Page 77 of Depraved

“Oh,” he faked a look of surprise, “here, let me show you.” The camera moved before it zoomed in on a finger laying in a pool of blood on the ground. A sudden coldness hit at my core, a flush of adrenaline burning a hole in my stomach. I was too fucking shocked to say anything.

“Now,” the camera moved back to his ugly motherfucking face, “that’s the first digit she lost. She has nine more. Catch my drift?”

Wiping my sweaty palm down my face, all I tasted was horrid, sour bile.

“By the way, Granite. Have you fucked the blue-haired pixie before? If you did, you’d know how fucking soft her skin is.” I heard him inhale deep. “Oh, and she smells like jasmine—all fresh and fuckable. Do you think she likes it up the ass?”

“You sick motherfucker, if you don’t let her go right now⁠—”

“What then, huh? What the fuck are you going to do about it? You have an hour to get the girl home, otherwise your pixie girl will have a very unfortunate encounter with a snake.”

I bared my teeth, flexing my arm and finger muscles, ready to gut this motherfucker from nose to navel when we were face to face again. “You listen to me, Slither. And you listen good. If you hurt another hair on her head, I will hunt you down, and I will skin you alive, cut you up, and feed you to the fucking fish.”

Another scream ripped through the phone speaker, and it ate through my skin, slicing its way to my heart.

“Whoops.” Slither laughed. “There goes another finger. Guess now we’re down to eight.”

“Mother—”

“An hour, Granite. You have a fucking hour.”

He hung up, the screen nothing but black. I couldn’t stop staring at it, my mind unable to process what the fuck I just saw.

Ink cursed then screamed as if he had the hounds of hell mauling him, tearing the flesh from his bones. Glass shattered, steel clattered, and Ink’s cries ripped through his chest like a thousand demons, the echo of pain resounding from his roars. Slither was torturing Neon, killing her slowly, and there was nothing we could do about it. The one woman my father asked me to protect, and I couldn’t do it.

I was just about to crush the phone into pieces when a message alert chimed. My heart sank to the soles of my feet, and dread churned in the pit of my stomach. That message chime was like the fucking church bells before a funeral—foreboding and ominous.

I stopped breathing when I waited for the message to open. And when it did, my fear was confirmed.

“Jesus Christ.”

“What is it?” Ink grabbed the phone from my hand. I didn’t want him to see it, but my reflexes were delayed as shock still zapped through my system.

Neon wasn’t hanging upside down anymore. Still bound by her ankles, her upper body had been hoisted up, a giant hook pierced through the skin of her back. Her face…oh God, her face. It was…it was horrifying.

Ink stumbled back as he looked at the picture, falling flat on his ass. His jaw clenched, nostrils flaring and eyes protruding as anger started to set in.

“Jesus Christ. Neon,” he muttered, her name nothing but a soft sound from his lips.

I watched as the phone slipped from his grasp, the veins in his arms bulging, and tears slipping down his face. I’d known the man for years, but I had never seen him shed a tear. It was one of the most heartbreaking things I ever had to see. The strong, big-mouthed man-whore tearing apart at the seams.

Dear God, this was not part of the plan. This was not how shit was supposed to go down. We were losing control over this war, and it had hardly fucking begun.

“We have to take Alyx home,” Ink gritted between clenched teeth.

I sat on a crate in the corner. “You know we can’t.”

“Why the fuck not?”

My eyes met his, and I knew he knew why we couldn’t let Alyx go. It was no more an option than getting Neon back was a guarantee.

My throat felt like a desert as I tried to swallow. Words escaped me, my lungs numb and unable to expand.

“Motherfucker!” Ink lost his shit, jumped up, and with one violent sweep, he knocked every tool that was on the table next to him to the ground. “What the fuck? She has nothing to do with this, man. How…why the fuck did he—Jesus, Granite. What the fuck do we do now?”

Weaving my fingers through my hair, pulling at the roots, I tried to focus, as I couldn’t fucking think straight. “He made it clear, man. If we don’t take Alyx back home within the hour and publicly take responsibility for her kidnapping…he kills Neon.”

“No!” Both Ink and I turned and looked at Alyx standing next to Dutch, eyes wide and face white. “What is going on?”