Smoke Road

by Toby Neal

  Luca opened the door to the room he’d been assigned, a small space with a double bed in it, a chest of drawers, and a window overlooking the bonfire.

  He flung Tabitha onto the bed. “Ooh! So rough!”

  Luca heard voices through the open window, the cackle of laughter and the crackling of the bonfire. What were they doing to Nani? He couldn’t be away long.

  Tabitha grabbed at him, tugging at his jeans and pulling at his shirt. Luca swatted her away and turned to close the door, then paced to the window.

  Two men were hauling Nani into low wooden stocks. They locked her neck and wrists between the boards. She was nude, her body covered by filth and wounds.

  A jolt of panic shook him. Would they rape her? He wouldn’t be able to control himself—he’d die trying to stop that, and likely Nani would die too.

  Peaches licked his fingers and he rested his hand on top of her head. Her soft fur and gentle whine brought welcome comfort in this hostile place.

  One of the men, indistinguishable in the low light from any of the others, raised a knife. The large blade caught the reflection of flames and glowed orange. Luca’s heart stopped and his fists clenched.

  Tabitha said Nani would live until morning, that they’d hang her then. But was he about to helplessly watch her murder?

  The knife came down and sunk into Nani’s braid, the blade sawing at it until the thick length of hair fell to the ground.

  A rush of relief swamped Luca, Nani would hate losing her hair, but she was still alive.

  Tabitha sidled over to him, pushing Peaches out of the way, pressing her body against his side. Luca hooked his arm around her neck. Tabitha leaned into him, purring as her hand worked at his belt. He tightened his hold, being careful yet forceful; there was a thin line between unconsciousness and death.

  He wanted Tabitha right at that line, leaving her alive, but unconscious. He increased his grip. She made a small coughing sound but didn’t resist. Her head lolled forward, her chin resting on his thick forearm.

  Luca carried her to the bed and set her down. He unbuttoned her dress and slipped it off her body, leaving her in just a bra and panties. He rolled up the dress, which wouldn’t fit Nani properly, but was better than being nude. He shoved it into his backpack. He tied Tabitha and gagged her, then left the room with Peaches, locking it from the outside with his key.

  The crowd around Nani had thinned. Now that she was unconscious, her body hanging limp in the stocks, the fun had gone out of the game. Several men were building a platform on the far side of the fire while others continued to drink and eat. Luca took a deep breath, smelling the smoke and stench of feces that hung in the air—someone had thrown dog shit on Nani, too. Maybe that was keeping her from being raped.

  Luca wove and staggered a bit, putting a sway into his step so that he’d appear intoxicated to anyone who spied him as he rounded the corner and headed toward the armory.

  He passed the temple where he’d been brought immediately upon his arrival.

  After taking his “gift” and patting him down, the guards had ushered Luca through the temple door. He’d stepped from the fading daylight into the dark of the Temple, and been blind for a moment. His eyes had slowly adjusted, seeing candles on an altar. A statue of Jesus hung above it. This interpretation of God’s son bore the same crown of thorns that Luca was familiar with, but instead of his head hanging down, Jesus was looking forward, staring at the entrance, watching Luca.

  “Hello, my brother.” A voice came from his left. Luca turned to see a man sitting in the back row, his hands resting on the pew in front of him, pale white against the dark wood.

  He stood and turned to Luca, his eyes glittering in the candlelight. Luca had never seen eyes like his—they held something indescribable but attractive. His presence quieted something in Luca, made him feel suddenly, irrationally safe. Luca wanted to hear anything Hillish had to say.

  Hillish approached. Luca was not just broader but taller, clearly much stronger, but power radiated out of Hillish, filling the temple with his magnetism and making it clear to Luca how he controlled his flock.

  This man was insane, and his insanity was contagious.

  “Sit with me.”

  Luca had followed him to the front of the temple where Tanner sat before the altar, cross-legged. He gestured for Luca to do the same. They were so close that their knees almost touched.

  “Tell me what brought you here.”

