Page 7 of Cruel Vows
She lifted a satchel from the counter, shaking it a bit. "Bag of chips, some peanuts, and a bottle of soda," she rattled off like someone asked her to take stock. "I was just gonna take it back up to their rooms and crash on the couch."
I nodded pointedly, leading her from the kitchen with a hand on her back. "I'll escort you. It appears these men can't be trusted to behave, and I would hate to find you laying in a corridor somewhere, bleeding out after they'd tired of you."
Once I'd seen her securely back in the Rebels' suites, I returned to my own room, ready to grab a few more hours ofsleep before the halls filled once more with the moans of the hungover and perpetually miserable when the sun rose.
Why I thoughtit would be that simple, I'll never know.
I woke to the sound of a girl's screams echoing off the walls of the building, high-pitched and filled with terror. Then, as I slipped on my robe and walked into the hall, those screams turned wet, and I knew damn well what that meant.
She was no doubt drowning in her own blood now.
With a heavy, heartfelt sigh, I marched down the halls, nearly slipping in an impressive pool of blood at the top of the staircase. From there, it was relatively easy to follow the bloody trail she'd left behind as she ran for her life. Down the stairs, predictability, then she took a hard left into the main foyer and skipped right past the front door in favor of sprawling all over my solid white lounge chairs.
There were bloody red hand prints all over the leather.
I wasn't going to be cleaning that.
Whoever thought it'd be funny to chase a dying girl all over this fucking place was about to get a bucket of bleach water and a mop and?—
The sound of laughter drew me up short, and I turned a corner to see two very filthy, very naked men standing over the broken, limp, and silent body of the girl from earlier. Of course, it was the two who'd tormented her in the kitchen, and unfortunately, one of them had her hand in his, using a dead woman's palm to jerk himself to completion.
Three guesses which sick fuckthatwas.
I cleared my throat, but they didn't seem to notice, so I decided to take matters into my own hands, chucking my hiddenblade at the one currently desecrating a corpse. It lodged in his shoulder, a few inches away from being a kill shot, as I intended. His cry of pain was like music to my ears, muffling the wetplopher hand made when it fell lifelessly back to the floor. Blood had pooled under her body, and it splashed up against his shins as he yanked the knife from his body and laughed, staring me down with malice in his eyes.
"You bitch," he growled, brows drawn together as he debated something inside his head. "What gives?"
Jack, at least, had the wherewithal to back off, his hands up in supplication and self-defense. "Listen, Lilly, it isn't what it looks like?—"
"Oh, do tell me what it is, then, because what itlooks likeis a dead innocent laying on my floor, who was chased down the stairs and into this hall, leaving bloody trails all over my asylum." I crossed my arms pointedly, tapping the toe of one of my shoes as I waited. "So, what is it, then, Mr. Algreth?"
He frowned. "Well, I guess you already got the gist of it, really."
"How did she end up with the butcher's cleaver in her throat?" I nodded at the blade that had cost me a pretty penny, mainly used to break down meat for bigger family-style meals."Mycleaver."
It wasn't meant to slaughter humans.
Jack shrugged, but his gaze cut to the real perp, Angus, who was busy shuffling from one foot to the other, a lighter under the blade of my dagger as he heated it with single-minded devotion. He didn't pay us any mind, grinning like a fool as the metal turned orange from the heat. There was only one reason to heat up a knife like that, and I winced as he pressed the hot steel to his stab wound, the sizzle of burning flesh and the acrid scent filling the air. The smell assaulted my nostrils, and I covered my face with a hand, trying in vain to avoid it at all costs.
Nothing assaults the senses like the scent of barbecued human.
"You're a sick fucker, man," Jack grumbled, stepping a few feet further away from his partner in crime.
I hadn't had occasion to see two men from separate crews work together to kill a target, but she was far from a hired mark. She was a bystander, a sick pawn in their game who'd just happened to make the mistake of not staying far the fuck away from here. And now, she'd never get the chance to see life over the hill of 30.
"She was a baby," I spat, my eyes narrowed as I knelt beside her, yanking the cleaver from the gaping wound on her neck. The pump of her heart stopped long ago, so there was no impressive spurt of flowing blood, nor was there a large quantity seeping from the injury anymore. I laid my other hand on her face and closed her eyes, hiding their unseeing, thirty-yard stare of abject horror and resignation, with just a hint of hope that in her eleventh hour, someone might save her.
That hope had been for naught. There were no heroes here in the asylum. Not a soul in the Guild was good at its core.
It was what had kept them safe from the normies around them for so long. It was why they were able to live here unhindered, somewhat peacefully.
Jack snorted at my quiet lament. "She certainly wasn't a baby when I had my cock in her?—"
In a flash, I jammed the cleaver into the meat of his shoulder, coming down from above with all the force I had in me. His girlish screams were satisfying, to say the least, and the way he whimpered when I yanked it out and turned on his partner sent a thrill down my spine.
I wanted these men to pay for victimizing an innocent girl whose only crime was to want to enjoy herself with some men who oozed danger and mystique.
Angus wasn't as fast as I'd expected him to be, and with a yelp, he barely managed to slip out of the path of the blade, sucking his gut in to make sure I didn't rip him open like a pig for slaughter. I sliced through the air in a choppy imitation of a slasher film final girl. The cleaver wasn't designed to be a murder weapon. I'd faced down greater odds and come out on top, though.
