Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 131708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
“It’s not what you think,” Darko defended, raising his hands slightly.
Viper shot him an incredulous look. “It’s not?”
“No.”
Digging deep for patience, Viper took a long breath. “You’re stood here covered in blood, and Omen found you looming over the dead body of a male demon outside the Red Rooms. Seems to me that you killed that demon.”
“Then, yes, it is what you think,” Darko admitted with a brief tilt of his head. “But I had valid reasons.”
Oh, this should be good. “Which are?”
“He threw a hellfire orb at me.”
Viper waited, but his brother said nothing more. “First of all, that’s one reason. Second of all, I doubt this was an unprovoked attack.” Darko had a way of making even the most tolerant person blow a fuse. “What did you do?”
He grimaced. “I might have called him a pussy. Things kind of escalated from there.”
Viper heaved a sigh.
“I caught him slapping his girl around, and it was obvious he did it regularly,” Darko continued. “I don’t like that shit.”
“Most people don’t, and they’d have intervened if they could have. But did you genuinely feel that the only way to deal with the situation was to erase the demon’s existence?”
Darko’s brow furrowed. As if no other course of action had even occurred to him.
Viper clenched his jaw. “We already have local humans disappearing—that’s going to lead to people knocking on our door eventually if we don’t get rid of the damn strix fast. You really want to draw the attention of a demon lair as well?”
Darko’s expression was the facial equivalent of a dismissive hand flick. “I made his corpse vanish. No one will trace his death back to me. And, if they do, I’ll handle it.”
“How?” challenged Viper. “By killing them, too?”
He shrugged. “It’s the quickest way to get rid of a problem.”
Viper sighed again. He did it a lot around this particular angel. In fact, the majority of their club did.
“Why are you riding my ass but not his?” groused Darko, indicating at Ghost. “He was told not to buy a Deadpool suit. Look at him.”
Lounging on the sofa, Ghost pointed at Darko. “Two things. One, I’m wearing a mask, not a suit, so it doesn’t really count. Two, this is a Spiderman mask, not a Deadpool one. You need to get your facts right.”
“You need to get that mask off your face,” Darko countered.
“I second that,” Jester piped up from the other side of the room, swiping darts out of the wall-mounted board. “And it don’t look like a spider. Just saying.”
Viper caught Darko’s eye. “Stop trying to divert my attention. We’re talking about you, not Ghost—he’ll get bored of wearing the mask when you all stop reacting to it. Your problem is a lot bigger. And I’m not talking the issue of a dead demon. I’m talking of how you seem to be using any excuse you can find to kill someone.”
Darko inched up his chin. “I was trained to kill. I was made to do it regularly. The Uppers can’t then put me out in the world and expect me to be normal.”
“They didn’t actually put you out into the world,” Jester pointed out. “You fell by choice.”
“Don’t you get tired of being technical?” sniped Darko.
Jester’s response was instant. “No.”
Right then, Dice teleported into the room. He did a double-take at the sight of the blood on Darko. “You have a run-in with someone? Tell me you didn’t do that thing again where you pounce on any reason to kill someone.”
“I don’t pounce on reasons, my actions are always justifiable. You’re not more curious about why he’s wearing a Batman mask?” Darko asked, flicking a hand at Ghost.
“Spiderman,” Ghost corrected.
Dice angled his head. “I’m thinking it might actually be a Batman mask. I mean, spiders don’t have upward-pointing black ears. That does.”
A dart hit the board with a thunk just before Jester slid a look at Ghost, who’d yanked off his mask to study it. “I did say it didn’t look like a spider.”
Viper slowly blinked, thinking that none of the people who watched his brothers warily would ever for a moment guess that these conversations took place between them.
Dice did a double-take as he looked out of the window. “The fuck?”
“What?” Viper tracked his gaze to see—motherfucker—a strix stood outside the chain-link fence at the rear of the compound, looming over a corpse.
“Son of a bitch,” spat Jester. “That’ll be another of the missing humans.”
The strix noticed them looking but didn’t scamper. It remained in place and grinned cockily. Viper didn’t worry that the little shit would bypass the fence. The entire compound was protected by wards that were powered by his blood—no demon would get through them.
Abruptly, the strix did a one-eighty and dashed across the stretch of unused, barren land that led to a wooded area.