26. Addison

Chapter twenty-six

Addison

T he man who grabbed me would be the first to die. One of Jake's puppets wrapped his arms around my chest, dragging me away from Piper as Jake advanced on him, looking like the devil himself. I'd never heard Piper sound so… possessed before. It wasn't right, and it sent chills down my spine as he taunted Jake. I struggled against the man who held me, sending an elbow into his gut and jerking my head back until I heard a satisfying crunch, and he howled in pain. He stumbled back as Jake kicked over Piper's chair, sending him tumbling to the floor.

"Piper!" I screamed, and he twisted, pulling against his bindings as he laughed, blood dripping down his cheek.

Selene hissed, her tongue brushing against my ear. I wish I could speak to her like Austin could, because it felt like she was trying to tell me something. My heart was pounding, adrenaline pulsing through me so hard it felt like the floor was shaking. Wait… was it actually shaking ? The puppet barreled toward me, one hand clutching his bloody nose, but something dropped onto his head from above, and he screamed, collapsing to the floor in front of me.

I heard a thud and whirled around, snarling as Jake aimed another kick at Piper. "Don't fucking touch him!" I yelled, running at him. Shouts of panic erupted around me as the room descended into chaos, and a cacophony of hissing filled the room. I cocked my fist back and caught Jake in the chin, forcing him to stumble back. His good eye turned towards me, his pupil dilated with… ew, lust? What a fucking creep.

"I forgot how good you felt," he growled, and I raised my fists, stepping between him and Piper. The door to the room slammed open, and the guard nearest to the door went down to his knees, blood spurting out of a gaping hole in his throat. "Shoot it!" Jake exclaimed, but the other guards were a little distracted at the moment, and I smirked. Two of them were grappling with pythons that had wrapped themselves around their throats, their guns forgotten at their sides. The one nearest to me was wailing and stumbling around as a rattlesnake sank its fangs into his hand. More snakes poured into the room, hissing and coiling as they surrounded us.

Another scream of pain erupted, and one of the men fighting the pythons was face down on the ground, a shadowy figure perched on top of him. I winced as the figure wrapped his hands around the guard's head and wrenched, twisting it at an unnatural angle. Jake swore as the figure leapt at the next man, his thumbs slamming into his eye-sockets as he brought him to the ground. The screams made my stomach churn, but they were silenced quickly, and the figure rose up, blood dripping off him.

He smoothed his hair back away from his face, and I smiled, my arms relaxing at my sides as palpable relief washed over me. Austin stalked towards us, his eyes focused on me, looking absolutely deadly.

"Fucking shoot him, you useless piece of shit!" Jake snarled, and the man with the rattlesnake hanging off of him swung his gun around, his eyes unfocused as he tried to aim. Austin was a blur as he struck, taking the man down before he could pull the trigger, blood spraying the nearby wall as he tore his throat out.

Jake's hand closed around my arm and I jerked away from him, freezing when a familiar prick of cold metal pressed against my neck. I let him wrench me backward, grimacing as he wrapped a hand around my waist. This time, the crazy man wielding the knife didn't scare me, because I was more powerful than he knew and his time was already up.

Austin advanced on us, blood dripping down his face as he hissed, his fangs flashing. The smile tugged at the corners of my mouth, even as Jake tugged me back, the metal biting into my skin. "I was so worried about you," I told Austin, and his pupils dilated. He'd shed the bloodstained hoodie I'd last seen him wearing, leaving a tight black tee-shirt with one of the sleeves missing, as if it had been torn off by hand. The place where I knew the bullet had hit him was scarred and angry, but clearly healing over. His patches of scales glistened under the light. He looked like a predator right now, and my face flushed with heat at the sight.

"I heard you calling," he hissed, his voice rough and barely audible.

"Shut the fuck up!" Jake snarled. "Stop moving, or I'll slit her throat!"

Austin froze, his hands clenched into fists. I shook my head, giving him a reassuring smile.

"It's okay baby," I murmured. The blade pressed against my skin, and Jake's hand tightened against my stomach.

"You ruin everything!" he snarled in my ear, and I laughed bitterly, the sound echoing across the room.

