Page 112 of Reaper and Ruin
He jerked, the gun slipping from my forehead and pointing up at the air.
Someone grabbed me.
I was barely aware of it in the tussle of arms and legs and gunshots.
Each one splintered through my brain, bringing with it the pain of everything this man had taken from me. Safety. Toby. Nyah. Any sense of worth.
A scream ripped from my mouth, and I charged forward, staring down the man I’d hated for as long as I could remember.
Levi and X held him, waiting for me for a decision on what to do. Travis howled indignantly, his shoulder bleeding, the wound nasty but unlikely to be life-threatening if treated.
“What do you want to do, Vi?” Levi asked, his eyes ablaze.
X practically vibrated with the scent of an impending kill in the air but held himself in check. Barely.
Blood seeped from Travis’s gunshot, a mesmerizing spread of red across his dirty T-shirt. I stepped in close, and without any forethought or planning, I brought the tip of my knife to his wound and pressed it.
Hard.
His scream of pain would probably be heard blocks away, and for once in my life, I was glad that Saint View was the sort of place where screams in the night were common and people were smart enough to mind their own business.
I dragged the knife across his shoulder, cutting through flesh and tendons, blood spilling beneath my blade like it was an extension of my body.
“That’s my girl,” X encouraged, almost panting at the sight of me with his knife in my hand, drawing another man’s blood.
I was his girl.
His and Whip’s and Levi’s.
And Travis was never going to take another person from me.
I plunged the knife into his jugular.
X crowed in victory as Travis slumped between him and Levi. He hit his knees, the knife sticking out of his neck.
Levi and X dropped him to the floor.
But I wasn’t done.
Something stirred inside me. Something strong and rich and…powerful.
Like I wasn’t even in control of my body, I drew the blade out, letting blood spurt like a fountain.
Then slashed the knife across his neck, slitting his throat.
More blood.
I did it again and again. Opening him up. Making him bleed. Making him pay for the fear I’d lived with my entire life. Making him pay for the lives he’d taken from me. Making him pay for every shitty thing our foster parents had done, because he’d taken away the opportunity to confront them myself when he’d killed them.
Maybe he’d been owed those kills.
But so had I.
The darkness that had opened up in me demanded them.
I turned, facing the three men who’d brought me here.
I knew what they saw. A woman covered in blood. A woman with crazed eyes.
