And then I started cutting him.
I used small, shallow cuts at first. A nick here, a thin slice there. Little more than paper cuts, really. But the longer I worked on him, the deeper I went, slowly sawing into his neck, his arms, and the thick muscles of his chest.
I didn’t particularly enjoy torturing people. In fact, it went against everything that Fletcher had ever taught me about being an assassin. No kids, no pets, no torture.
But Sophia’s life was at stake, and there was nothing that would keep me from rescuing her, not even Fletcher’s
killer code of honor.
Owen and Warren stood a few feet away, watching the
whole thing. Every slice I made, every bit of blood that
spurted out of the guy’s wounds, every muffled scream he
let out through the tape over his mouth as I dug my blades deeper and deeper into his tender flesh. They didn’t say a word, and they didn’t try to interfere. Even if they’d wanted to, Owen and Warren couldn’t have stopped me. Not from doing whatever it took to save Sophia. Not even from this.
The guy writhed on the ground, trying to buck me off, but I dug my knees into his chest and used my weight to hold him in place.
And then I cut him some more.
It went on for about three minutes before the guy started shaking his head up and down, as though he were trying to scream,
I rocked back onto my heels and coldly considered him. “I’m going to take the tape off your mouth now.
You’d better be ready to tell me everything I want to know. Because if this is a trick and you even
The guy furiously nodded again, his head moving even faster than before.
I leaned forward and yanked the tape off his mouth.
“Now, where is the woman Grimes took? What does he plan on doing with her?”
“She’s—she’s at camp!” he sputtered. “It’s about another hour away, just like the old man said!”
“Is she still alive?” I had to ask the question, even though my heart felt as hard and heavy as a brick in my chest, dreading the answer.
“Yes! Yes, she’s still alive!” the guy said, the words tumbling out of his mouth one after another. “Grimes wants her for himself! He told the rest of us not to even think about touching her!”
I didn’t have to ask him any more questions, because the guy started babbling all about Sophia, Grimes, and the camp. He told me everything that I wanted to know and a few things that I didn’t. Apparently, in his free time, Grimes liked to go trolling through Ashland, especially around the community college. Once he saw a girl he liked, he grabbed her off the street, out of one of the parking lots, or even right off campus and brought her up to his mountain camp, and he didn’t let her go until she died from the torture, rape, and abuse that he subjected her to. Occasionally, Grimes would get bored with a girl before he killed her, and he’d give her to the rest of his men as a reward for their loyal service. The girl always died real quick after that.
The whole thing made me sick, but it matched up with the information in Fletcher’s file.
But what was especially revealing was that Grimes wasn’t the only one in on the act. Hazel enjoyed torturing the girls even more than Grimes did, beating them, berating them, and using her Fire magic on them again and again for no real reason other than the fact that she could. Sometimes she was the one who would go trolling and bring back whatever young man caught her eye to meet the same sad fate as the kidnapped girls.
“How many men does Grimes have?” I asked. “Where are they stationed? What kind of weapons do they have?
Do any of them have elemental magic?”
The guy hesitated, so I cut him again to encourage him to keep talking. After a few more slices with my knife, he sang like the proverbial canary.
According to my new best friend, Grimes currently had around three dozen men working for him—a mix of dwarves, giants, vampires, and humans, all armed with guns, knives, and whatever other weapons they could make or scrounge up. But Grimes and Hazel were the only ones with elemental magic. A few guards patrolled the camp perimeter, but Grimes counted on his ruthless reputation to keep most folks away, along with the booby traps that surrounded his camp.
Apparently, my guy was a relatively new recruit and had been sent down to do a sweep through the park and make sure that no one was hanging around who shouldn’t have been and that no one had tracked Sophia to Bone Mountain.
“Grimes said that some woman tried to stop him,” the guy babbled. “Some chick who got lucky and took out a couple of our guys. He said that once he had the dwarf under control, he was going to go back for the other chick—and that he was going to teach her a lesson that she wouldn’t forget.”
“Well, Grimes doesn’t have to worry about finding me,” I said. “Because I’m going to find him first. Anything else you want to add?”
The guy didn’t say anything, so I casually twirled my knives in my hands to motivate him one final time.
“That’s it! That’s it!” he sputtered again. “That’s all I know. I swear! I swear! I wouldn’t lie, not to you.” He
stared at the knives in my hands—knives stained a bright, glossy crimson with his blood. He shuddered, but a desperate, hopeful light still flared in his eyes, despite what I’d done to him. “So . . . I was helpful, right? I mean,like, really,
“Oh, yeah. You sang your sweet little heart out for me.”
I didn’t add that it had been a foregone conclusion.
Few people could resist more than a few minutes of torture, even me.
“So . . . you . . . you’re going to let me live, right?” the guy asked.
Behind me, Owen and Warren remained still and silent. They hadn’t said a word while I’d carved up and questioned the guy, and they didn’t speak now. It wouldn’t have done them—or him—any good. Because I had a promise to keep to Jo-Jo and Sophia—and Fletcher too.
“You said that you’ve been working for Grimes for, what, six months now?”
The guy nodded his head.
“Tell me,” I asked. “Of all those poor women Grimes has kidnapped and brought to his camp in the time that you’ve been here, exactly how many of them did you rape and torture along with the others?”
He winced, as though I’d caught him with his hand in a cookie jar instead of talking about the horrible bru— talization of so many innocent victims. “Um . . . well . . . you see . . .” His voice trailed off, and he gave me a sheep— ish grin, followed by a shrug, as if to say that he was just one of the guys.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought.”
I plunged my knife into his heart. The guy opened his mouth to finally let out a good, long, loud scream, along with all the others he’d been holding back while I’d been cutting him. But I denied him even that much mercy. I ripped the blade out of his chest and sliced it across his throat before he could utter a single sound. He bled out quickly after that, which was a far more merciful death than what his vile gang had given all those young women and men.
When I was sure that he was dead, I wiped my knives off on his pants leg, then got to my feet. Warren and Owen stayed silent.
Warren finally turned to one side and spat on the rocks. “That’s one of Grimes’s men that we won’t have to worry about getting between us and Sophia.”
Well, I supposed that was one way of looking at things, instead of the cold, hard fact that I’d just tortured and killed a man. Warren nodded at me, then shouldered his rifle and satchel and started back up the ridge.
And finally, even though I dreaded it, I turned to face Owen.
I expected to see censure stamped all over his features, along with disgust, disapproval, and
