Page 36 of Obey

Devil being dead was entirely secondary.

“This is for Tinker,” she hissed. “The bikes are just beyond the tree line. Go. I’ll catch up.”

“You can’t!” I hissed. “What are you doing? I need you to come with me!”

She grabbed me and yanked me toward her. “He killed the love of my life. I saw Tinker die in front of me. All those years, wasted. All those years that we can never get back. And it’s Devil’s doing. Devil’s fault. I’ve been silent for too long, and I’m not going to stay silent anymore. He deserves to die for what he’s done. Go, girl!” Then she was up and rushing back the way I’d come. Back toward Devil and his cursing and mad, wounded-bear rampage through the woods.

I watched her go with my mouth hanging open. What. The. Fuck?

Then I realized what I was doing and jerked into action. She might be insane and willing to risk her own life in hand-to-hand combat with Devil, but I wasn’t. I wanted that bike. I’d just have to trust that she’d catch up to me the way she said she would.

I jumped up and continued on my way, praying for the tree line and hoping like hell I was running in the right direction. It was impossible to tell in the dark, but I could still see the glow of whatever light that was in the distance, and if that had been my marker in the first place, it made sense that it still was.

I broke through the trees without warning and almost fell over the first of two bikes parked in the darkness. Skidding to a halt, I looked from one to the other. They seemed to be exactly the same, so I went for the one closest to me. I could see the glint of the key shoved into the ignition, and thanked Sioux for leaving the key with the bike rather than thinking she’d have a chance to hand it over to me later. I jumped on the bike, reached for the key in the ignition...

And heard the blood-curdling scream of a woman from the woods.

Shit. Sioux.

I sprang off the bike and ran for the woods, my eyes on the place where I’d heard the scream. That woman was my only friend here, and though I didn’t want to come face-to-face with Devil, I wasn’t going to leave her to fight her way out of the forest on her own if she was in trouble. I couldn’t. She’d saved me when I needed it. The least I could do was save her.

I got just into the trees again and jerked to a stop, breath heaving and legs shaking. Where was she? What had happened?

Then I saw them. Two people were struggling in the darkness, one of them much larger than the other. The moonlight was filtering down through the trees, just enough to give me a staccato, stop-action view of the situation. Two people struggling. The glint of moonlight off the machete in Sioux’s hand. The whirl of her jacket as he spun her around. The sneer on his face as he watched her fly through the air.

The sound of her body hitting a trick with a thunk that made me feel sick.

Sioux on her feet again, one side of her face darkened with what could only be blood. More moonlight on the machete. She was still up and fighting, then, and I braced myself, looking for an entry point and wishing I had any weapon. I bent down and picked up a fairly large branch, weighing it in my hand and wondering how much damage I could do to Devil’s head with it. Was it enough to bash his skull in?

I thought it was. If I managed to swing it hard enough.

I ducked down and started creeping toward where the battle was happening, doing my best to stay behind Devil. I was close enough that if he turned around, he might see me, but with luck, he’d be so concerned with what Sioux was doing that he didn’t have time to do anything like that.

He’d have to be a fucking idiot to turn his back on someone who was actively trying to kill him, and though Devil had never been smart, I didn’t think he was that dumb.

I started moving quicker, dashing across the hard ground and taking cover behind trees as I came to them. Up ahead, Sioux was somehow holding her own, dodging around him and swinging at him with the machete. I heard her hit him twice, his hiss telling me that she’d sliced through the skin.

She laughed every time she hit him, the low, menacing laugh of someone who’s lost their mind.

“What are you doing?” he hissed, sounding both shocked and outraged at her behavior.

“You killed Tinker,” she told him in monotone. “And now it’s time for you to pay.”

She rushed toward him, the machete held high, and I increased my pace, trying to get to them before she reached him. This was it. This was going to be the moment when she either stabbed him or he killed her, and I had a very bad feeling that she was going to come out on the losing end. If I could just get there before anything happened and at least knock him out...

The glint of silver in Devil’s hand, a quick move, and a gasp from Sioux. Devil’s hand retreating from her stomach and then shoving toward it again.

Another grunt. A long, sucking breath. And Sioux fell to the ground.

I skidded to a stop and watched, aghast, as Devil stabbed her again and again, the movements driven by rage and betrayal. She might have been alive when she first fell, but there was no way she’d survive that onslaught.

He was killing her as I watched.

I must have gasped in disgust and horror, because he suddenly turned and looked up at me, his eyes locating me in the moonlight and coming to rest on my face.

I turned and ran into the darkness, my feet faster than they had ever been as they carried me back to the bike Sioux had left for me. I dodged to the other bike, yanked the keys out of the ignition and pocketed them, and then jumped on the original bike and started it. A quick rev of the motor, a split second to familiarize myself with the bike itself, and then I hit the gas, taking off across the hard Arizona dirt and skidding across a patch of gravel as I went. Ahead of me, the light Sioux had told me to aim for shone brightly, illuminating the start of a street.

I didn’t know where that street went or how long it was, but I ducked over the handlebars and rode for it like a bat out of hell. Devil would get to the bike I’d just left, find that there weren’t any keys in it, and have to go back to the house for another one. It would give me at least ten minutes of time to get a head start. More, if I was lucky.