“Back the fuck off!” he yells at the others. “Or I’ll put a bullet in her skull.”
No, no, no…
My heart sinks.
He’s going to try to use me to escape. He knows the men won’t risk him killing me.
My feet stumble as he pulls me backward toward the stairs, keeping the gun pressed against my head. Their eyes never leave me, their faces transformed in pain and fear. My heart thrashes wildly as I look down at my father’s body, completely still now, blood staining his clothes. I look at Gray’s body and my stomach opens up into a bottomless pit. I can’t tell if he’s dead yet, but he’s not moving at all. His chest is covered in blood, his face pale.
Is he gone?
A primal instinct rears up in me. The same one that made me run from the bunker. The same one that made me fight Cliff the night he tried to rape me.
The will to survive. To protect the people I care about.
Fight. Back.
I don’t fucking care about the risks. I don’t even think about them. I just move.
My body slams back
against Alan’s, throwing him off balance as I grab for his forearm, yanking it away from my head. The gun fires as he pulls the trigger, the sound making my ears ring in pain.
Hot liquid drips down my temple and the side of my face from where the bullet grazed me, but the pain is nothing compared to the years and years of rage and anger pulsing through my body in hot waves.
“Bitch!”
Alan’s blunt fingernails sink into my skin as he curses, but I tear my hand from his grip and throw a wild punch.
My fist hits his skull with a hard crack, and the feel of pain in my knuckles snaps some part of me into focus. I hardly know what’s going on, but I let the animal in me take over as I fight back, kicking and hitting and scratching, using my teeth to bite into the skin at his neck like a wild animal. I barely see, barely hear, barely know anything but the raw urge to fight and kill.
I’ve let this monster control my life, manipulate the people around me for too long. I’ve let him win too many times by pulling back into myself, letting fear take over, but not anymore. I will not stop until he’s dead. I will not stop until the lives he’s taken are avenged by his own spilled blood.
Good girl.
Be a good girl and do as I say.
Memories flood back, a fuel to my rage. Memories of him trying to groom me, make me into a little pet just like he did to Reagan. Memories of him telling Cliff that I was his to take, memories of the helpless fury I felt as a child.
I knee him in the gut, hard, and the gun goes flying out of his hands as he clutches his stomach, sucking in a breath. His eyes are wide, bloodshot, and furious, and I imagine that his gaze burns bright red like a demon sent straight from hell, an image that sears itself into my mind with burning intensity.
The world around me goes black except for that face, the face I hate so much, the face that took everything away from me. There’s nothing left except that face, the pain it caused, the life it fucked up, and I’m fighting again, this time not trying to injure and disarm, but to kill.
Kill.
Alan doesn’t deserve to live, not when he’s killed so many. He doesn’t deserve to rot in prison—he deserves to rot where the rest of the people he’s killed are, under layers and layers of dirt, his flesh eaten away by maggots.
I’m lost in a fog, but I’m vaguely aware that the face beneath me is going purple. My hands squeeze tighter and tighter around Alan’s neck until his eyes are rolling back in his head, his hands desperately trying to push away mine, his lungs struggling to pull in a breath…
But then I’m being pulled back out of the darkness. The bunker around me spins back into focus as strong arms hook over mine and drag me away from Alan’s body.
“Blue, he’s down. He’s out! Let go, okay? We need to get out of here. We need to get Gray—”
Gray.
That single word snaps me out of my trance. Shaking my head, I release Alan’s neck from my tight grip. His body slumps to the floor as I stumble over to Gray.
The second I reach him, I throw myself down beside him and check for a pulse, a breath. His heartbeat is so faint I almost don’t catch it, the pulse in his neck a mere flutter.