Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other books by Victoria Johns
Copyright © 2018 Victoria Johns
All rights reserved.
The rights of Victoria Johns as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000. All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, by an approved book reviewer. No circulation in any form or binding or cover that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.
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This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places or events are entirely coincidental. Many are products of the author’s imagination.
Cover design and formatting - The graphics shed – [email protected]
Editing Services – Heather Ross – The Red Pen Editing Services
Twenty Years Ago
We were bored out of our skulls. It was summer vacation and we were always trying to come up with something more exciting to do than the day before, and at ten years old, we were never short of ideas. Our execution, though, was something different entirely.
My best friend, Declan Foster, was my only friend. The trailer park we lived in was the nastiest place for miles, but to us, it was this special place full of excitement and adventure. No one cared what we did, and that included attending school. It took me a while to understand why the other kids hated us, but it was because they were scared of us. We were like these feral creatures who couldn’t be contained or controlled, and we didn’t want to be. We only went to school for fun, although secretly, I was kind of excited about learning stuff, too. I would never admit it to Dec but the other kids intimidated me, too. The girls had shiny shoes and hairstyles that made them pretty. I smelled bad, every day, or at least I think I did. After a while I stopped noticing it. The only one who didn’t care about any of this was Dec, and he wasn’t bothered because he smelled like shit, too.
Going to school got me away from my mom. She was a complete waste of space and I’d been raising myself since the age of six. That was how Dec and I became friends. He caught me stealing some food from the cool box under his trailer and we ended up scrapping about it. I told him I’d tell everyone a girl beat him up if he didn’t let me have it. Then he started to follow me round like a lost dog, and after that, I could pretty much get him to do anything I wanted. I adored how that made me feel, having him under my control. I listened to all the teachers in school talk about bullying and everyone paid attention, but I reckoned I was the only one sitting there proud of the fact that I was getting away with it.
My mom had some skanky old men around the trailer during the day and she used to kick me out when they visited. I loved the freedom I got when they turned up. I didn’t want to be cooped up with her anyway, but it wasn’t so much fun on days when it rained. On those days, I had to sit in the two-foot gap beneath the trailer and try to stay dry. What was worse was that I could hear what was going on above me. There was a whole lot of bumping and grunting, and occasionally that would turn into some screaming and swearing. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound fun. I’d hang out somewhere near the trailer on sunny days and when the coast was clear, go back and see my mom drinking herself to sleep. She was always drinking after one of her man friends had been around.
At the beginning of the summer, we started out by playing pranks on the other people who lived by us—simple stuff like leaving a box somewhere for them to trip over, hiding rotten food in someone’s trailer or stealing smelly old Jimmy Jinks’ pants. It was lame kid’s play, but when I spotted one of my mom’s regular friends riding into the trailer park on his motorcycle, I came up with our most adventurous plan to date. I planned to see what they were up to.
Dec was scared of my mom; he was scared of everyone, especially his dad. His dad was as mean as a snake and I knew Dec only went to school because he was safer there than at his trailer. It took Dec some convincing to barge in on my mom’s visit with her friend, but when I told him I wouldn’t be his friend anymore if he didn’t, he agreed.
I made room for him underneath the trailer and we lay in wait. The bumping and grunting started and very quickly it got much louder than normal. Dec was shaking like a leaf next to me. He didn’t want to do it, but I still made him. I made him get up first, open the door and tip toe in. What they were doing looked disgusting. They had no clothes on and my mom was licking his willy. I say licking, but she was more or less choking on it. Her eyes were bulging in their sockets and I could see her scratching at his legs to get away from him. I knew I’d made a mistake. I should have waited for the laughing and drinking to start before barging in, but I was hyped up and wanted to see. As we stood in the doorway, I could hear him shouting really nasty things to my mom. It was then that I figured out she was in trouble.
Declan was shaking next to me. I only understood just how terrified he was when I felt warm water on the bottoms of my bare feet. Looking down, I realized he’d peed his pants.
I wasn’t sure whether I was scared for my mom or angry that someone had scared Dec so badly he’d wet himself. He’d hate that I’d seen that. He was my best friend and this guy was going to pay for humiliating him.
I stepped to the side and grabbed the old axe my mom kept by the door. I’d seen her show it to people and threaten them before and it seemed to work. Declan tried to stop me.
“Stop hurting my mom!” I shouted and tried to wave the axe, but it was heavy. The bearded old guy was wearing black jeans that were now round his ankles, and he had lots of tattoos on his arms. He was wearing a white t-shirt that was grubby and so thin I could see he had more tattoos on his back.
