So, when he heard the deathly quiet footsteps of multiple men come down those dreaded wooden steps, he didn’t want to believe it. Not even when a heavily tatted man, who he used to call a brother, appeared in his glazed vision.
Ten years of his life had been spent in this six-by-ten basement. Ten years he would never get back. And, even if he did get out it, he would no longer have a life worth living, not after what he endured. That was why he had stopped trying to run. Seeing the sightless eyes of the woman he had killed had effectively shackled him to the basement, as if wearing leg irons too strong to escape.
An inked hand filled his distorted vision. He prayed it was another hallucination from the heroin coursing through his veins, like he would see with Taylor. He was convinced this new vision was just another head trip. But, unlike the ones he was used to, the inked hand didn’t fade away; it felt as if he was being touched for the first time in years by someone who actually cared. It was the moment he knew he should have prayed harder, terrified the face bending over him wasn’t a mirage and the soulless eyes were ones he recognized.
Shade was a man incapable of failing a mission. He was the first person who he prayed to see come through the door when he had first been locked in this hell … but now he was the last.
Gavin had seen that look of determination on his face too many missions to count. Reaper was getting out of here—and he was fucking getting out alive.
Shade would see to that.
The world deserved Gavin James, not Reaper. Releasing Reaper would release a wrath unlike this earth had ever seen. It would be a Hellfire scorching every inch, until all the beautiful and ugly things died, burning to the ground until only one thing remained—ash.
Fighting to keep himself there, to keep Reaper where he belonged, was all he knew to do when Shade and now Train fought to get him up. His brothers had good intentions, but they didn’t see that Gavin wasn’t the one they were saving. They were too late; Gavin was gone.
They were releasing the very thing that The Last Riders had spent their lives protecting everyone from.
He struggled against the fake Shade and Train, created in a drug-induced mind, a state of consciousness that could no longer distinguish the difference between reality and fantasy, like a gamer lost in a virtual reality. There was only one reality his mind could accept. Having his hopes crushed so many times, the very thing he wanted became another enemy just out of reach.
Gavin fought against the captor who wore a mask that looked like Shade’s face; he vaguely remembered how he used to fear him from time to time, but now the Reaper was being unleashed, they were matched.
“Move away, Train, Shade. Let Killyama take him.”
He heard the command from a man he hadn’t even known was there. Instantly the figures of the men he knew released him. Falling back down onto his cot, the drugs weighed him down like a ton of bricks.
“Come with me, Gavin. I have something to make you feel better.”
His crazed eyes moved from the soulless ones to see the silhouette of a woman reaching through the haze. Thinking Taylor was there once more, he waited for her to disappear again when her hand touched his arm and lifted him. The face near his wasn’t Taylor’s, but he didn’t fight her like he had the others. He couldn’t have another woman’s death on his conscience.
The woman helped lift him to stand, taking most of his minimal weight. “That’s right. Just a few more,” she coaxed as they treaded up the steps ever so slowly.
One step in front of the other, they followed behind the images of Shade and Train, into the bedroom that had been his torture chamber. He wanted to beg them not to make him play anymore games, but he knew they wouldn’t listen to his pleas; they always fell on deaf ears.
The haze continued through the hallway until he heard gunshots firing. He was shoved against a wall, and the woman whom he clung to fired back. Unable to hold himself up, he slipped down, comprehension finally dawning on him that these people were protecting him.
The relentless woman picked him back up, yet he had been dragged outside too many times for their cruel amusement to allow the fragile spark in his chest any room to grow.
When the door to freedom was opened, he squinted his eyes and turned his face away from the bright light. For a second, he thought he was granted the death he’d craved … until he realized a man like him wouldn’t be granted access into Heaven.