Page 42 of Walking in Darkness

It came from all sides.

Grunts and shouts and the scraping of bodies.

Anxiety beat through my thready pulse. Maybe Pax was right. I was so out of my comfort zone. Had no clue what I was doing, even though I knew I had to dosomething.

Tiptoeing forward, I pressed my back against the dumpster as I slowly skated around so I could see.

Pax was embroiled in a battle.

Kicking and punching and slashing a knife at the three men who surrounded him, all of whom were doing the same.

“You think you can come around here and disrespect us?” one of the men snarled, lunging forward and lashing out, the metal of his knife glinting beneath the hazy light.

The blade nicked Pax’s wrist.

It didn’t do anything but set him aflame, the man a fire that raged.

“You sick motherfuckers are going to bleed,” Pax growled as he spat a wad of blood onto the ground at their feet from a wound that gaped on his lip.

The first man I’d seen chuckled a dark sound as he wielded his knife. “Ah, you see, it’s fools like you who come around here thinking they can edge up on my territory. Saw the way you looked at my girls. You think you can have them? Can promise you one thing—you won’t be walking out of here tonight.”

He glanced at the other two guys and gave a jut of his chin in Pax’s direction. “End this piece of shit.”

He said it as if Pax were trash.

Expendable.

A problem to be disposed of, and he was going to take pleasure in watching it happen.

The two men obeyed while their leader looked on, slowly encroaching on Pax, who they began to back into the wall.

Pax seemed to comply, angling back, both his hands stretched out as if he were surrendering, though one still held on to the knife. “No need for that. I’ll just go.”

Except I could see the look in his eye. His intentions. Something neither of the men recognized through their arrogance.

They laughed. “Gonna make it easy on us, yeah? What’s the fun in that? Think we’ll take our time cutting you up.”

Only as soon as one of them took him by the wrist to bend his arm behind his back, Pax attacked.

It was a flurry of movement as he spun around, twisting out of the man’s grip and taking hold of his arm.

Pax held a knife in the other hand, and he jerked the man forward and drove the blade deep into his stomach.

Pax had already whirled around and was behind the second guy, taking him by the forehead and dragging the knife across his throat before anyone realized what had happened.

Both dropped to the ground in two quick thuds.

Motionless.

I fumbled through the dim light to turn off the safety and cock the gun.

I leaned against the dumpster, trying to catch my breath. To keep calm. To see through this madness.

With my back plastered to the rigid metal, I forced myself to move closer, my feet scuffing along the cracked sidewalk and up to the very end of the dumpster so I could peer around it.

Thadeo, the man who’d been in the girls’ thoughts, stood between me and Pax with his back to me, and Pax was already hurtling around to take him down.

But he froze in his tracks when he found Thadeo pointing a gun in his direction.