by April Lust
He pushed back from the bars and started towards the stairs. I rushed forward and slammed against the wall of the cage, reaching for him, suddenly desperate for this information he wouldn’t share. “No, please! Wait! I need to know.”
Turning back to look at me, his lips pulled down into a deep frown. For a moment, it looked like he was going to cave and tell me, but then the door at the top of the stairs opened and another pair of boots came down. It wasn’t Blade, thankfully, but another one of the Slayers.
“Boss wants you upstairs,” he told Bills.
Bills looked back at me briefly and mouthed, “I’m sorry.” Then he was gone and I still had no answers.
Chapter 22
Max
The man who sat before me was big. Bigger than I was by a couple of inches and roped with muscles that made him look like the kind of man who devoured children for breakfast every day. It would have been a lot more convincing, however, if his expression wasn’t a mask of absolute terror. He’d had that same expression, bruised and battered, since we’d dragged him in here. I think he’d even been praying a couple of times, making me want to remind him he was in Reaper territory. No god was going to save him here.
Thunder was standing off to my right, arms folded across his chest so they sat on his heavy middle. Thanks to the dimmed lighting and Thunder’s unkempt look, my temporary bodyguard looked menacing. Perfect for the mood.
I stood in front of the man, who was a Slayer and Blade’s lackey, staring him down. I hadn’t said a single word to him since we’d pulled him from the alley. One of my guys, Danny, had spotted him after doing a quick round of the block to check for Slayers. He’d found this poor soul and the three of us had given him a solid run for his money.
Danny was gone now. I’d told him to leave, to find more Slayers, to get information however possible, and to kill them as soon as he could.
My hands were bloody, torn up already, but they felt good. I flexed them slightly, stretching out the torn skin and indulging in the spark of pain. The blood hadn’t really started to clot yet, so it oozed as I stretched the cuts and scrapes open wider again. I’d been dying to hit something ever since they took Lucy and I was more than happy to have our little friend here act as my punching bag.
I noticed the poor, terrified creature cringe at the sight of my stretching fingers and I realized he was waiting for me to hit him again. There was a strange sense of satisfaction that came from knowing just how much a man was terrified of you. It made my blood warm. Adrenaline surged through me for a moment, and I considered it. The feel of my skin meeting his flesh, a sharp slice into his already sore and bloody face. Well, it was pretty damn tempting. And I was angry. Angry enough that I worried just a little that if I started, I wouldn’t stop until the man was dead.
Not that I’d shed a tear. I wasn’t worried about his damn life and never would worry for a Slayer’s life again, but there was a reason this man was sitting in front of me instead of being thrown into the truck of a car as a bloody body, driven away into the depths of nowhere. I needed information. Anything on Blade might be useful, but mostly, I wanted Lucy.
“You know what I’m going to ask you?” I said to him mildly in a voice that displayed more restraint than I actually had.
One of his eyes was starting to swell shut and he didn’t even bother trying to keep it open, but the other was trained on me, terror shining in it. He shook and opened his mouth, trying to answer, but not quite able to.
I flexed my hand again and this time I had every intention of throwing it into his face, maybe knocking out a tooth or two. But then the door behind us opened, allowing a small stream of light to flood in, reminding me it was still the late afternoon. I turned to look at the silhouette that walked towards us.
Bills.
I turned fully from the man, not even giving him a second glance, and walked over to my lieutenant. “What do you know?”
Bills let out a low breath that almost came out as a whistle. He didn’t look so good. Pale, drawn, sweating like a pig. I knew at least part of that was due to his illness, but some of it wasn’t. I could tell. Dread was written across his features.
“What is it? Lucy?” I asked, suddenly panicked and furious all at once.
Quickly, Bills shook his head. “She’s okay. I saw her. I talked to her. She’s okay.”
I seriously doubted that, but it eased my fears a little bit all the same. Maybe she wasn’t exactly doing great, but at least she was alive and, I hoped, untouched. Bills would have told me as soon as that had happened, because he knew if I found out before he told me, I’d kill him, too. Folding my arms across my chest, I asked, “What’s going on?”
Bills glanced over my shoulder towards the man in the chair sitting beside me. He didn’t say anything about it and I knew he wouldn’t, but he lowered his voice and said, “Let’s talk in the office. Fewer ears.”
I nodded and led him to the office. It still smelled faintly of Lucy. When I closed the door behind me, I rounded on him. “Well?”
He swallowed harshly, then said, “Blade’ll do it. He’s making threats about… about using Lucy and he’ll do it.”
My blood ran cold, though this wasn’t new information. I already knew exactly what Blade was capable of. I was a fool to have ever thought we could work together, to coexist. Waste of fucking time. “I know,” I ground out.
