by Stasia Black
“Don’t worry, Bells,” he reassured her. “I got this.”
Chapter Nine
DREA
“So what now?” Gisela asked Drea, crowding around her.
Drea took a step back. Whoa, whoa. She wanted to put up a hand and say, okay kids, let’s all just step the fuck back for a second.
But just a couple of hours ago these women had been— Drea shuddered remembering the cages. And now they were… Drea looked around her at all the hopeful faces.
Well, fuck.
Was this how the Pied Piper felt?
“Okay,” she said, hoping her voice sounded firmer than she felt. “We need to fortify. We might have the night or a little longer before Tillerman finds out what’s happened here and—”
“Who?” asked more than one girl.
Drea ground her teeth. “Suicide. We have a little while before Suicide finds out what’s happened here.” She hated feeding that bastard’s ego by using his stupid fucking road name, but fine, it would be easier for everyone if she just used the name they knew.
“We’ve restored main power and should be safe spending the night. Galveston is only a three hour trip away but I don’t think Suicide will attack directly until—”
“Suicide ain’t in Galveston anymore.”
Wait… what?
But several girls around the one that spoke up nodded their heads.
“Where is he?” Drea asked.
“He took over San Antonio,” said Gisela. “It’s Black Skulls territory now. I overheard Bulge and them talking. They’re working with Travis. Real close.”
Son of a bitch.
“What about the women?” Drea pressed. “All the women he was holding at Nomansland island?”
Gisela shrugged but another girl, a skinny blonde who was more bones than girl stepped forward, her entire body shaking like a leaf. “I heard Tweeker talking about girls. He said Suicide had a whole stable of girls with him when he took San Antonio.
“Motherfucker,” Drea swore.
Then she took a deep breath to try to calm herself down. She’d get her women free. It just might take a little longer. And in the meantime, these women were depending on her now.
“Okay, well for right now, that’s good for us. With the shit Travis is pulling, Suicide will be balls deep in the civil war that’s brewing.”
Drea looked around at the group of women. Everywhere she looked, she saw cutting clavicles and too-sharp cheekbones and if they lifted their shirts to expose their bellies, she knew she’d be able to count their ribs. A pussy was enough to sell a woman without bothering to put weight on her.
She took a deep breath and focused on the task in front of her. “We’ll fortify and stay put for a couple weeks. Get you guys healthy and fed.”
She nodded toward Billy. “Billy here is a doctor.”
She didn’t miss the way several of the women still cringed away from him.
“He won’t hurt you. If he so much as lays a hand on you, you let me know and I’ll chop his balls off.” She thought of Bulge. “You know I’m good for it.”
Laughter went through the crowd and Billy shifted behind her, his crossed arms moving lower to cover his family jewels.
“No but seriously. He’s a good guy.”
She met Billy’s gaze as she said it and his eyebrows dropped, like he was confused but also moved that she’d say such a thing.
But it was true. He didn’t have to help her. He’d put his life on the line for her, a complete stranger.
No, not for you—just so he could score big.
She frowned and turned back to the girls.
“Okay, so first things first, help yourselves to the kitchens. Try not to eat too much, too quickly. Then we can—”
“Belladonna! Peewee’s back with the man you sent him to get.”
Drea didn’t even try for dignity as she ran out of the room for the front of the lobby where Garrett half-carried half-dragged Eric through the door.
“Eric!” Drea shouted.
Jesus, he looked so much worse than when they’d left him only hours before. His cheeks were flushed but the rest of his skin was an odd waxy color. His eyes were slits and Drea didn’t know how much he was comprehending about what was going on around him.
“Come on, let’s get him to an elevator.” She turned back to the girls. “Gisela, which apartment should we go to?”
Gisela ran toward them, pulling out a keycard. “This is a master key. On the fourth floor, apartment 401 to the left of the elevator. Bulge kept it for visitors. It should be clean.”
Drea nodded, eyes going to Billy even though she was still speaking to Gisela. “And the pharmacy? We’re going to need antibiotics.”
“Anything like that, all…” Gisela leaned in, whispering, “…product, it’s up on the second floor. They store it in a locked room you need old keys for.” Gisela held the same old-fashioned key ring from earlier. It was odd to see antiques like those used in an otherwise modern apartment but Drea grabbed them and then waved Gisela forward.
“Come with us and show me.”
“Maya too,” Gisela said. “She used to study nursing.”
Drea nodded as she helped Garrett get Eric onto the elevator. The other girls joined them, along with Billy. Drea swore she could feel the energy vibrating off him every moment they came closer to him finally getting his fix. Which pissed her the fuck off.
She glared at him. “You help him first. Then I don’t care what the fuck you do afterwards. Just that by late tomorrow, you need to be sober enough again to start looking over the girls. Got it?”
Billy looked wounded by her words or her tone or whatever. Tough shit.
He was what he was and she wasn’t dumb enough to think that he’d magically become a good guy who cared about anything other than his next fix.
He could stay fucked up for days if she didn’t still need him so much.
First they took Eric to the fourth floor apartment and got him settled in one of the three bedrooms there. Then they all headed back down to the second floor and the locked room.
