Free God of Destruction by Alyssa Adamson Page A

her face, he held it before the bullet
wound. “And you wouldn’t happen to have any peroxide on you?” he
wondered aloud, chuckling to himself.
    She rolled her eyes. “Nah, sorry. You’ll be
sticking it out until she doesn’t need you around
anymore.”
    He gave a kind of grunt in agreement. “How
long have you been in here?”
    She shrugged, knowing he couldn’t see her. “I
have no idea. What month is it?”
    “June,” he answered reflexively, pushing his
fingers into his shoulder to remove the bullet.
    She gasped, staring at the bloody mess
soaking through his white dress shirt. “That’s gonna get infected!
Stop it!”
    “It’ll get infected if I don’t,” he snapped,
pulling the offending scrap of metal free. “That bitch!” he mumbled
to himself, staring at the bullet between his thumb and forefinger.
“Just an inch lower—” he shook his head in mock amusement. “She’s
losing her touch; didn’t even lose movement like last time.”
    “She knew exactly what she was doing,”
Janie whispered. “She always does.”
    He seemed unmoved by her palpable fear of
Natalia Petrov, the assassin who’d been trying to catch him for
years. She was slippery, yes, he could admit to that, but, in
talent, she wasn’t nearly as skilled as others he’d met. As a
fighter, she’d lost to him many times, but she’d always slipped
away by the skin of her teeth. Then, their dance had begun anew. He
snorted.
    Janie’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally from
behind the wet hair hanging in her face, “Something funny?”
    “You shouldn’t be so impressed, miss,” he
chuckled smugly, unfazed by her sudden venom. “I’ve been beating
her in hand to hand for years now. She’s not as good at what she
does as you think.”
    Janie suddenly wanted to laugh, really
loudly, but she resisted. “Then why are you here?” she snapped with
dark humor evident in her voice.
    Taran held his breath, biting his tongue so
hard he tasted blood. “I was…distracted. Otherwise, Natalia ,” he spat like a curse, “wouldn’t have had a
chance.”
    “If you say so,” she rolled her eyes. “How do
you know her?”
    “Who? Natalia?”
    “Ya.”
    He didn’t look highly upon a long discussion
of their intertwining dark pasts. His face crinkled in distaste. “I
guess you could call her a coworker of sorts.”
    “Some work you must do together. Do you
torture terrorists, bad men, and murderers? Or is it just me? Or do
you only partake in the robberies?”
    His face pinched, eyes staring down at the
wound in his chest in disgust while he, absentmindedly, tore the
hem of his suit jacket, looking for any reason not to answer. As he
wrapped it tightly around his injured flesh, stopping the flow of
blood, he mumbled, “You didn’t answer me.”
    “About what?” she whispered, rolling onto her
side in an attempt to alleviate the pain in her leg.
    “How long have you been here?” he repeated
politely, though he genuinely didn’t care much for the rude
child.
    She did the math quickly on her fingers. “Six
months.”
    He felt no sympathy, but he put on a brave
face for the girl who couldn’t have been any older than thirteen.
He estimated by the shape of her body that she had to be
pre-pubescent. “Your parents must miss you,” he winced, realizing
immediately that it was definitely not the best thing he could have
said to a captive child.
    “I moved out three years ago,” she confessed.
“I hope they don’t miss me too much.”
    “Moved out?” he questioned. “Why?”
    “College,” she closed her eyes.
    Taran began to rethink his assumption. “How
old are you?”
    “I guess twenty-one now. My birthday was in
April,” she shrugged, immediately regretting it when her weakened
bones cracked.
    “Twenty-one!” he gasped. “You’re so small!”
He sat up, with a small amount of difficulty, and crawled closer to
her, placing his back against the wall beside her head.
    “I don’t know when they feed me, but it’s