Take Courage, My Heart

Chapter Forty

I watched unable to help as Keisuke and Jonathan struggled, the knife having fallen somewhere in the sheets and no sound coming out of Jonathan as Keisuke strangled him. I had pulled my legs up and given Kei enough space to pin Jonathan down and Sydney was not being disturbed either.

As it all played out, I kept my focus outside of the room. No one was coming up the stairs yet. If they registered the struggle they probably thought it was just me and Jonathan. Keisuke threw more of his weight on his hands and Jonathan's neck snapped when Kei's hand twisted his neck in an angle. He pushed himself upward and turned to look at me and the tears that I had been fighting started to trail down my face.

One of the sleeves of his hoodie had gotten blood on it and his face softened when he noticed that I was crying. Without a word, he moved Jonathan's unmoving body and brought it up all until Jonathan's neck was against my lips.

"Drink. I'll figure out a way to get those cuffs off," he told me, his voice barely above a whisper.

"There's bolt cutters– in the nightstand," I replied, equally low, and as Keisuke turned to look for them I let my fang drop and bit into Jonathan's neck.

The blood that was coursing through his veins and hit my tongue tasted fresh and I savored it even though it distinctly had the bitter aftertaste of venom. The drawer of the nightstand was opened and then a shadow moved over me –I had closed my eyes, but I knew it was just Kei– and then the chain of the cuffs was snapped off. I pushed Jonathan off me and let him fall on the ground with a thud. While fully ignoring the ache in my shoulders, I wrapped my arms around Kei and pulled him in a hug.

"I'm here. I got you," he mumbled as he hugged me back and I cried harder but still silently. "We're getting out. Jesse–"

"We have to kill them," I breathed out, pulling back a little and looking at him in the eyes. They were filled to the brim with tears but what I said made him blink them back. "We can't– if we just run they'll keep coming after us... after me."

Keisuke set his hand on my shoulders and his eyes flickered down. With the bed covers still on my lap he couldn't see me, but I saw the redness that jumped in his eyes as he took in the state I was in. My body was still covered in dry, oxidized blood and sweat. There was still some redness close to my ribs, where Vincent had kicked me.

"Vincent's out," he said at last. "There's Eric downstairs," he went on with a questioning lilt, sounding unsure of the name, "a pet and three dwellers." His gaze flitted to Sydney's body. I looked at her as well.

"She's coming with us," I muttered to Kei, thinking of her friends and family. Thinking of her wish, to not die young.

Keisuke nodded and stepped back, tugging off his hoodie and handing it to me. He was left with the tee he had been wearing underneath it, oversized and smelling of Ezra's cologne. I threw it on and reached down by the foot of the bed, where the pants I had been wearing had been left. I didn't bother with the underwear, putting the sweats on as they were and then turning to look back at Kei.

He had grabbed his knife again and was leaning down over Jonathan, having started to cut his head off. I had so many questions to ask him, starting with if my brothers were safe and ending with how the hell Keisuke had made it into the nest. But they would all have to wait. We had to fight our way out of here and Eric could pose a problem. It had been surprising how easily Kei had taken down Jonathan, especially since he was not even half a decade old and claimed to not have ever been trained. Sure, Keisuke had lived in the streets, but that didn't make him an expert in fighting.

As he killed Jonathan I looked through the room as silently as I could. There were only two more pairs of handcuffs inside the drawer of the nightstand, and I quickly pocketed them before moving to the dresser. Again, I didn't find any sort of weapon, but I did find some hand-wrappings and got myself ready for a fight.