“No shit,” Buck bellowed, stalking forward so he and Boner were toe to toe. He was thicker through his barrel chest with a big square head and meaty hands, but Boner was one long line of lean muscle, and I didn’t know what would happen if they came to blows. “You think I don’t know my brother, a man like a grandson to me, was fuckin’ killed? I want vengeance as much as any’a you! But a woman’s got no place here, specially not one like Cress.”
The room rumbled with low chatter and murmurs of protests and agreement, but I stepped forward and instantly the air went dead quiet.
“A woman like me?” I mused in a voice I didn’t even recognize, one that was cold as the barrel of a gun and just as cocked to deliver something deadly. “A woman like me. What kinda woman is that, huh, Buck? Are you talking about the woman I used to be, before I loved King? The prim and proper, judgmental, scared off her ass Cressida Irons? Because I haven’t been her for four fucking years, and whatever’s still left of her inside me? It’s dead. I have no softness left, no class for the sake of classiness or morality just to colour inside society’s line. That went comatose years ago and now, after this, this fucking horror, there’s none of that left.
“You wanna know what kind of woman I am, Buck? I’m the kind of woman who would carve open her own chest right now just to show you the empty cavity where my heart used to be. And then, bleeding and hollow, I’d be the kinda woman who’d take that same knife and stab it through Harold Danner’s fucking eye sockets for taking away the only man I’ll ever love. And you know what I’d do, the kinda woman I am now? I’d fucking laugh while I did it because I’d know it was the only joy I’d ever feel again.”
My face was twisted up into something grotesque, a snarl and sneer together in perfect disharmony.
“Don’t cast me out,” I beseeched as I looked from Buck to the other brothers in the room. “I’ve fallen from grace, but I thought I had a home here with my Fallen angels. When I need you now, are you really going to prove me wrong?”
The silence was thick and reeking, filled with discomfort, banked anger, and conflicting ideas. It was the silence King had told me about after every Chapel he’d been to since he’d been taken on as a prospect. It was the silence that came between action and inaction, between stagnating and evolving.
Even after everything, the club wasn’t so good with change.
And a woman asking to get in on their action was too radical even for the rebels. I knew it instantly, as if defeat had a taste and it was in the air.
My shoulders rounded, and all that hot air rising from the flames in my belly cooled, then settled into dust and ash.
“Right,” I said, the word leaking from my mouth like blood from a wound. “Right then. Fuck you all very much.”
I turned on my heel, the train of my wedding dress dragging behind me as I pushed through the doors into the waning spring sunlight. Benny, Carson, and Ares leaned against the car, but the second they saw me, they stepped forward and enfolded me in their embrace.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, but I only noticed when Benny sweetly rubbed them away with his thumbs.
“Wait here a second, Cress,” Buck called from the doorway of the clubhouse.
A low growl worked itself up Carson’s throat, and he stepped forward with his teeth bared. “No, you fucking wait there. She came to you for help, and it’s obvious you turned her away.”
“You don’t know what she’s askin’ for,” Bat protested, but he did it weary, running a hand over his face up into his hair as if he wasn’t convinced of his own argument.
“I don’t give a fuck. Someone you love comes to you for help when they’re so lost to grief they can’t see straight, you don’t turn them away without a bloody good reason.”
“You want her to go to jail after all this?” Buck growled.
Carson stilled, then turned to look at me. His eyes were hard, but his mouth softened as he saw me wrapped up in Benny and Ares. He turned back to the crew gathered on the stairs and shrugged. “I’m thinking after everything that’s happened, it’d be good to give her the chance to make her own choice about what she’s got left to live for when the love of her life’s been ripped away.”
He turned back to us, and barked, “Get in the car. We’re goin’ back to our place.”
We got into the car, but I didn’t remember doing it or the drive to their small bungalow off Main Street. I was in a fog as Benny drew me a bath, as he and Carson talked about whether one of them should sit on the toilet with me so they could make sure I didn’t do harm with myself, as then it was decided that Tayline and Rainbow, who arrived at some point, would sit with me and read to me.
