by Jadyn Chase
The phone fell out of my hand. I must have passed out because I didn’t hear Kane hang up. I let gravity haul me into the carpet and my eyes blurred. What was the use in trying? It was all over but the crying.
Christopher. Christopher and Ruby. I wasn’t dead yet, but they would be in a very short time. I pried my eyes open against the blood that was forming a thick crust on my face now. It glued my lashes together so I had to exert extra force to separate them. The sky outside turned steely grey with falling twilight. Holy Christ, how long had I been lying here?
I twisted over onto my face and braced my arms. I dragged myself onto my hands and knees one particle at a time. My head swam and my skull throbbed with every tormented beat of my heart. I couldn’t remember ever hurting this much. I wished I was dead.
I would save Ruby and Christopher. Then I would find a hole to crawl into and never wake up.
I kept my eyes closed for a time and compelled one arm outward. I put my weight on it and focused on my knee. Piece by piece, I inched toward the bathroom. I wouldn’t find Ruby and Christopher there, but first things first.
I touched the bathtub and steadied myself to catch my breath. Now came the hard part. I locked my jaw and took a firm grip on the porcelain. I flung out my leg and put my foot on the floor.
I leaned over the tub and rested my chest there while I got my other foot in position. Ever so slowly, I eased my weight back and squatted. I had to hang my head to remain conscious for a minute until the world stopped spinning. Every second counted, but I couldn’t rush this if I hoped to stay upright.
I bounced on my thighs and straightened my legs. My knees braced. Thank Heaven for small mercies. I supported myself from the tub to the sink and teetered in front of the mirror. I didn’t dare look at myself, though. I was here to do a job, and I already knew I looked like death warmed over.
I pulled out my Bowie knife. I clenched it in my right hand and propped my left next to the mirror to hold myself up. I trained all my attention on my forehead and raised the knife.
The pain always vanishes in situations like this. I stabbed my knife into my brow and dug out the first pellet. One after the other, I cut out the buckshot driving me insane. Blood trickled into my eyes, but I blinked it away.
When I finished, I washed off my face and patted it with toilet paper until the bleeding stopped. I shoved the knife into its sheath. Now the pain really hit. My head wobbled on my shoulders like a lead balloon. Every few seconds, I lost the strength to hold it up. My neck sagged and a wave of cold sick gripped me.
I leaned both arms against the mirror and rested for what seemed like a long time. While I wondered whether I could really do this, my phone buzzed. I blew out a long breath and took it out. Unknown caller. That was weird.
I touched the button. “Hello?”
“Hey, man!” It was Logan. “They’re letting me out of here. I’m all better and the doctors were astounded by my speedy recovery.” He let out a childish laugh at his own joke. The doctors must have really been amazed. They probably called the Journal of Medicine about it.
He changed his tone. “You okay, man?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” As if. “When are you getting out?”
“They say a couple of hours, but nothing ever happens very fast around here. Can you pick me up?”
“Sure, man.” I sniffed and squared my shoulders. “Just tell me when and where.”
“Come to the main entrance at eight o’clock. I should be there by then.”
I hung up. So God in his Heaven didn’t completely forsake me. One other Diablo remained in semi-operational condition in this piece of shit town. I checked my phone. Quarter to seven.
Now that I got those pellets out, I sensed my healing powers kicking in. Just a few more hours or maybe days of pain and I would be right as rain, just like Logan. I had a plan and I had a friend. I only needed one more crucial piece of the puzzle—well, two actually.
Ruby lived with her father. She only moved back here a short time ago, so she probably couldn’t afford her own house.
After considerable difficulty in the parking lot, I located my bike and mounted up. Then came the challenge of fitting the key into the ignition hole. I missed several times before I got the motor turned over.
The steady thump of the machine between my legs gave me new strength. I had work to do and no one would do it for me. I might have Logan, but he wasn’t in good shape. I still had to spearhead this operation and no one knew Barstow like me.
I angled my hog onto the street and gunned it. I roared onto the Interstate and burned rubber.
11
Eli
I parked the hog at the curb and climbed off. Already the pain shifted to rage inside me. Those assholes better not have laid a finger on Ruby or there’d be hell to pay.
I hesitated to enter the house. What would I find in there? Would I discover that my life was already over, that all my hopes and plans and dreams lay dead and broken in a pool of blood?
I got halfway up the walk when I noticed the door standing open. My nerves prickled. That was never a good sign. I halted on the porch and peered into the living room. No one there.
“Ruby?” I called. “Christopher?”
That name sounded strange on my lips. Christopher. Was he alive or dead? I never even got a chance to meet him. He would never know who his father really was.
I stepped across the threshold and strained my senses for any clue. I tiptoed through the living room and peeked into the kitchen. A sliding door communicated to a yard behind the house, but it contained no glass. The bent metal frame sagged to one side, and broken glass fragments sparkled over the linoleum.
My hand flew to my Bowie knife. I should have armed up before I came over here. I still wasn’t thinking clearly. I needed Logan to remind me of things like that.
