Rubix laughed, bunching the T-shirt higher.
My teeth clamped on my bottom lip. I poured every inch of hate and repugnance into my gaze.
If he wanted me scared—he’d achieved it.
If he wanted me to scream or beg or cry—he’d be sorely disappointed.
I won’t.
Cobra and Sycamore pulled my wrists, jerking me flatter against the table.
“Tell me again … what you said about Arthur,” Rubix demanded.
“Yes, tell us the part where he’s a hundred times more man than us,” Cobra chuckled, blowing a kiss in my direction.
“Yeah, the part where you’ll be laughing at us.” Sycamore’s eyes were luminescent with toxic lust.
Don’t fall into their trap.
I knew they were taunting me, but at the same time, I couldn’t let them talk ill of Arthur.
I looked at all three Dagger Rose bastards and said loudly, clearly, and with utmost conviction. “Arthur is a thousand times the man you will ever be. He’ll find and kill you. And then you will see for yourself how pathetic you truly are.”
Rubix laughed softly. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we, Cleo? We’ll see who wins this coming war.” He placed his chilled hands on the paper-thin skin of my throat.
I froze.
Our eyes locked.
With the barest of voices, Rubix ordered, “Prepare her. The sooner we do this—the better.”
I wanted to ask what would happen.
I wanted to disappear and never open my eyes again.
But Cobra moved so fast.
A blur.
A shout.
What—
Then pain.
Impossible, profound pain.
Cobra struck me with something I didn’t see.
Pain against my temple. Agony around my throat.
I moaned as the agony intensified, casting out waves of black fog. My mind sank deeper into the ink, faster and faster, succumbing to whatever they’d struck me with.
“Again,” Rubix shouted, slicing through my thick haze.
I tried to speak but my tongue wouldn’t work.
I tried to move but my body had disappeared.
There was nothing but thoughts and whispers and pain. Endless, measureless pain.
Cobra obeyed.
The agony struck again.
It smashed through my consciousness, sending me into drunken spirals.
Around and around.
I’m on a merry-go-round.
I’m slipping.
I’m falling.
It came again.
One last strike.
The world turned from solid to swimming; I was sucked down a drain into a whirlpool of sickness.
Chapter Six
Kill
Running away had a certain appeal.
If I knew he wouldn’t come after me, I’d steal a bike and put Dagger Rose in my dust. But to leave, I’d have to cut my heart out, because I’d never be whole unless I was with her.
She’d saved me all while ruining me.
And now I was trapped.
Indefinitely. —Kill, age fifteen
There were approximately five liters of blood in an average man.
Rubix owes me every last drop in his body.
Cleo had been in their clutches for fifty-five hours.
Ninety thousand seconds since she’d slept angelically beside me.
Fuck …
No, wait. That’s wrong.
Three thousand six hundred seconds were in an hour. So that made it one hundred and ninety-eight thousand seconds since I’d last seen her.
A cold sweat dripped down my spine.
Another mistake. Another mathematical solvent I’d fucked up.
Shit.
Had this injury stripped me of whatever gift I’d been given? Were all my trading sequences, tricks, and secret formulas dashed upon the rocks of my useless fucking brain?
My mind was darkness and smog.
My neurons faulty and extinct.
Snippets of knowledge were there, but not in their entirety. The codes were broken—unconnected and fragmented.
Shit, I am defective.
Fear stalked me, closing its claws around my thoughts.
I forced my bike faster.
It doesn’t matter.
I didn’t have time for self-fucking-pity.
Cleo had been held hostage for one hundred and ninety-eight thousand seconds. In order to pay the grim reaper, I had to extract the perfect amount of vengeance before killing those who hurt my woman.
My headache intensified; sludge coated my synapses. I was swimming upstream and out of breath.
There’s approximately five liters of blood in an average man.
Punishing the bike with another burst of speed, I beat my brain into submission. In a spark of intelligence, a figure came to me.
A figure of exact revenge.
My thoughts turned from chaos to calmness.
Five liters spread out over fifty-five hours.
Zero-point-zero-zero-five drops of blood for every second.
That’s how much they’ll pay when I get my hands on them.
Darkness was our ally as we purred through the sleepy township run by Dagger Rose.
With a growl of mechanical power, we slipped through suburbia.
My old family.
My old home.
It wasn’t too late—about midnight—but the streets were abandoned. There were no teenagers playing on the seesaw and swings where I’d kissed Cleo for the first time. No couples stumbling out of the diner.
Vacant.
Soulless.
Just us.
My body ached as if we’d been traveling for days, and my head—shit, my head was a damn wasp nest of agony.