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.
Hundsen himself unlocked the chains that were inhibiting my legs and yanked me to my feet. With a firm hand on my arm, he and Orozco escorted me into another room that I'd never seen before.
My eyes were drawn to the splatter of blood, both dried and drying, that stained the concrete. Various torture devices lined the wall. I didn't falter in my neutral expression or my steady gait, though my two wounds were stinging with sharp pain.
I gave an involuntary grunt as the hand on my arm forced me down to my knees. A new younger man stepped into my field of vision. He may have been handsome, but it was covered up by a swelling black eye and several cuts on his face.
"That looks like it hurts," I told him mockingly. "Did Jake give you a hard time?"
He responded with a swift slap to my face. I hardly moved. This wasn't the first time I'd been tortured.
"Show her what we do with those that desert and defy the Crepuscule Club," Hundsen ordered, sounding smug. I could practically hear the satisfied smile in his voice.
The torturer started by hitting me so many times that I lost count. Soon, my own blood mixed with the blood of those unfortunate enough to find themselves in this room. He made sure to land blows on my bad shoulder, which led to a pain so great that I had to grit my teeth together to keep from screaming.
Once in a while, when the torturer would take a few seconds to either switch his weapon or to hold me down, my eyes darted to the plethora of weapons hanging on the wall. It would be so easy to simply use them on the man inflicting such pain on my body and Hundsen, who stood watching.
But my plan for escape would be stopped by the crowd of gang members who were standing in the entrance of the room, trying to get a peek at Delphinium Tesla on her knees, being beaten to a pulp. If I killed Adiago, I knew that all of his minions would go straight for my team and kill them like he would have wanted.
I couldn't have them die. Too many people had been ruthlessly cut out of my life.
It had taken the multiple threats of their lives to make me realize that, though I didn't trust them or rely on them, I felt responsible for their lives now. If I let them down, I would have a team no longer. If I didn't have a team, I couldn't avenge the deaths I'd brought about.
But when the torturer got out a wickedly sharp blade somewhere between a sword and knife in length, my heart sank.
As he slashed away at my flesh, mostly at my arms and legs, I lost my self control. The pain was blinding as I bled out from a thousand wounds. My screams echoed in the metal walls of the warehouse.
I sent a volley of knives sailing through the air towards Hundsen, but another slice of the knife and my aim was ruined. They sank helplessly into the wall three feet away from Hundsen's head, who hadn't moved a muscle.
I'd been tortured before but because they'd needed me alive for the next mission, the torturer had never gone too far. Adiago Hundsen didn't seem to have the same problem.
And then, just when it seemed that my body couldn't take another cut from the knife, the assault stopped. I lay on the floor, completely exhausted and physically done, as Hundsen held up a hand to stop the man that I was beginning to think was my executioner.
"I just thought of a favor you can do for me, Tesla," he spoke, looking down at my weakened form without pity.
"You actually have the audacity to ask me for a favor?" I inquired through gritted teeth as I lifted myself from the concrete. "How about you do me a favor and go to hell?"
He landed a swift kick in my ribs with his immaculate black shoes, making me curl up again in pain. "I'm going to forget you said that. Get up." It was a small pleasure to see him grimace from the pain of his stab wound in his chest.
I wanted to send a knife into his heart more than ever now, but it was too late. I couldn't lift a knife, much less attack him now. Though my muscles screamed with pain, I hoisted myself up so that I was standing.
"Follow me," he barked, making his gang members part like the Red Sea as he marched through them, me limping behind him.
Throwing over his shoulder at a woman that stood in the front of the dispersing crowd, "Bring me the healer." After sitting down at his desk, he rifled through papers and folders as if he hadn't just had me brutally beaten.
Before I knew it, a very pale and nervous Gigi was pushed forward towards me, with her hands tied together.
With her pretty face alight with fear, she looked up at me in surprise. "D-Delphinium, what happened to you?" Her turquoise eyes raked my bloody and bruised face, probably wondering if she'd be next.
As my fierce eyes stayed trained on Hundsen's scarred face, I spoke firmly, barely moving my lips. "I'll be fine."
She blinked once after gaping at my pitiful state, clearly questioning me. "Are...are you-"
"Gigi." I silenced her, knowing her obvious weakness and fear was not smart to show around Hundsen.
"Heal Tesla the best you can," Hundsen ordered of her, leaving no room for her to object, though I doubted that was a possibility. "Or you'll be meeting a fate worse than her."
I watched as her eyes widened and then she turned back towards me. With a quick wave of her hand, I could feel the pain in my body growing lesser until it was gone. Though she made it look relatively easy, I could tell it took a toll on her. She looked very tired, having healed my entire broken body.
