Road Warriors (Motorcycle Club Romance Collection) (Bad Boy Collections Book 4)

by Faye, Amy

  “Were you sleeping with his wife?” Elise asked. Her fingers were running through the tips of her hair.

  I shook my head, coughing. “I never cheated on Etta. Not once.” It was the truth. I would have never betrayed her like that. Were she still alive, I still would have been perfectly true to her. She was everything to me, and a man doesn't ruin everything for a one night stand.

  “So he believed a lie,” she thought out loud, her voice quiet. “You humans are so strange.” I ignored that strange comment and continued with my story. Elise should know it. She should know what kind of man she was staying with.

  She should know that I was a killer, and it wasn't safe for her to be near me. Whatever she did with that knowledge was up to her. She could leave, or she could stay. Deep inside, I hoped that she would stay, even though I had no right to hope for such a thing.

  “It was a convenient lie to believe. He used it to justify setting my house on fire. Etta was home. I wasn't. When I got there, she was already dead. I was a wreck.” My hands were shaking from the memory, my mouth tasted of metal. I didn't want to finish the story, but I had to. I had to get it all out there. No more secrets from Elise.

  “I took a week to plan my revenge. That's what these photos were for, they acted as my notes. About where they went. What they did. Who they talked to, and when they would be weakest. I took Joachim and Boaz, my pistols, and I went to our headquarters. I killed them all. Every one of them. I did not spare a single person, blowing holes into their chests and their heads. So you see, Elise, I'm a monster.”

  She came to my side and touched my shoulder, but I shrugged her away. I couldn't do it, anymore. I couldn't be human in front of her then. “I need you to leave me alone for a while, Elise.”

  She left the basement.

  Chapter 8

  Imogael

  I thought I had fixed him, but I guess I was wrong. He was still moping, still boring, still frustrating.

  What was I going to do? I had sort of thrown all-in with him. I didn't know where I would go if things didn't work out with Scott. Plus, I wanted them to work out with him. I didn't want to leave him all alone while he was suffering.

  That bit of empathy was so strange to me. Why did I care what happened to him? I would have normally been torturing someone like him. Instead, I felt bad for Scott, and I wanted to ease his burden.

  Did I want to ease it for him, or for me? Was I being selfish?

  That I even cared was stressful. The human body I had been given must have been poisoning my mind, forcing me to care about things that I shouldn't have been. I just wanted Scott to be fun again. I wanted him to go and beat some assholes up.

  I did understand, of course, on an intellectual level. What he was going through had to be hard. I felt bad for being selfish about him again.

  I'm not at all interested in staying with someone who was just going to sit around in the basement all day. He was handsome and usually interesting, plus I liked his motorcycle, but the newfound depression was too much for me. I was about ready to tap out.

  I missed Hell. I knew I was growing too attached to a human, when I could be yanked back down to hell at any moment. I did love his hair and his face and the way his thoughts invaded my mind. I wished he would come upstairs then and let me run my fingers through his hair some more.

  A sound turned my attention away from myself and to the window. I heard that fluttering of wings once again, the familiar sound. Seraniel. Had he come to take her back? To apologize for leaving her, for sending her to be with the humans?

  I stood and went to the front door, my heart pounding against my chest. What would I say to him if he asked to have me back? Would I let him take me home? Would I argue with him, and goad him into fucking me the way he used to? Or would I tell him to fuck off, leave me to stay with Scott?

  I wasn't sure which outcome seemed better. Somehow, I wanted all of them at once.

  When I opened the door, I found no one. For a second, I worried there would be another dead body, but the porch was completely empty. I heard the flutter of wings again, above me that time. Like it was coming from the room.

  Stepping out onto the porch, I moved into the front yard and looked up. The roof was empty. No one. Nothing. The sun was setting, but there was still enough light to see that whatever had made that sound was gone. Or maybe that it had never been there at all. Maybe it was all a hallucination.

  Deciding to search around the house, I started on the left wall and then traced it all the way to the right wall. There, near the back fence, I found a pile of feathers. Large, black feathers, exactly like the ones Seraniel would have had.

  It answered nothing. I was sure there were birds that could have had feathers like that too. I tried to look for more evidence of Seraniel, but found nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  What in the world was going on? If Seraniel was trying to take me back, why would he have been flitting about, hiding from me? Was he watching me, like some kind of strange guardian angel?

  A horrible thought crossed my mind. What if he was the one behind the murders? Would he have killed those humans? Why? To punish Scott for taking me in?

  It was possible. Angels were wrathful, capable of causing great harm. It was rare, but it did happen. An angel that wasn't getting his way would very likely act out. Seraniel was no stranger to tantrums, and it seemed that most of his anger was always aimed at me.

  I hoped, I wished, I even prayed that I wasn't the reason Scott was suffering. I would hate myself for all eternity if I was.

  And if he was there to take me back home, I realized, I wasn't interested. I would get back to Hell on my own terms. Not with the help of some bratty angel, and definitely not with the help of an angel making a human suffer because of her.

  That thought was funny, to me. I had no real attachment to Scott, and yet I was so fond of him that I would forsake a chance to go home to punish Seraniel, as childish as that punishment would be.

