Searing pain hits me like lightning, and I turn around and slice through the guy who punctured my precious skin. “NO ONE FUCKING TOUCHES ME. NO ONE.”
I stab his eye out with my sword and shove it into his mouth with the same blade, forcing him onto the floor with his last taste being his own entrails.
But fuck, his knife is still stuck inside me.
I yank it out and groan from the pain.
“Don’t,” Penelope runs to me and rips off a piece of her shirt, then rips up mine to wrap it around my waist. “Gotta stop the bleeding.”
BANG! BANG!
Felix takes down the guards shooting at us one by one, alternating bullets with knives, keeping them at bay, while Penelope takes care of my wound.
“Blaine, are you okay?” I can hear Crystal’s voice before I see her, and the second she runs up to me and wraps her arm around me, I breathe a sigh of relief.
At least she’s still intact.
“Look at what that fucker did,” I groan. “My beautiful body.”
“You’re not any less beautiful, my guy,” Dylan says, snorting.
“Why thank you,” I muse.
Dylan turns around to shoot at one of the guards, then drags his body toward the stack of partially living, groaning guards they’ve been collecting. One of them tries to crawl out, and Dylan promptly grabs his ankle and drags him right back in. “This place is perfect for a fire, don’t you think?” Dylan grabs a few bottles of expensive liquor left on the play tables and chucks them at the pile of guards. Then he fishes out his lighter and sets them on fire. “Burn, bitches, burn!”
“What the …?” Nathan stares at him like Dylan’s completely lost his mind.
And maybe he’s right because I’m thinking the same thing. These Skull & Serpent Society guys are something else, that’s for sure.
Alistair blocks attackers from the side with sneak attacks from behind a pillar, gouging out their eyes and slicing up their Achilles tendons when they run past so they stop running forever.
“Don’t think you’ll get away,” he says as the guards cry in pain.
The cruelty is immeasurable, and I’m loving it.
This is the kind of violence my blade lives for.
So I push Penelope aside as the guards approach and pierce them on my blade one by one, avoiding their bullets with ease. Penelope fires another shot at a guard at our backs, taking one after the other down with a single shot. She’s a very good sniper, a perfect rear for me.
“Fuck, this stab wound hurts,” I hiss, and I take my anger out on the next one who approaches me, slicing through his balls. “There, that feels better.”
“No time to waste on chitchat,” Kai says.
“What about my pretty little bonfire?” Dylan mopes. “Now I’m gonna miss seeing it burn.”
“Plenty of chances to start fires elsewhere,” Felix growls at him.
Dylan sighs out loud. “Fine, fine.”
“You’re still alive,” Milo says in a cheery voice, staring at all of us. “Didn’t think you’d make it out. I’m impressed.”
“Ha ha.” Penelope throws him a glare.
“Where to?” Alistair asks.
Kai points at the back of the hallway. “My father’s office is in there. End of the hallway, to the left. It won’t be easy getting in. He has a ton of personal guards.”
Felix cracks his knuckles. “I love a challenge.”
“They won’t stand a chance,” Nathan says.
“What’s your body count?” Caleb asks.
“Twelve,” Dylan muses. “Yours?”
Caleb smirks. “Thirteen.”
Dylan’s nostrils flare, and he pulls out two sets of knives. “No bastard from the Tartarus House is going to beat me.”
“Who are you calling a bastard, Phantom bitch?” Caleb retorts.
“Use your anger on them, not us,” Kai says.
“Ares is waiting for us,” Crystal says.
“Darlings, less talking, more fighting, please. You’ll never catch up with me otherwise.” I add a wink when they all look incensed.
BANG! BANG!
Shots are fired in our direction.
We move forward as a group, slicing through guards coming at us left and right. No guests are left in the casino, so we can go all out.
Felix and Kai shoot as fast as they can while I cut up anyone who comes too close with a simple flick of my katana. Despite the pain, I push on, determined to reach Ares. It’s my duty to protect him, and I will fucking save him, no matter how much it costs me.
I owe him my life.
So I will give it to him.
“Fifteen!” Dylan yells over the fighting after he’s gutted someone from lip to lip, carving him a new smile. “I’m on a roll, bitches!”
