by Anne Jolin
“It seems fine to me,” I yelled.
Glitch didn’t answer.
I pulled the hood down and glanced over the top. Glitch wasn’t in the driver’s seat anymore, but the door was open.
The hood made a clicking sound when I slammed it down. “Glitch?” I called out to him.
No answer.
Rounding the side of the one-ton, I stuck my head inside the cab on the driver’s side.
The keys were still in the ignition.
“I’m just going to call, Grant,” I hollered out to him, wherever he was.
Probably taking a leak on the side somewhere. Why men found peeing on the road so entertaining, I wasn’t sure.
Reaching forward, I grabbed my purse and hauled it to me.
“Shoot,” I grumbled as my phone fell from the side pocket and under the seat.
I leaned forward, farther into the interior of the truck and wiggled my fingers.
The phone was just out of my reach.
I put one knee up onto the floorboards but just before I could reach for it again, I heard the crunch of gravel behind me.
“Glitch, can you—”
I tried to scream when someone’s arm came around my waist. I couldn’t. There was something wet over my mouth.
My feet kicked out in front of me as my purse fell to the floor.
The world started to spin and my eyes got heavy.
Then it was dark, so dark.
Someone had taken me from the side of the road.
That meant they’d taken Glitch, too.
What was happening?
“I see you’re awake.” Another voice sounded in the dark. It was farther away than Glitch’s.
Again, I tried to answer but again, no words came out.
“She’s very pretty,” the deeper male voice said and my insides rolled.
I wasn’t sure how a voice could seem slimy, but this one did. Every time he spoke, it was like a snake weaved its way in my direction.
“You won’t hurt her,” Glitch said, and I felt my eyebrows pull together. “That was the deal. You promised you wouldn’t hurt her.”
That was the deal.
My mind shook against the walls of reality, but it was like trying to put together a puzzle in the dark. Impossible.
“You can go now.” The snake’s voice slithered and the hand on my shoulder squeezed again.
“Promise you won’t hurt her,” Glitch, who I could now tell was behind me, urged the other man.
Why would he hurt me?
Why was Glitch in the dark even though it seemed like he knew the voice?
My heart burned with confusion.
“I ain’t promisin’ shit,” the deeper voice growled. “You go on and get out of here now, or I won’t think twice about havin’ that order come down on your brother.”
“No,” Glitch’s voice was a pained whisper.
Brother, Glitch had a brother.
Suddenly, my sight was dragged into the light as someone tugged at my face.
There had been a blindfold over my eyes that was now missing.
I blinked.
Once, then twice and my head winced against the sudden brightness.
“Welcome to the party, blue eyes.”
A man, the man who I attributed as having the slimy voice, was standing in front of me in what looked to be a bar. It was empty, but somehow he still seemed to crowd the space.
He was big, bigger than his voice had suggested he was.
There was an edge about him that requested I hold my breath.
I was scared.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked.
My eyes dropped from the haunting look in his eyes to his chest. He was older, somewhere in his late thirties, I guessed, and fit. He wore a black shirt and over it was something leather, a vest.
I felt my memory strain. It nagged at me.
A cut, it was a leather cut. The kind the guy outside the bar had been wearing. Except this one was different. It had some kind of design on the left breast, a dog. Actually it wasn’t a dog, it looked like the hound from a nightmare.
No.
My eyes flew back up to his face, a face that only if you looked past the beard you could tell was somewhat disfigured.
No.
His mouth, which only seemed to move on one side, curled into a smile.
“You know who I am,” his slimy voice hissed.
I followed down to the stitching over the right breast of his leather cut.
He was right. I knew who he was.
There, on a white patch, it said, HOUNDS OF HELL MC and underneath it another of the same size said, PRESIDENT.
The man whose very memory haunted Rhys even in the daylight stood before me. He was worse than any image I could have pictured. Even the lines on the edges of his eyes seemed evil.
“Hyde Murphy.” His laugh was sinister, like the sound of demons clawing at the door.
I shuddered.
I was not the kind of girl who talked back to a man that looked like he’d saw me in half just for the fun of it. I was not the kind of girl who, before now, had ever seen a man like this outside of a TV screen.
No, I was not that girl.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.
I shook my head, and the hand I’d forgotten was on my shoulder began to shake.
Glitch.
My heart rate thundered in my chest.
Would they hurt him?
Hyde jerked his head to the side, and I felt the comforting hand fall away.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Glitch move around me. My eyes assessed him for damage, but I saw none. I said a silent prayer to whatever God had been looking out for him.
His sight was down at the floorboards.
He wouldn’t look at me.
Hyde outstretched an arm, throwing it around Glitch’s shoulder, and I bucked at the restraints on my arms. They didn’t move. My outcry only came out as garbled sounds against the gag in my mouth.
Don’t hurt him, I wanted to say. Let him go, I wanted to beg.
No words would come out. No one would hear me.
“Look at her,” Hyde said to him, and Glitch shook his head.