My boots crunched in the glass when I glanced into the yard. At the door frame, I noticed a smear of blood on the grass outside. It formed a large round splatter mark near the swing set and smeared to the gate. Another curved patch discolored the wood.
My spine tingled. Those motherfucking son of a bitch bastards. They beat me to it. They better not have killed Ruby or so help me….
I charged back into the house boiling over with rage. I would tear their fucking limbs off. I would drink their blood before the night was over if it was the last thing I did. Ruby and Christopher weren’t here. That meant The Furies didn’t kill them on the spot. Maybe, just maybe they were still alive somewhere.
I barged back to the living room when something made me stop. I didn’t hear anything. An extrasensory impression drew my awareness to a hall leading to the back of the house. I snuck down the corridor glancing into bedrooms. I didn’t find any sign of violence here.
The door blocked my view into the very last room. I touched it and it creaked aside. The old man lay in bed. His blank eyes stared up at me. Was he dead? No, he blinked. Did he recognize me?
I crept in and crouched over him. “Mr. Lewis! It’s me, Eli Walch. Do you remember we met at the hospital the other day?”
He blinked again but said nothing. Did I only imagine that spark of recognition? I grasped at any straw. Please, dear God, let Ruby and Christopher still be okay.
“Mr. Lewis!” I murmured. “Do you know where they took Ruby and Christopher?”
He blinked one more time. God, I never knew someone could blink so slowly. Every second took an eternity. This time, though, he frowned ever so slightly. “Ruby?” he croaked.
“Where is she?” I did my best not to bellow in the poor man’s face. “The men who came—what did they do with her? Where did they take her?”
“Ruby….” He glanced toward the window. “Christopher…..”
That window looked out on the street heading east—but not just east—northeast. That street led toward the train station. It was a long shot, but I had nothing else to go on.
I bent over the man again. “Did they say what they wanted with her
?”
He didn’t answer. He just blinked again. I gave up. He couldn’t help me. He probably had no idea who attacked his house. He certainly didn’t know anything about The Furies.
I laid my hand on his skeletal shoulder. He felt barely alive. I slipped out of the room and made for my hog. I had an appointment to keep with my enemies. The blood surging through my veins brought strength and vitality back to my organs and limbs. My brain kicked into gear, even though my head still hurt.
I hit the gas and roared to the hospital. Eight o’clock seemed a long way off, but I didn’t care. I marched to Logan’s room and found him seated on the bed wearing his colors. Blood-stained the bullet holes revealing his bare chest beneath his t-shirt.
He broke into a grin when he saw me. “Hey, man! You’re early.” Then the smile evaporated. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.” I jerked my chin at him. “Are you ready to roll?”
He rubbed his side. “I’m a little sore where they stitched me up. That’s all.”
“I’m a little sore, too, to tell you the truth.” I sat down on the bed next to him. “Listen, brother. I’m sorry to tell you this, but I need you to throw down and do a little business with me tonight.”
His eyes widened. “Business? What kind?”
“It’s like this. After we torched that truck, The Boss arranged for Alfonzo Salazar to accompany the next shipment to make sure nothing went wrong. We laid charges in the yard and blew the tractor sky high and made off with the goods. Then we blasted Alfonzo’s limo to rubble with a rocket launcher.”
He cracked a devilish grin. “Boo-ya!”
“Don’t get too excited yet. Turns out Alfonzo wasn’t in the limo at all, and now he’s back in town seeking revenge.”
he gasped. “No!”
I waved toward my face. “That’s what this is all about, but that doesn’t matter. After he popped me—or after his boys popped me, I should say—he went after an old friend of mine—an old girlfriend of mine, actually. Aw, shit. What the hell. Here’s the thing, man. She was my high school girlfriend, and she got pregnant. She had a kid from me and I never knew about it. That’s the God’s honest truth. I met her at the diner that first night. Do you remember that waitress who knew me? That was her.”
He stared at me with huge eyes. “Are you fucking serious? That’s some heavy shit.”
“Well, Alfonzo must have seen me talking to her because now he’s gone after her, too. He’s got her and the kid somewhere in town, and we’re going to get them.”
“Where?” he asked. “Where does he have them?”
“I have no idea, but I think it might be somewhere near the train station. I hope it’s somewhere near the train station because if it isn’t, we could be searching this desert until doomsday trying to find them.”
“That’s all right,” he remarked. “As long as we’ve got the boys with us, we should be fine. We’ll just storm in and torch the place. We’ll catch one of their flunky moron piece of shit initiates and rip his fucking toenails off one at a time until he tells us where they’ve got her and the kid.”
I cringed. “That’s just the thing, man. We don’t have the boys with us. It’s just you and me.”
His jaw dropped. “You want to go after The Furies with just you and me?”
“Sorry, dude.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I wish it could be otherwise.”
He wilted before my eyes. His back hunched, and he stared at the wall for a second. My heart sank watching him, but I already made up my mind. If he didn’t come with me, I would go after Ruby and Christopher myself. I didn’t see any other option open to me.
“If you decide you’re not up to it, I’ll understand.” I said the words, but I didn’t mean them.
He turned toward me, and his eyes drifted to my face. His lips curled upward into a wicked grin. “Sounds like fun. When did they take her?”
