Kaeden

by Naomi West

  “Would you care to explain to me why I can’t kill this dog?” His voice is chilling. More so is that he sounds intelligent, like he knows exactly what he is doing and is committed to enjoying every second of it. There’s madness in the way he talks and holds himself, but he doesn’t seem unhinged. It’s a terrifyingly unsettling combination. “It seems pretty simple to me, girl. Pull the trigger; job done. So … what?”

  Kaeden rolls onto his back and stares up at me, the hole in his shoulder spewing more blood and his face gushing plenty as well. He shakes his head at me urgently, unable to speak because one of the masked men has stuffed a rag into his mouth. Every time he tries to stand, they prod their guns into his bleeding face. I know he wants me to shut up, but I just can’t watch him die. I can’t.

  “I’m his old lady!” I blurt, hoping I have the right term. I search my mind frantically. I’m pretty sure that’s it; I overheard it at the bar, I think. “I’m his old lady and … and if you let him live, I’ll go with you as a hostage!”

  Kaeden’s eyes widen and he lets out a roar, muffled by the rag. The masked man looks down at him, regarding him like a zoologist would a chimpanzee, which is even more unsettling when his face is hidden. Then he turns back to me. “Why can’t I just kill you both? Despite what people say about the big bad Red Death, there’s nothing stopping me, is there?”

  One of my English professors once told me that the best way to understand literature is to understand people, to be able to put yourselves into their heads even if they are completely different from you. That’s what I do now, trying to imagine what this man could possibly want. It’s clearly not simply to kill everybody, otherwise he’d just do that. No, he wants something deeper, something even creepier.

  “Look how scared he is!” I shout, feeling sick. I point to Kaeden. “He doesn’t want you to take me! Let him live and take me and it’ll be worse than killing him!”

  Kaeden thrashes now, kicking out and flailing his arms. It takes four of the masked men to hold him down, and even then they have to beat him. The leader waves a hand and they stop the beating. Kaeden doesn’t lie still, though. Two men basically lie on him to stop him from struggling. The leader paces a small circle, rubbing the chin of his mask as though thinking. He turns back to me. “Fine,” he says. “I think you’ll regret this very soon, girl. But you make a good point. Come down here. Now. If you’re not down here in ten seconds, I execute him.”

  I run down the stairs, ignoring the judgmental gaze of the old man, leap the final two steps, and then pace across the restaurant. There is still a part of me that is constantly questioning what the hell I’m doing, what I’m thinking, what’s wrong with me, etc., and that part is the reasonable part, the logical part; it turns to ash and dies when I look at Kaeden’s bloodied body.

  The leader kneels down next to Kaeden when I reach them. “Just think of all the fun I’ll have with her,” he says gleefully. “All the good times we’ll share, Silence, while you’re sitting with your dick in your hand, wondering what the hell’s happening. Ha! See you later, little man.”

  Two men grab me, one on each elbow. They’re wearing leather gloves and their grips are firm, the leather digging into my bare elbows. I feel exposed as they drag me out of the restaurant, toward the entrance, every eye in this place turned on me. Behind us, Kaeden is struggling to his feet, but they beat him bad and each movement is a struggle. I just see him get to one knee before they wrench my head around and pull me into the warm Texan evening.

  They drag me down the street quickly, around a corner, into an alleyway, and then right into the back of a black van. It all happens so fast, I can barely register it all. Then I’m being strapped to the corner of the van, zip-ties digging into my wrists. The men leave me alone in the van for a moment: a long moment in which I wonder what the hell I just did, what the hell is wrong with me. I can already hear Jocelyn: “You don’t even know him! I knew this was trouble! Oh Fee, they’re going to rape and kill you now! And for what? For him?”

  “Shit,” I whisper.

  The van door opens just as the van begins to move away. The big leader climbs in and slams the door behind him. The grim reaper mask stares at me; his eyes the only visible part of his face. Then he pulls the mask off and reveals the rest of it. I am expecting some evil-looking man, perhaps with crazy hair or a face covered with tattoos. But what I see instead is a plain-looking face framed by a regular brown haircut, with a slight beard and an even slighter smile. The only thing that shocks me is his eyes, which are regular and brown except for the sadism in them; it’s like they are laughing.