I thought they read from Paradise Lost, but I only guessed that because one line resonated like a struck chord in my head and wouldn’t leave my thoughts.
“How can I live without thee, how forgo
Thy sweet Converse and Love so dearly joyn’d.”
Cressida
* * *
I was ready that night when they came for me. The night was dark as ink spilled across the town, no moon to illuminate the way, clouds veiling the stars of their shine. I sat on Benny and Carson’s front step in black jeans and a black long-sleeved tee, King’s hunting dagger affixed in its leather sheave to my belt. Benny and Carson were in bed, wrapped up in each other and softly snoring while Rainbow and Tay dozed in the guest bedroom in the same bed I had pretended to go to sleep in. I was betting they wouldn’t wake up. It had been a long, awful two days for everyone, and they’d been there for me through all of it without much sleep.
So, I waited on the front stoop and tried not to focus on the acute throbbing pain in my chest that radiated throughout my entire body like a strobe light.
It didn’t take long past midnight for them to come.
The familiar rumble of motorbikes grew to a muted roar as five Harleys rounded the corner of the small cul-de-sac and parked at the curb. I was off the step and moving toward them before they could even take their helmets off.
Nova was at the head, handsome face transmuted by wrath and sorrow. “Ridin’ with me.”
We didn’t have to talk about it, about why he, Priest, Curtains, Boner, Axe-Man, and Cyclops were there in black at the dead of night, about why I’d been waiting there for them.
They got it, me, and what had to be done.
They were showin’ me in the way bikers could how much they loved me.
Enough to make me an accessory to their crimes.
Even though pain blasted through my chest as I zipped up my leather jacket and swung a leg up to climb on the back of a bike that wasn’t King’s, I did so quickly, needing to feel the road beneath me, riding toward a future bright with violence.
“Tight, Queenie,” Nova ordered as I wounded my arms around him. “Not a joyride.”
No, it wasn’t.
We roared off as a group, Nova riding in front with the rest fanning out behind us, a formation of leather-backed geese. I held tight and stayed quiet, letting the rush of wind drown my thoughts and the bite of cool air replace the harsh ache of mourning.
It took about an hour to get down the mountain to the bright lights and pale skyscrapers of Vancouver, and then only a few minutes more to navigate the streets to the warehouse district where we parked in front of a seemingly abandoned storage unit.
“Behind me, do as I say,” Priest told me, stepping forward to take point.
This was his gig, the darkness and the night, the violence and the blade. Priest was the club’s enforcer not because of his size, though he was tall and packed with lean muscle similar to King, but because his mind was full of shadows and his soul haunted by demons who whispered to him loudly enough to drown out the guilt of the sins he’d committed for the club.
I nodded, boots clipping against the pavement as I followed the brothers into the echoing warehouse.
Two men stood in the center of the space, both big, wide across the chest, and cloaked in shadows that made them see
m like living nightmares. But I felt no fear as I looked at them, only relief and gratitude because somehow, Wrath and Lysander had found him.
Him; the man who had ripped apart my world without so much as blinking.
Him; the man disguised by the wings and blue of justice who was secretly so much worse than the “bad” men he chased after.
Harold Danner sat in a chair with the seat taken out of it, his naked ass perched on an empty frame, hands bound from shoulders to wrists behind his back so tightly, his shoulders jutted out like stubs where wings once might have stood. There was a massive gag in his mouth, dirty fabric stuffed so far down his throat, I could see the swell of it in his bruised neck. He was dirty and a little bruised up but otherwise basically unharmed.
A thrill of dark delight warmed my belly at the knowledge that would soon change.
I came to a stop in front of him, close enough to see the hatred burning up his eyes, to see how far gone he was to the evilness that had corroded his soul.
“Where was he?” I asked, not recognizing the cold, hollow tone of my voice, like empty shell casings falling to the concrete.
