Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
He doubted by the voices that any of them would notice, anyway.
Their own bloodlust saturated the suffocating air.
Vileness the only oxygen by which their depravedness was sustained.
“Gonna have her one more time, boss.” A voice cackled, amped up, both from drugs and the perversion that reeked in the air.
“No, this is sufficient to send the message I need. That and her body on his doorstep.”
Sickness rolled in Silas’s stomach. Bile climbing his throat. His heart shifted into overdrive.
A riotous thunder that battered at his ears.
Everything spun.
Hands slicked with sweat, twitching with the need for revenge.
All while something else pressed into his conscience.
Retribution was right there.
He could have them.
But there was something that drew him forward. A call he couldn’t help but heed.
He crept forward, cringing when his boot crunched against a sliver of broken glass on the floor.
But it wasn’t enough to penetrate their barbarity.
“Pick her up and toss her into the back of the SUV. You’ll slit her throat once we get there. I don’t want her bleeding out in the back of the Rover. Isius, get rid of her car.”
Silas peeked around the doorway and into what was the house’s living room. It was nearly pitch, and he was barely able to make out the outline of three men standing in the room.
Except Silas could see only one thing.
The stripped, battered body of a girl on the floor. An indistinct silhouette held in the pall.
It didn’t matter that he couldn’t really see her.
Silas felt like he got turned inside out.
His guts ripped from his body.
His heart toppled like the garbage on the floor, though it beat out of rhythm, out of time.
A monster moved to pick her up, and Silas didn’t think.
He didn’t wait for the cue from Phoenix for them to go in at the same time.
He just stepped out and started to shoot.
Going for the bastard who knelt first, refusing to allow him to get his fetid hands on her again.
The fucker howled when he was struck.
Chaos suddenly broke out.
Shots fired back.
The one that struck Silas didn’t even bring him to his knees.
The disgust, the fury, the rage were enough to keep him standing.
At the back of the house, he heard glass break. No doubt, Phoenix had heard the commotion and was rushing to make his way in.
Another barrage of bullets.
His and the men’s.
Silas was on his stomach, trying to crawl into the room.
Footsteps and shots resounded.
Shouts as the men suddenly ran from the room.
“Get up!” Phoenix shouted from the end of the hall.
An engine suddenly roared and wood crashed as the SUV busted through the garage door.
“They’re getting away,” Phoenix shouted.
Only Silas remained on his knees. Crawling for the girl.
Dead or unconscious.
He didn’t know.
Sirens sang in the distance.
Phoenix gripped him by the back of the shirt. “Get up. We have to get out of here.”
“No…I…she needs help.” He tried to get to the girl.
To change it.
His mother’s face flashed behind his eyes.
Her smile.
Her belief.
Was this someone’s mother?
Their sister?
Their daughter?
Pain splintered and shook.
“You have to get up now.”
When he couldn’t, Phoenix fisted two hands in the front of his cut and hauled him to his feet.
“Fuck, man. We have to get the fuck out of here. Right fucking now.” He jostled him. “The police are coming. They’ll get her help.”
Phoenix forced him back down the hall and through the window that he’d come through, then basically dragged him through the three-foot grasses that clogged the backyard, the toes of Silas’s boots cutting through the soil.
Phoenix tossed him through a missing slat in the fence and out into the alley at the back.
Their breaths were jutted and harsh as the sound of sirens approached.
Silas suppressed a wail that threatened to rise from his soul.
“The fuck, man? You just let them go?” Phoenix wheezed it near his face, disbelief threaded into every word. “You were supposed to wait for the cue.”
But in that moment, it wasn’t about vengeance.
It was about setting something right.
Helping an innocent.
Silas didn’t know her name or her face, but he knew there were uncountable others just like her.
Pain finally broke through the disturbance, and he pressed his hand to his side. Felt the warm blood dripping free.
“You’re hit?” Phoenix’s demeanor flipped into concern.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
Phoenix gave him a clipped nod, confusion woven on his expression before he helped Silas to stand.
He kept an arm around Silas’s waist as they fumbled down the alley in the direction of their bikes.
They stayed low the way they always did.
Undetected, pausing for a minute when an ambulance with its lights flashing and siren screaming sped into the neighborhood.
And he knew, standing there cloaked in a blanket of fog, listening to the sirens, that he wouldn’t take it back.
As he climbed onto his bike, wincing from the bullet lodged somewhere near the same spot where he’d been hit the night his mother had been slain, he felt something inside himself break apart and rebuild in a flash.