Blood and Bone | 1

2 | 8

      With my mind, I worked on pulling the two bullets from my body. My skin was bright red with my own blood, and the bullets were so deep that I could hardly see the shine of the metal. I was exhausted after the fight, so it took me much longer than usual for the bullets to be removed. I cursed myself for letting them hit me. There had been too many going every which way for me to control.

There were so many things I could have done to avoid getting caught and thrown into a locked room. What I should have done was send the rope back up as soon as we were all down so that Hundsen wouldn't have seen it.

Unfortunately, I'd been too preoccupied to think of that then and my stupidity may have costed us our lives.

My door opened without warning. A man with a dark complexion stood in the doorway and walked in quickly. Before he could get to me, I sent both the bullets I'd pulled from my own body flying towards him.

There was a sickening sound as the bullets burrowed into the man's bare chest. He was dead before his body even hit the floor by my chained feet.

I may have not been good enough earlier, but I would be now.

I nudged the man as much as my chains would permit. Rolling him onto his side, I saw a knife hanging from his belt. Trying to make as little noise as possible, I pulled it out of the sheath.

"Jamison?" came Dmitri Orozco's gruff voice, calling from somewhere down the hall.

Orozco had barely entered the room before Jamison's knife went flying across the room to rest uncomfortably against his lined throat. "Let me go," I commanded in the deadliest voice I knew.

"No," Orozco choked out, struggling with the blade at his neck.

"I won't hesitate to kill you," I warned him, the last words he'd ever hear.

"Kill me, then, witch," Orozco sneered, his hands dropping back to his sides. "Adiago will have all your friends' heads on platters and then kill you after."

I was done with the mind games, but that was nothing new. I supposed that I couldn't let them all die at Hundsen's hand.

"Drop the knife, or I'll have Adiago end your friends right here and now."

"Excuse me, Orozco?" came the intimidating, deep voice of Adiago Hundsen. I couldn't see him, but by the way Orozco's eyes were flicking to his left, I could gauge his placement.

"Adiago, sir, the witch is still struggling," Orozco stammered, nowhere near as powerful and threatening in the presence of his insane leader.

"Tesla, lower the knife now or you will surely regret not obeying me," Adiago commanded, his black eyes on me yet again. I refused to squirm under his unsettling gaze.

Though it was a stupid idea, I knew it would be stupider not to. So I let the knife drop to the floor with a clatter. I may not have trusted my team in the least, but that didn't mean that I wanted them dead. My hands were already dripping with the blood of the innocent.

I knew that Hundsen wouldn't hesitate to kill off all seven of my teammates. I'd watched him murder one of his own gang members without a second thought the other night. It wasn't like he had a conscience that bothered him too greatly.