"Jake, this time, I'm going to make sure you're well and truly dead," I murmured. "Selene, Helios, take care of him for me, would you, please?" I felt Helios shift in my hoodie's pouch, his body coiling tight before he struck out, latching onto Jake's hand. Selene struck in tandem, and Jake reeled back, the knife dropping to the ground as his hands went to his face. I turned and smiled as Selene extracted her fangs from his cheek, dropping to the floor and slithering away. Helios, my brave boy, coiled his body around Jake's arm, biting him several more times as Jake screamed in agony.

"You shouldn't have touched me, Jake," I sighed, stepping away as he writhed in pain. "You should have just left us alone." Austin grabbed my arms and spun me around, pulling me tightly against his chest. I breathed in his scent, melting into his arms.

"Did he hurt you?" Austin rasped, his fingers raking through my hair, tugging it back until I tipped my face up to look at him. He looked like a monster, with the blood streaking down his face, and his fangs bared as he snarled at Jake's twisting body. He was my monster, and I rose up on my tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek.

"No, but he hurt Piper," I whispered, looking over my shoulder, and Austin's face darkened with rage. As his hands slid off my back, I stepped aside, leaving him to finish the business with Jake. Hurrying over toward Piper, I found Selene curled up on his chest, watching me. I looked around and spotted Jake's discarded knife on the floor. I used it to cut the duct tape on Piper's wrists and ankles, and then I grabbed him carefully under the shoulders and dragged him off the chair, laying him gently on the ground. He was a mess. I could barely see his skin underneath all the bruising and blood.

"Piper, can you hear me?" I murmured, wincing as Jake screamed in agony. Not really sure what I was doing, I pressed my fingers to Piper's neck and managed to find his heartbeat, faint but steady. "I need you to wake up. We need to get you out of here," I told him, stroking his cheek. He let out a soft groan, but his eyes didn't open, and I started to panic.

Another crack, like a gunshot, echoed across the room, and Jake screamed, his voice breaking. "Austin, we need to go. Piper needs a hospital," I announced, and he hissed in response. Another snap, and Jake's screaming stopped abruptly. I exhaled in relief. It was finally done. Austin dropped down beside me and I picked Selene up off Piper's chest as Austin lifted his limp body up awkwardly in his arms. We walked out of the room, leaving the cluster of bodies behind.

I glanced down at Hannah, a shiver of remorse rippling through me. She didn't deserve to die. She was just another victim in Jake's horrific reign of terror. I shut the door behind us, entombing them together, and made a mental note to come back here tonight and set a well-placed fire to destroy the evidence we left.

The next part wasn't fun. I had to convince Austin to leave Piper in an alley a block down from the building. It felt all kinds of wrong, but it would be too suspicious if we brought him in looking like this. I called an ambulance, stating that someone had been mugged and where he was located, hanging up before they could ask questions. Austin and I waited in a doorway nearby until the ambulance arrived and gathered him up, rushing him off to the nearby hospital.

We got back home, and I discovered Wyatt passed out in the studio, propped up on one of the benches. He had fresh blood on his chest and all over his cast, but no visible wounds, thank god. To my utter devastation, I found Granddaddy cobra coiled next to him on the floor, belly up.

Apparently after I'd left, Wyatt had crawled down the stairs by himself to find Austin on the floor, bleeding out. Not knowing what else to do, he'd healed Austin, but it had been too much for him to take on himself. The old snake had made the ultimate sacrifice for them, letting Wyatt push the injury into him instead.

There was no time to mourn him, not today, at least. Tears stained my cheeks as Austin and I found him a shoebox and tucked him inside, and he brought him up to his room for his other friends to watch over our fallen. Then I helped Austin strip out of his bloodied clothes, setting them in a pile to burn later, and pushed him into the shower to get cleaned up. I set Selene and Helios in with the others to rest and dropped my clothes into the pile with Austin's, checking myself over for blood. Just Piper's and Austin's, which coated my hands. I scrubbed in the sink for ten minutes, trying to get my skin clean, but I could still see the stain on my fingers even though the water ran clear.

Austin stepped out of the shower and pulled me away from the sink as my hands began to turn pink from the hot water. I was so tired; I wished we were a normal family who could just nap the afternoon away. Instead, we got dressed in silence, checked on Wyatt to make sure he was breathing, and then headed back, out into the world like we hadn't just massacred a room full of brainwashed people.

