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“You dirty fucking bastard,” Beast growls. “A turncoat and a deviant.”
Vasko laughs. “You think I care about what names you call me? I may be both of those things, but I’m not a fool. You, however, walked right into this trap. Soren knew you’d come after him. He also knew I owed you a debt and that eventually you’d make that call, asking for information. He was right. All I had to do was dangle a carrot and you’d come running.”
“Yeah, but here’s the thing,” Beast says, chuckling as he lowers his gun. “You ain’t really thought this through all that well, mate.”
“Beast?” I question, but he just throws me a wink and keeps talking.
"Whilst you’ve been banging on about how clever you are, I realised something important,” he says, grinning more widely now. “We ain’t dead, and the glassyouwere holding shattered.”
“And?” Vasko retorts, his confidence wavering.
“And that tells me either your marksmen are a crapshoot, or one of our guys was sending us a warning. They know we need you alive, but you sure as fuck don’t need us still standing. So my question is, why are we?”
Vasko’s face visibly pales because Beast’s correct in his assumption. By rights we should all be dead by now, the fact we’re not means The Masks got to his men first. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that he’s got a gun pointed to my head.
I should be more worried.
I’m not.
I may not have seen this coming, but I know that today isn’t the day I die.
Meeting Lorcan’s gaze, I give him a small smile and it’s enough for him to lower his gun too.
His gaze drifts behind us before focusing back on Vasko. “It's over.”
"It isn't over until I say it is!" Vasko shouts, and in that millisecond before his finger squeezes the trigger, the sound of a bullet ripping through his skull rings out in the air around us, his brains and blood spattering over the table and our faces.
Vasko's limp body collapses, the gun still clasped in his hand.
“Arden!” Carrick shouts, grabbing me and twisting me to face him. Given the expression on his face, he was clearly expecting me to have a similar fate.
“I’m okay,” I reply.
“Thank fuck!" he replies, grasping my head between his hands and pressing his forehead against mine.
“Would you look at that? It’s gotta be the luck of the Irish,” Beast says, snorting with laughter as Carrick lets me go and throws him a dirty look. “What did you do, bribe a leprechaun to keep you safe? You lucky shit.”
I let out a tight laugh. “Christy isn’t the only Dálaigh left who has the gift. I knew I wasn’t dying today.”
Beast’s whistles. “No shit?”
“Yeah,” I reply, scraping a hand through my blood splattered hair and looking at Vasko’s slumped body. “Fuck.”
“But you didn’t see that coming?” Beast asks with a smirk. “Because it would’ve helped us a ton.”
Carrick slams his fist against the table, rattling the china and beer bottles. “We needed him alive!”
“We’ll figure this out,” Lorcan says, resting a hand on Carrick’s arm. “We’ve got this, remember? She’s coming home.”
Carrick tightens then flexes his fingers, releasing the tension. “She’s coming home,” he repeats.
“Who fired the shot?" I ask, flicking off a piece of Vasko’s skull from my jacket and rolling my shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension there. I might have known I wasn’t dying today, but the adrenaline still gets pumping nevertheless.
"I did."
We turn to find Jakub walking towards us from the tree line, his clothes dishevelled, his right cheek swollen, and his lip split.
“Looks like you’ve been busy,” Beast says. “Where are the other two?”