  “I heard about what you’re doing here. I think it’s great.”

  Hillish reached out and touched Luca’s knee. “Tell me the truth, brother. Why are you here?”

  “Because I’m angry. I want to make the world safe for me and mine.” This truth made his voice ring with conviction.

  “You have family left alive?”

  “No sir. Lost my parents years ago, never had any siblings.”

  “Then who are your ‘mine’?”

  “My brothers of flesh, my brothers of race. All white men and women are mine.”

  Tanner nodded. He held Luca’s gaze and Captain Luciano used every ounce of his training not to turn away, not to hide from the strangely compelling man. Instead he encouraged the rage he’d cultivated since burying his men, thinking of all the ways Nani had betrayed him—the way all women were liars—and he showed that anger to Tanner Hillish through his eyes.

  Hillish smiled, his gaze soft and kind.

  “Welcome, my brother. We will find you a woman and a bed and you shall be of great use to us.”

  Luca was going to be of great use to them all right. He was going to send them all to hell.

  He reached the armory and found the door locked, not surprising, but annoying.

  Tanner would have the keys, as would his two lieutenants, Wyatt and Marcus. He’d seen Wyatt drinking at the campfire, his eyes glassy from the homemade hooch. Luca didn’t want to go back there, seeing Nani humiliated again might make him do something reckless and stupid.

  There had to be another way into the arms storage. Luca circled the freestanding building and discovered a window in the back. He found a rock and smashed it. The cracking of the glass was loud, but hopefully everyone was too drunk to notice.

  Luca took off his shirt and wrapped it around his fist, breaking out the rest of the window. “Stay,” he told Peaches, and hauled his body through. There were no lights on, so he used touch to navigate the shelves. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he was able to find what he needed.

  He climbed back out into the night, a pack filled with supplies on his back and an AK-47 over each shoulder. He jogged toward the square, Peaches by his side. He was going to get his woman. And he was never letting her go again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Haunani

  Nani woke up to pulsing, terrible pain, feeling like she should be lying down, but unable to do so. She was kneeling, bent over, and her legs trembled as if she had Scorch Flu. Her head hung, throbbing. It felt strangely light and cold, a draft of air chilling her exposed ears.

  Her hair was gone, and she’d been stripped naked—the breeze on her delicate skin told her so.

  Nani opened her eyes and blinked the compound into focus, lit only by dim yellow security lights at the edges of the wall. The deep dark of night had fallen. The bonfire was an amber-red bed of coals nearby.

  Nani was clamped into an old-fashioned pillory, her hands and neck locked in place between harsh wooden restraints as her kneeling body was forced to support it.

  Nani felt a thousand small wounds crying out for attention. She reeked of shit and rotten food.

  Great Nation America had brought back the old-fashioned pleasures of public torture and humiliation. And if that weren’t enough, straight ahead of her was a moveable platform with a hanging noose spinning from a gibbet in the gentle night breeze.

  A terrible cry of horror and agony swelled in her chest, rising up in her throat, but when she opened her mouth to let it out nothing came but a whispering croak.

&
nbsp; Nani hung her head, letting the weight of her experience bear down on her, allowing the pain and humiliation, the fear and the anguish cloak her. She was hardly even alive, just a pulsing core of hurt.

  They’d hacked off her hair.

  It was a symbol of culture and femininity in Hawaii, and now it felt like they’d taken her womanhood.

  But they hadn’t.

  She was naked, but she hadn’t been raped, her feminine parts felt intact. She was filthy and sore, but relatively unharmed. No way were these racist skinheads going to crush her.

  No fucking way.

  Nani took a deep breath, feeling bruised ribs and ripped skin, knowing that her body was beaten but her soul was still alive and well.

  She forced herself to calm down and think logically. Raising her head, she scanned the compound, searching for a way out. Hell if she was going to meekly walk up to that gibbet tomorrow and let them put a noose around her neck!

