Before he knew what he was doing he were in front of Brian again. The part of him that still had control over itself tried to stop him, but it was too late. He knew it was too late causen he drowned that part, that little voice, out without any effort at all.
It’d felt good punching Brian before. Now it felt even better. All that fucking energy all over him, that thick sex magic, his anger, the memories … it all gathered itself up behind his punch, and he knew he was smiling as Brian’s bones crunched beneath his fist.
The voices behind him, louder. Almost there. Terrible turned—it were all so easy, like everything around him ran slow, like he weren’t even thinking at all just moving by instinct, like being peaceful—and watched em come at him.
The first one had a knife, some little pocketknife wouldn’t hurt even if he managed to stab Terrible with it. But he wouldn’t. Instead he got his wrist grabbed and twisted; Terrible felt it snap, and kept twisting until the elbow snapped, too, until the dude whose arm it was crumpled to the ground and another one was coming that Terrible could hurt.
That were all he wanted to do, now. Hurt them. And they were lining up to give him the chance. Dumb fucks.
One of em jumped at him; he ducked to the side, grabbing the dude’s neck as he did and throwing him back so he slammed into the one behind him.
Terrible didn’t let go. He drove his knife into the dude’s chest with his left hand, yanked it out and stabbed the other one just the same, shoved the second one to the floor and stomped on him while reaching out to grab another.
Hands clutching his arms, trying to hold him back. Like that were gonna happen. He spun, already throwing a punch. It connected with that sharp, hard little pain, that jolt up his arm that made him feel alive. That felt right.
Somebody else’s fist hit him in the jaw, and that felt the same way. Good. Right. It fed the rage inside him, made the flames in his head run higher and his focus stronger. Made the memories play faster. More and more of em, like white noise in the back of his head, pictures going faster and faster til they was just a blur. And they hurt, too. A different kind of pain. One inside him.
One that wouldn’t go away, and even knowing how fucking dumb it was he sometimes thought—not consciously, not really knowing he was thinking it, but it were there in his head like an instinct just the same—that maybe, maybe it might this time. Like maybe this time he could beat em all and get rid of the memories too, make it all go away for good. Like maybe if he hit hard enough, drew enough blood, killed em dead enough, got hurt enough, he could end it.
But just then he weren’t thinking. He was moving. He weren’t feeling anything but pain and how good it felt to cause it, making them hurt like he hurt, and every time his fist slammed into something, every time he felt blood on his skin, he felt lighter inside.
Sharp pain on his arm where somebody slashed at him. Sharp pain in his leg where one of em kicked him. All of it only made him think sharper, made his vision so bright and clear it was like a spotlight shone on each of em and he saw everything. Droplets of blood and spit flying through the air, their wide eyes, their open mouths. His left hand kept moving, guiding his blade into doing its own damage. He cut somebody’s throat with it, shoved it into somebody’s stomach.
And they fell around him, which pissed him off more. They weren’t really hurting him. They couldn’t beat him. Sometimes he wished somebody would, or at least that somebody could come closer than these fucks did, than anyone he’d taken on did. Sometimes he wished somebody could or would actually do some damage to him, for real. Damage outside, stead of what them had done to him inside years ago.
But they didn’t. They never could, it seemed. And he wasn’t willing to just let them beat him, neither; what was the fucking point in that? He ain’t wanted to give up. Far from it. He just wanted a real match.
One that would take more from him than this, because while he was still getting worked up, they were done. He ducked a punch—a slow, clumsy one, easy—and threw one of his own. He grabbed a leg while its owner tried to kick him and twisted it, dropped to the floor to deliver another punch, and it was over. Not one of them knew how to fight for shit, and his blood still rushed in his ears, his breath still came hard and fast, his head still buzzed, and there was nothing else to do.
Except hear the sirens. They was coming after all.
It was an effort to pull himself back; his body ain’t wanted to stop, his mind ain’t wanted to return from wherever it went. Brian still sat there, whimpering behind the tape, and it was hard not to kill him. Specially since he were gonna die anyway.
But no. Much as he wanted to—his chest heaved and his knife was still ready in his hand, it’d be so fucking easy to cut Brian’s throat and watch the life disappear from his eyes—he couldn’t. He sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second he couldn’t afford, and clenched his fists, clenched his arms, tightened very muscle he could until his mind calmed up again.
Then he bent down and scooped Brian off the floor, flung him over his shoulder. Brian made some noises under the tape, but who gave a fuck what he were tryna say.
Terrible stopped in the doorway, pulled his lighter out of his pocket, and flicked it open. The sirens outside were louder; flashing red lights showed in the distance through the iron-barred windows. Soon they’d be there. Time to get gone. He thumbed the flame into life and touched it to one of the fluid-covered files near the door. Fire leapt from it; fire ran in hot orange streams across the room, in thin rivulets like scribbled pencil lines as the lighter fluid went up, across the floor, around the bodies, over and into the boxes of spells.
His phone beeped. Timmy Vee telling him he had one minute. Aye, then. He closed the door on the growing fire, twisted the handle to make certain it were locked, and jammed one of the other keys on Brian’s ring into it. Just in case.
Then he ran. Down the hall, down the stairs, past all them machines, lugging Brian over his shoulder. The countdown he’d started in his head when he got Timmy Vee’s text told him he had maybe twenty seconds when he hit the door; he burst through it just as the flashing ambulance lights washed bright over the parking lot. Fuck.
He threw Brian into the Chevelle and gunned it for the fence. Not enough time to try and get past the ambulances. Not even enough time to get out that front gate if the ambulances weren’t coming, because his countdown hit single digits, and as the Chevelle burst through the chain-link and left rubber on the street the Peace Factory exploded behind him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE PULLED UP outside the apartment complex in Cross Town five minutes later. The complex where Archie lived, for real—well, not Archie, but Tom Grant. According to the text Terrible got, Tom Grant lived in Building C, in apartment 2022. And Terrible was real fucking happy to be seeing Tom again. The magic he’d felt from that spell at the Peace Factory had faded, but the memory hadn’t, and he’d calmed down some but not all the way.
It had ended too soon. His muscles still burned. He weren’t done yet, he wanted to … to finish it. To beat on something or someone else, because those shitbags at the Peace Factory hadn’t been enough.
Tom wouldn’t be enough, neither, and he couldn’t kill Tom, but it were still gonna be fun.
He left Brian on the floor in the backseat of the Chevelle and covered him with a blanket he kept in the trunk. It was old and grimy, but Brian weren’t in a position to complain and Terrible didn’t give a shit even if he were.