Before she faced Hundsen again, she met my eyes once more in a silent plea. I said nothing to her. If she was looking for pity or kind words, I had none to give. I couldn't say anything comforting that wouldn't be a falsehood.
Without speaking another word to her when Gigi's job was done, Hundsen gave the woman a nod. She grabbed the raven-haired girl's arms and yanked her back to her cell. Gigi didn't try to fight her and simply let herself be dragged away.
When the two were gone, Hundsen pushed a folder towards me and opened it. As he spread out all the clippings of paper for me to read, my heart sunk in realization.
No.
"I'm going to need you to take care of this for me," Adiago Hundsen conveyed. "And for your friends' sakes, I hope you comply." He pulled the flap of his jacket back to show me his handgun in a message that needed no words.
I wanted nothing more than to dent the table with his head, but my self control seemed to have been returned with my strength.
"Be back here by eight at night on Sunday. If you try anything, especially with the police, I will know, and even you will not be able to save them and your friends from an early death at my hand."
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I waited in the shadows behind the building for the man to walk out the exit. The chilly night breeze breathed onto my face, and my cloak fluttered around my legs.
Finally, the door opened with a squeak. A tall man with a scraggly beard walked out. Pulling a cigarette out of the box, he lit it and breathed the smoke out into the darkness. I could already tell that this was the man I had been searching for.
I stood perfectly still and silent for a few moments before he stiffened and turned around, searching for what was making him feel so uneasy. The cigarette fell from his two fingers as the surprised man took me in, but he couldn't see my face. The hood was pulled up over my hair, casting darkness completely over my face.
"Who-what-?"
I interrupted his nervous stuttering. "Marcus Ponsey, we've done buisness before." At this, his freckled face formed into a frown as he probably tried to decipher exactly what kind of business I meant.
"Guns," I snarled, getting impatient.
"Do you have something to offer me for them?" He questioned, his greed getting the best of him. To his statement, I pulled a wad of cash from my pocket and held it up for him to see.
Ponsey nodded quickly. "I can get you one. Follow me." The smuggler led me to the dingy pawn shop he owned. As he beckoned me to follow him to the counter, I surveyed the shop. Many trinkets lined the shelves, most of them dirty or broken. Obviously, the only thing that kept him in buisness was his illegally sold guns.
Ponsey lifted a box from under the counter up and opened it for me to look inside. Stashed in the box were a multitude of small guns, pistols and handguns among them.
I shook my head. "I need a sniper rifle." These guns were too small and not as accurate or ranged as I needed. I needed the kill in one shot.
Ponsey nodded his head again in understanding and walked over to a small room off to the side. Keys jingled in his hand as he unlocked the door. Inside the room were different larger weapons hung on the wall.
Without hesitation, he passed me the exact one I needed. One that felt all too familiar in my hands.
As I slapped the money into the smuggler's dirty palm, I stopped. "Be here by 1 AM tonight. I'm returning this gun by then."
"Done," he stated, curling his hand around the cash. He didn't ask why I was returning it or what I was planning, and for this, I was thankful. It wasn't as if he was going to go to the police about it, but I always lived by one main rule: the less people who know about it, the better.
As I was preparing to leave, shouldering the long gun, Ponsey took a step forward and turned me back with a hand on my shoulder. "Who are you?"
After thinking for a moment, I answered him honestly, "Someone that you should be afraid of." I wrenched my shoulder from his grasp and went off to complete my mission.
▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂
I scanned over the numbers on the sidewalks, searching for the one I'd seen in one of Hundsen's photographs. My eyes caught the painted white 307 on the sidewalk and I knew I'd found a match.
Noting that the house's roof was a lighter gray than all the others', I walked all the way around and began climbing the hill behind the houses. There was a clear trail cut into the dirt and rock, and I knew there were no cameras here.
However, just to be careful, I ducked behind a massive boulder and got out my borrowed gun. With one eye closed, I scoped out two windows that were open to the kitchen in the warm night.
I saw my victim moving about in the kitchen. If they sat down at the table, they would be in the perfect place for me to shoot. The bullet would go through the open window, and no glass would be broken.
As I waited for my target to sit by the window, I thought about what to do. I hardly had a choice. It was seven lives to one; though Hundsen had forced me in an impossible spot. Someone still had to die tonight.
I closed my eyes as soon as my victim sat down next to the window, a perfect target. I would have given anything in that moment not to have been the monster that Delphinium Tesla was.
With my mother's screams echoing in my mind, I pulled up the gun to my shoulder. I pressed my finger to the trigger, ready to bathe the floorboards with the blood of Imani Henderson, the mother of Gigi.