Page 71 of Beastly Armory
As she falls backwards onto the carpet, I lunge and sit atop her, gripping her torso with my thighs. With the tip of my blade, I puncture her carotids on either side until the red gushes from her open neck wounds, spurting like geysers onto my hands and exposed forearms. Her body jolts in frantic twitches until it settles, her eyes stiff and wide with horror. Her last sight was me hovering over, delivering her to death.
Catching my breath, I wipe off each side of the knife on my jeans, then shove it back into its home.
Well, I guess I’ve killed a person. Before I can think too deeply about that, my shock is interrupted as my phone buzzes in my pocket. Even before I slide it out, I know ithasto be Echoes. She probably spied on the entire situation. Scrubbing my hands on the dead woman’s dress, I answer the call.
“Yeah?”
“You look like you could use some help,” she says in a voice that’s way too calm and patronizing.
“Shut up and fucking do something. Now.”
The lights in the place go out a second later. For months, I studied the cavernous hallways of the brothel to get the armory key, and I was the best at hide-and-seek down here when we were little. If Echoes can hold off on Strauss’s security coming to find me, I’ll have a chance to get back to my car... and hopefully find Max.
The feel of the cold stones cuts into my finger pads as I graze them along the walls, counting the doors until the seventeenth on the right. Pushing in, I enter my escape room, the old kitchen cellar with some stairs leading out to the back of the building. Shuffling along the floor, I edge toward the west, blindly reaching out for a doorknob.
Lights blare brightly as they turn back on. A brassy ornate knob sits in my hand, and I turn it until the winter air blasts me in the face, the threat of snow hovering in the purple sky.
I’m able to sneak through the back grounds toward my car, scanning the lot for Max’s Barracuda, but I don’t see it. As I dart out into the main street, I considerwhere he may be and come up with only one conclusion.
Strauss.
And certain death.
Flooring the gas, I speed through the south’s streets, heading north as bile rises into my throat. Dusk spills over into the light quickly, filling the sky with darkness as I approach dangerous territory. My heart rate climbs as images of what I may find near the consort’s land invade my mind.
Ravaging down the twisted lanes leading up a small incline to Strauss’s mansion, I have to turn on the headlights in order to see anything meaningful in front of me. When my phone jiggles in my pocket, I almost release a terrified scream, but I pull it out and toss it onto the passenger seat, knowing full well it’s either my brother or Echoes, telling me not to do what I’m about to.
Each twisted pine and old oak hides something I may not want to see behind it, but I still strain my neck to peer around them as the car approaches the tall iron fence at the entrance.
Before I reach them, I slam on the brakes at the horror before me.
The gates have been blown off their hinges, guard towers leaning dangerously sideways with the stones from their base crumbled in rough piles like everything has been blown up.
On the largest pillar of rubble stands my lion, on top of a bloody battlefield, a heap of dead men surrounding his feet. In one of his hands hangs amachine gun, and in the other, a severed head. Tendons and clinging skin swing from the base of it in the crisp winter breeze as it drips with what was left of the man’s life.
Other pieces of Max’s stage are almost indistinguishable. Maybe a half of a leg here, some arms there… eyes and entrails. A guard has only a torso, but remains alive and attempts to crawl away on the only elbow he has left. Max raises his gun and sprays him with bullets in the back of his skull, brain matter shooting out from the large wound with each bullet.
If my vision could make out that what was before me was indeed real, I believe I’d vomit at the sight.
Turning slowly, Max’s half naked body puffs up to the largest I’ve ever seen it. The T-shirt he was wearing has been shredded, almost blown off his top, leaving his exposed chest sliced with small cuts from debris, each oozing with blood. From all the carnage he’s caused, ash and gore coat almost all his skin, blackened as much as the look he gives me through the dusty windshield.
When he sees it’s me, something falters in his countenance, and he drops the gun and head, collapsing to his knees. Hurling myself out of the car, I dash over to him. Despite everything on him, the stench of liquor is still strong, pungent over the smell of burning destruction.
“Fox,” he moans with a sluggish slur as my feet near his body.
“I’m here, lion. Come on, we have to move.”
“No! Leave me.” Every word he says is mumbled so heavily, they seem trapped, barely able to depart from histhick lips. Squeezing his eyes shut, he avoids my gaze. Quietly, he meditates, “Just fucking leave me here.”
Grasping under his large arms, I try to pull him to a stand. “Up and at ’em, soldier. We’ve gotta move.”
When he’s able to, his eyelids open, the wide pupils finding mine after a moment of unfocused haze. “Help me,” he says in a tiny voice I haven’t heard since he was squatting over a hornet’s nest one time during hide-and-seek. I’ll deal with his dick later. Right now, I need to get us both out of here.
Shuffling to his feet, he leans on me as I walk him over to the Victor and shove him inside. As soon as I close the door, he slouches, resting his dark head of hair against the window.
“Where’s your car?” I yell to keep him awake, but when I look at him, his eyes are focused, the orange lights of the dashboard lighting up his stoic face. Reversing quickly, I spin around and head back down the winding drive toward the main street.
Max moans and slumps farther in his seat. He rubs his chest with a hand, probably attempting to soothe his open sores. “Left it down the road... Gemini can get it.”