“Fuck you, I’m just getting started!” Nathan screams.
“Sixteen,” Kai says with a snort.
“Twenty,” I muse.
“Cheater,” Dylan growls at me. “See how you do without your stupid umbrella.”
“Katana. If you use your weapon as badly as you use your words, I understand exactly why you’ll lose, and I win,” I quip.
BANG!
Gunfire to the left has Milo and Nathan going wild on a guard, alternating strikes with gunshots until the guy is on the floor, and the next one too.
Felix and Kai are back to back, shooting at anyone who tries to get too close to them, while Penelope and Lana protect each other by throwing knives around and plucking them from the bodies of their victims with ease.
Only Crystal seems to be having problems killing people, opting to aim for the legs instead to make them go down. So I finish them off and let their heads roll.
I have never intervened with what Ares did here in this casino because he explicitly told me not to. He must’ve thought there was still a chance to win this without destroying everything. To fight his father on his own and come out as the conqueror. Even if it meant his death.
No. I won’t allow it.
“Move!” I yell as everyone’s stalling from the guards that keep pouring out from the hallway ahead.
But I can clearly see the door behind them … along with the man standing in front of it, pushing his own guards toward us when he spots us.
“Torres,” I growl under my breath.
“There,” Kai says, pointing at him. “Fight your way through!”
“Happily,” Milo replies, throwing his nunchucks around like a good boy, making me proud.
I taught him well.
Torres backtracks into the hallway and runs back into his office, shutting it tightly.
Caleb’s grunt draws my attention. A bullet grazes his cheek, and the rage he exudes is nothing short of magnificent.
“Motherfucker!” He throws a knife at the guy’s bulge, who cries in pain when it hits him, collapsing on the spot. Caleb marches at him and stabs him through the cheek. “How does it feel, asshole?”
“Fuck, he’s wild,” Alistair mutters to me.
“Yup,” I reply. “That’s why Ares keeps him around.”
Alistair snorts and aims over my shoulder. “Duck.”
BANG!
A guard goes down right behind me.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Don’t mention it,” he replies.
“We’re almost there!” Felix yells before he stabs the last two guards in the belly, and Nathan shoots them in the head.
“Felix, Alistair, Dylan, Penelope, Milo, Nathan, Lana,” Kai says, “guard the hallway. Don’t let anyone through.”
“What about you?” Lana asks.
“I’m going in with them,” Kai says, looking at Caleb, me, and Crystal. “I want to see the truth for myself.”
Penelope and Lana nod. “Good luck,” Penelope says.
We pass beyond the hallway while they stay behind and block the way out.
Everyone tears off their masks and throws them onto the floor, as they’re useless now that we’re here.
“Ready?” Crystal asks.
Caleb doesn’t wait and kicks in the door. “TORRES! GET YOUR FUCKING HA—”
We all stand in the door opening, shocked by the pool of blood underneath the carved-up body lying on the floor. Ares.
Crystal
Is he …?
I cover my mouth as I gasp for air, tears forming in my eyes at the sight of the wretched amount of lashes to Ares’s skin. It’s far beyond anything he’s had before. His back is covered in gashes and fresh blood, his body collapsed on the floor out of sheer exhaustion in a puddle of his own blood.
Oh God.
“What the f—This is what you’ve been doing to him?” Kai screams at his own father. “You told me you were talking to him!”
A guard standing beside the door points an automatic rifle at us. “Don’t. Move.”
A man in a gray striped suit and a freshly shaved face along with a wavy, gelled-back coup of hair stands close to Ares. Mr. Torres. “You’re too late.”
Ares lets out a muffled groan and his head tilts, his eyes barely opening to look at us.
But I can still see the hurt on his face, the absolute destruction of his will to live.
His gray eyes reach inside mine, clawing out my soul the moment his fingers scrape down on the floor and begin to claw their way to me in desperation, leaving bloodied streaks on the floor.
The sight haunts me. Destroys the very core of my being and grinds it into dust.
“Still think you have any semblance of power?” his father grits.
THWACK!
He strikes Ares’s back with an actual bullwhip right in front of us.