The apartment complex had been very modern, probably built right before The Fall. There were lots of windows and lots of lights. A lot of them were burnt out, but the effect was still almost magical after getting used to a world where, when the sun went down, everything went dark apart from firelight.
They passed a small open sitting areak a game room with several pool tables, and what looked like it might have once been a conference room.
The glass walls between some of the rooms had spider-cracks in it, other panels were shattered completely. And everything else was dirty. The carpets were filthy and there was a sour odor to the air.
“Bikers,” Drea muttered with disgust as Gisela put a key in the lock of a door at the end of the hall. It was the one room with solid walls instead of glass, including a hefty metal door complete with biometric scanner.
“We need the keycard, too,” Gisela said, peering at the setup more closely. “And it looks like it also requires a hand print and brain scan.”
Drea had picked up a keycard off Bulge so she held it up and a lock clicked, but the door didn’t open.
“Whose prints?” Billy asked.
“I’ll go get Bulge,” Garrett volunteered and Drea swallowed bile back down at the thought of dragging that man’s dead body around the building so they could open secret doors.
But when Garrett reappeared a few minutes later, he wasn’t dragging a body. He only held a bloody towel cradled to his chest.
Drea fought not to turn away in disgust when she realized what it meant. She focused instead on the task at hand, swiping the keycard in front of the censor.
When prompted, Garrett put the stump of Bulge’s hand on the hand plate.
“Who knows how to reprogram this shit?” Drea asked. “Cause I’m not hanging on to that bastard’s corpse.”
“I think Carrie is good with computers,” Gisela said. “She was interning i
n Silicon Valley and had just come home for a few weeks when Xterminate hit.”
Drea nodded. “Get her on it.” She pushed through the door as soon as it clicked open and paused in her tracks at what she saw. “Holy shit.”
“Holy shit,” Billy echoed from behind her.
Drea swung on him, her finger up in warning but he already had his hands up. “I know, I know. We’re just here for Eric.”
“Good.” Drea turned back to the shelves full of bricks of heroin. “This building was barely fortified.” She shook her head. “And they had this much product up here?”
There were shelves and shelves full of the white bricks. And even more shelves full of all sorts of prescriptions. God, it looked like half the contents raided in south Texas must have ended up here.”
“They’re the kings in this area,” Gisela said. “They kill and terrorize the townspeople. Who was gonna challenge the Black Skulls in their own territory?”
Drea shook her head. “Well look how easy it was to topple the kings. Just one girl and her trusty sidekick.” She punched Billy on the shoulder. A little harder than was strictly necessary. But he was doing that weird thing where he looked at her with that befuddled expression. Was he overwhelmed by all the drugs? God, she’d have to watch him so he didn’t OD, wouldn’t she? It would be all too easy with access to this much H.
“Hey,” she snapped in front of his face. “Focus. Find antibiotics and whatever else you’ll need for surgery.”
“I’ll help,” Maya said, quietly slipping into the room. Drea had all but forgotten the small woman was there.
Billy blinked and then started looking around the room. It wasn’t very big. It was more than a closet but smaller than a conference room. Maybe a storage room. He moved around the various standing shelves.
It was Maya who several moments later called out, “Here. There are antibiotics over here.”
Drea hurried around the shelves and saw Billy piling medical supplies in a black duffel bag.
Bandages. A sealed syringe. What looked like a suture kit. A big plastic bottle of hydrogen peroxide. More items Drea thought might be for making a cast. Then he zipped it up and they were ready to go.
Maya came around the corner with several small vials of clear liquid and a pill bottle. Billy examined them and nodded, handing them back. “Hold on to those.”
Drea couldn’t get back to Eric’s side quickly enough.
“Prop the door open,” she told Gisela over her shoulder as she rushed to the elevator. “And get Connie on seeing what she can do to reprogram the biometrics.”
“Okay, but we might need you to come down to scan your eye and palm print.”
Drea just shook her head. “Use yours and give access to anyone else you trust. I’m leaving you in charge of this room.”
Drea punched the elevator door button and stepped inside.
She barely heard Gisela’s, “Really?”
Drea looked back toward her. “Yes. Of course.”
The last thing she saw before the doors closed was Gisela’s shocked but pleased face.
It took Billy and Maya over an hour to clean out and sterilize Eric’s wounds. Drea stayed for every gory moment of it. The deep gash in Eric’s upper arm had swollen with infection.
Thankfully morphine had been among the goodies in the Magical Storage Closet O’ Drugs. Drea didn’t care if it was wasteful to spend it on someone who wasn’t having major surgery. Eric was her… her, her friend, he was her friend, dammit. And in this one instance she’d forget about the greater good and all that shit.
Finally, finally, Billy had all Eric’s wounds cleaned, he’d stitched the big gash, and he was just finishing up with the cast on Eric’s forearm.
“There we go,” Billy said, using the last of the roll he’d been wrapping to create Eric’s cast. “In four to six weeks, he’ll be good as new.”
Drea sucked in a huge breath and held it. Jesus, was she about to cry? Fuck, this day had officially been too long. She nodded and turned away from Billy while she tried to get her shit together.
