“Oh, I have no doubt you’ll try,” I said.
“Then why are you laughing?” he gritted out.
“You talk about power. I don’t think you understand it very well. Men don’t come into power.”
I let my eyes roam up and down his body, my expression unimpressed. I wasn’t just doing this to goad him. There was really nothing unique about this stupid fucker.
Just then, a familiar bird call came through the window.
I smiled.
Finally.
“Power,” I continued, “is something that some men control. Others—” I shot him a pointed look. “—are controlled by it.”
Then I let out the same bird call I had just heard through the window. A quick second passed when another bird call came through.
Joseph, or John, or whatever the fuck his name was, looked at me in confusion. “What the fuck are you doing?”
He came in closer to me with the knife.
I grabbed him just as an explosion rang out from the other side of the building, far away from me.
I took the knife from his hand and held it against his neck. He stopped struggling in my arms, his breathing coming out erratic.
He knew he had lost.
“Time’s up,” I said in his ear. “My men are here, and you’re about to meet your maker.”
“You—”
He gurgled on his own blood before he could even finish the sentence as I ran the knife through the side of his throat.
I let go and watched him.
His surprised eyes stayed focused on me as he continued to struggle before, finally, a glassy quality overtook his gaze, and he stopped moving altogether, lying in a pool of his own blood.
He was dead.
How … anticlimactic. He went through this much trouble to get me, and his death happened so fast.
I pulled out the knife and made my way to the door.
It was time to go home.
It was time to get back to my lovely pet.
13
CATALINA
I was now sittingin an empty car.
We arrived at our destination ten minutes ago, and everyone climbed out of the car. I’d looked out the window then and saw Nikolay, Mikhail, and Gabriel talking with Francisco about something as they pointed to an abandoned barn up ahead.
My arm ached, and I grew impatient with all this waiting around.
I was nervous and scared and hopeful, and I just—I just wanted to see Damien so badly.