The moment that jubilant laughter met Corey’s ears he jerked his head back. Their gazes locked and not once did Joseph’s waver as he spoke. Never once did that maddening smirk leave his cracked lips. Corey stared back at him, incandescent eyes piercing right through him. By the time the lesser Haunted finished speaking he’d imagined at least seven different ways he could end his pathetic life, each one more awful than the last.
Corey jerked his wrist from the man’s grasp and ripped the blade across his abdomen without warning, tearing both flesh and clothing in one smooth movement. Within several seconds Joseph’s shirt was becoming saturated by blood in a great, crimson swath. Corey pushed him back by the throat with a grip like iron. Smoke poured from his nostrils and from between his sharpened teeth like dragon’s breath.
“Whatever delusion of value you have on your life,” his voice was dangerously calm, “That’s all it is: A delusion.”
His hold shifted instead to the lesser Haunted’s jaw. He gripped him hard enough to bruise, keeping his head tilted back and that vulnerable throat exposed–stretched taut.
“Your time here ends whenever I decide it does.”
He held the blade of his knife against the smaller male’s neck, now, pressing the tip into his pulse point.
“Keep running that mouth of yours; I dare you.”