Spider

Gunshots came from far over the lakeside cabin, and Mackenzie lifted her face to look at it, then looked back down and continued to weave her garland crown.

She was sitting on a small hillside beside the woods, humming a song out of tune as she let the soft rattan wrap clumsily around her fingers. The machine gun was placed in the grass at her feet, and it seemed that its owner had no intention of picking it up at the moment.

She finally made the amorphous thing a little more pleasing to the eye. She put it on her head and tried it and found that it was a whole circle bigger than her head, almost slipping down to her neck. She had to pull it off once again, sighing in defeat.

"Ben," she said, turning to the man beside her, "do you think I should've warned Mr. Parkman that even if a trapper is handcuffed and shackled, he's just as much in danger of end up dead?"

Ben picked up the scattered rattan crown, touched the tiny petals on it, and handed it back to her, shaking his head silently.

Mackenzie curled the corner of her lips. "I thought so, too."

"But," she sighed again, "there will be no substantial change in the outcome. He still has to die in the end." Her slender fingertips stroked the vine branches, unconsciously pulling down the delicate little yellow flowers one by one, the shattered petals falling all over the ground. "Do you remember Pei Yue, Ben?"

Ben nodded his head.

"He's a lot like him, from a long time ago, and he’s getting more and more similar now... They set out on the same path and will move toward the same exit, right?"

Ben hesitated for a moment and nodded yet again.

"So, you can't go down that road," Mackenzie smiled tenderly at him, "or I'll kill you myself. I don't really want that, you know."

Ben lowered his eyelids and seemed to go back to his own world.

This is so unfair. He should've given me time to get my pants on. Jason grumbled, anxiously dodging yet another bullet, which flew past his back with great aerobatic effects, leaving a long trail of blood.

Just now, he took advantage of the chance to roll out of the chair to grab the Python, so he could still hide behind the dining table and shoot back. His opponent, however, was armed with a Steyr TMP, which had up to thirty rounds of ammunition, not counting spare magazines, and he only had six. Typical polarization between rich and poor, he muttered resentfully.

Gavin had found a couch at the other end of the room to use as a cover and was trying to figure out how to open the handcuffs, but the keyhole was custom made and couldn't be poked open with a pin. He stretched the handcuffs out of the armrest of the sofa and yelled at the blond man with the gun, "Jason, break it!"

His temporary battle companion widened his eyes. "What, how can that be? I'm not a sharpshooter! Your wrist will be ruined!"

"You won't miss," Gavin spoke in a profound voice.

Jason hesitated, then realized there was no more time for him to hesitate again; Budd shot violently at the couch, nearly smashing it into a giant honeycomb-like cheese. He took a deep breath, aimed at the silver chain between the handcuffs — it appeared thinner and shorter now — and murmured, "Jesus! Let me succeed and I shall be a nun for your old man..."

The bullet was fired. Jason stared with bated breath, surrounded by what seemed like dead stillness, all the gunfire forsaken by his nerves outside his ear drums, until he saw a cloud of sparks erupt from the metal as Gavin's wrists regained their freedom utterly unscathed.

Jason breathed a sigh of relief. At this moment, he almost wanted to sing a psalm to God like a priest, but he couldn't remember a word of the lyrics. "Oh, I forgot. Nuns don't welcome male companions. Fortunately, the Lord has always been merciful, and He will forgive me for my slip of the tongue," he said in good faith.

A bullet swept over his head, and he smelled the burning protein in his hair. I actually let my mind wander in a mortal juncture, Jason blamed himself, raised his gun and shot at the other side. After pulling the trigger, he heard the hollow echo of the hammer hitting the end of the pin.

Damn! Out of bullets!

Quick as flash, words like 'the Lord condemned him' and 'God's punishment' popped up in Jason's mind.

The other showed a mocking smile behind the black muzzle. His whole body stiffened, seeing the black robe of the Grim Reaper brushing maliciously past his face, the scythe sweeping his nostrils with the gloomy odor of death.

The gunshot that announced the end of his life rang out. Jason stood in a daze, unable to decide whether to use his hand to cover his chest or something else. He hadn't received the pain yet. Could it be that the bullet hit the brain and destroyed the nerve center? He pondered confusedly... Hold on! He can still think! He's still alive!

He jumped up happily, stepped over Budd's body, which had fallen like a toppled stump, and darted toward the source of the life-saving bullet.

"Close call! Dear, I've never seen the Grim Reaper so close! He's a handsome man!" He hugged Gavin and exclaimed enthusiastically, with a look of eagerness that made one suspect that there was far more excitement in it than shock.

The black-haired man's naked body produced a moment of tension. It was evident he was not used to such intimate physical contact. He then relaxed and slowly hugged the other, burying his face in the blood-stained blonde hair and breathing deeply.

