Page 81 of Mayhem

Nichlas sagged forward, both hands catching the ground while he sobbed. He told me he was sorry again, quieter this time, without attaching an explanation to it. Maybe that was the first real apology he had ever given me. If he had managed it years ago, before I found him protected behind Hunter and before I spent all that time imagining exactly how his blood would feel on my hands, it might have meant something.

Now it was only late.

I stepped behind him and caught his hair.

Nichlas realized what was happening as I pulled his head back and exposed his throat. Both hands came up immediately, grabbing at my forearm despite the damaged fingers, and he began pleading so fast the words blurred together. I held him tighter against me while the knife touched the side of his neck.

The first cut opened skin and muscle but missed anything that would finish him quickly.

Blood poured over my hand.

Nichlas screamed and thrashed hard enough that I nearly lost my grip, one heel digging into the dirt while he tried to shove himself upright. I dragged the blade back across the wound, deeper this time. Hot blood surged over my fingers and down the front of his shirt, splattering my jeans and the leaves around his knees.

He kept fighting.

I had expected that.

His elbow drove backward into my ribs, and I tightened my arm around him until his movement shortened. The sound coming from his throat changed as blood filled places air needed to move through. His hands scratched at my wrist, lost strength, caught again, then slipped over the blood coating both of us.

I held him through all of it.

His body jerked against mine several times before the fight began leaving him. The frantic grip on my arm weakened first. His shoulders followed, sinking backward while I kept his head pulled against me. Blood ran steadily over my hand and wrist, warm enough at first that I felt the temperature change as it spread through my clothes.

Nichlas tried to breathe.

The attempt produced a wet sound and another rush of blood.

I watched his eyes.

He was still there for several seconds, terrified and aware, and I wanted him to see me for every one of them. I had seen him leave me bleeding. He could watch me stay.

When his eyes finally stopped finding mine, I lowered him carefully to the ground.

I sat beside him long enough to make sure.

No last movement came. His chest stayed still, one hand lying open in the leaves while blood continued spreading beneath his neck in a dark widening patch.

I expected something dramatic after wanting this for so long. Maybe relief would hit hard enough to make me dizzy, or all the rage I carried would suddenly disappear and leave some enormous empty space behind it.

Instead, I felt good.

Tired. Sore. Bleeding from the side of my head.

And really fucking good.

I wiped the knife once against what remained clean on Nichlas’s shirt, then looked at his face. Killing him had never been the only part of the plan. I had wanted proof. Maybe because some piece of me had always expected somebody to tell me he escaped again, that another protection order appeared, that a body without a face was somehow not enough.

Whatever the reason, I wanted the head.

Removing it was ugly work.

The wound I had already opened helped, but the knife still had to pass through layers that did not surrender easily. I rolled Nichlas onto his back, braced one knee against his shoulder, and worked from the existing cut while blood soaked farther through the ground beneath him. Muscle gave before connective tissue did. I had to change my grip twice when the handle became too slick, wiping my palm against my jeans before going back in.

The spine was worse.

I could not slice cleanly through it with the knife I brought, so I had to work around the joint, feeling for the place the vertebrae separated instead of trying to force the blade through bone. My shoulders started burning before I got the angle right. When it finally gave, the sudden release nearly sent me backward.

I sat there breathing hard with Nichlas’s head separated from the rest of him.