Souls Unfractured (A Hades Hangmen Novel)

I moved my legs, fighting back the dark memories of being fucked in that hole, when I glanced behind us… and my poppa wasn’t fucking there.

Pushing myself to my feet, I barked, “Where the fuck’s he gone?”

Then a scream came from outside. “Flame!”

Maddie…

NO!

“Fuck!” Viking spat. But I was already running to the door, my blood pumping like fucking rapids of fire. I flew out the door, only to see my poppa, with that fucking knife back in his hand, holding Maddie to his chest. And the fucking blade was at her throat.

A red mist came over my eyes, and I screamed, the noise ripping from my chest.

Maddie’s green eyes were wide and filled with water. And she was staring at me, she was fucking staring at me to help her.

“Let me the fuck go or I’ll slit the whore’s throat,” my poppa warned. My blood quickly cooled to ice.

I stood still and calmly said, “Let her go.”

Viking stepped beside me, and my poppa’s eyes darted between us. “Let me the fuck go, and you can have your whore back.”

“Flame,” Maddie whispered, her face paling to white.

I watched that blade pressed against her throat, the edge already touching the skin and I tossed my blades to the ground. “Fucking let her go,” I demanded, my voice like fucking thunder.

Then the cunt started walking to the side, heading down the dirt driveway. As my poppa moved to turn, he moved Maddie, briefly pushing her body to the side, opening himself right up. I was just about to launch forward to tackle the fucker to the ground, when AK stepped beside me, his 9mm held up in line with his eye. “Get ready to cut that sick fuck up real good,” he whispered.

A second later, AK sent a fucking bullet straight into the back of the cunt’s leg, and my old man dropped to the floor, blade slipping loose, femur shattered. Maddie fell to the side, her neck still under his arm. But she scurried free, crawling to safety.

And that was all the fucking green light I needed.

Reaching down, I picked up my blades and sprinted forward. My poppa rolled over, trying to get up, just as I arrived at his side. Then looking him right in the eyes, the flames roaring from within, I dropped to straddle his waist and sent my blades sinking into his flesh, strike after strike. And I fucking watched him. I fucking watched him like a hawk as he tried to cry out. I sank the sharp steel into his chest, his stomach, twisting and hacking at his flesh. I saw my mama’s face in my head as I cut up his chest. I saw him hitting her, her skin bleeding and bruised. I saw him screaming at Isaiah. Saw him putting him down beside me, in the dirt hole, and fucking leaving us there to die, as I ripped and snapped the tendons in his arms.

I moved lower, my poppa’s body now hemorrhaging blood like a geyser. But I couldn’t fucking stop stabbing, I couldn’t fucking stop screaming out all the years of fucking pain. I reached below his waist, and taking both knives, sent them piercing through his cock. My poppa choked on his blood. But I shut my eyes, still trying to push away the feel of his breath on my neck as a kid, of his fucking sweating chest pressed to my back, as he fucked me against the wall.

And I still couldn’t stop. I hacked down his legs, ripping through bone and muscle. I moved to his stomach and sliced apart the skin, then I got to his face. To those fucking dark eyes that were staring up at me glazed over, and raising both my hands, I slammed both blades down into each of his eyes. And yet I still couldn’t stop. I kept going, ripping through his jaw, his cheeks and his fucking skull.

I didn’t think I’d ever be able to stop, until…

“Flame! Stop… please!” a voice cried.

But lifting the blades, my hands shaking, I drove them through his skull, feeling the bone splinter under my hands.

“Flame! Stop! STOP!!!”

Tillie Cole's books