The afternoon sun came in through the windows, and the beautiful warm rays spilled onto this wretched and bloody battlefield, as if the boundary between life and death was in perfect harmony. Two men covered in wounds embraced together, and at their feet laid the gradually cold corpses in a bloodbath.

"I'm sorry, Jason... I'm sorry..." Gavin kept whispering his apologies, his face still buried in the side of Jason's neck, and his voice even sounding awfully labored.

"It's not your fault. You don't have to blame yourself so much, really." Jason gave him soft pats on the back and said kindly and magnanimously, "As much as I despise that kind of thing — being forced, I mean — it didn't hurt me as badly as you think, and I'm not so far gone as to have a nervous breakdown over a few piston-like movements in my gut."

Gavin jerked his shoulders away all of a sudden, anger in his eyes. Although the other's mental state relieved him, his play down tone made him feel very unwell, which made him have the urge to put the gun against something and slam the trigger.

"Come on now, don't look like you want to murder someone. The bastard's already dead. Although I don't mind you putting a few more shots into his corpse, but honestly man, that's kind of silly." He looked around and suddenly asked, "And your ex-boss?"

"He left the living room and slipped through the back door when I killed Wilson." Gavin broke the fetters, put on his clothes, and equipped the weapons on the floor back onto his body. His lips were pursed together like a blade's edge, and his face was stern, radiating a bloody and somber aura.

Jason curled his lips in disdain, and said hatefully, "Turns out he's conscious enough to know that the consequence of staying was getting a magazine shoved up his ass by me!"

"He can't run away, and he'd never be willing to stop here, so I'm guessing he's gone to contact Mackenzie and Ben."

"Those two trappers?" Jason stared at the awfully calm look on the other's face. "You still look so laid back! Two on one! And you've been badly hurt! Do you want to go hard on them?"

Gavin tilted his face to look at him, his eyes pitch-black and without a bit of light. "I'm going to kill him." His tone was cold and decisive.

Then he walked out of the living room. Jason sighed and followed.

The kitchen was made a mess by splashes of scarlet blood. Two badly mutilated bodies were collapsed together. One of them was the very same hostess who had opened the door for them, the other a middle-aged man. It looks like they captured her husband or lover and forced her to trick us in. So that's why her eyes looked at us full of pain and hatred. Jason squatted down, reaching out to close the cold, turbid, but still reluctant-to-rest bluish green eyes, and whispered, "May you rest in peace. Walk through the grave and stand before God, when everyone is equal."

He stood up and said, a little remorseful, "I never listened carefully to the priest's prayers, otherwise I could've said more."

"You've made a great try." Gavin patted him on the shoulder.

Mackenzie felt the phone vibrate in her pocket. She fished it out and looked at the caller ID. "After-sales service number. Looks like our Mr. Client is in trouble."

She leapt up with her machine gun, her figure as nimble and graceful as a feline. Her slim body concealed an unimaginably strong explosive force. Many men loved to call her a 'sexy kitten' when they first meet her, but soon they realized that 'tigress' was the proper description. By then, however, there was no chance to correct their spoken words.

"Let's go, Ben. The final hunt is on."

His car, which he had just driven a distance away, had its tire punctured by a sharp rock on the riverbank. Perhaps it was originally cracked, who knows, but luck wasn't on his side today anyway.

All three subordinates he'd brought with him had turned into dead bodies. Albeit he hadn't seen the latter two with his own eyes, he had guessed the aftermath after the gunshots rang out. He had tested Gavin with a dozen of his men when he had just brought him back, and those were professionally trained experts in killing. He instructed them to keep his newly bought little hound alive, but the result was a surprise to him: Gavin used a 9-round Desert Eagle to take them all out, and the other three, who didn't enjoy the advanced weapon treatment, had their necks wiped out by a dagger.

To this day, Parkman still remembered (and thinks he'll always remember) that scene. The dark-haired man rising from a pool of red, frightening blood and slowly wiping the wetness from the dark blade with his palm — as if it was not human blood but water stains on it — as he stared straight at him with a pair of icy to inorganic, nightful eyes: 'Mission complete.'

At that moment, it seemed that innumerable small currents flowed from the soles of his feet to his whole body, his heart twitching slightly at a high frequency. He couldn't tell what kind of feeling it was, surprise, dread, excitement, eagerness... Not any of them, but like a mixture of all. He looked at him with condescending appreciation and ordered him to kneel on one knee with the dignity of a controller. He was satisfied to see that the other carried out the order without the slightest hesitation, yet suddenly grew an unexplained sense of panic and dissatisfaction from the bottom of his heart. He didn't know where this feeling came from — his novice was very strong, and 100% obedient to orders, then why did he still have this sense of emptiness as if somewhere in his body was always stuffed with discontent? He couldn't help testing him again and again, testing his loyalty and obedience, and the results never disappointed him. But that feeling was getting stronger! He couldn't even look him in the eye! So, he ordered him not to look directly at him. When he saw those frightening dark eyes disappear beneath lowered eyelids and fine lashes and saw his ready silhouette in a posture of deference before him, a brief moment of pleasure was followed by a greater loss. He was clearly the ruler, yet it never felt like he could conquer him! This man was too valiant, and the more thorough the obedience based on this valiant foundation, the more flustered and restless he felt.

