was shaking, her limbs trembling from the cold or shock or…
“You don’t need to be afraid anymore,” I swore to her, pushing her back just enough so that I could look into her eyes.
She glanced about and the fear there was impossible to miss. It wasn’t just what had happened to her or the men we’d killed or Duke escaping. This place was the root of her fear too. It was where she’d spent her entire existence as far as she could remember. And it had been hell on Earth.
“You wanna see it burn?” I asked her, looking around at the mixture of mine shafts, trailers, cars and cabins that made up this ramshackle place.
Winter’s eyes widened like the idea of that excited her and I smiled darkly as I moved towards the trailers, taking two huge tanks of propane which had been hooked up to heat them and dragging them back towards the mine shaft.
Next, I found a snowmobile and got it started, riding it over so that it sat idling beside the shaft, ready to ride just as soon as I was done.
Winter climbed on at my command and I gave her a dark smile as I grabbed the propane tanks again.
I found a heavy rock and used it to smash the valves off, the hiss of the gas escaping letting me know it had worked before I rolled the leaking canisters down into the dark. I pulled an old matchbook from my pocket and leapt up onto the snowmobile behind Winter.
I struck the match and tossed it into the shaft, ripping back the throttle in the same moment so that we sped away from the mine just as an explosion tore through it.
The ground quaked and trembled as the fireball erupted from the mouth of the cave and we shot away downhill at high speed as the networks of mines began to collapse like a tower of dominoes, destroying the cannabis farm with them.
Winter leaned into me as we raced away and I held her tight, smiling as a laugh filled with pure light escaped her as she craned her neck to look back at the burning campsite behind us.
“I’ll destroy anyone and anything that ever hurts you, baby doll,” I swore as I held her tight. “You only have to point me at them.”
Nicoli's body surrounded me as the scent of blood and smoke tangled in the air mixed with the heady scent of him. His muscular arms built a cage around me as I sat between his thighs on the snowmobile, my body so small that I fit perfectly within the walls he made around me. It was the first cage I'd been in which didn't steel my freedom away at all. This one made me safe, and I knew I could escape it at any moment if I wanted. I just had to ask. And that meant more to me than words could ever convey.
We bumped over the snowy ground, sailing across the sheen of white as the stars glittered overhead and I stared up at them in awe. The sky was a huge and endless expanse. Nothing could keep me in this world if I chose to leave it, but right now I had more reason to stay than I'd ever had before. I was in the arms of a man who had come for me in my darkest moment. Who had stormed into an army, ripped through them like cannon fire and raced to my aid. But he was no valiant knight on a white horse, he was a violent attack dog sent from the very depths of hell. And he was exactly what I needed. A creature whose soul was as twisted up as mine.
I'd bled too many times to fear blood, and Nicoli had drawn it too many times to resist doing so again. And again. He was merciless and beautiful, and in the depths of my soul I wanted to keep him, even though I knew this time was fleeting.
He drove up to the cabin, parking the snowmobile and climbing off, a chill finding me the moment the warmth of his body left me. He picked me up before I could complain, cradling me in his arms and hugging me to his chest, his face a stony mask. My limbs were battered and bruised and there were enough fresh cuts on me that they stung in the freezing air. But I felt none of it like I felt the