But Anatoly was aiming low, thinking I might be down there on my feet, while I was really up here in a high-hide like that Mr Malcolm man in Jurassic Park. You can’t find me, Anatoly-saurus Rex.
My upper lip peeled back as I returned fire and the smoke cleared further, letting me see exactly where Anatoly and Anastasia were taking cover.
I took the real grenade from my pocket, giving zero shits about the consequences anymore, especially as Brutus let out a whimper of fear below the car and reminded me how much these motherfuckers needed to die. The sound gilded my soul in chaotic vengeance and a snarl ripped from my throat as I pulled the pin and launched the grenade towards the assholes in front of me.
The grenade bounced under the car they were hiding behind and Anastasia went running a second before a boom sent the car flying up to the roof. The floor exploded simultaneously and Anatoly lost limbs in the absolute carnage as he fell away into the huge hole torn into the parking lot. He cried out in fear and agony, but the sound was cut off as the wreckage of the car slammed back down on top of him and I felt a twisted satisfaction over killing the man who’d killed my Niall.
The Land Rover started up beneath me and I realised some scared little mouse was hiding inside it. I twisted my Uzi down onto the surface of the hood right above the driver’s seat and pulled the trigger, holding on for dear life as the vehicle swung sharply around, revealing Brutus where he’d been laying beneath it in a pool of blood.
A male voice cried out in terror from inside and the Land Rover jerked to a halt as the guy got out of the car, raising a pistol just as my Uzi rang empty. But a blur of motion behind him collided with his back as he took the first shot and it went whistling past my ear as my dog threw off his aim.
Brutus snarled and tore into the man, bringing him to his knees before going for his throat, my little beasty holding his poor injured leg off the ground as he ripped into flesh and bone, and our enemy died in his jaws.
“Thanks, Bruty!” I called, leaving him to chew up his new plaything as I turned to hunt for Anastasia. She was running for the ramp and I grinned darkly as I locked her in my sights leaping off of the Land Rover and tossing my gun. I knew exactly how I preferred to kill her anyway.
I chased after her, blonde hair whipping left and right behind her as she disappeared around the corner. But I was fuelled by the kind of rage and hatred only grief could put there, and nothing would stop me from catching her and making her pay for what she’d done.
I tore down the ramp, gaining on her with every footfall as she threw panicked glances back at me over her shoulder and I knew she saw her death coming for her.
I let out a manic laugh worthy of Niall O’Brien, letting her fear slide in deeper, toying with her as I closed in on her from behind. This was how he would have wanted to be avenged. With all my sanity stripped away and nothing but madness guiding my movements. I was a true assassin now, one more terrifying than anything I could have imagined I’d become. I was Anastasia’s monster, a creature stitched together from her worst fears, and I’d be making good on ensuring every one of them came true.
“Dead – dead – dead!” I yelled and she put on a spurt of speed in desperation.
Gunfire sounded off somewhere below us, but my mind couldn’t piece together anything beyond my hunt as I focused on the only thing that existed to me anymore. Anastasia. My final victim, and the bloodiest death I’d ever offered up to anyone.
Her heels were slowing her down, but my feet were bare and free, giving me all the advantage I needed to close the distance between us. Before she could round the next turn in the ramp, I collided with her and she slammed face first into the wall ahead of us before we both fell to the ground with me on top.
I threw a savage punch into her shattered nose and she answered with a furious blow of her own, my rib popping under the impact. But I felt no pain. There was a beast of hell housed within this human flesh now, and the wild, frantic look in her eyes told me she knew what had her in its clutches.
I slammed her head down against the concrete, dazing her and giving me a moment to snatch the spider knife from her pocket.
As her eyes refocused, she saw it, the blade glinting above her and the bloody, beaten girl she’d thought she’d had at her mercy holding it ready to end this. I had all the power now, every ladybird of it clasped in my fist, and I held her in suspense for an eternal second before I drove the knife right into her fucking tits.
She wailed in agony, but it was nothing to the second scream she gave me when I did it again. And again, and again, and again. I popped those bouncy Brendas and made her squeal like a piggy sent to market. I was her butcher, her cruel and unforgiving end. But her meat was rotten and rancid, and I didn’t want a single lick of it.
“Say you’re sorry and I’ll call you an ambulance,” I growled and her eyes widened with hope, blood bubbling from her lips.
“I’m s-sorry,” she garbled and I leaned down so my mouth was next to her ear, sliding the knife under her ribs until I felt the moment it pierced her wretched heart.
“You’re an ambulance,” I whispered.
The fight in her gave out and I leaned back to watch the life fade from her eyes and her body fell still beneath me, a bitter kind of quiet descending in the wake of my revenge.
The gunshots had fallen silent in the lower level of the parking lot, and that quiet continued to grow, pressing in on all sides and stealing me away again.
I ached for the company of my psychos, but I knew that we would never be whole again without Niall.
I shuddered, the sweetness of vengeance soured by what it was in aid of. Niall was gone. The crazy, unshackled hellhound I’d found a kindred spirit in forever parted from me now. The first man to see me and not recoil, the first to see value in me that no one else ever had. And now he was lost to this world, and I didn’t know how to move forward or even if I could.
But as I turned my own knife back on myself, aiming to chase him into death and seek some kind of solace there, Jack and Mateo appeared, bloody and out of breath. They didn’t slow for a single second as they saw how close my own blade was to my throat.
Jack gripped my arms and Mateo snatched the knife from my hand before I let out a horrible sob that echoed everywhere and nowhere. Because my Hellfire was gone. And all I wanted to do was take us all away from this world to go and find him in the afterlife.
I groaned as I stared up at the cloudless sky, a mixture of numbness and pain radiating through my body as I cursed myself and worked to breathe through the seconds which dragged by endlessly.
The screaming had given way to gunfire, every torturous second of the fight playing out while I couldn’t so much as turn my head thanks to the tranquiliser dart which had struck me in the left pec.
Panic consumed me whole and chewed me raw while I waited in the dark, my body cocooned in the metallic embrace of the car roof I’d landed on thanks to my two floor drop right outa the parking lot window.
I had to assume I hadn’t been meant to fall otherwise the dart seemed kinda pointless, but the list of people who would want to take me alive was pretty damn short. What kind of fucking amateur tranquilises someone when they’re sitting on a wall over a damn precipice?
My lips parted on the name I’d been trying to yell while the drugs kept me trapped here, but I barely managed to force a whisper of it past them.