  Nani was in the middle of The Center, to the left of the bonfire. Ahead was a building marked with a cross, their perverted version of a church. Adjacent to it was another building, and the steady chug of a generator marked it as running machinery that needed to be on all the time. “Refrigerators,” she murmured. “The virus.” The virus, and the vaccine, needed to be kept cold to be viable.

  Things had gone too far to call in a strike force on this place, even if one would come, which she doubted. No, she was on her own and if she couldn’t take down Tanner Hillish, at least she could try to destroy what remained of the virus.

  But all that depended on her getting loose. Where the hell was Cocky Lupo?

  As if in answer, Luca rose out of the silent darkness on the other side of the compound, coalescing from the shadows like they had formed him.

  She recognized his shape, knew it as if it had been stitched on her soul. As he ran toward her, the sound that wouldn’t form finally came out, a hoarse cry at the horror that had been done to her, and it formed his name. “Luca!”

  His big hand covered her mouth, warm and gentle as Luca leaned in close to her ear. “Shh. I’m getting you out of here.”

  He dug at the lock holding the stocks shut with the tip of his knife, glancing up and around. Luca was armed with two AKs clanking from straps across his back, Peaches by his side, her ears swiveling, nostrils flaring at Nani’s stench.

  “I’m going to have to shoot the lock off,” he whispered. “But I need sound cover. Just wait another minute.”

  “Like I have a choice,” she croaked. Nani watched the silhouetted noose behind him twist back and forth—counting off the seconds.

  “I’m getting you out of here.” His voice was cold and confident.

  The temple building across the way blew up with a sudden burst of explosive light that seared her vision. Nani hunched, shutting her eyes and cringing in her restraints as bits of metal and wood flew everywhere in a flurry of shrapnel. The report of the gunshot as Luca blew the padlock off was drowned in the sound of the explosion.

  Smoke burned her nostrils and white flashed behind Nani’s closed eyes as Luca threw the wooden slat off of her wrists and neck. She slipped toward the ground, her body too sluggish and weak to react, but Luca caught her, lifting her into his arms and running to shelter between two of the buildings.

  Her body shuddered and shook—but the warmth of his chest and the steady way he ran with her, like she weighed nothing at all, made her feel safe, cherished. Luca tucked himself deep into a shadowy corner, Peaches by his side.

  “Can you stand?” he asked, his voice close to her ear.

  “I’m not sure.” Nani’s limbs were exploding in waves of pins and needles.

  “Let’s try.”

  He lowered her bare, raw feet to the dirt, keeping a steadying arm around her waist. She winced as weight shifted onto her legs, sending new bolts of pain through them. She groaned and he scooped her back up into his arms. His eyes were focused on the square just beyond their hiding place, lit by the burning temple and filled with chaos as men and women raced to put out the fire. Thick smoke hung in the air, drifting lazily around, helping to shield them.

  “Where is your pain?”

  “Everywhere. But the biggest problem at the moment is pins and needles, just circulation.”

  “You’re stronger than all of them put together,” Luca’s gaze dropped to her and his eyes glinted gold, reflecting the flickering light of the blaze. “You know that, right?”

  She nodded, feeling the truth of his words in her bones as his affirmation reverberated in her soul.

  Luca lowered her legs again and she bit down on another groan, using his support and admiration to stand on her own two feet. Luca kept an arm around her waist as he pulled out a dress from his bag. It was full length and white, stinking of alcohol and stale sweat. He helped fit it over her head, his hands gentle as he buttoned the smock over her bare, bruised chest. His fingers lingered for a moment at her throat and his jaw tightened.

  Nani’s hand cupped his rough, warm cheek. His gaze lifted to hers, and his eyes were filmed with tears.

  “My wolf,” she whispered.

  Luca swallowed, his throat convulsing. “I’m sorry I couldn’t stop them from hurting you.”

  “Thank you for getting me out.”

  He nodded, and her hand lowered to his chest so that he supported some of her weight but the feeling had returned to her legs. She was sore, bruised, and covered in filth, but Nani wasn’t afraid any longer.

