Page 38 of His Favorite Color is Blood
Grim’s jaw muscles twitched. “You can’t just scratch it out. It’s dangerous.”
Misha managed to gulp half a breath. “Then cut it out. You have the knives. Just cut it!”
Grim shook his head and pulled Misha into his arms. “We don’t know where it is. I can’t do that. We will go to a doctor, and he will take care of it.”
“Even a doctor could be his spy! You don’t know!” He punched Grim’s shoulder and tried to pull away.
Grim looked into Misha’s eyes and squeezed his arms. “That’s why we’ll go to someone I can vouch for. It will be fine. I will bury them, get rid of the van, and we will go.”
Misha sobbed as if he were the seventeen-year-old weakling again, unable to fight for his life. He hadn’t known about the chip, yet now he could almost sense it throbbing under his skin like a live cockroach feeding on his fear.
He nodded, completely frantic on the inside. Maybe he could distract Grim and get to the knives? Slice the legs open and find the fucking thing? His fear of Zero was much bigger than his fear of blades.
Grim exhaled and rubbed his forehead, deflated. “Fucking hell. Those motherfuckers made such a mess,” he said and started quickly stripping down.
Misha’s nose was plugged, so he kept taking big open-mouthed breaths, eyeing the knives and waiting for the right moment.
Grim tossed his clothes to the floor and picked up a sheet of thick plastic, which he put close to the tub. With a bit of shuffling about, he dropped Black’s dead body on the sheet and gathered it around him.
Misha crawled closer, and when Grim was busy with Bob’s body, he snatched one of the daggers. Even now, with his goal so certain, he could hardly stand holding something this sharp, instantly thinking of how it could slice into his flesh and scratch against bone. He turned his back on Grim and put the blade against his skin, begging unnamed gods for the courage to go through with the cut.
“Misha?”
The question came like from behind a glass wall, muted, dull, the only object in focus being the one in his hand. He pushed the knife down, hoping that the chip would be in this stump, not the other. The first pang of pain made him hiss, but before he could do anything else, a big, strong hand clenched on his wrist so hard, he droppedthe knife with a yelp.
Grim fell on Misha with a growl that didn’t belong in a human’s throat. The red streaks on his face and chest made him look even more like a wild beast as he pushed Misha against the wooden floor. “What the fuck are you doing, huh? I told you we’re gonna see a doctor!”
“It will be too late!” Misha yelled back. “If he comes for me, I’d rather kill myself!”
Grim’s handsome face twisted in anger. “Who? Who are you so afraid of?”
Misha slumped to the floor, the panic too much for his body to bear. “The man who took my legs. He cut them off with a hacksaw. And if he gets to me, he will cut me again. I can’t go through that, I can’t!”
Grim’s hands clenched on Misha’s even harder, and his eyes burned. “He did what? He ... cut them off? What?”
Tears pooled in Misha’s eyes until they spilled, and he wanted to laugh. Just when he thought he didn’t have many tears left in him, it seemed they were just locked in with his emotions, which now flooded out in gallons.
“I was healthy, and fit, and I had things going for me. And he took everything. He cut my legs and filmed it so other cruel freaks like him could watch. He intended to kill me, but I survived. Now that I think about it though, he did kill me. He murdered everything I was.” Misha let his stumps curl closer to his thighs and looked up at Grim, wondering if he could possibly understand what Misha was saying.
Grim was still and his eyes drilled holes in Misha’s neck as he took deep, heavy breaths. “Who is he?” he whispered in the end, finally looking into Misha’s face with a rage burning behind the calm grey of his eyes. It was so cruel, Misha longed to see it unleashed on everyone who ever hurt him.
“He goes by ‘Zero’,” Misha whispered, slightly calmed down by Grim’s intense stare. “He runs the organization who owned the base the Coffin Nails raided. He makes videos of torture. Distributes them on the dark web. He doesn’t know what mercy is. He’s sick in the head, and he ruined my life.”
Grim squeezed Misha’s hands, watching him fiercely. “And when I find him, what do you want me to do to him?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t want you to find him. He’s dangerous. He would hurt you. He destroys people.”
“He won’t see me coming. No one does,” said Grim, gently stroking Misha’s cheek with his fingers, which were sticky with blood.
“I want him to suffer. And then burn, until there’s nothing left of him.” Strangely enough, even though Misha doubted there was a chance for this to happen, saying it out loud made him feel better.
A shudder went through Grim, and he nodded, glancing into Misha’s eyes with a warmth that could melt the ice of fear around Misha’s heart. “He deserves what’s coming. He broke you, and he needs to pay.”
Misha let out a deep breath, and stroked Grim’s shoulder. “Thank you.”
Grim pushed his forehead against Misha’s and pulled him deep into the protection of his arms. “You’re mine now. All mine.”
And despite their relationship being something out of a nightmare, Misha couldn’t help but nod, hugging Grim tightly. “I am.”
