Live Free or Die Complete Series Boxed Set: Age Of Madness - A Kurtherian Gambit Series, Hayley Lawson [books you have to read TXT] 📗

they would dissolve him, and the women treated him like he had the plague, which was somewhat ironic because even diseases avoided Nestor.

He stared down at Ivan’s battered body as if trying to figure out what he was looking at. “Holy fuckaroni, Terrier. Couldn’t you wait till you got to the kitchen before you started chopping it up?”

“It isn’t the catch. It’s actually Ivan,” Terrier told him.

Nestor leaned away from the bloody lump. “Shiiit…he looks like he got his balls caught in a bear trap. What the fuck happened here?”

“Saved him from a pack of wolves,” Terrier explained, conveniently leaving out Ryder’s involvement so he didn’t draw attention to her absence. “Then the prick’s eyes started glowing red, and he attacked me. I had to fuck him up.”

Nestor nodded, eyeing Terrier respectfully. “You fucked him up all right. Remind me not to piss you off.”

He wasn’t sure which injuries had come from the wolves and which ones were from Terrier’s axes. Ivan was a bloody, unrecognizable mess.

Nestor’s eyes darted to Terrier’s axes and then back to Ivan. The two of them had hunted together for years, and he’d seen plenty of things that Terrier had done for Afana. None were as gory as this.

Yegor craned his neck around Nestor, seeming to appear from nowhere. He was good at that. Yegor was the hunting group’s scout, which suited him perfectly. He was always sneaking around, and his neck —which was nearly twice the length of a normal person’s — aided him in spying on others.

“Looks like we’re having Ivan for dinner tonight.” Yegor’s voice showed great interest in the prospect, and Terrier and Nestor wrinkled their noses in disgust.

“Gross,” Nestor groaned. “Get away from me, you nasty motherfucker.”

Nestor shoved Yegor hard, and his skinny body crashed into a nearby tree. He was by far the thinnest of the group, and it looked like a light breeze could blow him away.

Yegor smiled, seeming to enjoy making the others squirm. “What? It’s just meat. And he’s got plenty of it.” He kicked Ivan in the ribs, making his belly jiggle. “We called him Fat Ivan for a reason.”

Yegor rubbed his filthy hands together like he was preparing for a feast.

Sergei and Pavel joined the rest of the group, stopping by Ivan’s body. Sergei glanced at the mangled hunter and then at Terrier.

“Where’s Ryder?” Sergei asked.

Terrier did his best to look sad, even though acting wasn’t his strong suit. “The wolves took him. While we were saving this piece of shit.” He gestured at Ivan with his axe.

Sergei raised his eyebrow and then his blade. “I don’t believe you. I’ve seen how you follow Ryder around like you’re his little puppy dog. Is it because you’re into him?” Sergei grinned, nodding his head. “No, you’d die before you let anything take him.”

Terrier gripped the axe handle. He was nobody’s puppy! Ryder was his best friend, but Terrier imagined that Sergei didn’t understand the concept of friendship. No one in their right mind would willingly spend time around a festering genital wart like Sergei.

Terrier would do anything for Ryder, and that included killing every single one of these fuckers. He tossed his axe into his other hand, and all of the other hunters tensed up, knowing he was readying for a fight.

“Duck,” Terrier said as he flung the axe in Sergei’s direction.

Sergei dropped quickly, and the axe embedded itself in Ivan’s leg. Ivan was dragging himself toward the hunters, groaning wordlessly. The axe blade embedded in his body didn’t seem to faze him at all.

Sergei gazed at him in horror. “How the fuck is that fat bastard moving? Fucker was dead two seconds ago!”

Ivan was barely recognizable. One of his eyes lay deflated and ruined, dangling from the exposed optic nerve to rest on his cheek. His remaining good eye glowed red, drawing attention to the glistening sores on his face. The rough ground flayed the remaining skin from his arms and chest as he dragged himself inexorably toward them, one torturous pull at a time.

Terrier took another axe from his waistband and launched it. The axe head buried itself in Ivan’s shoulder, but it did nothing to stop his momentum.

The other hunters got their weapons ready. Nestor darted in for the kill, hoping to collect Ivan’s head so he could trade it for a night with a woman. Maybe Lisa, if she wasn’t busy with someone else. Lisa was a popular choice among the hunters.

A head for some head, he thought, smiling triumphantly as he swung his cleaver at Ivan.

Ivan ducked the clumsy strike and then heaved his body off the ground. His teeth sank into Nestor’s arm, and he tore off a hunk of flesh. Nestor screamed in pain, and blood gushed over Ivan’s grotesque face.

When Ivan chomped down on a different spot, Sergei and the others attacked him. Sergei hacked off Ivan’s right arm at the shoulder with one swift swing of his machete, but even unarmed, Ivan kept coming.

With his last axe, Terrier swung for the cross tattoo on Ivan’s neck. The wickedly sharp blade cleaved through Ivan’s flesh and bone, sending his head flying through the air. Terrier watched Ivan’s head turn three revolutions in before it fell to the forest floor with a wet thud.

Ivan’s legs crumpled beneath him, and his body followed. The red glow in his remaining eye faded and then winked out completely.

Terrier breathed a sigh of relief and turned to head back to the bunker.

“Hey, Terrier,” Sergei called. “Where’d you say Ryder was again?”

Panic took Ryder in its grip as she reached the edge of the forest.

In the past, she’d gotten close to the outer boundary, but she’d never crossed it. The others in her hunting group had always reminded her—almost gleefully—that if she stepped over the line, they would take her head.

The men from the bunker repulsed Ryder, except for Terrier. He’d protected Ryder when she was first dragged into the bunker as a child.

After her mother’s warning, Ryder had tried to