Page 130 of Kept in the Dark
I don’t want to die.
Luckily, that was as far as he got into his interrogation before the elevator dinged. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like I’m going to like who I find behind that door.
“And here they are,” Kyle announces to me with a horrible, smug smile as the penthouse elevator arrives at the top floor. “My backup. You’re not going to like these guys. They know exactly how to make a bitch like you—”
I never gave much thought to what the Grim Reaper would look like. They sell you on this idea of a hooded figure—a skeleton, usually, with a scythe—but after everything I’ve seen in the ER and years of trauma cases and the messy, awful sides of humanity, that image always felt a bit tooclean. And now I know why. Any personification of Death that I’d believe in would have to be… bloodier.
The elevator chimes and the doors part, revealing a single, enormous figure in shades of darkness and violence; a man, wearing black, covered in blood. His skin is streaked with crimson, his face is splattered, and still more blood is dripping from the tips of two sharp knives—one in each hand—pointed down at the ground. He’s surrounded by a ring of bodies on the floor, slowly and fatally leaking their insides into pools of ruby red.
He’s the Angel of Death. Justice with a blade. The reckoning of… Kyle.
God, that would have sounded so much cooler if the bad guy wasn’t named Kyle.
I know it’s Dimitri before I recognize him through all the gore. My soul sees him. My heart soars, and I nearly cry as relief swells and rushes out of me, taking all the ugliest feelings with it.
Dimitri barely waits for the doors to open all the way before he strikes, and the way he moves melts my brain. He bends the laws of physics, I’m pretty sure, because momentum and energy conservation and gravity… they just don’t seem to work the way I think they do anymore.
He takes a running leap that lands him almost all the way across the room, within reach of Kyle. He drops to the ground and kicks out his leg with a spin, knocking Kyle off his feet before the man can even react towhat’s happening. As Kyle falls, Dimitri pops back up just far enough to drive one of his knives into Kyle’s stomach and smash him into the floor with it.
Kyle’s head slams back against the floor, and he screams in pain, but Dimitri doesn’t stop. He takes Kyle’s arm and stabs him through the hand, driving his knife into the hardwood through flesh and bone. He does the same thing to the other as Kyle writhes and curses and cries.
“Stay,” Dimitri growls as he rises to his feet.
If I weren’t taped to a chair, I’d probably be picking my jaw up off the floor. Did I just witness a real-life superhero in action? No one should be able to move like that.
He approaches me, chest heaving, eyes wild, fury still written into his features, and his face still dripping with the blood of I don’t know how many people…
Not the superhero. The supervillain.
In that instant, I’m afraid. He doesn’t look real, or human, or sane. He stalks towards me, and my body wants to shrink away. My stomach drops.
And then, when he’s within a foot of me, he falls to his knees. “Nicole,” he whispers, broken, hands hovering like he doesn’t know where to touch in case he hurts me.
It’s all I can take. I dissolve into tears, and he disappears in a blur of color behind the water. I want to reach for him, but my arms are tied. I want to scream his name, but I can’t speak through the choked noises my mouth is making.
Dimitri carefully slides his knife under the layers of tape. With a series of short, loud rips, I’m free, and I fall from the chair right into his arms, sobbing. Heavy, ugly, loud sounds escape me that I do nothing to try to control. He wraps his arms around me, hugging me tightly, and I melt against him. From the way his body shakes, I think he might be crying, too.
“You came,” I sob.
“I will always come for you,” he promises, the words coming out muffled in my hair.
“I knew you’d come,” I say, over and over, clutching at him in an effort to get as close to him as possible.
We find each other’s lips and pour ourselves into the union. My cheek is pounding, my head aches, and my stomach feels like one giant bruise, but right now I don’t care. I wrap my arms around his neck, and he cups a hand behind my head. I want to stay here like this always, melding with him, connected and safe. I resent needing air.
Eventually, he pulls back, and his hand comes around to cup my jaw, thumb ghosting beneath what is probably a nasty cut and bump from the butt of Kyle’s gun.
“I was so scared,” I confess, eyes filling back up with tears.
“I know,” he croons. “I told you. I take care of what is mine. That means I will always come for you. You are safe. He cannot harm you or anyone else.”
That phrase snaps me out of it, making my whole body tense with an urgent memory. I scramble to my feet, out of Dimitri’s lap, and he rises smoothly next to me. He opens his arms to receive me, but I shoot past him towards the other room.
“Nicole?” he says softly, confused as he follows.
The door of the bedroom slams against the wall, denting it, and I make a horrified noise. Just as I feared, there’s a dead body on the bed—a mostly naked woman with a bullet hole in her forehead, lying next to a small puddle of vomit. Kyle killed her for daring to throw up on him.
I sob again and feel Dimitri spin me and tuck me against his chest to protect me from what I can’t unsee.
