“Guys,” he called over his shoulder, walking to the stack. “Come look.”
Each crate was covered on the top with a piece of blue plastic tarp, sealed down with packing tape. Ghost flicked out one of his knives and cut through the tarp on the topmost crate, finding white bricks inside, just as he’d thought.
Walsh and Roman crowded in on either side of him.
“Coke,” Walsh said grimly.
Ghost opened one of the bricks and licked a tiny spot of white powder off his fingertip. “Not ours. They’re bringing it in from somewhere else.”
“What is it?” the woman called nervously from the door.
“You don’t wanna know,” Roman called back to her.
Ghost took the brick he’d opened and stuffed it into his cut pocket. “Leave the rest.”
Walsh sent him a questioning look.
“Tell the woman not to come down here again until we give her the all-clear, no matter what.”
~*~
Roman’s kid, Boomer, was big and strong – albeit, the top of his head only came up to Mercy’s chin, but hey, that was true of most people – but he was so outwardly nervous Mercy couldn’t decide if he was just a wimp, or if this Reese person was something to be concerned about. The guy had killed a dog – that spoke of asshole and not dangerous in Mercy’s book, but again, he didn’t exactly judge things by normal standards.
They stood in the cracked-up parking lot of the old Johnson & Sons factory, and the storm clouds had rolled in so thick it was nearly dark as night by this point. Nervous tongues of lightning chased each other in the distance, creeping closer. The wind kicked fast food wrappers past their feet.
Mercy felt the first raindrop splash against his forehead and he rubbed it away with the back of his hand.
“You’re sure he’s here?” Aidan asked skeptically. “There’s not even any glass left in the windows.”
Boomer’s expression was pained. “Reese doesn’t exactly care about being comfortable. There’s offices and bathrooms up on the second floor. If he can hunker down and keep to himself, he’ll think it’s great. This is the last place he told us he was camping out.”
“Why wasn’t he staying with you guys at the cabin?” Tango said.
“He, uh, doesn’t really…like to be crowded.”
Aidan and Tango exchanged a look, a silent conversation of raised eyebrows and head tilts.
“Okaaaay,” Aidan said.
“Go get him,” Michael said. “We ain’t gonna stand around here ‘til it gets dark.”
“And rain’s coming,” Tango said, tipping his head back to frown at the clouds.
“Um,” Boomer said.
“You’re afraid,” Mercy guessed, and the kid blushed. “What for? You’ve been working with him.”
“Yeah, but he’s…not right.”
Michael glared at him, and Boomer seemed to shrink down into his collar.
“I mean,” he said in a hurry. “He’s, like, not been raised up like a person, you know? He doesn’t act normal.”
“He’ll be in good company, then,” Mercy said, taking him by the beefy shoulder and shoving him toward the building. “We’re all fucked up. Let’s go. We’ll back you up.”
“Damn,” Boomer swore, but he led them toward the factory’s door, just as fat raindrops began to fall in earnest.
The door was sticky thanks to the humidity, and finally opened with a pop and a gasp and a shower of paint peels. They were assaulted with the scents of mold, and damp brick, and rotting wood. Feeble daylight fell in through the windows, revealing a graveyard of old office furniture, all of it coated in inches of dust. Mercy spotted fluffy piles of insulation spiked with pine straw, where rats and squirrels had built nests.
Their footfalls – crunch of grit and dirt grinding between their boot soles and the concrete floor – echoed loudly off the brick walls.
“Dad said he and Roman had a deal go bad here, way back when,” Aidan said, voice hushed. “Kinda…I dunno, what’s the word?”
“Ironic?” Tango asked.
“Prophetic,” Mercy suggested.
Michael said, “Shut up.”
A creak of a floorboard overhead.
“Someone’s up there,” Michael said.
Boomer let out another of those shaky breaths.
Lightning strobed outside, its glare flashing through the windows. The thunder that followed rumbled up through the floor; Mercy felt it in his back teeth. A strong gust brought a spatter of rain in across the old desk tops.
“Stairs,” Mercy said, pointing toward the back corner. “Go.”
