Which is putting it very, very mildly.
But before my mind can wander again to those big blue eyes and heart-shaped mouth, I yank my consciousness back to the business at hand. She’ll come later. First, I have business to attend to.
I left a skylight propped open last night: one, conveniently, in a corner above a hanging light without a bulb. Like a wraith, I slip inside the building, picking my way along one of the rafters. My gaze drops down to the haze of cigarette smoke, the smell of fear and dirt, and I listen to the chuckle of one of my prey as he bangs his gun against the bars of one of the cages. My teeth grind silently when I hear the sobs of the girls shrinking back from the bars and his laughter.
There’s evil everywhere in the world. Sometimes, it’s so much to think about that it almost overwhelms me. Sometimes it sparks a rage inside me that threatens to shatter the mask I’ve spent so much of my life perfecting for the people I call family and loved ones.
That’s what tonight is for. Not saving the world. Not destroying evil once and for all. You can do something, or you can do nothing. And the “something” I’m doing tonight will allow me to vent that rage that inevitably builds inside me.
I double check the knife strapped to my hip. Then I drop down to one of the catwalks just beneath the rafters. I move silently to the far side until I’m above a stack of old wooden shipping crates. Swinging over the edge of the catwalk, I lower myself, shoulders and biceps coiling like thick rope before I drop down behind the crates.
It’s a matter of seconds before my beast will be let out. And he knows it. He’s salivating for it. I slip the knife from its sheath, fingering the hilt. I slip around the far side of the boxes. My eyes stay shadowed as I keep hidden, taking note of my targets.
There’s only three of them. If they knew what was coming for them, they’d have added a fucking zero to that number.
The closest to me will be first, for practical reasons. He’s got an M-16 and an obviously inexperienced and twitchy trigger finger. His two buddies are similarly armed—one sitting at a folding table dicking around with playing cards and chain-smoking, the other doing his fuckhead maneuver of clanking the stock of his rifle against the bars while he laughs.
He’s apparently quite pleased by his ability to terrify children locked in cages.
The three of them have all got guns. I’ve just brought my knife. But I’m not worried. And it’s not as if I didn’t think there’d be firearms here.
I prefer the knife.
It’s more primal. More savage.
I can feel it more when I wipe their existence from the face of the earth.
It’s sentiments like that that might possibly indicate something far darker, psychologically speaking, than I care to contemplate most of the time. Does getting excited, maybe even a little hard at the prospect of ripping out the throats of child predators and traffickers make me a psychopath?
Perhaps, at least a little. Because it’s not just about justice or punishing the wicked to me. It’s not only about “doing the right thing”.
I fucking enjoy it.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, I am what I need to be: the strong, silent, gentle giant of a brother. The friendly and helpful grandson. The loyal friend.
But you can’t hide your true nature all the time. And it’s moments like this where I get to really be who and what I am. When I get to inhale malice and exhale violence and bloodshed.
It’s times like this when I feel the most alive.
You know, as in the opposite of what these three fucks are going to be in three, two, one…
Go.
The first never even sees me before my hand clamps over his mouth, wrenching his head to the side and snapping his neck. I drag him into the shadows, my knife cutting his throat anyway, because why the fuck not.
The other two jolt when I slip a shoe off their dead buddy’s foot and hurl it at the far wall of the warehouse.
“The fuck was that?!” the one at the table blurts, lurching to his feet and bringing up his M-16.
The dumb fuck still has the safety on when I charge up behind him. He screams, gurgling wetly as my knife punches into his lungs from behind, lifting him off his feet. The third one whirls, his eyes bulging in horror when he sees my size and my mask. Before he can even fire his weapon, I’m hurling cocksucker number two at him.
They both slam into the bars behind them. Roughly a quarter second later, I’ve got them both by the throats. I drag them into the shadows and away from the girls, who’ve already seen plenty of things they shouldn’t have, before slitting their throats as well and spilling their blood onto the ground.
I glance at my watch.
Three minutes and eighteen seconds.
Fuck. I’m getting slow.
“I’m glad you called, Kratos.”
The man in front of me with the slight Eastern European accent, blonde hair, and haunted blue eyes is my age. And yet Lukas Komarov always comes off as much older. I never actually asked how he knew who I was the first time we crossed paths, because I’d already looked into him.
Suffice to say that by the time we finally met, he was more than fully aware of who and what I was.
Lukas’ father, Viktor, runs the Kashenko Bratva, which Lukas will one day helm himself. But until then Lukas runs the Free Them Foundation alongside his wife, Lizbet, an organization that focuses on eradicating child trafficking around the world. To the casual observer, they do this by working with local legislators and police forces.
Under the surface, though, they do this by harnessing the power of the Bratva, not to mention Lukas’ personal penchant for darkness and violence, to exterminate the cockroaches that would harm children.
“Although…” Lukas arches a brow, turning to level his gaze at the three bodies now covered by a tarp in the corner of the warehouse. “When you did call, I sort of hoped we might be working together on this one.”
“Hey, I did call you.”
“An hour ago, yeah.” He eyes me. “When did you get here?”
I lift a heavy shoulder. “An hour and…three minutes ago?”