  What was it I was feeling? Fondness, warmth, compassion, desire. Was it love?

  Scott

  Another buzz in my back pocket finally irritated me enough to force me to look at my phone. I felt bad for telling Elise to leave the basement. She wasn't trying to make me upset. That was all me, stupidly reliving the worst days of my life.

  I would have to apologize to her. She didn't seem like the kind of woman to hold grudges for very long, but I would feel bad for a long time if I didn't.

  It was amusing to me that I cared so much about what she thought or felt. Was I starting to like her? She was goddamn hot, and she was a great fuck, but I wasn't sure I was capable of having real feelings for a woman. Not anymore.

  It seemed like that would have been unkind to Etta's memory. Like I was spitting on her grave, or forgetting her. Would she have wanted me to one day move on?

  Was Elise even the kind of woman I would want to move on with?

  My phone told me I had missed 9 calls. 5 voicemails and 7 text messages awaited me. I chose to listen to the voicemails first. The first one was one of the girls from The Black Diamonds. I recognized her, she was one of the girls I had been with most often. She was a strong girl, usually, with a good head on her shoulders. She was the one who convinced Starr to start dealing in meth.

  Alright, so maybe she didn't have that great of a head on her.

  She was freaking out. “We don't know what to do, Scott. Who's supposed to lead us now? Without Starr, we're aimless. Please come help us.”

  The next call was her again. It came an hour after the first one. “Scott, it's Danielle again. I was calling you to let you know that, for now, we have things figured out. We just ran a sort of quick election. I guess it was decided I would take Starr's place. I hope you and I will be able to have the same professional relationship you had with Starr, and that you'll guide me through this transition.”

  She would do just fine, I thought. I would walk her through what I knew about Starr's job and her alliances with the gangs and
other clubs in our area next time I went out to see them.

  The third call was Antonio, back to business as usual. No time for sympathy. He got that from his father. When Antonio's mother died of cancer, he didn't even take more than an hour away from the job.

  So Antonio needed me to do a drug run in a small neighborhood to the south, where he was trying to expand his business so he wasn't butting up against Saejima so much anymore. The fourth call was similar, but came from an unfamiliar voice.

  It was the president of a club from Oklahoma, hoping to open up trade routes with Antonio and, through him, Saejima. I would have to call him back in the next few days to avoid causing him trouble.

  Finally, the fifth call. I wasn't prepared for what I was about to hear. Not at all.

  At first it was just sniffling, and then a cough. An attempt to compose oneself. Then Saejima's voice.

  “I just received some texts,” he said. His voice wavered. “I forwarded them to you. Once you get them, come find me. I need your help.”

  Brief, but terrifying. Closing out my voicemail, I went to my texts. The first photo was of a finger, severed and on a cement floor. The second was of a leg, again severed. Covered in sticky, red blood, sitting on top of some sort of industrial machine. Each photo became progressively more gruesome, showing off more of the dead person's body, until finally it revealed a face.

  Jin's face.

  No wonder Saejima had been crying. “Fuck,” I said. That hatred, that anger, was coming back to me. I would find the bastard doing this, and I would kill them. I would fucking kill them.

  There was that same flame tattoo, the one that Starr had on her chest. Jin had it under his eye, and unlike Starr, I knew that Jin had no tattoos at all.

  It was a message from the killer.

  I dialed Saejima, who picked up after only one ring. “Scott. Are you on your way?”

  “I will be soon, but first I need to know what you have planned. What should I bring?”

  “Joachim and Boaz, plus whatever else you've got. I got in touch with Dan down at the police station, and he told me there's been some suspicious activity around an old abandoned factory.”

  “How do you know that's where we'll find them?” I asked.

  “I don't, but I have a hunch. You saw the machinery, right? It's gotta be some kind of factory, even if it's not that one. We have to go, just to check it out. We're just gonna check it out with fully loaded guns in our hands.”

  It was sound logic. I just worried that Saejima would kill an innocent on accident. We didn't need more unnecessary deaths on our hands. “Fine. I'll be there soon.”

  “Good. You probably shouldn't bring Elise with you, though,” he said.

  The thought of leaving her alone scared the piss out of me. She could get attacked while I was gone, but she was guaranteed to get hurt if she came with me. “You're probably right.”

  “I am. Be here by 10, and we'll ride there together. I have most of my men coming, but I'm leaving a few to keep watch.” He paused. “Just in case.”

  “Then I might have Elise stay there with your wife,” I said. Saejima agreed, and then we both hung up. Finally, we had the possibility of dealing with the problem. The deaths might stop, and I might be able to move on.

  It seemed unlikely, but it was definitely a possibility.

  Chapter 9

  Imogael

  “Elise,” Scott said as he walked up to me. I turned around. Something seemed off about him, some kind of shadiness, but even looking into his mind all I could capture was anxiety and anger. Purpose, I guess. But still that shadiness, that unwillingness to tell me… something.

  Humans were complex. That much I had already known. I just didn't realize how complex and infuriating they could be when they were left to their own devices, without restraints or torture holding them back. They were intelligent, but also duplicitous.

