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“Do you need him awake?” I ask gently. “He apologized.”
“I want him to know he’s dying. I want him to - to know there’s nothing he can do. And I want it to be slow. I want him to lay there praying it will just happen already, having no idea how long it’ll take, hoping the next breath he takes will finally be his last.”
Maison makes a soft sound. I look over to find him smiling. “I like that plan. Can we do that plan?”
I shrug, finding it a relatively good plan myself. “Fine by me.”
Travis shrugs his backpack off and starts digging.
The smelling salts work, DuGray jerking awake violently with an agonized sound. It takes him a moment to figure out what’s going on. To remember. His eyes start rolling back in his head, but a sharp slap from me gets his eyes to settle on us. He’s shaking so hard his teeth are clacking together. “P’ease.”
“You want to die?” Casey asks, his tone taunting.
“P’ease,” he slurs, blood dripping down his chin and pooling in the dip of his throat. “P’ease, jus’ do it.”
“No.” Casey looks at me. “How do I do it? How do I make it happen slowly without him passing out again? Will ripping off his balls do it?”
Both Maison and Travis choke, following it up with coughs as if that doesn’t make their reaction ten times more obvious. I don’t choke, or cough, but I don’t know how well I keep my face blank. “That’s… one way to go.”
“He wouldn’t die from it,” Maison says. “At least, there’s no guarantee. He might clot. Unless you cut his artery, then it’ll be fast. Within five or so minutes, I’d think. Is that long enough for you?”
Casey seems to consider it. “Would he be in pain?”
Maison grins. “Excruciating pain, yes.”
“Then I need a new knife. This ones all slippery.”
I watch as he’s offered a fresh knife. His third of the night. He wipes his hand on his shirt before accepting it, his knuckles white. He glances over his shoulder at me, eyebrows pulling in. “Still?” he whispers.
It takes me a moment before I realize what he’s asking. My heart wrenches. I come up behind him, wrapping one arm around his waist and pressing a kiss to the side of his neck. “Still. Always. I will love you forever. I’m right here, baby boy.”
He sinks back against me, exhaling with relief.
And then he brings the knife down and begins to cut William DuGray’s balls off.
We leave DuGray upon Casey’s request. He left me alone when I thought I was dying. He gets to be alone too.
Maison and Travis linger outside the dungeon door, planning to pop back inside after 20 minutes to make sure the fucker is gone. The moment we step outside, the violent shaking from earlier returns, Casey unable to walk on his own. I scoop him up, carrying him away from the place that took so much from him. He presses his cold nose to my throat, bringing me back to the first time I carried him out of here. So much has changed since then. We’ve saved so many people. Taken out so much evil.
We’ve fallen in love.
Maybe his thoughts are the same as mine because when he begins to sob against me, the cries aren’t sad or pained. They’re filled with relief. So much goddamn relief.
“I know,” I whisper, holding him as tightly as I can against my chest. “I know, baby boy. It’s over now. You won.”
He cries harder.
I carry him past Keats, exchanging a look with him. He follows behind us, opening the door of the house, then the door of the SUV for me. I settle in the very back, letting him rest against me as we wait for the others to be finished. He cries and cries, fingers clutching at my shirt desperately. He needs to be cleaned up, but that can wait. What he needs most right now is to be held.
I listen to the guys work as he cries himself out, keeping track of the action to ensure nothing goes wrong. For the first handful of minutes, everyone is completely silent. The first to speak is Travis, his voice soft, almost like he knows I’m listening and Casey is nearby. “Kid’s a badass.”
“A motherfucking badass,” Maison agrees.
Keats sighs heavily. “I shouldn’t have volunteered to cover the door. I missed all the fun.”
“You really, really did,” Travis points out.
“He cut his fucking balls off, Keats,” Maison begins.