  “So,” he says, leaning his forearms on his elbows as stares at me, into me. “You might expect your knight in shining armor to come chasing after us, and he will. But the problem is I’m not a stupid prick like these Red Death morons. He’ll be chasing a ghost.”

  “You have two vans,” I guess.

  His mouth twitches. “Yes, I have two vans. What is your name, girl? My name is Reaper.”

  “What kind of a name is that?” I spit, thinking about Kaeden bleeding back there, thinking about the casual way this man shot him. Maybe I should be more scared, but right now shock is running through me like some kind of adrenaline shot; bolstering me, infusing me. I’m hardly in control of what I say or do; it just comes out, like a sob. “Reaper? I’m guessing that isn’t your real name.”

  “You don’t need to know my real name,” he says easily, grinning like a jackal. “But if you don’t tell me your name, I’m going to have to get it out of you another way.”

  I tell him, my bones turning suddenly cold.

  “Fiona. That sounds like a slut’s name. And look at you. Look at all that leg you’ve got on show. And that hair. You know, you can always tell if a woman is a slut by her hair. If you see a girl with a normal haircut, straight and blonde or whatever, then she’s probably not a slut. She might be, but probably not. But if you see a girl with dyed pink hair, like yours, then she’s a fucking whore.”

  “Wow,” I mutter. “Thanks for educating me.”

  He takes a long blade from the inside of his jacket pocket and turns it over in the light that shines in from the road behind him. “You should really be more careful how you talk to me, girl, really goddamn careful. You must’ve heard of me if you’re that asshole’s old lady. I’m the Reaper. I’m the one who killed those Mexican bastards. I’m the one who’s hounding your man’s club. I’m the one who’s going to take over this city. Unless you’re not his old lady, in which case I think I’ll shove this blade up your cunt and see what comes out.”

  “I’m his old lady,” I whisper, that protective adrenaline seeping out of me now, and my courage along with it. All at once I become aware of where I am and of what I have done, of the situation I have thrust myself into. “I’m valuable to him.” I hope. “He’ll pay a lot to get me back.” Won’t he?

  “Money.” Reaper laughs, that same high-pitched, weird one he did back at the restaurant. The zip-ties cut deeper into me as we round a corner. “I have money, girl, more money than I’ll ever need. How much does a man need, really? Enough for food, clothes, a good house; enough to pay his men and enough to buy obedient little whores who’ll do what they’re told when they’re told. No, I’m not in this for the money.”

  “Then what do you want from me?” I whisper.

  “You’ll see,” he says, resting his head against the van door, the smile dropping from his face. “But I don’t think you’ll be so eager to find out when you realize. You’re in for a wild ride, Fiona. I can promise you that much.”

  8

  Kaeden

  I manage to struggle to my feet, but my vision is all wavy and everything is out of focus. My instincts tell me to wrap the shoulder wound, assess how bad it is, and sort it out before I do anything else. Normally that is what I’d do, without second-guessing it, but right now my instincts drive me in another direction: right out the door and after Fiona. It’s an urge that is so damn strong I c
an’t even try to ignore it; a different kind of urge, the sort that makes a man forget everything he has ever learned about riding and killing and staying alive.

  I jump into my car and start the engine, and then pull out and follow the van that weaves through the traffic a few hundred yards ahead. They’re driving like mad people, almost hitting a mother walking with her child at one point. I imagine Fiona jostling around in the back of the van, being tossed about all over the place, her head slamming into the side. My shoulder blares at me as I turn the wheel; it roars at me to stop this madness, but I weave through the traffic after the van.

  I dart around a car the van clips, the driver walking around the side to study the damage. He throws a middle finger at me when I swerve past and then powerwalks back to his car. I step on the gas; I know that walk well. The man’s going for his gun. Bright lines shoot down the center of my windscreen, yellow and green and purple and orange, like a rainbow torn apart and then smeared onto the glass. I blink, and the lines shift. They’re not real; they’re in my eyes. I blink again. Each time, the blink is longer, and a pit opens up inside of me, dragging me down. My arm pulses. My body wills me to quit.