They picked their way through the chairs and cabinets and propped-up doors. The stairs, when they reached them, black wrought iron, were dusty at the edges, outlining a clear path where someone had been travelling up and down them. He’d definitely been here.
In the next lightning flash, Boomer’s face was pale, throat bobbing hard as he swallowed, gaze fixed on the darkness that lay at the top of the stairs.
Mercy leaned close to be heard above the pounding of the rain. “I’ll go first,” he offered, taking pity.
Boomer nodded in fervent agreement.
He hadn’t brought his sledgehammer – he mourned its absence – on the bike, but had a nice, solid-wood hatchet handle he’d been able to hide in his cut for the trip, and he pulled it out now, feeling its solid weight in his hand. Not his sledge, no, but he could still put a man in the hospital with it. It would do.
The crash of the rain and the thunder disguised his footfalls as he ghosted up the stairs, club at the ready. The goal was to talk to this guy, not beat him up, but Mercy wasn’t letting himself get jumped.
The upper floor had a low ceiling composed of acoustic tiles that seemed claustrophobic when compared to the floor below, the faint traces of daylight waterlogged and gray, hinting at a nest of cubicles furred with mold and dust.
He needed a flashlight, but knew that would give anyone with designs on him a place to aim. A glance back down the stairs proved that the others were right behind him.
Should they call out to Reese? Probably. Anything else would seem ill-intentioned.
“Reese!” he shouted to be heard above the thunder. “You up here? I’ve got Boomer Mayer with me.”
Boomer stepped up beside him. “Reese, it’s me! Come on out!”
In a break between rumbles of thunder, something crashed to the floor off to the right.
Mercy held his position, but Boomer took a few steps in that direction. “Reese? That you?”
Lightning, hot and phosphorous, streaked over the building, its residue Klieg-bright through the second story. In its succinct flashes, all three of them, Mercy watched the stop-motion progress of a lean, black-clad figure, from one wall to the next, caught mid-leap over the wall of a cubicle at one point. Flash of eyes, gleam of teeth, and then he was gone.
“Fuck,” Aidan said. He didn’t sound scared – just caught off guard. It had been unsettling.
“Reese!” Boomer called again.
Mercy headed toward the last place he’d seen him. Against one wall, a bank of copy machines, printers, and fax machines had been gutted for parts, stray wires and bits of plastic debris scattered across the industrial carpet. The lightning was so frequent he didn’t need his flashlight as he searched between the machines, peeked into cubicles, anywhere a grown man could hide.
Someone said, “Hey!” behind him, and he whirled, just in time to catch sight of the black-clad ghost dropping off a file cabinet and onto Boomer’s back.
Boomer screamed and tried to buck him off, but it didn’t work; the ghost had an arm wrapped tight around his neck, thighs gripping his waist.
Aidan was the one who’d yelled, open-mouthed in shock. He juggled his flashlight into the hand that held his gun and grabbed a fistful of the guy’s hoodie with the other. His eyes swung to Mercy, clearly asking for help.
Boomer was screaming like an idiot.
That old adage about wanti
ng something done right always proved true in instances like these.
Mercy grabbed the ghost under the arms, digging his fingertips hard into his lymph nodes – earning a grunt of discomfort in return – and yanked him off Boomer. Mostly off – Boomer fell over backward in a graceless heap. The ghost, once he was no longer attached, turned into a slippery eel. Mercy was reminded of some of his less successful fishing expeditions back home, Daddy laughing when a catfish wriggled right through his hands.
That was happening now. “Hey, hey, no!” He dug his fingers into the hoodie fabric. “Grab him!”
Aidan and Tango stepped up, each catching an arm, almost getting scratched in the process. The ghost’s fingers were curled into claws.
“Hey!” Mercy roared again, louder than the thunder, right against the back of the guy’s hood. “Knock it off or I’ll bash your head off the floor!”
Tango finally got a good grip on his left arm, his expression startled, almost repulsed.
Aidan openly recoiled, teeth gritted. “What’s wrong with him?”
