Chapter 71: She’s putting a spell on you
The sound of the rifle clattering against the cold concrete echoed through the warehouse like a gunshot.
For a fraction of a second, the silhouette behind the rusted iron support beam froze.
Then, a scrawny young man stumbled out into the dim, unshaded light of the overhead bulb. It was Leo. He was a small, wire-thin grunt with a pale face, a nervous twitch in his jaw, and a jagged, poorly healed scar cutting straight through the cartilage of his left ear.
Leo’s boots scrambled frantically against the loose gravel on the floor as he tried to back away, his chest heaving under his vest.
"B-Boss..." Leo stammered, his voice pitching high with a raw, ugly terror. His eyes darted wildly between Nat’s towering frame and April, who looked completely unmoved, cradling her glowing blue orb like a cold goddess of judgment. "Boss, you can’t believe her! I don’t know what kind of magic trick she’s pulling, but she’s lying! She’s lying to you!"
Nat didn’t move. He simply stood at his full height, his head tilted slightly, watching the scrawny grunt disintegrate under the weight of his own panic.
To the average eye, Leo was just a loyal soldier defending his name. But to a predator like Nat Collins, human behavior was a textbook he had spent a lifetime reading.
He didn’t need a supernatural system to spot a guilty person coming apart at the seams. He could see it in the thick, clammy beads of sweat suddenly erupting across Leo’s forehead, the violent tremor in his knees, and the way his pupils dilated until his eyes looked almost entirely black.
No one lied to the Golden Dragon and survived. Nat could read a man’s pulse just by watching the frantic throb of the artery in his neck.
"I would never betray the syndicate, Boss!" Leo cried out, his voice echoing pathetically off the high steel walls as he took another stumbling step back. He pointed a trembling, sweat-slicked finger at April. "She’s a hostage! She’s trying to plant seeds of discord to save her own skin! She’s making me look like the bad guy!"
April didn’t bother defending herself. She didn’t have to. She merely leaned back, her eyes reflecting the pale blue luminescence of the crystal orb, watching Leo dig his own grave with a sense of clinical detachment. How pathetic, she thought internally.
"Even if... even if I did get caught by the scorpions, Boss, I would never rat us out!" Leo screamed, desperation making his chest hitch as he tried to scramble for a shred of plausible deniability. "If I got caught in an operation, I’d bite my tongue off before I said a word! You gotta believe me, Boss! I’ve been with the Golden Dragon for two years! You know me!"
Nat let out a soft, dangerous hum. "Two years. Right."
"Yes! Two years! I’m loyal to the bone!"
"The only thing I know about a grunt, Leo," Nat murmured, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly smooth, conversational register as he took a slow step forward, "is what they look like when they’re standing in front of me pretending to be obedient. But what goes on in that tiny, rat-like brain of yours when my back is turned? That... is an entirely different story."
Without looking away from Leo, Nat raised his right hand and lazily snapped his fingers.
The sharp crack of his knuckles broke the spell of the room. Instantly, one of the massive, heavily built enforcers stepped out from the deeper shadows of the warehouse.
His boots thudded heavily against the concrete, and in his grip, the metallic glint of a heavy iron baseball bat scraped against the floor with a piercing, screeching sound.
The sight of the weapon made Leo completely lose his footing. He collapsed backward onto his hands, scrambling away on his rear like a terrified animal.
"Don’t do this, Boss! Please!" Leo shrieked, tears of pure horror finally spilling over his eyelids, mixing with the sweat pouring down his pale cheeks. "You can’t just listen to her! She’s a witch! She’s putting a spell on you! Boss! Boss!"
The enforcer stopped exactly three paces away from Leo, the iron bat resting lightly against his shoulder, waiting for the final, bloody command from the red-haired psychopath leaning against the desk.
Nat lazily reached out and took the heavy iron bat from his enforcer’s grip.
The metal caught the harsh, unshaded glare of the overhead bulb, gleaming coldly. But before he took a single step toward the weeping grunt on the floor, he stopped.
He turned his crimson head, locking his dark, chaotic eyes onto April, and a terrifyingly sharp smirk cut across his face.
"This is me once again putting my full faith in you, little seer," he murmured, his voice dripping with an intense, twisted sort of reverence.
The next second, the air was cut by a violent, whistling rush of wind as Nat lifted the bat.
Leo shrieked, frantically trying to scramble backward, but massive enforcers lunged at him, pinning his scrawny frame ruthlessly against the concrete. Nat didn’t hesitate. He swung the iron bat downward with absolute, monstrous precision.
A sickening, wet crack echoed through the warehouse as the metal pulverized the bone of Leo’s right leg.
Leo’s scream tore through the rafters, a high-pitched, agonizing sound that quickly dissolved into ragged, breathless choking as the bat swung again, shattering his left knee.
April sat perfectly still on her chair, her hands resting quietly in her lap. She did not flinch. She did not close her eyes.
Watching the brutal spectacle unfold right in front of her didn’t ignite a wave of panic; instead, it dragged her mind backward, plunging her into a cold, buried memory of her past life. It reminded her of the very first time she had killed a zombie.
It had been an old grandmother. The woman’s face had been grotesquely deformed, her jaw broken so it kept snapping as she crawled toward April on a single, mangled leg.
Back then, April had been so utterly terrified. Her entire body had been trembling so violently she could barely breathe.
In a frantic, desperate instinct to survive, she had snatched a heavy, rectangular brick from the debris and smashed it directly into the old lady’s face.
