“Alright you little fuckface,” I sneered at him, trying to fight the urge to strangle the fucking life out of him. “Tell me where Esteban is and I’ll make your death painless. Don’t tell me and I’ll break your bones with a hammer. Which one is it?”
His screaming wouldn’t stop. I shook him again. “You can’t protect him now, you’ll never fucking walk again and he sure as hell won’t give two fucks about a pathetic piece of garbage like you. So talk.”
But before he could, Diego was calling out my name and I let go of Juanito, rolling over him just in time as the air above me burned with bullets. Diego fired back at the assailants and I kept rolling until I was behind the kitchen island. I quickly reached for the grenade which I knew could take out enough of them without damaging the structural integrity of the house, and tossed it out of the kitchen. It rolled down the hallway.
They yelled to move but it was too late and I pressed my hands over ears as the blast went off.
“Jesus, Javi,” Diego swore as pieces of plaster rained down on him. “You haven’t even moved back in yet.”
I didn’t care if it was sloppier than my usual methods – it was efficient. I scrambled to my feet and stared at the wreckage. There was a ragged hole in the wall, smoke and flames licking the edge.
I shrugged. “I wanted to open up that room anyway.”
Miraculously, or something of that nature, Juanito was still alive, holding onto his bleeding and blasted knees as he writhed on the floor.
He was missing half his face though, so it’s not like he escaped the explosion unscathed. He was very scathed and crawling for freedom.
I covered my nose and mouth with the crook of my elbow and walked into the smoke, letting it wash over me. Juanito looked up at me with what was left of him, begging for mercy with an outstretched hand.
I stepped on his hand instead, crunching the bones beneath my boot.
“That was for my sister,” I seethed. “I know you intercepted her call when she was calling me, for help.”
“Javier, we have to go,” Diego said, coughing and coming over to stop me. A war was raging around me but none of it mattered. All that mattered was an eye for an eye.
This time I stomped on Juanito’s arm, driving it in with all my might, like I was squashing a cockroach, until I felt it break beneath me.
He screamed.
I smiled.
But I was the furthest thing from happy.
And Juanito couldn’t even speak at this point. His mouth was a flap of burning skin, covering a gaping hole. He was useless.
I slid the hunter’s knife out of its sheath and with one swift motion, stabbed it downward into the top of his skull.
The screaming stopped.
“Javier,” Diego warned again, pulling at me. “That had been Esteban’s scream, he’s upstairs.”
I nodded, trying to keep focus, and yanked the knife back out, wiping the brain and blood on my pants. They weren’t my pants anyway.
Diego led the way into the smoldering hallway, stepping over the dead bodies of Esteban’s fuckheads. Some of them were missing body parts, a foot here, a torso there, others were just a splash of guts on what was left of the wall.
We made our way up the stairs, firing at anyone who came at us and using the cover of smoke to our advantage. We kicked open doors, checked the rooms, searching for Esteban.
It wasn’t until we came to the last room, what had once been Luisa’s prison, that I realized what I was going to find.
Of course this would be her prison again.
Of course she would be in there.
With my heart already in a vice, I paused before looking in the room.
The door was already open and with what little light was left in the hallway, blurred by smoke and flickering from waning power, it illuminated Luisa lying on the floor.
I didn’t recognize her at first.
She was nothing more than a pile of blood-splashed limbs, a corpse.
Her hair was all gone, shorn off in clumps around her. She was bleeding and cut, mangled and bruised.
Naked and burned.
I immediately lost my breath, like someone had thrown brick at my gut and I grabbed onto the doorframe to steady myself. I couldn’t feel my knees.
My angel.
My queen.
Ravaged.
Ruined.
I’d never wipe the sight of her from my mind, never forget the horror.
A sob choked in my throat but I didn’t know if I was going to vomit right here or cry.
Diego dropped to his knees beside her, his hands hovering above her but he couldn’t bring himself to touch her, as if touching her would break her into a million pieces.
“Javier,” he said without looking at me. He didn’t say anything else. I could only hold on as if that doorframe was the only thing keep me from descending into complete madness.
She was so beaten, so broken, by life, by everything.
My queen.
My queen.
“Javier,” Diego said again, clearing his throat. He finally lay his finger underneath her purple and black chin. “She’s alive. Barely. But she is alive.”