When we reached the hospital, I had to think up a decent lie to explain how we knew Piper was there since he'd been brought in as a John Doe. In reality, I'd taken his wallet and phone myself since a mugging wouldn't make sense if he had all his valuables still on him. The nurse didn't seem to care either way, and pointed out his bed in the ER bay.

He looked even worse under the ugly fluorescent lights. The few patches of unbruised skin were tinged a sickly gray. I collapsed into a chair next to the bed, trying to figure out where to even hold him without hurting him. Austin hovered behind me, for once not hiding underneath his hood. He stood proudly, his shoulders firm, with a hand on the back of my neck.

We waited, listening to the machines beeping quietly, for nearly an hour before the doctor came by to check on him. His amputated finger was a priority, because it had been poorly done and left untreated for a long time, leaving him wide open for infections. Another concern was head trauma. The EMTs had reported that his pupillary response wasn't what it should be, and clearly he'd taken several blows to the head. They had me remove all of his jewelry and gave me the scraps of his clothes, which they'd had to cut off of him to assess his injuries on the way here.

I busied myself with storing all of his necklaces, bracelets, and assorted rings into my bag so I wouldn't lose any of them. A pair of nurses joined us in the little curtained room and prepped Piper to take him up for his scans. There was no reason to keep the scraps of his clothes, not even for rags, so I brought them to the nearby garbage bin. A small clatter had me pausing, and I looked down to see something glinting on the floor, whatever it was having fallen from my pile of fabric. I dumped the handful of clothes in the bin and bent to pick it up, wondering how one of Piper's trinkets had ended up in the clothes.

At a closer glance, I realized that it wasn't one of his; it was much too small. It was jewelry though. In fact, it was a beautiful antique ring with a blood red gemstone. It looked so similar to his own spider ring that tears pricked in my eyes. Maybe it was a little presumptuous, but I couldn't help but slip it onto my finger, admiring how perfectly it fit without being sized.

"Addy?" Austin murmured, coming up behind me. "What's wrong?" I shook my head, brushing the tears away quickly. Not yet. I couldn't cry just yet.

"Just tired," I whispered, and let him pull me back towards the chair, dropping down into it with a sigh. Somehow, I managed to doze off in that uncomfortable little chair, waking only when a loud ringing went off in our small space, startling me violently. Austin hissed as I dug through my bag, trying to find the source of the ringing underneath all the crap I had stuffed in there.

I finally unearthed my cell phone, and we both stared at it for a minute, confused about who would bother to call me.

"Hello?" I asked tentatively, as Austin crouched to listen in.

"Mrs. Collins?" a man asked, and I glanced at Austin.

"Yes, who is this?" I frowned.

"I'm Harold Leonberg, your husband's lawyer," he offered, and I opened and closed my mouth several times, trying to figure out the proper response to that, other than, huh?!

"What, um… can I do for you?" I asked, at a loss for anything else to say.

"Well… do you know, uh, where your husband is?" Harold asked, sounding a little sheepish. For fuck's sake, Cain may have lied about a lot of things these last few months, but I would be pretty dumb to not notice he'd been carted off to jail.

"Yes, trust me, I'm well aware. I actually was supposed to talk to you about how to visit him? They wouldn't let me see him when I went to the police station." I grimaced.

"Mrs. Collins, your husband isn't at the police station, or jail, for that matter. In fact, I'm here right now and I cannot find him," Harold told me, and I let out a string of very ladylike curses that had him clearing his throat uncomfortably. "I'm sorry to have upset you. I was hoping to speak to him, but he's not answering his cell phone either. You were the only other listed contact, I'm afraid," He explained gently.

"I swear to god, if that dumbass broke out of jail somehow, I will-" I hung up on Harold, who let out a strangled yelp at my mention of a prison break. "Cain is missing," I told Austin, blinking away tears of frustration. At least when he was locked in jail, he could stay out of fucking trouble. Could we please just go twenty-four hours without one of my men going missing or getting injured?!

I realized I was clenching my phone and took a deep breath, quickly dialing Cain's number. It went straight to voicemail, and I let it beep, fuming at this point. "You son of a bitch! You'd better call me back and explain what the fuck is going on, because if I find out you've done something stupid, I swear I will tear you apart limb from limb. Piper is in the goddamn hospital and you'd better not have broken out of jail. So help me god, Cain…" I sighed and hung up before I said anything else too nasty.