Mitch (Justice, #3)

He could feel her pain…not of her death, though from the looks of her it had been pretty tragic, but of her sadness, her missing her family, and of her sorrow of what she could no longer do. Mitch felt his belly churn and had to hang onto the wall before he felt they could move.

He stood still, trying to get his bearings, till she made him move until they got to the wall across from them, and she lifted his hand up. He watched in both fear and fascination as she moved the doorway open after working the mechanism.

There was no way he’d have been able to find this opening without her help. It was buried within the fabric of the wood perfectly. He had no idea how he could tell anyone where he was even if he could reach any of them.

I can help you. Her voice sounded drowsy and full of the promise of sex. His cock hardened painfully with just that sound. Behave or I’ll leave you to...what’s going on?

A woman, a client, is here and she’s taken my body, and I have no way of knowing what’s going to happen should I go into this room. I...my cell doesn’t work. She asked him what he needed. Can you call out to Steele or one of the others? Let them...I don’t know, tell them to come and find me?

Sort of. I can go to him and tell him what you need. But we’ve never exchanged blood, so he’s not on my network. Can you fight her off? He told her he wasn’t even sure how she’d done this to him. Great. I’m with him now. Try to...try not to piss me off by getting killed, all right?

He thought that was excellent advice all the way around. As the door opened, he tried to fight the woman who held him, but all it did was make her angry, and that heated her up. His body burned just enough that he finally backed off. No point in hurting himself if the others were coming to help. Moving into the room, it was all Mitch could do not to scream in horror.

Vinnie? Will you please tell him to bring the police? It’s bad. She told them they were on their way. It’s...it’s bad. Really bad.

The first thing he could see was the parts. Not car parts but people parts, large body parts that were hanging from hooks and nails all over the room. He supposed that was the wrong name for them, but right now he was straining just to cope. There was a...what was left of a person hanging from what looked like a fishing hook in front of him, the sharp end of it sticking from their neck. Blood was still dripping from the person, and he reached out blindly to hold onto something. That was when the woman left his body.

He dropped to his knees, his entire being simply unable to hold him up any longer. Mitch closed his eyes when he could see the rest of the person that had been hanging up just to his right. The voices behind him had him yelling for them to hang on.

“I want in now, Mitch, or so help me I’m breaking this fucking wall in. Where the fuck are you?” He told Steele to give him a minute. “Mitch? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Mitch?”

As Steele’s voice got stronger, he did as well. Staggering to his feet, he more or less fell to where he’d come through the wall, than stepped to it. He slid a little in the stickiness on the floor twice as he tried to get the wall opened. Mitch felt his belly rebel at the thoughts and tried to think of anything else. Even a train wreck would have been less horrid than this was, he thought.

Vinnie came in first.

Mitch didn’t have a lot of experience with vampires. Just a few, and that had been to royally piss them off, but he could see right now that Vinnie was not just mad, but she was going to kill someone soon if her fangs down and her eyes red were any indication. As she pulled him into her arms, he heard Steele yelling at someone to get the police.

“He said he wanted to make sure you were all right first.” Mitch nodded and stopped. It was too much right now to make his head move like that. “I’m going to help you. Will you take it?”

“Drugs? Alcohol? Anything that will make me pass out for, oh, I don’t know, a month or two?” She told him her blood. “No thanks. For now. I’m all right. It was quite a shock to my system.” He laughed a little.

“You’re hurt, did you know that?” He looked at his arm where she’d lifted it to show him. “Did she do this? Maybe when you came through the doorway?”

“I don’t know.” But he could see it was a long, deep cut. He’d not felt any pain and didn’t really now. He looked up at Drew when he said his name again. “I’m really okay. I am. I don’t feel so well after being taken, but I’m okay.”

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