Page 20 of To Curse A Knight

The Alvarez men were vicious in their delivery and hungry to kill; our element of surprise only gave us so much of an advantage. Our crew fought through the cohort; gunpowder and the metallic stench of blood enriched the air as each member of Alvarez’s crew was wiped from existence.

I fired the last bullet into the last sorry fuck who’d made the wrong choice in showing up for work tonight. Warm flecks of blood spattered my cheek as his skull shattered three paces away from me.

I felt nothing as his corpse collapsed to the dirt at my feet.

It wasn’t just their supply warehouse as we had originally suspected, but their clubhouse; the back of the building contained a pool hall, kitchen, and several bedrooms, even windows looking out into the garage.

They heard and saw us coming, frantically grabbing their own weapons and calling to the others for backup, but once we’d taken control of the outward operation, the inside group didn’t have a chance.

I searched the bedrooms one by one as Jonah and Mical secured a few prisoners and killed the rest. The remainder of our group loaded up weapons and moved out the cargo into waiting transport trucks as quickly as possible.

I blasted open a locked bedroom door with a single shot, surprised to find a bulging man laying in bed with several women chained to the bedposts, their naked bodies shivering from fear as wide eyes peered at me through the dim light of the lamp by the bedside.

Their heads lolled lazily despite their panic, and I knew with certainty they’d been drugged.

In the fraction of a second it took to assess the situation, the man whipped out a pistol, cocking it quickly. Quick reflexes and years of training kicked in, and I shot the gun out of his hand before he could lift his finger from the trigger.

He screamed in agony and fell back to the mattress, holding his bleeding hand to his chest, rocking back and forth in shock from the pain.

I yanked the greasy black hair off his scalp, pulling him up to face me. “Where is the key?” I nodded to the cuffs on the women’s wrists and used my other gloved hand to force my finger into his gaping wound. I immediately removed the pressure, needing to know its location before the man passed out on me.

“T-t-there,” he sputtered, pointing his uninjured hand into the bedside drawer. Keeping my grip on his scalp, I tore open the drawer, disgusted by the pile of used needles and bags of powder alongside the single silver key. I carefully picked it up and let go of my captive, quickly uncuffing the women.

“Get out!” I shouted, shoving them through the doorway toward safety downstairs. I didn’t wait to watch them skitter down the hallway—I turned my attention back to my next victim.

“You like drugging women for fun?”

A sheen of stinking sweat dripped from the man’s brow as he cowered in fear, shrinking further into the bedsheets as he cradled his bloody hand. Small whimpers filtered through his lips, but he said nothing.

“There is no excuse for men like you.” Climbing on top of him, I restricted all of his movements between my thighs, ignoring the little blood that seeped into my clothes. There was about to be so much more. “Let me show you what it feels like to have something taken from you.”

I took out my favorite sharpened blade from my pocket and held it against the flesh of his stomach. Sobs escaped him as I cut a deep line from the hair of his belly-button up to his sternum. Then I gripped both sides of his abdomen and pried the cut apart, exposing the soft internal flesh beneath.

A darkness took over me, desperate to be fed. Without hesitation, I pushed my hand through the opening, gripped the slippery tubing of his intestine, and pulled it through his skin.

His sobs waned to deafening silence as his body succumbed to shock, going limp as he passed out.

A slew of gunshots tore me from my task. Leaving the man to die slowly in his own filth, I took the steps two at a time and raced back down to the warehouse floor.

My stomach twisted into my throat at the three women with holes where their hearts used to be, bloody and naked on the earthen warehouse floor, their eyes no longer seeing this world.

Antonio’s calculating, emotionless gaze stared back at me. “Drugged girls have no value to us.” He calmly placed his gun back into his belt and turned on his heel towards his waiting men.

“Move out,” he called to the echoing chamber, and the remaining members of our crew scattered at his command.

I stared hard at the bodies before me, allowing their image to harden my resolve, their blank stares and lifeless forms cementing my path forward.

My allegiance to this family had frayed to the point of no salvation. Whatever Hillary needed from me to fulfill her vendetta, I would do it.

Alvarez and Antonio were going to die by my hand,and it wouldn’t come soon enough.

Ishot daggers at the man who’d shown up here today; the audacity of my enemy pricked me like a thousand tiny needles under my skin.

Marco Alvarez stared snidely back, a satisfied little smirk on his face. He sat on the plastic chair of the charitable foundation’s auditorium like a king on a throne, though he was worth nothing more than a toddler on a toilet. I turned to face the speaker; a brief reprieve from having to watch his smug, ugly face.

“Thanks to your generous donations today, you’ve given the gift of hope to so many young girls like Layla.”

The foundation I supported—the one that helped hundreds of women and children escape sexual predators—was hosting their annual Christmas appreciation event. An audience of several dozen attendees—mostly municipal counselors and government representatives, but a handful of wealthy donors who valued the cause—burst into applause. My stomach soured, though, when Marco clapped just as enthusiastically, like he wasn’t single-handedly causing the very problem this organization worked so hard to solve.

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