  But Fiona, goddamn it. Fiona. Anger grips me. With the hand of my good arm, I squeeze on the wheel until it hurts, my teeth clench so hard they rattle as I barrel around a corner and almost hit the edge of a building. Why did she have to do a thing like that? Now it’s about respect, too, because everybody in that place thinks Silence’s old lady was taken from him, and Silence was made to look a fool.

  The van swerves again. I follow, and then a streetlamp rises out of the middle of the fucking road. No, I’m on the sidewalk. I’m on the sidewalk and there’s an innocent old lady right there in front of me!

  I slam down the brakes and spin right into the streetlamp, the passenger-side door crushing like a potato chip packet, and then I walk from the car into a nearby forest that I had no idea was there. It’s a fresh forest, full of all different kinds of flowers, the sort I’ve never seen in Texas before. It looks like something out of Maine or Wyoming or a place like that, faraway and magical, and then Fiona walks out from behind a tree wearing nothing but a leaves over her private parts.

  She smiles at me. “Silly boy,” she whispers, shaking her head. “Why didn’t you fix your arm? Rule number one of outlawing: never play with half a deck.”

  “Where are you?” I demand, as my shoulder tears like wet paper from my body; it falls to the ground and lands in a pool of blood. But that doesn’t seem important right now. All that seems important is finding out where she is, which doesn’t make sense because she’s right here. But there’s something else, too: somewhere else.

  She smooths her pink bangs from her eyes and smiles at me, a smile that’d break a man’s heart if he had one. “Why do you care?” she whispers. “I’m just a fuck-hole, remember. I’m just something to shoot come into, right? Why would you care about a little fuck-hole like me?”

  I swallow, acid in my throat. “Don’t say that,” I whisper. “Why would you say a thing like that? I—I care about you. I think I do. I know I do. I care about you even if it makes no goddamn sense.”

  She purses her lips. “That’s not what you were thinking just a few days ago. Did you care about me when you bent me over and fucked me in a storage closet, like I was some kind of whore? Anybody could’ve walked into that closet! You clearly didn’t care then!” She skips over to me and places her hand on the bloody stump where my arm used to be. The forest fades; suddenly we are standing in the middle of a desert, the sun blaring down on us. I feel my neck boiling as the skin from Fiona’s face slides from her skull. “Would you really treat me like that if you cared, hmm? Would you really humiliate me like that? I don’t think you care, Kaeden. I don’t think you ever cared. You’re just a cold, mean, distant man. You’ll forget about me soon and go find another fuck-hole.”

  “No!” I snap, reaching out for her as more and more of her skin slides from her bones, leaving just the bones standing there, alone. Tendons and muscles melt away, but somehow, she stays standing. She pouts at me, impossibly, because she doesn’t have lips. But she pouts anyway. “No!” I roar, as my brain boils and all thought becomes impossible. “I want you,” I whisper, falling to the scorching red earth. “Please. I’m sorry. I want you. I care about you. This was the best night of my life. Tell me more about your novel. I want to hear more. I actually do! Goddamn it, Fiona, don’t fucking leave me now! No! No! No!”

  “Easy,” Shotgun says, bringing the straw to my lips. “Easy, Kaeden. Goddamn, calm yourself, man. Calm yourself.”

  I open my eyes, relieved to find that I’m not boiling to death, and just as relieved to find my arm still attached to my body.

  “Where … is she?” I manage, between sips of water.

  “Who?” Shotgun places the water aside. We’re in the clubhouse in one of the dormitory rooms. It must be one of the empties because the closets are bare and the sheets are plain, except for spots of blood.

  “The girl. Fiona!”

  “Shit, was she there?” Shotgun leans back, sucking in a breath through his teeth. “We’re still pulling their footage, Kaeden; a few of the fellas are down there now. But if you remember any of it …”

  I search my mind, which is hazy but functional now. The dream about the desert and the forest slips away, and seconds later I know that I had a dream but I cannot remember any of the details. More seconds pass, and the dream is replaced with the blunt reality of what happened in the restaurant. “How bad is my shoulder?” I ask. “Can I use it?”

