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Ray and Dante had moved closer now.

“We need to finish it. Tell him what he needs to do.”

I glanced up at the three men above me. My eyes were watering from the force of the hit and I wasn’t going to bother standing anymore. This would be my final resting place.

“What else could you…want?” I managed to ask.

Ray kneeled down next to me. He took the bottle from Vance and placed the sharp edges right below my ribcage. He grabbed my good hand, manipulating it over the neck of the bottle.

“You’re going to take this glass, and stab yourself. Right here. The same place you decided to stab the Chief instead of the actual target at the Masquerade.”

The world was flickering in and out of my sight, and I couldn’t answer. Had I heard him right?

“You’re going to do it,” Dante repeated firmly, from above me. “Or I am. And I’ll make it hurt so much worse. Might even leave a little extra of the glass shards in there for you to remember me by.”

I clutched the bottle tightly. I had options, but they were limited. I was also limited to the amount of time I had to go over them coherently. I had lost a good amount of blood and the pain was beginning to push everything else out of my mind. My choices were: Stab myself with the bottle and risk infection, embedded glass, or my favorite—death, or, turn the bottle on Ray and at least carve out part of his pretty boy face before they all completely killed me and disposed of my body.

Even though I might have gotten the jab to his face, I wouldn’t have been able to fight off the rest of them as they mauled me. It was a nice thought though—taking one of his eyes.

Might still do that if I made it out of this.

Instead of continuing to think about it anymore, I leaned forward into the jagged glass, feeling the razor sharp material slice through my skin. I winced.

“You’re going to have to go deeper than that,” Vance whispered excitedly, his eyes brimming over with demonic enjoyment.

“And then, it’s done?” I asked, my hands shaking, my body shaking. Everything felt so cold. “Tell me,” I ground out, “When I do this, am I done?”

I looked at Dante. He was the leader of this. He held my stare firmly. He nodded.

I turned my face down to look at the bottle. They wouldn’t be happy unless I did it properly. They wanted damage. And I was ready to be done.

From my place on the ground I painfully rotated my body so that I was hovering over the bottle. The glass had only barely pierced the surface of my skin, so I pulled it out, angling it again just below my screaming ribcage. Slowly, I propped myself up using my elbows and knees. I needed leverage. If I didn’t please them, they’d make me do it again and I knew it.

“Do it,” Ray taunted from somewhere behind me.

Gravity and pain worked with me, pulling my head and my chest downward. I didn’t have much longer until my body called it quits.

So I let go.

I didn’t have to force myself downward, or use my hand to push the bottle in. I simply surrendered to all of the muscles that had been working overtime to hold me up. My upper body slid forward, back into the concrete, momentum carrying me down like I was dead weight. The bottle didn’t move. I moved onto it, the force of my body pressing down, driving the shards deep.

I didn’t brace myself.

The glass found its way through more than just my skin this time. And it wasn’t the pain that told me so. But the warmth. The sudden, shocking, hot rush that seeped out of my body at the intrusion, told me I couldn’t have missed the mark.

Someone whistled.

I couldn’t really see much anymore. I found home upon the cold ground. I didn’t move. The night was the quietest it had been so far, and it was peaceful.

Moments later, Dante was in my line of sight, his face inches from mine.

“You did better than expected there,” he whispered, almost tenderly. “And I know you thought you were done.”

And when he said those words, an understanding detonated like a bomb inside my chest. Acceptance washed over me. This was it.

I could barely make out Dante’s white toothed smile. “We lied.”

They descended on me. Predators with a lust for my blood. Beating me. Screaming slurs that somehow still reached me from the underwater state.