What the hell was going on?
Hyde grabbed him by the throat, and I cried out as he forced his head up.
Glitch’s eyes were closed. “Look at her or I’ll cut your fucking eyes out,” Hyde snapped.
Then, like the tides turning, his eyes opened and I knew.
That pain was unmistakeable.
“I’m sorry,” he mouthed as my heart broke.
Hyde’s sick laugh buried in my chest, and I felt bile rise in my throat.
“She knows.” He smiled. “She knows what you did.”
A tear slid out of Glitch’s eye, and he didn’t even fight the hand at his throat. “They threatened to kill my brother,” he whispered.
I nodded.
“The money we paid you didn’t hurt, either,” some other voice in the bar hissed.
It seemed there were more snakes in the hounds pit than I’d realized.
Hyde released him and Glitch’s hands went to his throat. “I’m so sorry, baby girl.”
There had been nothing wrong with the truck.
Glitch had been the one to grab me.
He had been the one to put the chloroform over my mouth.
I knew it then.
The underbelly of Rhys’s world had crossed over with mine and I was scared. More scared than I had been in my entire life.
“Do you know this place?” Hyde bent down in front of me, his elbows resting on his knees.
I shook my head.
“This is the place where he gave me these scars.” He dragged a crowbar along the side of his face. “I look like a monster now.”
Every time he spoke, I felt a little part of my heart shrink away.
“Don’t be scared, pet,” he hissed. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
I closed
my eyes, terrified of the world I could see, and felt his lips against my cheek.
“I am a monster,” he whispered. “But he will come for you.”
It felt like a promise and my world shattered.
“And when he does, I’m going to kill him.”
My body bucked with a sob against the gag in my mouth.
“There, there, pet.” Hyde kissed my forehead. “I’ll let you watch.”
GRANT AND THE ONE-TON had been in my rear-view mirror for over an hour. Every time I accelerated, he did too and every turn I made, he followed.
My heart couldn’t have cared less—it was breaking, breaking into a thousand pieces.
How could I have been so ignorant? How could I have believed that two people who I had so much history with both could have buried their revenge?
Mine had taken years to simmer and burn, but with her, I never felt it. She had taken so much of the dark away, and now it had stolen her from me.
With every moment that we grew closer to the southeast corner of the city, my anxiety grew wilder.
I knew where they would be, I knew where he would have taken her, but I guessed that had been the point.
It wasn’t about her. It was about us. It was about me.
Hyde wanted an eye for an eye.
He wanted to beat my head in with a cast iron pipe, and I would let him. I would let him if it meant that she could go back to the light.
Rage rippled, burned, and broke on every rib her initials were carved into.
I felt my veins purge themselves of fear and the steel forge in my spine.
The shadows were my comfort zone, and the man who used to love it there was banging against the crate in my soul.
He was ready.
The trigger had been pulled.
It would end.
The tires on Grant’s pickup truck lifted on the right side as I took the corner too fast. Maybe someone else would have been afraid it would roll, I wasn’t. Even if it did, I would crawl bloody and mangled to the Hounds of Hell and offer my broken body for hers.
Nothing would stop in the way of returning an angel to her world. I only hoped that perhaps being loved by her meant they would allow me into heaven when the time came.
The wheels crashed down on the ground and spun out when my foot hit the gas pedal.
It took too long.
It took too long for the gravel to fly under my tires as I slammed the truck in park under the so familiar neon lights.
My hands curled into firsts around the wheel, and I called all the fury in me to the surface.
I’m coming, angel, I promised her. Just hold on tight.
My eyes closed and the door to the driver’s side was yanked open.
“You fucking idiot,” Grant roared and hauled me by the collar onto the ground.
I shoved at his chest and my top lip curled as I growled, “Move.”
My body lurched forward, and he slammed me into the side of the pickup.
“They’ll be waiting for you,” he chastised. “You know that.”
The light at the edge of my vision dulled, and I begged for release into the barking sound of hell.
“I know,” I sneered.
His hands fisted in the front of my shirt. “They will kill you.”
The love in my bones readied itself.
“I know,” I promised him.
Someone had to pay.
I expected that someone would be me.
His face fell.
“Move, Grant,” I barked. “I’ll hit you to get to her.”
He dropped his hands and my Harley boots raided the ground underneath me.
I passed the bricks on the ground below me.
There would be no weapons tonight.
There would be no adjusting to the weight of steel in my knuckles.
I would put up no fight.
For her, they could have me.
The Harley boot met with the wood of the bar door and I sent it flying inward, splintering against the wall.
My nostrils flared. There was that same stench of stale beer and desperation in the floorboards, but this time, the bar was nearly empty.
“I knew you’d come,” Hyde hissed from where he sat at the same back table I’d nearly killed him in front of eight years ago.
I didn’t answer.
“Petty, romantic idiot.” His voice was full of disdain for the protégée who refused to bow to him.
My heart rattled my rib cage and it called out to her.