When he spotted me, he let go of my mom who was clawing at her throat and gasping for air. I could just about make out that she was telling me to leave and get out. Dec was the clever one; he spied his chance and fled. The guy was laughing so hard at me wrestling with the axe and I could hear Dec screaming for his dad to come and help.
“Well look what we have here. Rita got herself a mini me.” My eyes were fixed on his penis, which was still hanging out and huge. “You wanna taste my popsicle, little girl?”
“Rosalind, get the fuck outta here.” Her voice was hoarse and I could tell it was hurting her to talk to me.
“Not without you, Momma.” Pulling all my strength together, I managed to swing the axe upright.
“Don’t be silly. Put it down, little girl.”
I didn’t do as the man said so he stepped toward me and his pants got tangled in his feet, causing him to trip. He would have landed on me, but I stepped out of the way quickly.
“You little fucking bitch!”
I may have been ten but I knew when someone was ma
d. It was something you learned quickly when you pulled as many pranks as I did. As he started to grab for me, I could see the rage in his eyes. I think he hated that a little girl like me had got the best of him so without thinking about anything other than proving I was a big girl, I swung the axe and caught his arm with it. I think it surprised him more than anything. He yelped, looked down at the ugly, bleeding slice I’d caused, and then back at me in sheer shock.
“Rosalind, no!”
I remember once, Dec and I caught a rabbit. Dec wanted to keep him as a pet, but where we lived he was more than likely going to end up skinned and hanging over a fire so I told him no. That boy had such a big heart. As he leaped across and picked it up, the rabbit froze, looked at him and then attacked. It bit his hand so hard that I had to help pull the thing off of him.
This guy did the same thing. He looked at me and then attacked.
I was small enough to get under the little table we had and that was where I made for. My mom was screaming now and clawing at the guy who was trying to get at me. She was pulling his legs but he didn’t seem to care; I was his sole focus. Mom was grabbing him from the back of his body and I was kicking out with my bare feet. It was working until he grabbed a hold of my ankle and yanked me out.
“No! Leave her alone, leave her alone!” I could hear my mom pleading, but all through it, I could only focus on the evil that I could see in this guy’s deep brown eyes. He was the thing of nightmares.
He did stop, though, and all of a sudden, he slumped forward.
I could hear my mom crying now, but I was transfixed by his eyes. What were once so vibrant and evil were slowly going milky. The brown wasn’t so deep anymore; it was changing shade. His face was going red and his head started to convulse and tremor, so badly that he bit his tongue off. He was struck again from behind and the convulsing stopped. The whiteness of his eyes was now tinged with red, like it was leaking out from the now caramel brown.
I felt a stream of blood on my shin. It was warm and I watched as it travelled and dribbled to the back of my calf like I was being burned. The severed bit of his tongue was next to my foot, and like some unknown force was pulling me, I reached out and picked it up, testing the squishiness between my fingers.
“Put that fucking thing down,” I heard a man shout as my body was slowly immersing itself in the situation. I had forgotten that the lifeless guy had been threatening me. I’d become so immersed in taking it all in, in watching the life drain from him, that I’d forgotten what was going on.
Looking at the man who was now talking to me, I recognized him. It was Dec’s dad and he was stood holding our axe, which now had the same reddish tinge to it as my leg. Dec was behind him, crying.
“Fucking hell, Rita. What have I done? What the hell have I done?” Dec’s dad threw the axe down and walked straight to my mom, slapping her so hard across the face that she slumped back on the dirty bed. “You’ve killed us all, you stupid fucking whore!”
My mom was sobbing uncontrollably now, but Dec’s dad didn’t do anything but grab Dec by the scruff of his neck and drag him from our trailer.
Mom hit the bottle in a big way as soon as they’d left. I watched as she grabbed a handful of pills and took them with her beloved bourbon.
She was drinking, going about her usual post-visit routine, and we still had a man’s bloody body left in our trailer.
Any normal girl, like one of my prissy classmates, would have been screaming, but I wasn’t. I didn’t feel scared. Lots of people died, and living where we were it came to some of us sooner than we expected
His body was the best show and tell ever. There was nothing happening, but it was so captivating. His human form was still changing despite him no longer breathing. His blood was thickening and congealing. His skin was changing temperature; I knew because I kept touching it. His eyes were there, wide open, but they were devoid of everything. I watched so closely, wondering if I was going to see his soul leave him and go to heaven, or in his case, hell.
The sky had long since gone dark and I hadn’t moved for ages when the door flew open.
