I pocketed it and stood, turning to face my attackers. “Where did you get this?” I asked.
“Why would I tell you that?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to kill you and all of your men right now.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve got the drop on you.”
I stretched both of my hands—each pointing at a different, still standing gang member. With a thought, and a simple crushing gesture, I made their bodies implode with sickening cracks. Each of their bone broke, some of the shards pushed out of their skin bags while others pierced vital organs. Both men screamed only for an instant, until system shock overcame them and pulled them under.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here!” someone called out, and the van reversed and pulled a quick spin that had its back facing me now.
The backdoors opened, and the leader of the gang, along with what remained of his men, rushed to get inside. I watched him and his people crawl away from me like rats. I didn’t follow them. I didn’t stop them from fleeing. I wanted them to leave. Leave, and tell others of what they’d seen tonight.
Leave, and warn others of what happens to fools that cross the Horseman of Devil Falls.
The sound of the van’s screeching tires faded away to nothing. I walked over to one of the corpses scattered nearby. This poor soul was still alive, still gargling on his own blood as each of his broken ribs pierced a different organ inside of his body. Lung, kidney, stomach, heart.
I watched the life go out of his eyes, curiously, as if I were standing near a zoo exhibit. When he was gone, I picked up his gun and examined it. It was a pistol, semi-automatic, unmarked and unregistered. Illegal. What interested me was the clip.
I pulled it out and dislodged one of the bullets that remained. Like the one I had pulled out of my body, this one had a pyramid on its tip. They all did. One by one I ejected them all into my hand and let the gun and the clip fall to the ground.
I sighed, breathing deeply, my chest rising and falling. The bullets in my hand all seemed to lightly buzz, and they did that because they were enchanted with an incredibly complicated, unique spell. A spell designed to stop supernatural regeneration. A spell designed to kill immortal, and almost immortal creatures as if they weren’t.
A spell of my very own design.
The bullets were mine.
CHAPTER TWO
The whole time here I had been pretending to be a prisoner, but now I was starting to feel like one. It had been a week since I last saw the Horseman. A week since Calder disappeared. A week since the Warden delivered his ominous warning. I had kept my head low, my back to the wall, my eyes peeled, and it had made me weak.
Whenever I had to leave my cell, I rarely made eye contact with the other inmates, but I could still hear their whispers. They knew what had happened in that little room that night. They whispered about how Knives had mopped the absolute floor with me, and the fact that I usually avoided her didn’t help.
Maybe if Calder was still around, if my link to the Obsidian Order wasn’t severed, if I thought I still had the Horseman’s ear. Then, maybe then, things would be a little different. I might walk around with my head held a little higher, instead of keeping my eyes on the ground, or on the metal tray on which my grey slop and stale bread sat.
I picked at it with my spoon, trying to find the will to eat anything. Eating usually wasn’t a problem. I loved food. The saltier the better. I would’ve killed for a plate of bacon—just bacon. It didn’t even have to be crispy, just cooked. I shut my eyes, wrapped my mind around the smell of bacon, and brought my spoon to my lips, but I couldn’t open my mouth.
The thought of eating it made me feel sick to my stomach.
I dropped the spoon on the tray and sat back in my chair, finally perking up and looking around. The usual eyes found their way to my little corner of the mess hall. Mages, shifters, outsiders. It was as if I was some kind of freak in a circus that no one could quite identify, and even fewer dared approach.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have cared that people were keeping their distance. I didn’t like most people, and I liked being around them even less. But it was the fact they were talking about me, whispering about me—that was what really set my blood to boil.
I focused my eyes on Garou, the biggest, baddest, nastiest shifter in D-Block. He didn’t so much have a scowl, or even contempt on his face as much as… pity. That I could stand even less than everything else. Even less than the whispers, and the glances. Even less than the sudden silence that fell as I walked by.
I wanted no one’s pity.
“What are you looking at?” I snapped.
Garou snorted and frowned, deepening the lines on his scarred and knotted face. He turned his bald head away shrugging his shoulders, and holy hell if that sucked even harder than pity. That alpha shifter couldn’t even be motivated to spare a few words, not even an insult, or a threat, at the asshole that had just poked him.
I really was at the bottom of the totem pole, and now I’d definitely lost my appetite.
I got up with my tray in my hands and turned, only for Knives to smack it out of my hand and send it clattering to the floor. The sound echoed through the canteen, bouncing off its high walls and ceiling and hushing all the conversation in the room.
I stared at the grey slop all over the floor, all over my shoes, then turned my eyes up at Knives.
She had a smug look on her face, her almond shaped eyes sharp as razors, her hair turned up into a high, long ponytail. “Oops,” she said, sarcasm oozing from her lips. “Did I do that?”
“Pick it up,” I said under my breath.
“What’s that? I can’t hear you.”
“I said, pick it up.”
“No, I don’t think I’m gonna do that. It’s your tray, you made a mess and… oh, it’s all over my feet. You’re gonna have to fix that—with your tongue, fiend bitch.”
I glared at Knives, then looked at the speck of grey on her foot. I wasn’t considering licking it clean. Absolutely not. I was wondering into how many pieces I’d have to break the tray before I could feed it all to her.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I asked.
“I mean, it’s only fair, right? You bumped into me, after all.”
I slowly gave her my eyes again. “How are you going to make me do that, Knives?” I looked around, “I don’t see any guards coming to help you win your fights.”
Her smug grin slowly disappeared. “I don’t need guards.”
“No? And I guess you could beat me up even with your collar, huh?”
“I could beat you up every day of the week.”
“I hate to break it to you, but you can’t. In fact, unless you go and grab whatever guard you’re fucking for favors, I’m going to spread what passes for your brains all over that table.”
Knives squared up to me, her nostrils flaring. “Say that again.”
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of movement. Guards. They weren’t getting near us, but they were present. After my last encounter with Officer Brickmore, after he’d thrown me into the room with Knives, Odessa, and their other friends—all of whom were there, like jackals—I wasn’t sure who among them I could trust. Not that I could really trust any of them, but there were some who followed the rules more closely than others.