  They would fight until they died, and that was the way it would be.

  Peaches touched Nani’s hip with her nose. She looked down at the dog, who nuzzled close in response. Nani stroked Peaches’ head and returned her gaze to Luca.

  “You’re in charge of this mission,” Luca reminded her. “Do you want an exit strategy? Or do you want to burn this place to the ground?”

  “We have to destroy the lab.” Nani’s strength was returning steadily, almost as if she drew it from him, as if Luca’s warmth, his touch, was thawing her and bringing her back to life.

  Chaos reigned in front of their hiding place as a bucket line formed, linking to some nearby water source as the cultists vainly pitched buckets of liquid onto the remains of the burning building.

  Luca thrust an AK into her arms and nodded. She checked the automatic’s magazine and took the safety off. Her eyes felt strained, burned, hardly able to adjust and take in all they’d seen.

  “Our lives don’t matter anymore, Luca. We have to kill Tanner Hillish and destroy the virus’s storage. The first thing they’ll do when they realize they’ve been breached is move it, and spread it further. It’s too late to call in a strike force. We need to take care of this ourselves.” Her conviction grew by the second. Dying to achieve the mission seemed like the only logical next step.

  “Yes, sir.” His voice was low but steady—he meant the sir. It wasn’t a joke or a put-down. His eyes held hers, golden and ringed with those thick, lavish lashes.

  Oh, fuck it.

  She fisted his shirt and pulled him close, pressing her bruised lips to his. He reacted instantly, his arms encircling her, his mouth opening. His tongue found hers and he groaned, the sound vibrating from deep within his chest.

  Nani’s toes lifted off the ground as he cradled her in his arms, holding her tight but tenderly, protective of her bruises and yet treating her like the fierce warrior she was. Damn, did Cocky Lupo know how to kiss.

  He put her back down and stepped back, his breathing ragged, a hand still at her waist, holding her at arm’s length.

  “Let’s start with burning the lab and see if we can nail Hillish, too.” Nani said.

  “That’s the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me.” His gaze held hers in the smoky dark.

  A warning growl from Peaches drew their attention to a man silhouetted at the entrance of their hiding place, a weapon in his hand.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Luca

  Luca fired and the man danced, jerkin
g as the rounds hit him, then collapsed onto the ground.

  Luca grabbed Nani’s hand and wheeled around, tugging her deeper into the narrow alley. He reached the end of the building and turned left, approaching the lab from the back.

  The door was locked, but a few bashes to the knob with Luca’s AK, and they were inside. The only light came through the windows from the flames still engulfing the temple on the adjacent side of the square.

  Nani approached the freezer and refrigerator that would be used for the virus’s storage. “See if you can find anything we can use as an accelerant. We need to burn whatever’s in this cold storage.”

  Luca hunted around the lab, Peaches by his side, as Nani pulled the electrical plugs of the freezers and refrigerator. Luca held up a couple of gallons of distilled alcohol. “Got accelerant.”

  “Good. I’m sure there’s a match here somewhere.”

  Luca grinned as he held up the battered matchbook he’d found in his jeans back pocket—another gift from the fallen soldier whose clothing and Harley he’d taken. “Right here.”

  Luca splashed the accelerant inside the refrigerator and freezer, over the floor, around the desks and computers until he could taste the alcohol in the air. Peaches whimpered by the back door, her sensitive nose pressed to the narrow opening.

  Nani joined Peaches and Luca held the door ajar, checking that the back of the building was clear, before striking a match. He tossed it toward the center of the room, but it went out midair and landed in the accelerant without igniting. He lit another, sheltering the small, shuddering flame. He bent down, touching the match to the edge of the alcohol.

  It burned fast, whooshing into an explosion that forced them out the back door. “That’s going to draw attention.” Luca grabbed Nani’s hand and they ran down the alley.

  “I want Tanner Hillish,” Nani panted, the pain of her ordeal clear in her dragging steps and hitching breath.