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This was my nightmare because the glow of neon was burning just above my head, and there was a long blade pressed tenderly against my stomach.
WILLOW
“I wouldn’t do that,” the man holding me said, voice familiar and taunting as he looked at Dare. “We have your wife.”
“There are more of you,” Dare said unapologetically.
“But they don’t have your Lily,” the man said, and I nearly choked on my gasp as the slightly muffled voice registered. And then I was clawing at him.
His arms.
His neck.
Screaming as many accusations as I could with how tightly his fingers were digging into my jaw.
“I trusted you,” I seethed as I thrashed in his hold, no longer worried about the knife he was holding. “You promised you would—you were supposed to—you asshole.”
I twisted in his hold, sure I only managed to because he allowed it, and swung. Connecting with the mask in a punch that was nowhere near enough.
“Ms. Bennett,” Detective Higgins muttered as he removed the mask, revealing a smirk as if my hit had amused him. “I’ve missed your temper.”
“How could you?”
“Think it’s obvious.” He winked, and then I was scrambling.
Or, at least, attempting to.
But Higgins kept me firmly in his grasp as a handful of people rose from the bodies we’d just walked past. Laughs low and mocking and completely unhinged. Gathering their masks and a variety of weapons as they turned toward us.
Two gunshots rang out through the weighted silence of the night, making me jerk just as one of the undead KSGs hit the ground.
“I wouldn’t,” Higgins seethed, and a shocked cry tore from me as an unexpected, searing pain ripped across my back.
“Stop,” Dare yelled from behind me, but two other shots had already sounded, and another masked person had fallen.
Higgins looked down at me, a slow cruelness gracing the corner of his mouth when he said, “I did warn them.”
Somehow, I knew what was happening that time. Somehow, it was worse.
I choked over my screamed curse as his blade made another slow path across my back. Dragging out the cut. Dragging out my pain.
“Diggs,” Dare snapped in command, in caution.
My body shook and swayed against the detective, making his smirk grow.
“Lachlan will understand if you don’t make it to him alive, Ms. Bennett, and he’ll repay the favor.” His glare snapped up and his smirk fell, his voice lowering to a growl as he spoke to Dare, “Do we understand each other?”
That earlier silence engulfed us, thick, pained, expectant.
“I don’t usually ask twice—”
“Yes,” Dare said over the detective.
“You’re not—” Diggs began from somewhere behind the line of bodies, making my heart clench between its strained, frantic beating. “Dare, what the fuck?”
“Willow understands,” Dare said calmly. So calm that it felt out of place for the nightmarish surroundings and the pain pulsing through my back.
It wasn’t until Detective Higgins placed his mask over his face, covering the victorious smirk there, that I realized Dare’s words had been a message for me.