  “Oh that.” Shotgun nods. “It’ll hurt like a son of a bitch for a while, but it’s just a flesh wound. Nothing to worry about.”

  “But I collapsed,” I mutter. “I fucking collapsed from a flesh wound?”

  “The doctor said maybe you were panicking, which was partly why you collapsed. It was a high-stress situation, he said, completely normal. I told him that was horse shit and that Silence never collapses in high-stress situations, but it makes sense now, what with the girl.”

  “I collapsed out of … what, fear?” I can hardly believe it. Years of outlawing and my steely nerve fails me when I need it most.

  “No, you might’ve passed out anyway. Maybe the panic just helped it along. Tell me what happened.”

  I tell him, editing out the details about how incredible the date was, about how close I felt to her, all that sort of shit. He doesn’t need to hear that.

  “Reaper,” Shotgun mutters, clicking his neck from side to side. “He has her, then? Shit, she must have some stones in her to do a thing like that. Hell, she must care about you as much as you care about her to do a thing like that.”

  “How’s that possible?” I whisper. “We barely know each other.”

  Shotgun shrugs. “I guess you know each other more’n you think. Listen, you’re pumped full of meds right now, so there’s not really shit you can do. But rest easy, all right? I’ll have news for you in the morning. We’ll find her, all right?”

  We both know that it isn’t a sure thing; there’s no way he can really make that promise; but before I can call him on it, my eyelids fall like shutters and the world turns to blackness. Phantoms rise out of the dark, taunting me with her name, over and over and over. I don’t care much; I hold it like a prayer.

  “Fiona,” I whisper into the dark. It makes it a little lighter.

  9

  Kaeden

  I wake with sunlight in my eyes, the events of last night at first a blur I can’t get into focus. I remember the date and I remember pain afterwards. I remember the dress Fiona wore, which was about as sexy a dress as she could’ve worn; the sexiest goddamn dress I’ve ever laid my eyes on. Then I get to thinking that if she wore a dress like that, why isn’t she lying next to me right now? Or at least, why didn’t I fuck her? Goddamn, she looked so—

  I leap to my feet, ignoring the dull ache in my shoulder. I can move the arm around now that the bullet has been take
n out and the wound patched up, but it isn’t comfortable. Fuck it, who ever said an outlaw’s life is supposed to be comfortable? I put on my jeans and boots and leather, which somebody left on the back of the door for me, and then go out into the clubhouse. I expect to find men here, but it’s empty. I go to the window and look outside: the lot is empty as well. Curious.

  I go to the boss’ office and knock twice.

  “Come in, Silence,” Dirk says.

  The old man sits at his desk with his chin resting on his knuckles, staring at his computer screen which shows a live security feed of a highway. He’s always looking at stuff like this, planning moves, so it doesn’t seem odd to me. His demeanor does, though. I’d expect some fire in him after one of his fellas was shot by the Nine Circles, but he seems more tired than anything else.

  “We need to go after the girl,” I tell him, standing over the desk. “We have to find her, boss. We can’t let these Nice Circles bastards take our women—”

  “Who is she, again? Some waitress?”

  I grind my teeth and resist the urge to snap at him, to tell him that he better watch how he talks about Fiona. It’s a crazy impulse, one I couldn’t imagine feeling even yesterday. A man once told me that you know when you really care about a lady when she leaves; it was after his divorce, and he was regretting being a cold asshole. Well, I guess I care about Fiona more than I could’ve guessed.

  “She was out with me, boss. She was my goddamn date and these Nine Circles assholes just came in and took her. Fucking shot me in the arm and then took her. Do you think I can let that stand?”

  The boss spreads his hands. “What do you want me to do? Isn’t Shotgun looking into it?”

  I repress a roar and drop heavily into the chair, causing a loud, thudding sound, and then rest my forearms on the desk and lean close so that I’m looking right into the boss’ eyes. He scratches his twice-broken nose with a spiderweb finger, unfazed. He looks almost resigned. I’ve never seen him like this before.