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Matthew Priest has really lost it, a dangerous cocktail of rage and terror driving his insane actions.
It pushes me to fight harder to free myself.
But there’s not enough space for me to make it out from under the beam. I can’t even budge it an inch, its weight must be truly colossal.
Heavy footsteps catch my attention, shadows falling over me, and I look up to see three Gatekeepers striding up to me.
I swallow hard at the expressions on their faces. I’ve seen that look often enough over the years to recognize it instantly.
Those dead eyes, an emotionless vacuum.
The hard set of their jaws.
Resolve and numbness colliding.
They’re done with the games now. They’re going to kill me.
And for the first time in over two decades, I’m not in much of a position to stop that from happening.
The fact that they’re not brandishing their weapons tells me that they’re going to draw it out and make it as painful as possible. It’s personal for them now. Payback for my recent infractions against their teammates. There’s obviously loyalty between the Gatekeepers themselves, just not from their leader.
I fight to reach for the blade strapped to a holster at my right thigh, but I can’t inch my fingers between the beam and my leg to reach it.
So many years in this line of work and this is how I’m gonna go out?
It’s not exactly the way I imagined it.
Going down in a blaze of glory doesn’t seem in the cards.
The timing couldn’t be more of a bitch. I’ve just reconnected with the love of my life, and I’m on the verge of retiring my Kingmaker persona too.
“You had a good run, sweetheart,” one of them says, stepping closer. “Time to pay for your crimes now.”
If they want fear from me, they’re dreaming.
Narrowing my eyes, I growl, “Do your worst.”
They close in and I brace myself.
A roar sounds from somewhere behind me and a blur of movement fills my vision in the next second.
I watch in a mix of awe and shock as Cal leaps over the wreckage and launches himself at them.
Oh my God.
He’s in such a state. His face is etched with so many grazes that it’s more blood than skin right now. His leather pants are torn in places, his leather jacket too, so badly that the right arm is completely shredded and barely hanging onto the rest of the jacket. His skin is gray from the dust of the rubble, his knuckles bruised and bloodied.
His rage and adrenaline transcends it all as he attacks the Gatekeepers surrounding me.
His fist plows into the closest one, the guy’s head snapping to the side, forcing him back a couple of steps. Before the other two can move in, he slams his boot into one of them, spins and uses the momentum to deliver a jarring uppercut to the third one’s jaw.
With every move and blow, his brutality escalates, his fury fueling the darkness within, dragging the full force of it to the surface.
“Ain’t touching my woman!” he roars, grasping the back of a guy’s head and slamming his face into a nearby concrete pillar. “Motherfucker!” He shrugs off the other two who are fighting to break his grip on their teammate, and he continues smashing the guy’s face into the pillar, crushing bone and scraping flesh.
As the guy goes limp in his hold, Cal roars and releases him. He slides down the pillar, a trail of blood and tissue following his descent before he crumples to the ground.
Spinning around and not missing a beat, Cal wails on the other two, tearing into them relentlessly.