Mercy didn’t know yet. When he stopped struggling, the ghost was a panting scrap of rags and bones in his hands. He could have snapped him in two over his knee. He could feel his pulse pounding in his armpits where he gripped him, even through the hoodie.
“This him?” he asked Boomer, who’d gotten his feet under him and was probing at a long scratch on his face.
The kid looked freaked. “Yeah. That’s him.” Then, realizing he should probably step up: “Reese, it’s me, it’s Boomer. Remember?”
Reese breathed in quick, audible gasps. “Yeah.” His voice came out slow and rusty, cracked-up and out of use like everything else in this factory. “I remember.”
“Then why’d you jump him, dipshit?” Aidan asked. He gave the arm in his grip – now limp – a shake.
No response.
Slowly, Mercy lowered him to the floor, giving him plenty of time to put his feet down and stand on his own. He didn’t, though, ankles and then knees folding, so when his ass hit the floor, he was sitting cross-legged, placid as a child.
“Reese?” Boomer asked, edging closer. “These are friends. They’re gonna help Dad.”
Again, no response.
Each strange second that ticked past – lighting flaring in the windows, thunder growling across them, vibrating through the walls – Mercy felt more ill at ease with this situation. Aidan and Tango still held Reese’s arms, and Mercy motioned for them to let go. When they did, his arms flopped down to his sides, a marionet with his strings cut.
Slowly, Mercy pulled the hood back, revealing a disheveled headful of strawberry-blonde hair, cut at some point with a knife, obviously, uneven ends that fell to his shoulders. When he didn’t react to that, Mercy tapped him lightly on top of the head – greasy hair, white scalp peeking through, smell of unwashed human – and said, “Hey.”
Reese tipped his head back, looking up at him, a triangle of pale face, hungry cheekbones, eyes that were distinctly inhuman. It was the gaze of an animal, cornered, caught, and submitting. There was none of the fear or indignation Mercy would have expected in this kind of situation. This was what Aidan and Tango had found so distasteful – the eerie lack of self-awareness in his blue eyes. He didn’t look stupid, or drugged, no, quite the opposite. There was just…an otherness to him. Not a person, his face said.
A trained attack dog.
“Can you hear me?” Mercy asked.
Reese looked up at him with that solemn, defeated animal gaze and said, “Yes, sir.”
Tango sucked in a breath and said, “Oh, shit.”
~*~
As far as Ghost knew, no one went to Gordo’s – but that wasn’t true. Someone kept it open, for reasons that clearly had nothing to do with profit.
They found it much the same as the last time he’d been here, maybe six years ago. Between a porn shop and a tattoo parlor with unreliable neon signage, Gordo’s occupied a narrow storefront, its windows cluttered with ads for local bands, none of which anyone had ever heard of. The interior was mostly bar, a few too-small booths along the opposite wall, and a makeshift stage at the back where the unheard-of bands could play, should they choose. Where Bell Bar’s dim lighting was cozy, Gordo’s was cold, flickering. It had always looked to Ghost like a crime scene waiting to happen.
It was early, not even five yet, but dark as night thanks to the hellraising storm breaking across the city. They dripped water all over the sticky hardwood – probably as close to mopping as it had seen in months – and made their way up to the disinterested bartender stacking glasses next to the register. There was one patron sipping beer and reading the paper, but he didn’t spare them a glance.
“Hey,” Ghost said, rapping his knuckles on the bar to get the bartender’s attention.
Her gaze flicked up and then down again. She cracked her gum. “Hey.” If his cut meant anything to her, she didn’t show it.
“Can I ask you some questions?” He didn’t sound polite, and didn’t care. Tit for tat with this one.
She shrugged. “Sure. But we’re outta PBR. The line’s broke.”
“Not my question.”
Roman shouldered past him and slid onto a stool, leaning toward her across the bar, all big smile and laying it on thick. “I like your earrings.”
She snorted.
“You know, my sister makes them…”
“Jesus,” Ghost whispered to Walsh.
“…and if you wanted, I could get you some. Big hoops like you’ve got, lots of colors. They’d look smoking hot on you.”
She finished with her glasses, put her hands on her hips, and fixed them all with a look. “Alright, what do you guys want?”
