other noise around me.
Something inside me broke.
A chasm opened in my chest, and it swallowed everything I was so I no longer existed. My legs gave out and I dropped on the floor, my body shaking so bad I could hear my teeth chattering. I didn’t see him rip her heart out, that would’ve killed me right there and then. Horror from what I witnessed, fear of what was next, and most of all soul-wrenching guilt pulled me under like a crashing wave. I couldn’t breathe. Someone was screaming. It was so broken and loud. A window shattered to the side, the glass falling like rain over the tiles and making chiming noises as if it was music to accompany the mournful cry. A sharp pain in my throat as my vocal cords ripped told me it was me screaming.
Everything seemed surreal.
So when the sound of fighting echoed above me, I didn’t think anything of it. Nor did I blink an eye when my curled-up form was lifted off the floor and I was wrapped in two strong arms that for some stupid reason made me feel safe instead of afraid for my life. I think I heard Samir’s voice say“Get her out of here,”but that couldn’t be the truth.
Roars and things breaking sounded one moment, and the next cold air hit me like a blast that made me shake harder in the cradle of the arms holding me. Whoever it was that snatched me was running, and the way his feet pounded the ground and jostled my body lulled me into a numbing sleep. The last thing I saw was a set of electric green eyes looking down at my face, but I could’ve sworn the pupils were vertical. That was okay though, because I was no longer alive.
I was dead.
I died in that chamber with Veronica, and all of this was just a dream.
7
Drifting in and out of consciousness was like a drowning man coming up for air just to be yanked under again until his lungs burned for oxygen, though nothing he did would help his predicament. Soft sounds were penetrating my mind, coming and going until they blended together, leaving only a constant buzzing in my ears that drove me insane. Everything was blurry when my eyelashes managed to unglue themselves from my cheekbones, but the light would burn my eyes until hot tears trickled down my face and soaked into my ears and neck.
I couldn’t care less about any of it.
I just wanted to sleep and never wake up.
I had no idea how long this went on before a loud boom like a meteor crashing through the roof of a house made me jolt out of blissful darkness and bolt out of the bed I was sleeping on. No, not a bed. A couch that had seen better days, with a few springs poking out of the faded fabric. My head jerked left and right as I crouched next to it, my body ready to spring into action at any moment. Another crash from somewhere on my right sounded, but it was a lot less loud than what originally woke me up. Craning my neck, I dared to peek over the back of the stupid couch with my heart thrumming in my throat.
“It was about time you woke up.” The deep voice made me shiver, and it took me a second to place it. “I was debating if I should just bury you alive.”
I stood there staring openmouthed at the shifter until a kink developed in my neck. My head felt funny and I couldn’t remember how the hell I got here in this dump with the one person who’d promised to kill me the next time we crossed paths. Lifting up from my crouch, I took a cautious step back, but he didn’t notice. Still with his back to me, he kept banging shit on the table in the tiny kitchen, which was made smaller by his imposing presence in the middle of it. Every time he threw whatever he found in the bag he was holding on the tabletop, it felt like someone was pounding a nail in the middle of my forehead.
“Would you stop that?” On the fifth bang, I had to groan out the plea.
“Did I disturb your beauty sleep, your highness?” He sneered, spinning around to face me.
His intriguing face left me mute for a moment, just enough to admire the raw masculinity wafting off his chiseled body in waves. Not even his twisted-in-hatred face took away from his animalistic appeal to me. Or I could’ve had a concussion because someone hit me across the head. That was a bigger possibility, because I couldn’t be so dumb that I’d ogle a shifter while being enclosed in a place with him.
“No asshole, my head feels like it might explode from whatever you did to me to get me here.” Snapping out of the idiocy, I snapped at him like it was his fault I’d been checking him out.
Well, it kind of was his fault. He could’ve eaten crappy food and given himself a beer belly. That would’ve helped right about now.
“The only thing I did was save your life.” If he punched me, I would’ve had more air inflating my lungs. “That makes us even. I don’t want to owe anything to any of your kind.”
“Back track a bit there, buddy. Say what again?” While he was glaring at me, I used the opportunity to pinch myself hard on the thigh in case I was still dreaming. My mouth twisted in a grimace from the pain, which made the shifter eye me as if I would lose my shit at any moment.
