More gunfire rang out. More bodies in the small yard.Too many bodies. Viktor definitely couldn’t count. We’d have words about that later if we weren’t dead on the dilapidated tarmac.
Viktor.
I whirled around, searching for him, winning another fight that passed me by.
My knuckles hurt.
My ear.
My arm as a blade drove into my tricep.
Then I found Viktor and everything stopped.
Cos every fucker I could see was dead.
Except him.
Except me.
Except Priest, because he wasn’t fuckin’ here.
8
NASH
It had always fascinated me how the relative calm of a night ride—even one where you were scouring the earth for your kidnapped lover—could change in the blink of an eye.
I was in the middle of the pack, tucked up in a jacket that now smelled like Saint—of forests and hemp. Penned in by Folk and Mateo. Like they were afraid that if they took their collective coddling away from me, I’d ride my hog in front of the next oncoming truck.
Couldn’t deny I’d thought about it. Not because I wanted to die, and I’d never leave Orla. But I was curious. About what it was like to not feel how I did right now.
Desperate.
Scared.
Violent, now the numbness I thought would save me had deserted me for good, leaving me trapped in the vortex I’d woken with two days ago. But not like I wanted to kill someone. Despite the life I’d led and the things I’d done, I wasn’t about that shit, and this felt more like the slightest puff of wind would trigger an explosion no one I loved would survive, and it was all I could do to keep my hog upright.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice Folk veering off-road at first, skidding into a passing lay-by off the country lane we’d been burning down on our way to revisit the original house of horror I’d stumbled on all those weeks ago with Ranger and Saint.
You should’ve killed Priest then.
True story, despite the consequences being as unsurvivable as this, and I was glad Ranger was out with Alexei tonight. It was getting harder and harder to look him in the eye.
I tailed Folk, rolling to a stop beside him.
His helmet was off, head cocked in his best impression of Saint.
“What is it?”
“Cut your engine.”
I killed my V-Rod as Mateo flanked me and did the same.
His frown matched mine, blazing from his amber eyes as he flipped his visor. “What?—”
“Shh.” Folk sprang from his bike and took a few steps away from us, gaze whipping back and forth before it settled on the direction we’d been heading—to the prefab torture chamber. We’d paid it more visits than I could count in the past few weeks but come up blank every time. No fresh blood. No new tyre tracks. And it made no fucking sense. My heart screamed at me over and over that it was where we needed to be, but Priest hadn’t been back since the night I’d stopped Ranger killing him.
“This is why you will install the cameras tonight, zolotoy mal'chik.”