They’d started out this morning with no food, a plan she hadn’t really believed had much chance of success, and Eric dead on his feet.
And now—
She swallowed and blinked hard, over and over. God, she would not cry. She’d taken over as leader of this MC compound. She was a badass. She’d chopped off a guy’s dick for Christ sake.
A woman who did that couldn’t afford to have fucking feelings. Not if she was going to go ahead with all the things she still had planned. Because this fight wasn’t done. It was barely even started.
But Eric was safe now. He was going to be okay. She sat down on the bed beside him, her face still averted from Billy.
She clasped Eric’s good hand. It was dirty. All of him was from sleeping on the ground two nights in a row.
She reached over and rifled through the duffle Billy brought up from the pharmacy room, grabbing a packet of moist towelettes. Then carefully, starting at Eric’s brow, she washed the grime off his skin. Down his sloping nose and to his cheeks. One and then the other.
He stirred, turning towards her touch and her heart skipped a beat.
But before she could even begin to decipher any of her complicated feelings, Billy spoke up from behind her.
“He’s a lucky man.”
She ran her hand down her own face, swiping away any tears that may or may not have been there and then turned toward Billy with a glare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But Billy didn’t call her on her bullshit.
No, he had that look on his face he’d had earlier.
“What you did today…” his voice trailed off, his brows scrunched together as he gestured behind him. “Standing up to those guys, fucking owning their asses.”
He shook his head. “And then saving all those women.” His brows scrunched even deeper. “But not just that. Like, you saved them, but it was more. You, I don’t know… you gave them a reason to live, too. You gave them a purpose. When you lose everything…” He looked down. “You don’t know how important what you just did was.”
Drea just shook her head. “I only did what anyone w—”
“No,” Billy cut her off sharply, his eyes coming back to hers. “That’s bullshit. No one would do what you just did. No one else in the whole damn world. Believe me,” he laughed darkly. “I’ve fucking seen people. They’re selfish assholes.” He continued holding her gaze. “I’m a selfish asshole.”
Then his eyes went frantic. “But I don’t want to be. I want to quit. For you. I swear I was a good guy once. You make me want to be that guy again.” Then he reached into his pockets and pulled out a pill bottle. He hurried forward and slammed it on the nightstand. “Here. I took it when we were in the supply closet.”
Drea huffed out a breath, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.” Once an addict, always an addict.
Billy winced and then he reached in the other pocket and came out with three more pills that he tossed on the nightstand beside the bottle. “And those are the three that I already took out of the bottle.”
Drea stood up and got in his face, furious. “Did you take any before you started working on Eric?”
“No, no, I swear I didn’t.” Billy held up his hands. “I swear on my mother’s name.”
The way his voice got choked up as he said it, Drea thought he meant it.
Still, he was a fucking addict. It didn’t matter how earnest his promises were today. She stared at him.
Dammit, she did not need this right now.
So you just throw him away because he’s inconvenient?
“Fuck,” she shouted, digging her fingers into her scalp and massaging her skull. She’d been an inconvenience once.
And tossed out like yesterday’s trash without a thought.
Billy had winced at her outburst, but he still stood there, face open. Waiting for her to break him or save him.
Which wasn’t fuckin
g fair. She wasn’t anyone’s salvation.
“Number one,” she pointed her finger in his face, “I’m not fucking perfect. Don’t put me on some damn pedestal because I don’t want to deal with your shit when I fall off it, got it?”
He nodded rapidly.
“Two. Do you have any more pills on you? Or any other shit?”
“No.” He gestured at the nightstand. “That’s all of it.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “And I’m not going to. For a good long while, so get used to it. Now empty your damn pockets. All of them. Inside fucking out.”
He hurried to comply, pulling his pockets inside out.
“Back ones too.”
He did.
“Shoes and socks off. You know what? Just strip completely down to your boxers.”
His neck colored but he was more than happy to drop his drawers. When she patted him down, she couldn’t help but to notice his stiffy and she rolled her eyes. Men. Then again, she had yet to change out of her Boobzilla little black dress, so what did she expect?
“Three,” she ticked off on her fingers as she pulled back. “If we do this, you commit to fucking doing it, got it? You get one chance with me. All in. No redos. So. Are you in?”
He immediately opened his mouth and she clamped her hand over it.
His whole body shuddered at her touch and Drea almost stepped back, her breath hitching.
What the—
Because she’d felt it too.
Down all the way through her chest, zinging straight to her sex and all the way onwards to her toes.
She kept her hand on his mouth, but suddenly the connection between them felt electric. She had to swallow before she was able to speak again.
“Really think about it,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. The words that sprang to mind were, Don’t break my heart. What she said was, “If you break your promise, you’re dead to me.”
Billy gulped. Hard. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down but he didn’t break her gaze. She pulled her hand away from his mouth.
“I promise.”
“Okay.” She stepped back from him and turned to her own little bag. In addition to her Glock, she’d added a few goodies she’d found in the garage. She had her back to him as she pulled out one item. “I’m going to hold you to that. But right now I need to sleep. Not babysit you while withdrawal starts.”
