Page 36 of Bleed the Shadows

“How long should we wait?” Remy asked.

“We don’t.” Bram straightened.

He started through the trees with a roll of cellophane in his hand, and Remy and I dropped in behind him.

We stalked toward the front door of the cabin like we owned the place. Bram barely stopped moving to give the door a vicious kick. It didn’t give on the first try — and we heard a shout from inside — but it gave on the second.

Then we were inside a small vestibule, a living room to the right, kitchen to the left. A long hall stretched beyond the two front rooms, and I caught sight of a dark-haired guy rounding the corner into one of the other rooms.

“I’ll take Milo,” Remy said, heading for the hall.

A shot rang out from behind the sofa. It grazed Bram’s arm and I felt the spray of blood on my hand as I headed for the kitchen while Bram made his way toward the guy who’d taken the shot at him from the living room.

Brock was rifling frantically through one of the drawers in the kitchen, looking for a weapon. He lifted his head as I approached, his eyes wide with fear.

“Wait, I?— ”

I grabbed him before he could finish the sentence and hauled him back toward the living room by his mop of red hair.

He kicked and thrashed but it didn’t do him any good, and I threw him against the wall and withdrew my knife.

It was the same knife I’d used to mark Maeve in the first Hunt, a fitting weapon to kill one of the men who’d put her in danger by giving his place to a team we hadn’t vetted and hadn’t approved.

The Hunt only worked because of trust. It had lasted as long as it had because none of the girls had ever been harmed or abused.

Sure, they were stripped, they were fucked. But that was stuff they agreed to.

Stuff they wanted.

We didn’t cause them pain. Not unless they wanted it. That was the deal.

The Ghosts had broken that trust. Worst of all, they’d hurt Maeve by doing it.

And for that they would have to pay.

“No… I’m sorry…” Milo begged. “We didn’t?— ”

It only took a second to slash my knife across his throat and the last of his sentence died on his lips as blood sprayed from the wound on his neck.

He was still breathing — barely — when I let him sink to the floor to bleed out.

I left him there and turned the corner into the living room in time to see Bram wrapping the last of the cellophane around Viggo’s face. Viggo kicked and clawed, trying to get the cellophane off his face as he struggled to breathe.

Bram shoved him away and left him to writhe on the floor as the last of the air left his lungs.

Gunfire echoed from the back hall.

“Problem solved,” Bram said.

He wasn’t even out of breath.

Remy emerged from the hall, his gun still in his hand.

He looked at Viggo, now still on the living room floor, then peeked around the corner at the bloodbath in the kitchen.

“Jesus fuck,” he said. “Did you have to make such a mess?”

I shrugged. “Bram had all the cellophane.”