Page 6 of The Wayward Sons & The Vampires of Fortune (The Wayward Sons #4)

T heir screaming was damn near comical, I’d give them that. As it turned out, these two morons didn’t know what a hunter was. Or what the hell they’d gotten themselves into. Poor souls. I’d almost feel bad for them if it wasn’t for the way they’d tried to kidnap Ryder.

I kept them tied up and dangling against the back wall—perks of getting the farthest room in the motel. We didn’t have neighbors this far down, and no one would hear what I was about to do. Granted, someone would be pissed about the structural damage by the time I was done.

Mostly Ryder from the look he gave me.

“You need to leave,” I ordered gruffly as I propped a cigarette between my lips. Ryder’s susceptibility to pain meant I didn’t want him anywhere near the room because what I was about to do wouldn’t be pretty.

“I’m staying—”

“You ain’t,” I snapped over him. “I ain’t goin’ to hurt you, baby.”

That was the last thing I wanted.

“Gray.” His warning tone wasn’t lost on me. He knew what I planned to do—hard not to. I had one line that no one was allowed to cross and that line was hurting Ryder.

Trying to kidnap him was unforgivable. They were goddamn lucky I didn’t rip the air out of their lungs right now, but they had information I needed. I knew who sent them— Ryder’s dick of a dad— but exactly what he knew was the question of the hour.

“I ain’t arguin’ about this, Ryder,” I replied. I crossed the room to where he hovered by the door, eyes glued on the chaos at the back wall. I didn’t need his power to know just how stressed out he was about the situation. He always was when his past came rearing its ugly face. “Look at me.”

I took his face in my hands and made him look at me, which was more of a feat than it should’ve been. Those baby blues were wrecked with conflicting emotions.

“You’re goin’ to go outside. I don’t care where you go—get a coffee, wait by the car, I don’t give a fuck what you do—but you’re goin’ to stay out of this room no matter what you hear, you hear me?”

“Gray—”

“Baby, I ain’t goin’ to pretend like this’ll be a nice lil’ conversation between me and them,” I interrupted, my hold on him tightening as he tried to pull away.

“And I ain’t about to hurt you, so either you go outside on your own, or I’m goin’ to drag that sexy ass of yours out—and it ain’t goin’ to be in a fun way, I can promise you that. ”

Note to self: figure out what the fun way would be.

The conflict on his face was clear as day, making it a battle of wills between the two of us. In the end, he caved, whether because he knew I was right or because he knew he wouldn’t win against me.

“You’ll be careful?” he whispered. I kissed him once and smiled against his mouth.

“Please,” I scoffed. “We established this, I’m always careful, baby. It’s my middle name.”

He groaned but said nothing as he left the room. When the door shut behind him, I lit my cigarette. Fuck it. I’d add smoking damage to property damage. There was no salvaging the room at this point.

I inhaled deeply, letting the smoke fill my lungs, as I faced my two problems strapped to the back wall.

Yeah, from the looks on their faces, they didn’t have a clue what was coming for them.

Probably didn’t help that I was in a pair of jeans and that was it.

I didn’t look real intimidating—minus the glow of my activated powers and all.

“Now,” I began gruffly, “I’m callin’ you One and I’m callin’ you Two. Which one of y’all is in charge? One? Or Two?”

My gaze flicked between the two of them. One panicked at the idea of being in charge. Poor fucker. He didn’t have a clue what was coming for him.

“Listen up, Two,” I said, “I want you to watch One over here real damn close, you hear me?”

Two nodded barely around the vines shutting him up.

“And if you close your eyes, I’m goin’ to cut your eyelids off and start all over again. Got it?” The frantic nod was more than enough to tell me that he knew I was serious.

Was I pushing it? Absolutely.

But I didn’t give a fuck.

Dipping into my power, I dropped One to the ground. He hit hard, but before he could scramble, I connected with the air in the room. Every molecule lit up in response and vibrated with my power.

One had only seconds to try screaming before I ripped the breath right out of him. His back bowed against the ground as he gasped, unable to fight it. The silence torture was brutal—his face turning a horrible shade of red and his body going rigid.

“Nuh-uh, Two.” I snapped my fingers when Two tried to look away from his partner’s suffering. “You pay attention, remember? Don’t make me hurt you more than I want to.”

It had the effect I wanted. He cringed and whimpered from his spot on the wall. I unnecessarily drew out the death of his partner, leaking the tiniest bit of air back into his lungs to give him hope. To make it last longer. To be a fucking dick.

This was for Ryder.

Time ticked slowly as I repeated the process. Once. Twice. Three times. After the fourth, I didn’t pull back. When he was good and dead, I gave my full attention to Two. He let out a satisfying little whine as I stepped closer.

“To answer the only fuckin’ question you get… no, I ain’t human,” I told him. “I kill demons like it’s my fuckin’ job, so a human like you don’t scare me, you hear me?”

Another nod.

“Now, I know Hartford sent you—that much I don’t need you to tell me,” I continued.

“But I have questions, and you’re goin’ to answer them.

And just know, if you try to scream, I’ll rip the air out of your goddamn lungs before you can.

And then I’ll bring your dumbass to the brink of death and drag you right back, you hear me? ”

I peeled back the vine from his mouth and watched as he swallowed hard.

“Do you hear me?” I repeated.

“Yeah,” he answered quietly.

“Good. Then we got an understandin’,” I said. “What are you?”

“Bounty hunters.”

“Hartford sent you,” I continued. “Did he pick you lot specifically, or did you randomly pick up the bounty?”

“It was random. Found it on the internet,” he said. “And the money was real damn good so we took it.”

Oh, I bet it was.

But I wasn’t about to ask that question. Knowing what kind of bounty Daddy Hartford put on Ryder’s head wouldn’t do a damn thing for my temper.

I took another long drag of my cigarette to stave off my anger as best I could. Time and place. Time and fucking place. This wasn’t it.

Yet.

“Were you the only ones who picked up the bounty?” I asked, though I highly doubted it. The quick shake of his head told me everything I needed to know. “How many?”

“I don’t know,”

“When did the bounty go up?”

“A few months ago,” he whispered.

After the Seattle incident. Fuck.

While I had wanted to believe the quiet run we were having was a good sign, it hadn’t sat right with me. The incident at the strip club in Seattle with Ryder’s power was always at the back of my mind, nagging at me with the question of how long we had before his past caught up with us.

I made a small sound and leaned back against the dresser, pulling in another deep inhale of smoke as I considered his words. It was fucking messy. That’s what this was. It left us with a list of issues that were growing by the minute.

At the top of that list: we had to get the fuck out of Cincinnati.

And I had to get rid of Two.

“I got one last question for you,” I said quietly, my gaze flicking in the direction of the bounty hunter. “Who else knows he’s here?”

“No one.” He shook his head. Poor idiot probably thought that fact would save his life.

If anything, it sealed his fate. “We just had instructions to bring him back and where to bring him—some rich guy’s house in Seattle.

That’s all. No one knows we found you or where we found you. I ain’t told no one anything.”

“Well, that,” I began as I stood, “is just what I like to hear.”

And then I ripped the air right out of his lungs.