“Met with a guy I know who does forged passports,” Sander said. “Wrath, the club, and me all put out feelers to our contacts, and this one pinged. Picked ’im up from a shitty hotel in East Hastings.”
An unfeeling laugh escaped me like acrid smoke as I addressed the murderer stuck in the chair. “You thought you could escape the wrath of The Fallen? Always thought you were better than us…Tonight, I guess, we’ll prove to you just how wrong you were.”
“Cress,” Sander started softly, drawing my gaze to find him helping Priest set up a table filled with implements of torture. “You sure about this?”
“This… this…” What did I call the being who murdered King in cold blood? There were no words horrible enough, scalding enough on my tongue as I fought to say them that represented the depths of his villainy. “This animal killed King, and in doing so, he killed me. He tried to kill the club for years. He deserves so much more than this, but at least I can make sure he suffers some of the agony he’s forced on us.”
Sander sighed, but Priest nodded, getting it because part of him was just as dead as parts of me.
“Need to find out where he kept his doctored documents and payouts,” Curtains said. “King, uh, King and some of us broke into his house, but he didn’t keep any’a that stuff layin’ around there. We need it if we want to get him put away from more than just murder.”
“We need it to prove he killed Riley Gibson,” I said. “I know.”
“You start,” Priest allowed, walking to me with a glimmer of metal in his hand. I swallowed at the sight of the blade-tipped brass knuckles he unfurled in his palm. “Get him warmed up for me.”
I stared at the weapon, flexing my fist, wondering if I could leash the anger and its toxic violence if I gave in to it for even a second.
“I want to kill him,” I admitted through my teeth, the burning desire to feel Staff Sergeant’s blood on my hands almost vampiric, as if I needed it to live, to sustain me.
Priest’s cold, strong hand took my own, and he carefully fitted the brass knuckles over my fingers. When he was done, he shocked me by palming the back of my head and bringing my forehead to his so all I could see were his dark and stormy blue eyes.
“Death is quick,” he murmured, and I noticed the slight accent that leaked through his words sometimes. “It’s bein’ left on earth to suffer for our sins that’s the real hell. We take our pound’a flesh now ’cause we need it. We deserve it. Penance for his sins against us. Balm to our fucked-up souls. We take it ruthless and savage to let the beast in us breathe.”
My blood hummed, and to my shock, my mouth watered, as if vengeance had a taste and it was delicious.
“But in the end, you gotta get me, it’s worse to leave ’im broke and alive enough to feel his wrongs every day for the rest of his miserable existence, locked up with men who he put in lock-up himself. Might not even last long inside,” he admitted. “But better to put him through the shame of it than kill ’im quick.”
I flexed my hand opened and closed, testing the weight and the feel of the weapon. I knew it was Zeus’s preferred method of torture because I’d seen his collection of brass knuckles in his house, and now I got why. I’d be able to feel the pain I inflicted on Danner echoed back through my hand like a barometer of justice meted out.
“Does it get better?” I whispered to him even though I knew the answer by the ghosts that haunted his eyes at all times.
He paused, grimaced. “Not a liar, never wanted to be and can’t tell one now. You’ll suffer all the days’a your life. That’s why we gotta match his sufferin’ to yours, so he can wear half the burden of it.”
I nodded, slanting my head so I brushed my cheek against his and pressed a kiss to his lower jaw. “Thank you for not lying.”
His nod was curt, a muscle jumping in his throat, but I knew it was good emotion that pained him then, and it alleviated just a bit of my own ache.
“Now,” I said, striding forward so that I loomed over the cop who had killed my King. My smile was stretched and branded into my face, hot, distorted, smoking with heat. “I’m going to beat you to within an inch of your pathetic life, and then, if you don’t tell me where you’ve hidden your deceits, I’m going to let Priest take that very last inch away.”
