He cuts my cheek this time.
The blade opens a hot line across old scar tissue. Dark blood runs down my jaw, warm beneath the rain leaking from the roof.
I turn my head back to him slowly.
His grin returns, wild and bright. “There he is. Monster’s bleeding.”
I hit him.
Not with my full strength. Never with my full strength. Even so, the blow sends him across the enclosure floor and into the base of the feeding platform. He coughs hard, trying to rise, and I reach him before he can. I grab the front of his jacket and haul him upright.
His feet barely touch the ground.
The remaining gang members freeze.
Ron spits blood onto my chest. “Do it.”
“No.”
“Do it, you big scaly freak.”
“No.”
His eyes glitter. “Then you lose.”
“No,” I say. “You do.”
I pin him against the old feeding platform with one hand on his chest. My other hand rises slowly, and his bravado cracks when he sees where my claws are headed.
“Wait,” he says.
I grip the silver ring through his nose.
His eyes widen. “Don’t you?—”
I tear it out.
His scream fills the ruined building, high and shocked and humiliating. Blood pours over his mouth. He grabs his face with both hands, dropping to his knees when I release him. His men stare, horrified, not because the wound is the worst they have seen tonight, but because I have made their leader small.
That was the purpose.
I crouch so he can hear me through his own ragged breathing.
“You enjoy performance,” I say. “Remember this one.”
He glares up at me with tears of pain in his eyes.
“You will not threaten Evie. You will not enter Sweet Tooth. You will not touch her customers, her friends, or any person you think she cares for. You will leave the bakery, the old woman, the grocer, the dockworkers, the crippled elder, and every child who eats there alone.”
He says something through blood that might be a curse.
I lean closer. “If you forget, I come back. If I come back, I will still honor my promise not to kill you. You will wish I had broken it.”
The music finally dies with a burst of static.
For a moment, all I hear is rain through the broken roof, groaning men, and Ron’s wet, furious breathing.
Then sirens rise beyond the zoo.