There was no answer.
I felt my eyes sting as they ripped through the room, searching for her.
Glitch.
Betrayal ran thick in my heart when I saw him standing there, appearing thick as thieves in a sea of leather.
No wounds.
No shackles.
Nothing but remorse on his practically adolescent face.
My jaw ground together and something foul crawled into my heart.
He looked at the ground.
Coward.
It was only when he stepped to the side that my heart cried.
Behind him, duct taped to a chair with a rag in her mouth, was the love of my life. I couldn’t see her eyes, they had a bag over her head and the desire to die overwhelmed me.
They trapped an angel in the dark, and it made my heart bleed from a thousand scars.
“Well?” Hyde, with that ugly disfigured face, stood from his chair.
I lifted the front of my shirt and spun slowly.
There would be no fight here, not if she would be free.
“You were always a stupid bastard.” He laughed.
I didn’t dare look at her.
This was no place for the sun.
“Me for her.” I jerked my head toward her shaking frame.
She could hear me.
I could tell by the garbled sounds coming from the hood that she was gagged, but she could hear me.
Hyde seemed unwilling to ruin his perfectly-tailored trap.
“Bucky.” He grunted and one of his lackeys stepped forward. “Take the girl outside.”
I took a step forward and shook my head.
“The kid,” I growled. “The kid takes her.”
The president crossed his heavy arms over his chest and studied me.
My soul had no room for compromise.
He jerked his head toward them, and the man cut her loose from the chair. Glitch reached for the bag on her head and my heart shuttered.
She wouldn’t need to have a memory of this.
“No.” My voice was certain. “Leave it on.”
He nodded, putting her arm around his shoulder.
I knelt to the ground, my arms slack at my sides as Glitch dragged her toward the door.
She screamed something through the gag in her mouth, and I closed me eyes.
I could feel her sunlight on me, and I smiled as Hyde’s fist connected with the side of my face. It almost knocked me over, but again, I kneeled in front of him.
My eyes remained shut.
There was the muffled sound of crying, but all I heard now was her voice in my memories.
“Then let me show you the sun.”
I saw her in my heart, that smile that wore me down shone brightly in my blood as his boot connected with my ribs.
“Show me the sun,” I whispered to her memory.
The vision of her in a yellow sundress danced on the bridge to my soul.
My head jerked backward as Hyde grabbed a fistful of my hair, his knee connecting with the underside of my chin.
“Read to me,” she asked.
“I would read you a thousand books,” I promised her through the blood in my teeth.
I felt the light of her in my mind grow duller.
“I love you,” I vowed to her when I felt his fingers curl under my chin.
She faded into my mind. “I love you, Rhys.”
I hung my head in his hand.
There would be no fight.
The a
ngel goes home tonight.
And I return to the shadows.
I took my last breath and let go.
“What the fuck?” Hyde hissed, and a shotgun blast shattered the roof above us.
My head fell as he dropped it.
I heard the sound of a gun loading, and then another shotgun blast hit the bar beside me.
My eyes felt heavy with lead from the beating.
“Back away from the kid,” a voice demanded.
I rolled to my back.
Grant stood in the center of the bar with a shotgun in his hands.
“The cops will be here any minute now.” He aimed in their direction. “You can waste your time killing him or you can run.”
The sound of a boot scraping the floorboard near my knee caused Grant to fire another shot into the ceiling.
“I suggest you run.” His voice was low, but I felt like I was hearing him underwater.
As my eyes started to blink shut, I saw red and blue lights skitter across the ceiling.
“Police!”
Men broke into chaos around us, and there were no more shots.
Just a blur, every sound became like the steady hum of an engine in traffic.
Every sound but the sound of her voice.
“Rhys,” she called out to me.
My heart fought against the dark. “Aurora,” I whispered.
I felt hands on my chin, and my eyes desperately tried to stay open.
She was there.
Her angel wings framing that face.
“I love you,” she promised, tears streaming down her face.
I lifted a bloody hand to cup her cheek. “So much it hurts,” I told her.
My nightmare was over.
It would be okay.
Everything was going to be okay.
My soul quit struggling as it went to the light.
Edmonton, Alberta - Edmonton Remand Center
September 2016
HYDE “THE PREZ” MURPHY AND Bradley “Bucky” Prak were arrested just outside The Haunt bar where they were found attempting to flee the scene of a kidnapping. They were both charged for kidnapping and assault. Along with their prior arrest warrants, they were both sentenced to twelve years in prison without the possibility of parole.
Anthony “Glitch” Johnstone was arrested on parole violations and pled guilty to kidnapping charges. Three years were taken off his brother’s sentence in exchange for his testimony against the Hounds of Hell Motorcycle Club. He died in a prison riot the day before he was set to be transferred to Fraser Valley Community Correctional. The authorities suspect it was a hit carried out by Hyde Murphy, former president of the Hounds of Hell Motorcycle Club, but no one could prove it.