And when Danner didn’t move or blink or mumble behind his gag, I took it for what it was––a morbid initiation––and cocked back my arm the way King and Priest had taught me to and began my systematic desecration of Harold Danner the moment my brass-covered knuckles tore through his cheek and crushed against his bones.
* * *
Priest took over when my arm shook too badly to continue, but I sat on the ground at Wrath’s feet and watched The Fallen enforcer at work. It was bloody, gruesome even, and I understood the horrifying purpose of tying Harold to a chair without a bottom so that Priest could beat his exposed balls blue with the end of a heavy, tied hemp rope.
Cyclops tended to my sliced, raw knuckles, dabbing at the cuts with vodka poured from a skull flask on his belt, wiping up the streaks of the cop’s blood that trickled down my forearm with the edge of his Harley Davidson tee. I wasn’t close to Tayline’s Old Man—he’d always been to distant, too into Tay and nothing else—but I knew that would never be the same after this. You couldn’t watch a man beat another nearly to death, until the victim sobbed and wailed like a newborn, without forming intractable bonds with each other.
He held my hand when I was done, dwarfing mine in his palm.
It took three hours for Priest to get him to the point of agony where his secrets spilled from him like so much confetti, littering the air with his sins.
We didn’t rejoice.
Instead, cold as automatons, we cleaned up the mess––Boner with the bleach, Wrath burning the bloody towels––and hog-tied the comatose former Staff Sergeant before throwing him in the trunk of Sander’s stolen SUV. It was still dark enough, quiet enough, for Wrath and him to drop him off at one of the downtown police stations and get away unnoticed.
The rest of us got back on the bikes and made our way up the mountain.
I was the first one off the bike at Lionel Danner’s ranch property, climbing down from Nova’s bike to open the gates and then opting to run by foot to the corner of the acreage where a massive willow tree wept in the middle of a field.
There was a heart carved into the bark, the initials HD & SH embellished within it. Harold Danner and Susan Hobbs, his wife. I didn’t allow myself to dwell on the murderer’s love for his wife because it would’ve made me soft.
And I was nothing soft now.
Only hard shell over hollow innards.
I dropped to my knees under the sweet carving and started to dig.
The rocky earth cut into my already sore, bleeding hands, but I barely felt it. Beneath this soil lay Zeus’s salvation and in the storm of my selfish
mourning, that was the only objective keeping me anchored.
The men arrived, boots thumping, chains rattling, and then Axe-Man was there with a shovel and we were digging together even though I probably could have stopped.
My breath caught and shattered on the hard edge of a sob as my fingers wrapped around the lid of a steel box. Priest was there then, and Cyclops, prying it out of the ground with me but yielding it to my hold when it was free.
My hands trembled so badly, I couldn’t even fumble with the lock. Nova took it from me gently, placed it on the ground and produced his flash ivory handled gun to shoot the lock off before returning it to me.
I sucked in a deep breath and pried the lid off.
A gun sat in the middle, so innocuous, just an object, but it was the key to everything, the same model as Zeus’s gun, a cop’s gun, and the real weapon that killed Riley Gibson.
My eyes burned so badly, I couldn’t see the faces of the men around me as I lifted my head to look at them and said, “He’s free. Oh my God, Zeus will finally be free.”
Cressida
* * *
A month went by in the blink of an eye, and all I was, was sorrow.
Now that the evidence how been found to clear Zeus’s name, Mr. White had set the ball rolling on getting him released. I’d had this image of him getting out the next day after finding the gun and the box of documents hidden behind a painting in Danner’s old ranch home, but the law didn’t work like that. Still, with nothing left to rally against, waiting for Danner to be processed and persecuted, and Zeus to be free, I succumbed to my internal injuries and went into a kinda coma.
I knew the passing of the days by the people who were scheduled to keep me company.
Lou every weekday afternoon with the babies, except for Thursday when she went to the Autism Center.
Harleigh Rose on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, often with Danner in tow who played his guitar for me until I cried. I think they thought tears were good for me.
After the Fall: The Fallen Men, #4 Page 26
