Page 129 of Serpentine

I pull out of Aella’s mouth with a hiss, my eyes growing heavy-lidded, and Kylo turns around, clearing his throat again.

I crouch down before her, capturing her lips with mine. I can’t help but to give her something. As much as I’m still upset, I fucking need it, too. “I’ll be back, Bambi. Don’t go anywhere.”

“How do we know this isn’t bullshit information? This place looks well abandoned,” Blaze says as we approach an abandoned hospital. We’d gotten intel from someone in town that Miles was here.

A good samaritan we’d helped had seen a suspicious van coming and going from where she drank her coffee on her porch. When we told our network of spiders in town, she felt she had to tell someone.

“We don’t. But we have to try. He’s been gone too long. Who knows how bad his injuries are? We have to get him back,” I tell them.

Kylo loads the last bullet into his gun and nods as we fan out.

“Stay quiet on the comms unless you find something,” I tell them, and no one says a thing. It’s all the confirmation I need.

I push into the broken front door. The room is littered with paper, and the walls are peeling from disuse. The front desk looks like something out of a horror film, and I can almost see a woman sitting behind it, waiting for anyone to come in.

The room splits off from the desk to the right and the left, and I stop, looking both ways and pointing my rifle down at them in case I need to use it.

I don’t know which is a good option, but I see an open door at the end of the hall to the left, so I turn that way, slowly creeping down the hall. I monitor my back while I do so.

“Second floor is clear,” I hear, and no one replies. Keep moving.

“The third floor is clear,” Blaze says in a hushed tone.

“Make your way downstairs,” I tell them as I approach the door. It seems to lead into some sub-basement. I click the light on my helmet, slowly descending and listening for signs of life.

There are none.

Not until I reach the bottom and hear someone shout an alert that they’ve been invaded.

I turn, shooting two Jackals one after the other, the first in his forehead, the second in his chest.

“Basement, now! I found the fun!” I tell the boys and hear feet behind me as Blaze takes up my six.

“What the fuck, man? All this over his fucking sister?” Kylo asks as we move down the hall, encountering man after man.

I think of the drugs and the things I’d found that didn’t lead me to any conclusions that this kind of action was needed. It doesn’t line up. But if I know Miles, his smart mouth has gotten us answers. Even if he’s been tortured.

“I found him!” Kylo says from ahead, having moved to scout out the hall before us.

My heart skips two beats before I burst into action, keeping my rifle trained high and rushing into the room Kylo is standing on the precipice of as if frozen.

When I reach it, I know why.

Miles is hanging from four meat hooks in the middle of what looks like a body cooler. His feet are dangling, and his body looks lifeless. I forget my weapon, dropping it to hang around my shoulders and neck. I know they’ve secured the door if someone happens down the hall.

“Miles?!” I shout, lifting his lolled head and slapping it a few times.

If there ever was a moment in my life where the world felt like it was caving in on itself, this is it.

“Don’t you fucking leave me, Miles! I’ll follow you to hell and beat your goddamned ass!” Tears make their way to the edges of my eyes as he finally comes around, his one eye that’s not swollen lifting open slightly.

“Brax,” he manages. His lips are cracked and bleeding. His breathing is ragged at best.

He’s fucking dying.

I tug him to me, forgetting the amount of pain he must be in, and he howls, reminding me.

“Help me get him down!” I command, and Kylo and Blaze move to lift him as I slowly and painstakingly remove the hooks from inside his flesh.