Page 92 of Dangerous Deviance
Everything went silent.
If I shot right then with the way they were angled, it would have killed them both with one bullet. I would put her in the ground with her sister. Because she was mine, and she knew how I felt about another man touching her.
But as strong as the jealousy was, I held back. Ellie’s hand twitched in her pocket, gripping an object, pulling it out. Without leaving his lips, she jammed her hand forward, stabbing Bates in the stomach with a knife in a quick succession of jabs.My knife. He crumpled against her, his eyes blinking rapidly.
A few seconds passed.
“Now?” Derek asked.
No one moved. All of us waited to see if Bates was dead.
But energy renewed inside of him. He took a deep breath and kept his eyes on Ellie.
I ran forward, my gun raised.
Dr. Bates screamed, “Ladies!” Every single head turned toward him at the same time. “These are theAdlers. Show them a nice, warm—”
Ellie pulled him up by the hair and pressed the knife to his throat. “Not another word,” she hissed.
“—welcome.”
The women ran toward us. A few had sticks in their hands, others knives, some barehanded, their wrists swinging, their feet moving faster than I could process. The guards came too.
I rushed through an open space, finding cover by a building, then peeked around the corner. A woman raised her sticks, about to strike me, but I immediately rammed the back of my gun into her forehead. She fell down. I knew it was unavoidable, but I silently hoped she was okay. I checked for Ellie; she was dragging Bates off to another building, but none of the women noticed. In the end, it wasn’t about protecting Bates. It was about avenging their loved ones by eliminating the targets.
Doing what I could, I knocked out some of the women, sometimes swooping out their legs, then putting them in a chokehold until they passed out, or knocking them out with the back of my gun. I looked around; one of our men was supposed to have rope to tie up the women, but I didn’t see him anywhere. There was no time to search; I had to trust him to do his job. So I moved on. Two guards approached me from the sides, their bullets whizzing past me, but I shot them in the head. As I took down another guard, I glanced around at the others. Derek kept pulling tranquilizers out of his pockets, stabbing the women with them. They fell, but more always came forward. Axe had been knocking them out like I had, a blow to the head, saving his bullets for the guards. My eyes landed on that slimy sonofabitch, who had his eyes on Ellie, even now, in the midst of the chaos. She was hacking apart Bates’s corpse with a cleaver, tearing him limb from limb, just like they had done to her sister. But that guard had another thing on his mind, his eyes glued to her. I ran towards him.
“You made a big fucking mistake,” I growled. “Ellie is mine.”
“Your whore, huh? That’s funny. I had her first,” the man sneered, barely glancing at me. “She’s working for me, fucker.”
I pulled the trigger, hitting him straight in the neck. His body shook to the floor, then he gurgled, blood pooling out of his mouth. I leaned down, staring into his blinking red eyes. He only had seconds left.
“I should have made it harder for you,” I said. “But it’s your lucky day. Have fun getting raped in hell.”
Ellie looked up at me, but her eyes flickered, catching something behind me. Her mouth opened to warn me. I turned, finding a woman with her knives ready. The woman lunged forward, stabbing my dominant hand, the one that had finally healed and was holding my gun. I dropped my weapon. I couldn’t move my fingers.
I grabbed it off of the floor, but my other hand was weak. I held it up, biting back the pain. Adrenaline surged through me, and I turned towards the woman. Shaking, steadying myself.
The woman stared at me. “You killed her,” she said. “You killed my sister.”
And I was back there, in my bedroom again, when Ellie had first cut me. But I saw her true intentions now. She needed her sister to be okay. She needed it more than anything in the world.
And I couldn’t give that to Ellie, but I could end this, and I could do it the right way. For her.
I rammed my elbow into the woman’s head, but she avoided the blow, and as I lurched forward, she stabbed my thigh, energy shooting through my body. I howled, then turned to try to hit her again, but a tranquilizer dart hit her neck. She paused, touching the feathered end, then her eyes closed. She fell forward, crashing into me with a thud. My whole body tensed, holding her up. Suddenly the agony from my hand and thigh skyrocketed, and as gently as I could, I let her down on the floor. But the tension in my body swelled, trying to fight off the pain. I fell to my knees.
I looked up, expecting to see Derek, but it was Billy, her short hair ruffling in the wind. Iris stood behind her.
“Figured I have to use my training for something,” Billy said loudly, more to Ellie than to me.
“Nice shot,” Ellie shouted. “Get the rest of us.”
Iris lugged a huge black bag to the side of her. She kneeled down beside the woman who had stabbed me, then removed a pair of handcuffs from her bag, clicking them closed around the women’s wrists.
“Who knew thatthiswould be what I did with my day off,” she muttered. “Helping the Adlers. What the hell?”
Ellie rushed over to me. “You’re hurt,” she said.