I shriek from the sound it makes, the flick of his wrist as he so easily scars his own son.
“NO!” Kai screams, to no avail.
“Move, and I’ll put a bullet in all of you,” the guard growls. “And I’ll do it far quicker than any of you can ever pull the triggers on those measly guns you have.”
But it’s the way Ares gazes up at me with a pleading look in his eyes that breaks me as he begs, “Please … run.”
“STOP!” Caleb screams at Mr. Torres. “What the fuck is wrong with you? That’s your fucking son!”
“What is wrong with me?” Torres growls. “It’s your fault he’s behaving this way. You degenerate pieces of shit, breaking into my casino, have destroyed his mind. He’s no fucking son of mine.”
Despite the pain, Ares manages to curl up and bring his knees forward, leaning on both hands and knees, blood dripping down on both sides.
His father whips him again, causing his body to buckle under its own weight, and tears spring to my eyes. “Stay down and let these friends of yours watch you whimper like the useless animal you are!”
But Ares refuses to lie down, continuously shoving his own knees underneath his body to try to stand, even when his whole body caves in on him.
I can’t. I can’t watch this.
Not again.
Even if there’s an automatic rifle pointed at me, ready to kill me, I can’t let Ares suffer. He’s suffered enough.
Right before the third strike hits him, I bolt away from the door and wrap my arms around his body, shielding him from the impact right when it strikes. “NO!”
THWACK!
“CRYSTAL!” Blaine’s voice rips through me, but not nearly as harshly as this whip.
The sizzling pain is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced, a crackle to the spine like thunder, heat striking my skin causing a loud shriek to emanate from my lungs.
Just one strike, compared to the hundreds Ares might have received …
And I am struck in awe at how long he endured.
I thought I knew what hatred was as Ares tried to instill it within me with every one of his stares, but now … now I’ve felt it enter my skin and seep into my bones, twisting my mind into furious knots until all I see is red from blinding rage.
I turn and grip the whip at the edge, holding on as tightly as I can while staring into the eyes of the real monster. “This stops. Now.”
“You … You dare to interfere?” he says, grinding his teeth. “It is my right to punish him.”
“Your right is nothing but to feel the same pain you inflicted on him!” I scream. “How dare you? How fucking dare you?”
He yanks away the whip and pulls out a gun instead, aiming it at my head. “Move.”
“Torres, don’t you fucking dare!” Caleb yells.
“Stay out of this,” Mr. Torres grits before he focuses his attention back on me. “You … you … I recognize you. Why do I recognize you?”
“Because I look like my father … the innocent man you callously murdered without a care just because you thought you had the right,” I growl. “And I watched your son pull the knife out of his body.”
His face contorts with utter evilness and a hint of disgusting pride. “You … you’re the reason my son destroyed his chances to be a true Torres.”
The barrel is pushed into my forehead.
“No,” Ares grumbles from underneath me. “Please. Don’t kill her.”
His father begins to laugh maniacally. “You all came here to do what? Save him?” He laughs again, even more menacingly than before. “You think I took him against his will? He came on his own accord. He doesn’t want to be saved.”
“Bullshit!” Caleb yells. “He never asked you to fucking whip him!”
“He needed to be shown the punishment for defying me, for continuously killing the people I work with, for purposely getting in my way every single time just to defy me.”
“You broke him,” I mutter. “You broke his spirit. His body. His mind. Even his heart.”
“Torreses have no conscience. No remorse. We don’t need a fucking heart,” his father growls, glaring at Ares. “And yours made you weak. Vulnerable. Useless. You couldn’t even kill one man to solidify your place as my goddamn heir. You chose his life over your own, for her?” He spits on me. “What a disgrace.”
When his hand rises to strike me with the whip, Kai swiftly takes out the momentarily distracted guard with a single shot to the temple while Caleb runs toward Mr. Torres and grips his wrist, twisting it to stop him from hitting me. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
I roll away.
Suddenly, Mr. Torres aims his weapon at Ares instead. “HE’S MINE TO FUCKING PUNISH!”
Blaine runs up to us and throws himself between Ares and his father right as he pulls the trigger.
BANG!
