“I’ll kill her!”
“How?” I purred at him. “You aren’t holding a weapon. Can you hurt her faster than I can get to you? Are you willing to take the chance? I have all kinds of ways of making you feel pain.”
He moved but not in the direction I expected.
Being surprised in battle is not something that had happened to me very often. I could only assume I was severely out of practice when I didn’t catch on to his plan until it was too late. Using his body, he shoved Raine to the side of the boat, over the edge, and into the water. He spun around to face the controls and cranked up the gas.
I had very little time to act and no time to think. Raine was behind us, unprotected in the waves. The boat, which could be our best rescue chance, was at full throttle and heading out to sea. Most importantly, I definitely, definitely was not going to let that asshole live. I had to go after Raine immediately because she could drown in minutes, but I couldn’t leave him on the boat. There was only one option left. I jumped for him, grabbed him by his ponytail, thankful he had enough hair to form a tight grip, and leapt overboard with him in my grasp.
The boat continued to move at top speed out to sea.
Ponytail’s nails dug into the skin of my arm just above where I held him by the hair. I had to use the other arm to keep my head above water, searching the slow moving waves for a sign of Raine. I saw her about a hundred yards away, bobbing up and down in the currents. The shore was another thousand yards behind her.
Shit.
“Raine!” I screamed out at her and saw her turn in my direction. I wanted her to head towards me, not towards the shore like she would be inclined to do. I needed her with me. I had to have her close where I could touch her and know she was safe.
I kept the hand holding the half-drowned bastard under the waves, feeling his struggles subside. I wasn’t going to be able to kill him the way I wanted to – slowly and painfully. It was going to have to be fast so I could get Raine back to shore.
I pulled Ponytail up closer to me, his head above the waves again as I swam towards Raine. She was doing well, treading water and keeping herself afloat. I wished I had my knife on me so I could at least cut the bastard I was holding. I looked back to his face, and he spat seawater at me.
I swirled in the water and brought the fucker up close to me as he struggled to get out of my grasp. I grabbed one of the loops on his jeans and brought his torso up close to mine and then brought my knee up quickly, crushing his balls up into his body. He yelled and started thrashing around in the water. With a quick jerk of my neck, I nailed his nose with my forehead, and blood started gushing into the water. I shoved him back underneath the waves and started swimming to Raine again.
The hands gripping my arm became more desperate, clawing at my skin for a minute before the movements slowed and then stopped. I shook the bastard by his hair once and then let him go. He didn’t resurface but slowly sank into the waves. I resisted the urge to drag him back to shore, resuscitate him, and then beat his ass more thoroughly.
It took several more minutes, but eventually I reached out and felt the skin of Raine’s arm. She immediately wrapped both arms around my neck and held on as tight as she could.
“Loosen up a little, baby,” I said. I grabbed her waist under the water and held her against me for a moment before moving her to my back. “Hold on tight, but let me breathe, okay?”
“Yes.” Raine’s hot breath in my ear should have been both comforting and soothing, but my mind was still too focused, too eager to kill. I couldn’t think about much of anything but getting back to the last motherfucker who had dared to threaten what was mine and finishing him off.
We were a ways out but not a distance I hadn’t swum before, and nowhere near too far even though my right leg was getting a little tired and achy. Raine’s arms around my neck were almost cutting off my air, but I kept trudging on until my feet were finally in the sand and then out of the water. I reached up and grabbed her forearms and pulled them gently from around my neck, having a little bit of difficulty with that because she didn’t seem to want to let go. I took that as a good sign – she must not be badly hurt. I pulled her around in front of me and took her face between my hands. I scanned her up and down. Aside from her busted lip, I didn’t see any blood or signs of further injury. I glanced out over the water and saw the boat barely still visible on the horizon. I turned back to Raine.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, my words clipped and strained. My muscles were still desperate to latch on to something and squeeze the life out of it.
“I don’t think so,” she responded through deep breaths.
I let go of her without another word and stomped across the sand to where Buzz-cut was still lying in the sand, trying to both hop and drag himself away simultaneously. It wasn’t working well with one leg, and he had only managed to move himself about two hundred yards down the beach – like he could go somewhere and fucking hide from me. I didn’t even have to run to catch up with him.
When I reached him, I grabbed his injured leg, pulling and twisting it as he screamed. He flipped over onto his back, and the look of terror in his eyes reminded me of how Raine had looked as Ponytail had held her. It was the same look on her face when Buzz-cut had shoved Dreadlocks to make him grope her. I felt my chest tighten, and I increased my grip on his ankle until I could feel the outline of the bone against my thumb. Keeping up the pressure, I jerked it hard to the left, listening to the snap of the bone before his howls drowned out all the sound around us.
He still had a bloodied knife in his hand, and he tried to get near enough with it to cut my skin. He didn’t even come close, but I got tired of dodging, so I kicked his hand, breaking two fingers and causing the knife to fly off into the water. He turned his head, his eyes searching for the lost weapon.
“You want it back?” I snarled at him and then laughed. “You want to fucking cut me, you fucking son-of-a-bitch? You want to cut me? Let’s go get your little toy, shall we?”
I dragged him to the water and shoved his face into the wet sand. He struggled under my grip until I pulled him up by his ears just long enough to take a breath before I shoved him back down under the shallow waves. I found myself wishing he had a ponytail, too, so I could yank him around by it, but I made do with what was there.
Images of Buzz-cut
pushing Dreadlocks kept infiltrating my brain as I started slamming his head into the wet sand repeatedly. His face was a bloody mess of shallow cuts and scrapes. I caught a glimpse of the knife just a few feet away, hauled him up, and dragged him over to it before throwing him headfirst towards the weapon.
“Come on, you pussy!” I screamed. “Pick up the fucking knife! Pick it up, and I’ll fucking gut you with it, you worthless piece of shit!”
He was moaning and bawling and wouldn’t even go towards the slim blade. He put his broken hand up over his bleeding face and begged me not to kill him.
“You were dead when you first laid eyes on her,” I said softly. Landon’s voice was back on my tongue. I took three steps to reach him, grabbed the knife out of the water, and pulled him back onto the dry sand. I pushed the knife towards his face, making sure he got a good look at it before I opened him up, throat to gut.
He gurgled, and blood began to pour from his mouth. The fingers of his good hand gripped my wrist, but there was no power behind it. I punched him in the stomach, feeling the gash open wider and his insides start to pour out. I punched his face, feeling his nose break underneath my knuckles. It felt fucking fantastic, so I did it again and again. Eventually his hands fell to the sides of his head and he stopped struggling. My fists continued to pound into his face. Sometimes I felt my fists hit sand, but that didn’t necessarily mean I missed my target. I alternated left and right, throwing punches to what was left of his face and to his chest, listening to the sound of breaking ribs.