Total pages in book: 44
Estimated words: 40484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 202(@200wpm)___ 162(@250wpm)___ 135(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40484 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 202(@200wpm)___ 162(@250wpm)___ 135(@300wpm)
Blood rolled down the mean face, but just as his fist was about to descend on a stunned El, a gloved hand came out of nowhere and covered the wide, furious eyes. Another emerged from behind Carlos with a knife and dragged the blade over his throat. The cut sawed deep into the defenseless neck, exposing raw meat, and droplets of blood sprayed El’s face as more of it soaked into the cartel man’s blue T-shirt.
Whoever saved El remained a shadow, and stepped back into the puff of dust when Carlos’s heavy form collapsed to the floor. He was still gurgling for air but his eyes had already turned toward hell.
Too stunned to breathe, El only moved once a bullet hit the wall above him, and fell to the floor in front of the lifeless body. The cloud settled in time to show him a ripped man in black shoving Yellow Shirt at the wall. And his knife, the same one that had already cut one throat tonight, now pushed deep into the goon’s eye with the ease of a key going into a well-oiled lock.
Blood and dust created an overpowering, choking odor, but when a moan drew El’s gaze to the mess in the middle of the bedroom, to the epicenter of the collapse, he spotted a third man buried under the debris. Despite red shining in his matted hair, the goon attempted to crawl out from beneath the pile of broken wood and all kinds of… stuff, but before El could have broken out of his stupor, the same guy who’d just murdered two of El’s pursuers in cold blood stepped up to the injured man and jabbed his blade into his temple, all the way to the hilt.
El’s breath caught in his throat, and he wanted to hold out his weapon in warning, only to realize that he’d dropped the razor in the chaos, and had nothing to defend himself but trembling hands that wouldn’t even fully close into fists. El hit the wall with his back and faced the demon standing in the middle of the carnage.
“W-who…” was all El managed to utter. He didn’t even feel shame about being terrified in the face of such destruction.
The man’s clothes—jeans, a band T-shirt under an open leather vest—were gray from dust, but he was tall and filled his outfit with trim muscle. El watched him wipe his knuckle knife on the clothes of the dead man before replacing it in a holster attached to his belt.
The silence was daunting, and El didn’t dare speak, locked in one room with the apex predator and three of his victims. But as the stranger rolled his shoulders and faced him with a frown over dark eyes, El’s heart trembled with recognition.
He covered his mouth, but still whispered the man’s name. “Trig.”
Chapter 2 – El
“Wh-what are you doing here?” El choked out in disbelief and had to do a double take at Trig’s arm, to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him. But there it was—the four letters that complemented El’s original forearm tattoo. Unlike El, Trig hadn’t tried to forget his past by adding more letters or covering it with another design, so his skin still spelled out ever.
He had grown taller and more muscular than he could ever have on their past diet of marshmallows and instant noodles, and even the tear troughs running at a sharp angle on either side of his nose had deepened, making him look older than his real age of twenty-six. But it was still him.
El once more glanced at the massive hole in the ceiling, at an utter loss.
“Are those the only ones, or is there more coming?” Trig asked in a deep voice that sank its claws into El’s flesh the same way it had years back, when they’d first met.
Back when they were still two lost kids who only had each other.
He forgot how to speak when Trig approached the dresser and opened the second drawer, pulling out a clean black top. He seemed to… know where to search for it.
Carlos had gone to hell and now lay motionlessly as his blood seeped into the mess, like a reminder of the cuts on El’s forearm.
“I… I think they’re the only ones. For now. There will be more once their boss finds out that they’re—” El gestured at the three corpses, unable to comprehend the speed at which Trig had dealt with all the cartel men. The two of them might not have been strangers to violence in the past, but petty crime or brawls after punk rock concerts had nothing on this shit.
El was too stunned to move when Trig descended to one knee and pulled up his injured arm. The odor of blood clung to Trig’s dark clothes, but beyond it was the scent of leather, with a hint of sweat and exotic spices.