Hell on Wheels (Black Knights Inc. #1)(77)

Oh God. Grigg.

He almost fell to his knees.

Swallowing, shaking his head, refusing to believe what his heart was telling him, refusing to believe the truth of the matter—that he was too late—he dragged himself forward.

Grigg was strapped, spread-eagle, to a rough-hewn table. There was blood everywhere.

Far too much blood and—

Nate turned and wretched into the sand when he got close enough to see the large gash in Grigg’s sunken abdomen and the big bundle of bloody bowels looped around a long stick and sitting on the table beside Grigg’s waxy body.

“Grigg, my brother,” he sobbed as he wiped bloody vomit from his lips and laid a filthy, shaking hand on Grigg’s blood-caked hair. “My God, what did they do to you?”

He didn’t expect a reply. Grigg was too white beneath all that blood, too still, too…disemboweled, so when Grigg coughed weakly, Nate stumbled backward in surprise.

“Jesus God!” he raced around the table, using his blade to slice through the restraints at Grigg’s wrists and ankles. “Hold on, buddy. I’ll get you outta here.”

“Keh meh,” Grigg gurgled, and Nate limped to the head of the table. He cradled Grigg’s wonderful face between his dirty palms and stared into his best friend’s pain-hazed eyes.

“What, buddy? What’r’ya sayin’?”

“Keh meh,” Grigg burbled again, thick blood leaking from one corner of his dry, cracked lips.

Nate smothered a sob and had to hold onto the table lest he curl up in a ball and die right on the spot.

They’d cut out Grigg’s tongue.

As punishment for all the filthy names Nate had heard Grigg scream at them while being tortured, they’d cut out his motherf*cking tongue.

Nate shook his head, his salty tears dropping onto Grigg’s twisted face and turning pink in the caked-on blood. “No, buddy. We’re gonna get you outta here. We’re gonna make it.”

Grigg jerkily shook his head and Nate stopped trying to hold back, he sobbed uncontrollably while leaning down to press his fevered forehead against Grigg’s too cool one.

They both knew the score. Tangos one, Grigg zero.

Grigg would never see the outside of this filthy hut. Even if Nate could somehow find the strength in his wounded, sick body to carry Grigg, and even if they could figure out what in the world to do with that big bundle of putrefying bowels, there was no way Grigg would survive the maneuver.

Dear God in heaven.

“Peeh, keh meh.”

“God, Grigg,” Nate was crying so hard he could barely speak. “I c-can’t. I can’t d-do it.”

“Peeh.”

Nate threw his arms around Grigg’s neck, wracked by gut-wrenching sobs and wet, sickly coughing. His broken ribs were threatening a revolt, but he couldn’t stop the convulsive sorrow ravishing his control.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill Grigg. He couldn’t live with himself if—

Grigg moaned, a sound of unimaginable pain and Nate suddenly knew…

Pulling back, he sucked in a trembling, tortured breath because Grigg’s eyes…Sweet Jesus, they were dulled by piercing agony, but there was no mistaking the dreadful pleading in them. The pleading for Nate to put him out of his misery.

Nate allowed himself one tremendous howl of unspeakable anguish and impotent rage, then he swallowed and wiped the sticky, blood-tinged tears from his face. Looking down on his partner, his best friend, he sniffed and slowly nodded.

Grigg momentarily closed his swollen, bloodshot eyes. When he opened them again, the desperate pleading was replaced with poignant resignation…and gratitude.

Lord, forgive me, Nate prayed, and moving around to the end of the table, he cradled Grigg’s lolling head with one shaking hand and braced the hard, deadly tip of his KA-BAR at the base of Grigg’s skull with the other.

“I love you, you sonofabitch,” he whispered, choking on blood and snot and the unspeakable horror of it all.

Grigg smiled.

In that moment, with one last smile gracing Grigg’s mouth, Nate shoved the sharp tip of his steel blade between Grigg’s skull and first vertebra, instantly severing Grigg’s brainstem.

And it was over.

Nate threw his head back and roared.

***

Good heavens!

“Nate!” Ali grabbed Nate’s broad shoulders and shook him, hard. His dark head bounced against the flat pillow. “Nate, for the love of Pete, wake up!”

She’d never in her life heard a more terrible sound than the one tearing up from the back of Nate’s straining throat. Even the screams of her mother that horrible day they’d learned of Grigg’s death didn’t hold a candle to the god-awful noise Nate was making. It was like the furious, helpless call of a dying animal mixed with the roar of an angry dragon swirled together with the convulsive sorrow of a hundred lifetimes.

Then, like someone flipped a switch, the sound ceased.

Thank goodness.

“You’re dreaming,” she assured him, sucking in one petrified breath after another. She felt dizzy, but it was not the time to hyperventilate.

His black eyes snapped open and lasered in on her face. For a brief moment, he didn’t seem to recognize her. “You’re just dreaming, Nate,” she said again, trying to reassure him and herself simultaneously.