Page 98 of Till Death Do Us Part

It was like a dance, moving through it like a dream. Gunfire in deafening flashes all around us, grenades exploding, and people screaming—all of it was muffled and soft, background noise that I danced to.

I left a trail of bodies on my way into the building, split skulls and bullet wounds, spatters of blood like rose petals as I got inside and found the basement door blasted off its hinges.

Elaine.

I made it downstairs, into the shelter, where my insides bubbled into fury at the sight. Eight more of them taken out on the floor, Yulia’s doing, but she’d gotten hit in the process, down on one knee clutching a bullet wound and gritting her teeth at the man who held Elaine with a knife to her throat.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t come any closer, or Elaine gets it. You hear me?”

I squeezed my hands tightly. “Oh, I hear you. I think I’ve seen you before. Around Blackbird HQ. Andrew, right? Andrew Walt. Yeah, I know your face.”

He laughed derisively. “Intimidation isn’t gonna work on me, Farkas. Let’s talk. Talk real nice and slow if you want Elaine to live. Boss wants you back at HQ.”

I smiled. “Oh, he’ll see me back at HQ. Don’t worry about that. Hey, Andrew?”

He wrinkled his nose. “Are you trying to fuck with me?”

“I just remembered where I’ve seen you. You stayed behind to clean up the breakroom one time. I came in after a shitty day and saw that. Lifted my mood a little bit. You even watered the plants. That was good of you, Andrew. Just for that, I’m going to give you three seconds to take that knife away from my wife’s throat, or I’m going to make you scream until I cut your tongue out, and then leave you to gurgle and choke to death on your own blood. How about that?”

“Don’t you fucking try anything,” he yelled. “I mean it! One step closer and I’ll kill her!”

“One…”

He clutched the knife tighter. “I’ll do it! I swear!”

“Two…”

“You ready to watch her die, Farkas?”

I looked her in the eye.

She didn’t look afraid.

No. If anything, she smiled, relieved, seeing me there.

In all this. Despite everything.

She trusted me.

“Three,” I said. Caitlyn hit a switch, and the alarm blared right next to him with a bright flash of light, and he winced against it, just for a millisecond, but enough for Yulia to whip her arm out and throw a knife across the room that planted into his shoulder, and he howled in pain, his grip on Elaine loosening, and I moved.

It would have made more sense to shoot him.

But all I could see was red. All I could see was that he’d held a knife to her throat.

Elaine.

He’d hurt her. He wanted to kill her.

My fist connected with his jawbone so hard I could feel the crack as it gave at the joint. The next, I turned and pivoted with a pistoned punch so hard into his chest that I felt his rib split, and he doubled over.

Not the most effective attack.

Not unless you wanted them to hurt before they went down.

I didn’t let up, one savage blow after another as he screamed and struggled to get away, a mindless blood rage that only ended when the sick sound of a blade in flesh came from behind him, and I came out of the trance to see Yulia stabbing him from behind. His lifeless body dropped to the floor, and Yulia sighed.

“If you want to torture somebody to death,” she said, “you can do it once we’re in safe territory.”