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A mangled body tumbled out into the frozen world, hitting the porch limply. Naked, bruised and bloody, it barely resembled a human being. And it didn’t move.
Not when Sire walked out after it and drove his hiking boot into its midsection. Not when he bent and latched long fingers around a narrow ankle. Not a sound did it make when he dragged it down the steps and across the yard.
Oh fuck, no. Please, no.
Connor couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. His eyes blurred with tears when the head rolled toward him and Jenna’s swollen, battered face was illuminated by sunlight.
Thoughts escaped him. There were none. Just grief that cleaved him down to the bone and beyond.
Then he snapped. The backpack hit the floor with a thud, and he bent and scooped up the gun on the fly as he bolted from the trees with the singular focus of causing pain. His fingers fumbled with the safety, flicking it on as his hands shifted onto the barrel.
Covering ground in what seemed like seconds, he was almost on top of Sire before the bastard clicked on to the shitstorm raining down on him. Connor saw the shock and surprise flash over pretty-boy features, then the fear andwhat the fuck?
Sire dropped Jenna’s leg and reached for the small of his back, but Connor was already swinging, using the heavy rifle like a baseball bat. The thick wooden stock resisted the pressure as it parted air, then connected with Sire’s knee from behind.
The impact resonated up Connor’s arms like a bomb blast, and a scream ripped through the morning as the harsh pop of Sire’s knee breaking cracked. The monster went down like a sack of bricks, thudding to the ground.
Blind with rage, Connor swung again, hitting the same knee again with just as much force. Another savage crunch, another scream, followed by a pained masculine wail. The sound only fueled Connor’s bloodlust, and he didn’t hesitate to switch the gun to a backswing for Sire’s other knee.
More bone crunching, a plaintive plea for him to stop.
Breathing heavily, Connor paused, his vision clearing briefly enough to take in the pathetic sprawl of his girl in a bloody heap. Already gone, her skin ash-gray, she’d suffered in the short time Sire had possessed her for a second time.
No more.
“Have some of it back,” he snarled at the man cowering on the ground. “Have all of it back, you motherfucking prick.” He lifted the gun vertically, brought the stock down on a vulnerable hand hard enough to turn the appendage black almost immediately. “Torturing women gets you off? Kidnapping and murder get you hard? There are special places in hell reserved for things like you, and you’ll get there once I’m done with you, I promise.” His voice was so unlike his usual easy-going tone, he didn’t recognize it. “Lucifer won’t have much left to play with by the time I’m finished.”
“Please. Please! Don’t! Oh Christ, it fucking hurts!”
Connor knew his sanity had slipped, accepted it and his actions. If he went to prison for this, what did it matter? Without Jenna, nothing fucking mattered anymore, so why hold back in punishing her killer?
Flipping the rifle around, he flicked off the safety and pressed the muzzle directly against the small bulge of Sire’s cock. “Oh, it’s going to. I hear extreme genital wounds can cause a person to bleed out pretty quick—you’re not going to.”
“Please, I don’t know who you are, but I have money. I have property. Anything you want, you can have it.” Eerie blue eyes, frightened and desperate, pleaded with him. They morphed into Jenna’s beautiful green ones, full of pain and terror, and Connor’s teeth bared in a snarl savage enough to send Luna scurrying back. “I have millions at my disposal, billions. Take it all. Take everything!”
“You think I want your dirty money? You think I want anything from you but the blood in your veins and your heart beating in my fist?” Connor roared the words, past furious and heading toward berserker status. “You took theonefucking person from me who could have spared your pitiful life.”
Sire’s gaze darted to Jenna. “Twenty-Two? Have her. Take her, for fuck’s sake. She’s been more trouble than she’s ever been worth.”
“I don’t need your permission to take my dead woman home.”
“Dead? She’s not dead. Not yet.” Obviously sensing a weakness, Sire spluttered over the words, his tongue and lips not moving fast enough to keep up with his brain. “She’s still alive. You can save her if you take her now, get her to a hospital.”
The notion distracted Connor from his killing mission, and he took a wary step toward the brutalized woman. How could someone so decimated still have a heart beating?
He realized his mistake when Sire rolled onto his side with a groan and yanked a handgun from the small of his back. The motherfucker grinned manically as he aimed, fired.
Fire blitzed up Connor’s thigh as the bullet ripped through muscle, seated deep into hard flesh. He bellowed, staggered as pain tore through his nervous system, then lunged faster than Sire expected. Berserker rage turned Connor’s brain into an automaton, his body working on autopilot, and he barely felt their bodies collide with enough force to snap his teeth together.
More fire streaked through his right shoulder, and a dark laugh bubbled free as he straddled Sire’s chest, snatched the gun from his hand, and struck the insanely grinning asshole across his perfect cheek. He heard the crack of bone breaking and tossed the weapon aside without thought. If he was going to smash flesh and bone into pulp, he would do it with his bare hands and take the ultimate satisfaction from doing so.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Blood rivered over sun-kissed ground.
Sitting beside the remnants of what had once been a man, Connor stared blankly at Jenna’s body and tried to remember what the fuck had happened during the apparent mental blackout he’d experienced. His hands were swollen, the knuckles ripped and bruised, and even with the body beside him, he couldn’t figure out why.
He couldn’t understand why his body hurt in so many places, or where the hell he was. He’d never been here before, didn’t recognize the sprawling cabin or the forest.