Even so, he always took Gavin with him wherever he went. His style of doing things was to his liking, he appreciated him, and even loved him to a certain extent. Until the whole Bartlett family thing happened. To be honest, Parkman was somewhat surprised by the failure of the mission, as this had never happened before, but it wasn’t enough to sentence his favorite lieutenant to death. At most, a severe reprimand, and a little punishment if the other begged him for forgiveness and didn't really want to take the kid's life. It wasn't the Bartlett's seed anyway. But what he never expected was that Gavin would betray him! He didn't come back to report the results of the mission — he chose to leave! He left him as cold and unhesitating as he had been when he received orders before! It took him more than half an hour to digest this fact, and then he smashed the whole room to pieces in a rage!

At that time, he was so angry that his mind went blank, as if something he had been worried about and feared for a long time had finally happened, and all his feelings had turned into extreme wrath! The wrath was so strong that it couldn't be extinguished without watering it with the blood of the betrayer! A thought suddenly popped into his mind — perhaps it had long been hidden in his heart: there was only one way to conquer this man, and that was to thoroughly destroy him both physically and spiritually! When he finally figured this out, he exposed a content smile amid the ruins.

The phone suddenly rang, and Parkman quickly pressed the answer button. A few moments later, his gloomy face brightened. "Well done, bring it over as planned. The time needs to be shortened, though, within half an hour... Oh, no, I want you to eliminate the words 'can't' or 'impossible' if you don't want to become a corpse and be fed to the dogs!" He snapped his phone shut, glanced around cautiously, took out his handgun from his pocket, and headed toward the main road.

Just after taking two steps, a bullet flew from the back side and hit the gravel at his feet, sending a cloud of sparks with a bang.

He subconsciously rolled away and fired several shots in the direction of the gunshot. There was a dense bush, which was immediately broken into branches and leaves, but there was no noise except that.

The surroundings sunk into silence again, as if the gunshot just now was just a hallucination of his.

But Parkman knew it wasn't. He felt a suffocating pressure was weighing down the whole space viscously and heavily, frosty, and tough to the point of asphyxia. This was his exceptional keen sense of danger accumulated from his years of experience in the center of the storm. There was a blood-red pair of eyes staring at him somewhere in the dark, full of bestial ferocity and blood-devouring hostility. He couldn't see it, but he felt it in the pores of his body — it was really the eyes of a trapper!

And the target being hunted and killed was himself!

In a split second, a shudder appeared on Parkman's back, and cold sweat soaked through the shirt inside.

He knew what just happened: the shot was deliberately missed to remind him of the presence of 'someone.' However, where the next shot would be, in the arm, leg, shoulder, chest, abdomen, or head, only the murderer and God knew. The huge mental pressure caused his nerves suffer unprecedented torment. He held the gun handle tightly, his index finger rubbing unconsciously on the trigger, panted for breath, and tried his best to calm down the abnormally rapid ups and downs of his chest and the high level of mental tension.

Then he slowly lowered the muzzle of the gun. He knew that in the face of a gun-playing expert, this thing wouldn't be able to exert any deterrent effect at all. What could save his life now was not the metal filled with gunpowder, but a psychological weapon, and he still had his trump card, a good tool that could absolutely suppress him.

"Come out, my little hound. Don't hide, though you've always been good at it," Parkman said. "Do you want to play the sniper — oh, that would be too cheap for me, as one bullet won't make me 'die a very painful death.'" His voice wasn't loud, but he knew the other man would hear him.

Sure enough, a slight sound of stones scraping came from behind. Parkman slowly turned around and saw the eerie muzzle of a gun before him and the trapper's eyes that were darker than the muzzle.

"Exactly. You have no right to die so easily," he said coldly. "At least you have to experience the feelings of the people you tortured to death. One is enough."

Parkman smiled. "I guess that must have felt terrible, that's why they screamed and groaned in pain and despair, cursing me with the resentful, malicious eyes of the dying to be dragged down to the lowest level of hell. Actually, that would be nice. I'd see you again there, and that's something to look forward to, isn't it Gavin?"

"Yeah, we're all going there," said the man across from him in a cold, hard, but empty voice, "but you have to go first."

"Very well." His former boss sighed in a feigned manner. "I've got a companion nevertheless, at least to keep me company on my lonely journey. Gavin, your son's beautiful, really. His features are like his mama’s, but his hair color and eyes are like yours. The first time I saw him, I thought, this little guy's going to have a lot of girls after him when he grows up, but only if he's very lucky to live long enough to get an erection."