Roman’s smile dimmed as he realized his ladykiller routine hadn’t gotten him anywhere.
Ghost cut right to the chase. “You seen anybody in here wearing a Dark Saints cut?”
She nodded, gaze becoming suspicious. “Yeah. Why?”
“They drink in here a lot?”
“Most nights. Why?”
Ghost pulled the cocaine brick out of his cut and slapped it down on the bar. Her eyes went wide. “Give this to Badger. Tell him Ghost said ‘nice try.’”
“But…” she spluttered.
“Tell him.” He headed for the door and left the guys to follow.
Out on the sidewalk, the rain was still coming down in buckets and they ducked under the porn shop’s awning a moment.
Walsh said, “You know Badger’s gonna come running straight back to the clubhouse when he gets that.”
“He’ll try,” Ghost said. “I want guys stationed at the gates ‘round the clock – none of his crew gets in or out. We lock Dartmoor up tight as a drum at night.”
“Some people can still get in, though,” Walsh said, throwing a dirty look at Roman.
He held up his hands. “Hey, that was Reese. I ain’t never met another human who could do what he does.”
Ghost frowned. “Speaking of.” A quick check of his phone showed a text from Aidan. “They got him, said they’re gonna meet us back at the clubhouse.”
Roman looked a little wide-eyed.
“What?”
“Nothing, just…don’t say I didn’t warn you when you meet him.”
When the rain showed no signs of letting up, they put on their goggles and headed back to Dartmoor at a crawl, soaked to the bone by the time they pulled up in front of the clubhouse. Ghost’s boxers and socks were wet – they squelched when he walked – and he comforted himself with the knowledge that Roman was similarly miserable.
By contrast, the clubhouse was warm and dry, and blessedly clean. Tango had an armful of towels that he passed out.
“Thanks,” Ghost said, meaning it, scrubbing it through his hair. He needed a hot shower in the worst way, but first…
“Oh,” he said, when he pulled the towel down and spotted the kid sitting cross-legged on the floor. “That him?”
“Yeah,” Aidan said, biting back a
smile. “Tell him all about your new pet, Merc.”
Mercy sighed, long and deep. He was, Ghost realized, standing right behind the boy on the floor. “Boss, this is Reese,” he said, pointing unnecessarily. “He, um…”
“And according to him, Mercy’s the boss,” Aidan said with a laugh.
“Dude,” Tango said, scowling, and Aidan’s face fell.
“Not what I meant.”
Ghost dropped his towel on the bar and approached him slowly. “Reese?”
He didn’t react, staring ahead into the middle distance.
Roman stepped up beside him with a squish of soggy boots. “Reese? Hey, man, it’s me. Roman. You alright? These guys didn’t rough you up, did they?”
Reese stared, mute.
“Uh…” Mercy rubbed the back of his neck and looked uncomfortable in a way he never did. “I kinda threatened to beat his head in…and now he only listens to me.”
“Attack dog,” Boomer said, seriously. He was sitting in a recliner – in Ghost’s favorite recliner, the little bastard.
Ghost hadn’t had anything to drink yet, and therefore couldn’t process the weirdness of that statement – but if it was true, he was glad the one holding the “attack dog” leash was one of his boys and not Roman’s. He rubbed his forehead, a headache coming on.
“Drink?” Tango asked.
“Please.”
“Reese,” Mercy said, and the kid went tense in an active, listening sort of way – a dog prepared for the hunting horn. Eerie. “This is Ghost.” He caught his eye and pointed at Ghost. “He’s the president. What he says goes. Okay?”
“Yes, sir.” But his gaze touched Ghost only briefly, snapping back to Mercy.
“Oh fuck me,” Mercy sighed. “This isn’t good.”
“What the hell did you do to him?” Ghost asked, turning to Roman.
Roman looked, to Ghost’s surprise, sad. “Nothing. I tried to help, but.” He shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
~*~
Ghost took a shower, checked on Maggie, put back a drink, fixed himself another, and only then was he ready for a long story.
American Hellhound Page 31
