3
Ryker hands me the driver as I snatch up one of the timber screws from the stack to the left. Griffin watches, that one good eye narrowed in my direction. He tries to hide his fear but I smell it, I live on this shit. His fear is palpable, it coils in the air like a phantom snake, wrapping around us, making my heart thump with adrenaline, the blood course through my veins like a freight train.
The guy to his left is awake, he’s as quiet as a mouse though, too afraid now he’s in the vipers nest.
“So, Griffin, where is she?” I ask as Ryker casually lets the guy down, unhooking the ropes binding him to the ceiling so his body drops to the floor with a hard thud. Ryker’s face is an impassive mask, mouth set in a straight, unemotional line but I see the darkness and vengeance in his eyes. He wants them to hurt, he wants to make them pay.
The guy groans, too fucked up to even fight or move on the dirty ground. The sound of a body being dragged across the floor fills my ears but I don’t dare look. I keep my gaze trained on Griffin though he watches my man move the body to a steel table where he’s then strapped down, his shoes and socks stripped from his feet.
“What are you doing?” Griffin asks, ignoring my question, eyes flicking from me to his guy.
“I think you’re forgetting your place here,” I back myself towards where his guy is prepped and ready for me. “Answer my question,where is she?”
“I’m not telling you shit, away from you is better than anything else.”
“Even with Valentine?”
“He’s the lesser evil.”
“In this life, Griffin, choosing the lesser evil is not always the smart choice.”
I line the timber screw up with the guys heel, pressing the tip hard enough into the skin that a bead of blood wells to the surface. “I’ll give you one more chance,” I say, “One more Griffin, I don’t give many chances so think yourself lucky.”
“Fuck you, Silver!”
But his eyes are wide with terror, his voice shaking with the fear that rattles through his body like an earthquake. This is just the start of my revenge. Only the beginning of what I am going to do to those who have crossed me and Wren.
“I’ll go through each of your men, Griffin, until I get to you, until I get the answers I want.” I promise as I line the head of the driver to the screw and press down on the trigger. The sound is deafening to begin with but then the scream that erupts from the guy on the table overpowers that. His agony bounces off the walls, loud, painful, twisted. The screw slices through his skin, blood splattering as it spins through muscle and cartilage, vibrating against bone. The guy passes out long before I get it all the way in.
“You’re fucking sick!” Griffin bellows, his fear a stench that stains the air. I breathe it in sharply.
The skin on my face is slick with blood, war paint that I smear over my face as I turn back to Griffin and a wicked smile pulls my mouth up. I no doubt look manic, a complete psychopath and if they didn’t fear me before, they will now. “Tell me where she is Griffin.”
“Fuck you!” He bellows.
I tut with a sigh and gesture for Ryker to wake the guy up. It takes a few minutes, but he eventually comes to, tears of pain rolling down his bruised face, leaving clean tracks on his otherwise dirty face.
“Griff, man,” he begs, voice broken, “Tell him, please.”
I line the second screw up, his limbs twitching, trying to escape but don’t they know? There’s no escape from me.
“Yeah Griff, tell me.” I mock.
“I don’t know!” he yells frantically.
I sigh, the driver dangling in my hand, “That’s the wrong answer.”
The screw goes in just as the first, bloody, loud, violent. My hands are coated in this guys blood, his cries of torture ringing in my ears like music.
I bounce from foot to foot, “Doesn’t it make you feel alive, Griffin?” My laugh echoes through the barn, “doesn’t it make you feel powerful? You hold all the keys here, Griffin, you can make this stop.”
Griffin furiously lashes against his restraints, his body swinging. His hands have long gone purple from lack of blood flow, the wounds across his body clotted now and the blood dried to resemble the color of rust.
“You’re a fucking psycho”
“You’re probably right,” I nod my head with a sigh, turning a little to watch Ryker unbind the guy from the table and drag his bleeding ass back to the ropes where he proceeds to hang him like a prime cut of meat. Blood drips down from the wounds in his feet, the skin blackened. I mean that shit’s gotta hurt, right? “But I still don’t hear you talking, so really, who is the bad guy here?”
“I don’t know where she is, Silver!” He cries, “I don’t know!”