  “Hm?” I hummed at him. I would let him do the talking, rather than asking too many questions. I wanted to trust in him, trust in whatever he had chosen to do, where he was directing that purpose.

  “We're going to Saejima's to do a job.” He said. There it was again. A shift in his eye, a catch in his breath. There was something he was trying to avoid telling me, but this game was fun. I would let it play out, for now.

  While we rode to Saejima's little neighborhood, I held onto Scott tighter than normal. He felt relaxed, which was strange considering all that had happened. It seemed dangerous for him to be relaxed. It reminded me of people that are suicidal, how they're happier in the days or hours just before they end their lives.

  I would have to keep a close eye on him, or else he could get himself into trouble.

  It was dark, the moon was out, and stars twinkled above us. Hell didn't have stars, just the twinkling of obsidian and black diamonds above and the shining flame below. I wondered when the last time Lucifer had experienced the stars. When had he been able to escape last?

  Saejima's neighborhood was quiet, aside from the nearby bar. It seemed an unnatural quiet. That was when I saw it: black motorcycles, shining in the dark. Rows and rows of them, empty for now, but surely they would be roaring to life.

  Upon seeing Saejima, my sight went black and then a vision came before me. It was a vision of blood. A lot of blood. Blood dripping from a gaping chest, but I couldn't see who it belonged to. It could have been Saejima, or Scott, or anyone else.

  I grabbed Scott's hand as we walked up to Saejima. He gave me a surprised glance as I held his fingers tight. “What are you doing?” I asked. “What are you two planning, Scott?”

  “We're going to catch the bastard that killed my son, and Starr,” Saejima answered. There were dark, dark circles under his eyes. A woman in a red dress was behind him, looking just as miserable as he was. “Elise, this is my wife. You'll be staying with her while we're gone.”

  “Absolutely not,” I say, squeezing Scott's hand. “And you're not going, either.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” Saejima demanded. He stepped closer, but Scott stopped him with a hand.

  “What's wrong?” Scott asked. His eyebrows were stitched together, but he otherwise hid his worry. He was worried, about me? The idea of it was almost enough to make me laugh, a human worrying about a demon. A damned soul.

  I loved him.

  Realizing it was painful. A demon was in love with a human. It had happened before, I knew, and it never ended well. Either the human died, was corrupted, and spent eternity in Hell punished for their love… or the demon was sent to oblivion, true death, eternal darkness. Neither outcome was acceptable.

  I shivered, remembering the vision. “I have a bad feeling. A really, really bad feeling.”

  Scott seemed as if he wanted to listen to me, as if he believed me. Saejima, on the other hand, was only angry and growing more angry by the second. “If you try to stop us again, I will make you regret it. Do you understand?” His voice was low, a growl, a warning.

  I nodded. “I do. But I'm still not staying behind. If I can't stop you from going, then I want to be there.”

  “You'll be safer here,” Scott said with a sensitive tone. “Please don't come with us, Elise.”

  “I'll be safer here? You don't understand, Scott. I'm coming with you, to keep you safe.”

  Again, belief was in his eyes. I was worried for a moment that he was suspecting what I was, that I wasn't normal, but he said nothing about it. I realized, then, that I might have to reveal everything to him one day. How would he react? It seemed obvious that he would probably want me gone, and I could not blame him for it. Demons weren't meant to mix with humans. Humans weren't meant to like demons.

  He only nodded. “Then you ride with me.”

  “You have to be kidding,” Saejima groaned. “Whatever. If she dies, that's on you.” He walked over to his bike. Men suddenly appeared out of buildings, dressed all in black with their faces as grim as if they were riding off to war.

  Scott kept his hand in mind
as we went back to his bike. I didn't let go until the very last second. “What's the plan when we get there?” I asked him. Scott looked back at me, his eyes unsure.

  “We kill anyone alive, and then we look for clues. Evidence of whoever was behind the killings.” He looked up at the sky for a moment, as if he was meditating. His mind went blank, dark. With the roar of another engine, his eyes opened and he got onto his bike, waiting for me to get on behind him.

  I didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. It felt as if we were falling into the deepest depths of the ocean, where everything was strange and mysterious, and danger lurked around every corner. All I knew was that I had to stay near Scott. I had to keep him safe. As safe as I possibly could.

  Scott

  Even though I wanted to keep Elise safe, the truth was that I felt safer with her near me. I don't mean that I felt like she would be safer with me. She made me feel safe. For such a thin woman, she held herself like someone who could take care of her own problems.

  There was that nagging feeling that she was different, again. I wasn't superstitious, I was an atheist through and through by that point, but I still couldn't ignore that voice in the back of my mind that pointed out over and over again the very strange things that happened around her.

  Saejima and his men followed behind me, the mass of their bikes swallowing up all lanes of the road. I was leading an army of men, but I had no clue what we would find when we got there. I hoped that it would be empty, and that we could search in peace.

  But Elise had a bad feeling, and part of me trusted that bad feeling. One day, I would have to demand an explanation from her. Maybe she didn't have one. She could just be the kind of woman that trusted her instincts, and her instincts were just accidentally always right. That seemed unlikely to me, though.