Decision made, Lars took in a long breath as he heard Fate count down. Filling his lungs to over capacity and letting his talents loose, death itself seeped into the air he’d taken in, infusing into it the way only so few had ever been able to do.
He fended off the blows coming his way as he tried to cover the guys’ retreat. The second the door closed, giving them some barrier, he let the air out of his lungs.
One after another, the men in the hallway grasped their throats and fell to the ground. With one end of the hallway clear, the guys burst back through the door and down to help Karma while he finished off the rest of the men who were scrambling to escape. He followed them down the hall and into the stairwell, all the way out into the parking lot before he turned back around to find the guys and his true target.
Lars walked into the office to find desks overturned and blood spattered everywhere. There were bodies on the floor and Bic, Angus and Cutty were walking around the place, making sure there were no threats left.
“What happened? Where’s Fate and Karma?” Lars asked as he started looking at the bodies on the ground, looking for Keith.
Cutty grabbed a pack of tissues that had fallen to the floor to try and wipe some of the blood from his hands. “We don’t know. There were more guys when we got down here. It was chaotic. We were fighting, and by time we stopped, they were gone.”
“What about in there?” Lars asked, moving toward an interior office nested within the larger one, frustrated he wasn’t finding Keith among the dead.
“Nothing but a pool of blood,” Cutty answered, following closely.
Lars walked into the smaller room and knelt by the blood. He took a long breath but couldn’t get any read off it besides that it wasn’t human.
He stood and looked around at the destruction. He didn’t know if they were dead or alive. He’d feared something bad was coming and here it was.
“Malokin is gone,” Cutty said, standing beside him.
“For good?”
Cutty nodded. “Positive. It’s coming through like Mike Tyson himself punched me in the gut.”
“Nothing on Fate and Karma?”
Cutty shook his head.
Lars walked back out into the exterior office again, looking for a body he might have missed. “Keith isn’t here.” Lars let out a curse but knew there were more pressing issues. “Someone should go by Fate’s house.”
“We will,” Bic said, from where he was standing beside Angus, and then left.
“I’m going to go see if I can get a trace on his phone,” Lars said to Cutty.
Cutty grabbed his arm before he could walk out. “Hang on. I want to call Faith.”
Lars took out his phone to do it instead, fear gripping him, but Cutty stopped him.
“She might not answer for you,” Cutty said.
Lars gripped his phone tightly and then forced himself to put it away.
Cutty, with phone already in hand, dialed her number. Lars could hear her voicemail kick in.
Cutty dropped the phone from his ear and looked at Lars. “She’s not answering and I’ve got a very bad feeling.”
Chapter 35
Faith was just where Keith had left her when he walked back into the basement. The pipe had been much stronger than it looked. She hadn’t screamed at first, afraid of drawing some of the gangs that roamed the streets. Then she’d let loose, deciding she’d rather take her chances with them. It hadn’t mattered. No one had shown up, for good or bad.
He walked over to her face her, stopping about two feet in front of her. “Malokin is gone,” he said.
Even in her current situation, she felt some relief.
“You shouldn’t be happy. It means I’m probably going to die. It’s just me against them now, and I’m not stupid. They’ll get me eventually. But I’m not letting you live without me,” Keith said, and she watched as he moved about the basement. “Malokin’s gone, and he’s taken my future with him.”
“That’s not true. You can still have a life.” She tried to keep her voice calm and not rail at him, or call him the lunatic she believed him to be, especially as she saw him walk over to a pile of discarded debris and pull a length of chain from it. “With him gone, maybe you could take charge?” she asked, grasping.
He walked back over to her slowly and then behind her and out of view. “You idiot, it’s over. I just told you that. Things are going back to normal now. Take over what? I’m in charge of crap!”
“But why kill me? I’ve never done anything to you?”
“Because you will never be his. If I die, so do you. And when your boyfriend gets here, I want to see the pained expression in his eyes as I kill you.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He won’t care what you do to me.”
She heard the length of chain rattle before it struck. A stinging pain ripped across her back, making her feel like the flesh was being torn from her body. An involuntary scream ripped from her chest. Her sore wrists, and the ache in her shoulders, now felt like a tickle in comparison.
“Keith, think about what you are doing. I can talk to them. I’ll convince them to leave you alone, they will.” It was flimsy but she was desperate. She tried to keep her voice as steady as she could, even as her body shook from the shock of what was happening to her.
“You’re a liar. They’ll kill me no matter what you say. Don’t lie to me!” His voice became frenzied as an even harder blow struck her back. “And I’m going to take every ounce of hope from you before I die.”
After the first several blows, just the sound of the clinking chain made her cringe, waiting for the next one. She might not be human anymore but the pain still felt horribly the same.
And then she realized, after everything she’d been through, this might be her final end.
***
When they’d reached Cutty’s house, it had been empty. A broken kitchen window and puddle of spilled tea left an ominous trail to nowhere.
They’d made a list of every known location they had linked to Malokin. Each place they entered, Lars lost a little more hope that they’d find Faith in one piece.
When he walked into the fifteenth place on their list, and still there was no sign of Faith, he was ready to tear down every building on the entire East Coast if he had to.
Cutty walked up beside him. “We’ll find her.”
“I kicked her out. It’s my fault.”
“I don’t—”
“We both know it.”
“I think you need to take a break, just for a couple of hours.”
“No. You can, if you want, but I’m not stopping until I find her.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
It was five A.M. when he stepped into the cellar of the hotel Malokin had used on one of his very first times in South Carolina. The moment they stepped into the building he could smell her scent. They searched the small hotel, which was only about eight floors, and he almost gave up hope until they stepped into the basement.
She was strung up, hanging from a beam above her head. Her dress was torn as she stood on her tiptoes, with only a bra covering her from the waist up. There were marks all over her body, bruises and welts crisscrossed over each other as if there wasn’t enough surface for the damage doled out.
She hung so still he thought she was dead at first, but then he heard a thready heartbeat. If she’d been alone, he would’ve had her in his arms in seconds, but she wasn’t. Keith was there. He was standing alarmingly close to where Faith was hanging, a knife in his hand.
“Look,” Keith jabbed at Faith’s back with his hand and she winced. Her head, which had been hanging down, pulled up slightly, looking as if it had taken every last ounce of energy she had to accomplish that small movement.
Her eyes met his and he could see the pain shadowed in them. A rage grew within him, the likes of which he’d never experienced.
“He’s finally made it in time for the finale! Isn’t that nice of him?” Keith said, a psychotic laugh echoing through the basement. He closed the several inches between him and Faith until he was standing right behind her, his knife raised to her throat. “Are you ready for the show, Lars? Should we do it quickly or drag it out a bit longer, for entertainment value?”