The distance and gloom hid their faces, but their intention flew up the round ancient walls, infiltrating us with their purpose.
I clutched my dagger as the security guard cocked his gun, his face determined to do whatever was necessary.
Tess trembled, the first sign of fear she’d shown. Her eyes flickered to a barcode with a sparrow flying in the centre and the number fifty-eight etched on her wrist. “I can’t be taken again.”
Suzette placed a hand on her mistress’s shoulder, clutching baby Lino close. “I won’t let them.”
I placed my hand on her other shoulder. “Me, either.”
We stood bound by the promise and understanding of what we meant. The horror of being captured again, sold again, raped again…it turned us from women to warriors.
Our oaths to prevent such a future were as binding as blood. A mutual understanding that plaited us together and made us responsible for each other.
We wouldn’t let them take us alive.
Not this time.
Not anytime.
Another gunshot.
Followed by another and another.
Masculine shouts came short and snatched from inside the mansion.
As one, we all turned to the door, searching for answers but finding none.
The walls were too thick, the distance too great to hear who cried in pain and who yelled in triumph.
All we could do was forget what happened out there and focus on our battleground in here. The window was our weakest spot.
Ignoring the door, we looked back through the glass as three shadows left green grass and melted into the stonework of our tower.
Their fingers sure, their toes nimble, their bodies hauling them heavenward.
Climbing.
Coming.
Hunting.
We had our knives.
The guards had their guns.
No unwelcome visitors would enter this tower tonight.
With a fierce look, Tess opened the window and the guard prepared to fire.
Chapter Twenty-One
______________________________
Elder
HAD THERE EVER been a moment in my life when I didn’t live with pain?
Had there ever been a time when I wasn’t fighting to stay alive?
It seemed the answer to those questions was no.
No.
No.
For the past fuck-knew-how-long, I’d been fighting. Figuratively and literally. Fighting my past, my future, my mistakes, my accomplishments.
I’d fought until I forgot why I fought.
At some point in this war, I’d entered with thoughts of defending a man’s home, of battling beside that same man who was more stranger than friend, who’d stolen my woman and ruined my life, and instead of doing my best to kill him, I did my best to keep him alive.
Time stopped ticking.
I didn’t know if we’d been in this purgatory for ten minutes or ten hours, but for once, my OCD helped keep me sane.
The agony in my wounds was worse than any drug or obsessive chant. It coiled in my brain, it decorated my bones, it hissed hotter and louder with every swing, duck, and punch.
It grew so loud, it distracted me enough that I almost missed an obvious attack, leaving Mercer to pick up the slack. That was when my OCD decided to latch onto something else—something less debilitating and useless.
I swallowed my pain deep, deep down, and fought with brighter purpose. Clarity came from counting the cadavers we left behind. A tally of death that encouraged me to add to it again and again.
Hand-to-hand combat.
A shot to the chest with gunpowder and buckshot.
A serrated slice to the jugular with steel.
As the minutes bled into hours, my counting switched to incorporate another tally. This one just as handy and granting even better precision. I had an over analytic brain that loved rhythm and symmetry and numerical harmony. It relished in counting uppercuts and finger snaps. It begged to count screams and gurgles from the men I wrenched from living to dead.
I tried to keep count of how many deaths we caused while tucking away vital spread sheets of delivered punches versus the probability of who had the highest chance of success.
I lived for figures.
I craved odds and evens, hoping the final sum would equal our victory.
From the moment the doorbell rang till now, I’d counted, growing more and more frenzied the deeper into chaos I fell.
The first two to die were Chinmoku—just as I’d hoped but feared wouldn’t happen.
Mercer’s men had listened, and my man didn’t need to be told.
Bang.
Bang.
Two Chinmoku shot between the eyes, courtesy of Selix and Franco.
Q’s man and mine.
A joint effort and an equal commitment to this overthrowing of power.
Selix had been the first to shoot, knowing full well what the Chinmoku were capable of, thanks to me teaching him their ways every morning on board the Phantom. He’d overstepped and decided my conversation with Daishin had reached a mutually conclusive end—that there was only one place to go from there and that was most likely my death by sacrifice.
He hadn’t waited for me to make that vital mistake or confirmation from me that I wouldn’t.
He didn’t need to.
In this matter, and in all matters, he was my equal, my brother—just like the bastard Franco was Mercer’s brother. He was true to his word, shooting a fraction of a second after Selix.