“He’s making me leave, Rosie. He says we gotta go. I don’t want to go!” Declan’s face was awash with tears. It was then I stepped over the body on the floor, leaving it for the first time as I went to him.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“Declan Foster, get in this fucking truck now.”
I could see round him, and his dad was piling garbage sacks full of stuff into the trunk of his beat-up station wagon. Every so often he’d eyeball the big motorcycle like it was going to come to life and swallow him up. “He says that guy is bad news, Rosie. His friends will come looking for him and when they do, we’ll all be dead. You have to run away, too.”
I should have been bothered that my one and only friend, the one person I had complete control over, was leaving me, but all I could think about was getting back to the body, I didn’t want to miss his soul leaving. No one else at school was going to have a vacation story like this. A few minutes later, his dad stormed inside and dragged him away from the body, away from me. Dec was shrieking for me to help him and go with them, but one swift back hand to the side of Dec’s head took him off his feet and made it clear that wherever they were going, I wasn’t welcome.
That night changed my life in more ways than I can count.
My mom killed herself; she never woke up this time after her bourbon and pills session.
My best friend left. He was the only person who had ever loved me for being me, and I felt the hole in my existence grow wider as his dad’s car engine pulled away.
And I decided that death was nothing to be afraid of. I even managed to convince myself that the soul was invisible to a living eye. The dying form was just that, someone dying. The man even looked peaceful. It was just the next step for us all at some point.
When his friends finally came to look for him, they found me, still hunched over his body. This big bearded guy called me a gift from the heavens. He cursed a lot to the others with him. Apparently, something like this was ‘bound to happen.’ Whoever the dead guy was, he ‘had gone off the rails, big time’. The big guy thought I’d tried to protect him and that when I couldn’t, I’d held his friend as he died. He mumbled something about me being an angel, holding his brother, who didn’t deserve it, as his life bled from him and he travelled to the after-life. He was constantly muttering about how the dead guy didn’t deserve to be guided to heaven by an angel, and that he should have been sucked straight to the bowels of fucking hell.
He was wrong; I wasn’t an angel. I just didn’t want to miss one second of his friend’s body completely breaking down and rotting.
He said they owed me a marker, one he took very seriously.
That was how I became known as Angel and was taken to live with a bunch of bikers known as the Black Sentinels.
“Your dad is gonna freak if he catches you in here, Angel.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll hear his bike pipes first and disappear. The only way he’s gonna know is if you rat me out, Throttle.”
I was elbow deep in grease, oil and a 1971 Plymouth Cuda. I’d seen it come into the shop for a full engine tune up five years ago and it never left. I’d been tinkering with it, touching it, imagining the power of the four hundred and twenty five horsepower engine ever since. I was also wearing a formal pencil skirt, cream blouse, and heeled pumps because I’d rushed home from my dull as dishwater office job.
“He won’t need to see you. He’ll smell the grease and spot the smear of Castrol across your front.”
“Damn it.” I came out from under the hood to check he was right. Then my ears picked up on the sound I recognized and categorized as, ‘get moving; dad is inbound’.
I didn’t have time to do anything but grab an old rag and sprint from the back of the workshop, timing it just right so he wouldn’t see me cutting across the field to our house.
Our house.
Many people w
ould think being taken in by a bunch of bikers was some kind of crime, or a lesser life, and I’d been kidnapped or was working as a club bunny—I refused to think of them as whores—in the club house, but it wasn’t like that. They were girls who liked to hang out and kick back with the brothers. I wasn’t stupid; I knew there was an edge to the Black Sentinels, but they’d taken care of me. JP, short for John Paul, was the president. He was the one who’d decided I was an angel sent to see Chopper safely to the other side. He’d been like a father to me, so when I first heard him refer to me as his daughter, calling him dad felt right, and it’d felt right ever since.
I know; the irony was not lost on me. The guy I had tried to hack at with an axe when I was ten-years-old back in that trailer with my mom had been known as Chopper. Being in that trailer park with only my mom and Declan seemed like a lifetime ago.
It was a lifetime ago.
JP brought me home because of a sense of duty. He said I could stay for a few days until I remembered where the rest of my family was. He never spoke about my mother or Chopper, and never asked any questions. For all I knew they could still have been rotting in that trailer. After a week, he realized that I was all alone in the world, and his kind-hearted wife, Vix, had already gotten used to me being around, so I just kind of stayed.
Vix convinced him it was a sign. They couldn’t have kids, and with the tale of how I’d held Chopper in his dying hours and the fact that my middle name was Grace, she was even more convinced. I was an angel and I was there by the grace of God, so I became known as Gracie to her, but would always be JP’s angel to him and the rest.
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