I almost burst out laughing from sheer relief. I should have known I could count on Logan. If no one else would help me, he sure would. He didn’t give a damn if he just recovered from getting shot.
“I’m not sure,” I told him, “but it wasn’t long.”
“We better go then.” He got to his feet. “Do you know where my hog is?”
“As far as I know, it’s still at the Motel 6 where you parked it the night you got shot.”
He signed himself out at the nurses’ station and we left together. He rode pillion back to the Motel and got his ride. He looked ten times the man sitting on his bike and kicked it into gear. He put on his shades and nodded to me.
I led the way back onto the highway thundering through town. This was my town. I was born and raised here, and nothing happened in this town without my say-so. Logan fell in behind me and let me take the lead. I turned onto 1st Avenue and crossed the bridge. The train station came in sight, but that didn’t interest me.
I skipped the parking lot and drove around the building. I stopped, put my feet on the ground, and switched off the engine. Logan copied me. I swept my finger across the horizon where a few dotted lights shone against the desert blackness. “I figure if they’ve got the friendlies anywhere, it will be in one of those buildings. The boys that hit me said they were falling back to the depot. I don’t know any other place that meets that description.”
Logan nodded. “I can go along with that. Where do you want to start looking?”
“The bikes will make too much noise,” I pointed out. “We can’t drive over there without drawing too much attention to ourselves. I say we drive farther out into the desert and leave the bikes. Then we fly in low and listen for any sound that might tip us off.”
Logan grinned behind his shades. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
I jerked my head backward. “Follow me. I know the perfect place.”
I drove north along 1st Avenue to Old Highway 58. It left Barstow and entered the deep, dark desert night. All lights vanished except our twin headlights. I followed the road for a ways until I deemed we’d gotten far enough away from town.
I pulled over and parked my bike behind a rocky outcropping. Logan shut off his hog, too, and the oppressive silence closed around my ears.
“This is some desert,” Logan breathed.
I knew that. “Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
I launched upward and left my human skin on the ground behind me. My dragon soul ripped free. All my pain and uncertainty evaporated when the wind touched my wings. I knew only the stony resolve driving me into the distance.
The stars welcomed me to my rightful place in the air. I reveled in flexing my wings. I soared far above the pocket of light down below. I rocketed into the heavens until Barstow dwindled to a speck in a black void.
A current touched my raw face and Logan flew up next to me. He narrowed his eyes into the breeze and cocked his head to scan the ground.
I stooped and tucked in my wings. Gravity gripped me and I plunged zooming out of the night. I positioned my wings at just the right angle and rocketed upward with barely enough space between me and the town. No one would see me here.
I raced westward along the railroad tracks. A dense swatch of black cut the city in half. In half a second, the sheds and warehouses appeared and I banked to a stop. I hovered over the buildings sniffing and searching in all directions. Logan circled in a wide arc to canvas the area.
I didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary in one warehouse, so I shifted over to the next one. I made my way down the tracks one building at a time to the very last one. I stalled there trying to think. If they didn’t bring Ruby here, where did they take her? No other area of town answered to the name ‘depot’. Would The Furies have holed up in some other base somewhere?
Logan made another pass over my head. Our keen dragon senses should have picked up the slightest sound, but I could detect nothing. I turned away in defeat. We would just have to go back, get our bikes, and start over from zero.
&
nbsp; At the last second before I flew away, a blood-curdling scream shattered the air. It pierced my brain and whipped my head around fast. I glared at the building tensing every sinew to the breaking point. Then I heard another identical scream, followed by a child’s broken sob. They were here!
I dropped above the roof. I fixed my attention on that building with unbending intent. No one was going to make my….my woman and my son scream and cry like that. No fucking way in hell.
12
Eli
A shadow crossed my line of sight. I looked up to find Logan hovering in front of me. He stared at the building, too. He must have heard it. He caught my eye and nodded.
I didn’t need to see any more. I drew in my wings and dove. I retracted my head and tail and extended my talons. I gave myself over to the gravitational force hauling me toward the Earth. With a deafening, splintering crash, I smashed through the roof.
Sheet iron and twisted trusses whipped aside and bent under my feet. Corrugated steel pinwheeled into space and left me undisputed master of the scene. The building ripped apart at the seams and dust and debris billowed under my wings.
Ruby cowered in a chair at my feet. She tucked her chin into her chest and clamped her eyes closed against the calamity, but she couldn’t move with her hands tied behind her back. Christopher crouched on the floor hugging her around the knees. He hid his face in her lap for protection.
Another dragon perched opposite. It glared at me over Ruby’s head. For a fraction of a second, it eyed me with murderous hatred. I recognized the whole situation in a heartbeat. That fucker was trying to scare her—he was trying to scare both of them and he succeeded. No wonder she screamed. She’d never seen one of these dragons up close and personal.
The next instant, my opponent spat a scorching jet of flame at me. It sizzled over Ruby’s bowed head and pounded my chest. The heat fed my anger and made me stronger than ever. My scales deflected the charge and it spattered everywhere. It would have hit Christopher and Ruby if I didn’t do something.
