brutal

Chapter 19

VERENA

I yawned as we continued our trek. Kai, pressing down on his wound with his bundled jacket, continued limping despite the support I gave him under his shoulders.

"How much farther?" I asked, making sure my desperation was obvious.

"Just a little more. Take a right here." His ladened breathing and lack of any retort was a clear sign of his weakness. I should be rejoicing, probably formulating some sort of plan to leave him for dead.

But I didn't do this to him. Brutal did. Well, Fake Brutal did. I could still feel the anger I felt when I first saw my own alter-ego on someone else. She was robbing the one thing I was here for, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to rip her throat out.

"Don't sleep." I adjusted the hold I had on him and continued walking. My back hurt like hell and I felt like complete shit, but I knew I had to go on. I had to make sure Kai wouldn't die before I get the chance to do it myself.

"Mhmm," he replied weakly.

Cursing under my breath, I stopped and gently laid him down by a lamppost at the corner of the street. This area was barren, to say the least, and is probably the reason why we're both dying today.

"Kai, which way?" I asked, shaking him gently.

He didn't reply.

I stood and looked around, searching for what safehouse he was talking about. I took a right and sighed at the empty road surrounded by nothing but trees and trees. The left path didn't show much either, just more, you guessed it—trees.

"Shit." I went back to Kai and crouched. He was barely breathing. No, he couldn't die here. I refused to believe after everything I worked for, the bastard would die to someone else. I wouldn't. I couldn't.

"Kai," I called out once in a tone more frantic than before.

He didn't answer.

My hands went to my hair to push it back. I thought I was just desperate enough earlier that I'd made it up, but it was too incessant for my own mind to create. Water.

Without hesitating, I took the left path and ran through the trees where I could hear it. It sounded too stable for it to be natural, but too rapid for it to be caused by a person. It was a sound I'd grown accustomed to whenever I stayed at my parent's place out of state. The one I woke up to every single day during the summer of '19.

I sighed in relief when I emerged out of the trees and saw the mansion with its sprinklers watering the field before it. I ran, not even taking the time to think if this was what Kai was talking about, and knocked on the large wooden doors.

When no one answered, I bit down on my lip and banged my hands on the door aggressively. It was impossible for no one to be home; some of their lights were open from the outside.

"Yes?" The door opened to reveal a woman, tall and beautiful in casual clothes. She had tied her dark hair into a bun, her piercing green eyes striking a familiarity in me. The dirty gloves she held in one hand told me enough that I'd disrupted whatever chore she was doing.

I stood there, frozen, with only one word in my mind. "Kai."

Her face fell before turning back and removing her gloves to drop them to a bucket. "Drew, get down here!" She took a step forward and held my face, looking all over my bloody body. "What happened, dear?"