Bills shook his head, mopping up the sweat that was dripping off his bald head with a thick hand. “No. You don’t.”
I frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Bills spit out a curse and turned away from me. He began pacing, looking more and more like he was the sick, dying man he claimed to be. There were heavy lines of worry marking through his face like scars and his shoulders had drooped slightly, letting his arms hang almost limply at his side.
Things were bad, much worse than I realized. Had they…? “You said Lucy was okay,” I repeated back to him carefully, suddenly worried I had misinterpreted our earlier conversation. “They haven’t…they haven’t touched her yet, right?”
Bills cursed again, but then turned to me. “No. They haven’t touched her, but I’m telling you they will, and not just because we know they run girls and prostitution and porn. I’m telling you they will because…they have before.”
I froze. My mind blanked completely and I was grateful, because I didn’t want to think about what his words meant. They have before. Was it possible that I’d spent all these years with Lucy, the love of my fucking life, without knowing her biggest secret? Had she…had she been forced by Blade, the man I’d been trying to make peace with? Anger surged within me and it was so blinding that for a moment I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was the kind of anger that breaking things wouldn’t solve. The kind that boiled and festered and ate you alive if you gave it half a chance.
I thought about Lucy and how she’d been so weird lately. She knew there were peace talks between myself and the Slayers, that Blade would have to head them if we were ever going to get anywhere. I had thought her behavior was a direct result of her father’s death. They’d been so close and she loved him so deeply, that when he’d died, she seemed to be lost. So when she started talking about things like leaving, getting away from the violence…What if that hadn’t been about being a Reaper at all?
Had I missed what was going on so completely?
“They've already done this to Lucy?”
Bills glanced up at me in surprise. He frowned, then shook his head. “No. Not Lucy.” He hesitated for a split second, just long enough for a wash of relief to flood me, only to be replaced once again by dread. “Mary. Mary Gilles, the Preacher’s wife.”
I sucked in a harsh breath. “They raped Mary Gilles?”
Bills nodded. “And not just once. They…they’re going to do the same thing to Lucy if we don’t stop them. And we’re running out of time. Whatever we’re going to do, we need to move fast. I know where she’s being held.”
That
cold anger sliced me open again and my words came spilling out as a result. “I’m going to kill them. Every last fucking one of them. There will be no survivors, no hope. No one walks from this, do you understand me? No one.”
Bills’ expression was grim, but he nodded solemnly in response. He wouldn’t argue with my orders, not even if he disagreed with them, which something inside told me he didn’t.
We walked out of the office into the dimly lit room that generally served as the legitimate business body shop of the Reaper’s. Today, it was closed, however, and a bloodied man sat tied to a chair, his expression pale beneath the messy blood and terror shining in his eyes.
Normally, we weren’t particularly violent, especially when compared to some of the other clubs out there. It didn’t mean we were immune to it, and from a normal person’s perspective, we were probably downright barbaric. But by the standards of the trade, we were pretty mellow. Initiations and the occasional brawl aside, we were just a few shades shy of being model citizens.
But then there are moments like these. Moments where I stared into the eyes of my enemy and knew I was at war. What I did here may have been brutal, may have been unfounded in the eyes of those who stand outside of the war, but in this moment, they were necessary. My options had disappeared. They were stripped from me the moment I heard about Mary, Lucy’s mother. Worse still, the knowledge that it was Lucy next ate at me until I couldn’t see past the red in my vision.
Maybe the man sitting tied to that chair, a Slayer by choice and therefore just as guilty as the rest of them, sensed what was brewing within me, because he spoke before I got the chance to hit him again.
“I’ll tell you everything! Whatever you want to know! I’ll—I’ll tell you where your girl is! The—the pretty one, right? Real cute and small with the brown hair—”
My fist plunged into his mouth. I ignored the feeling of his teeth catching on part of my skin, tearing what hadn’t even begun to heal yet. I didn’t care. I just didn’t want to hear his filthy mouth say anything about my Lucy ever again. I’d take out his voice box next if he didn’t watch his fucking mouth.
“She’s at the edge of town! Over by that old train yard!” the man all but screamed at us. He coughed and sputtered and I momentarily wondered if maybe he weren’t crying a little bit, too. If he were, I was still unmoved. “There’s a house, an old house that was condemned! Blade got a hold of it and it’s got a basement! Oh, God, she’s in the fucking basement!”
I glanced over at Bills for confirmation. He shrugged his shoulders lightly, but nodded his head, silently confirming the man’s story. Not that it mattered. He hadn’t given me any new information either way. I looked back at the guy, staring him down for a long moment.
He couldn’t meet my gaze and began whimpering again. “That’s all I know, I swear, that’s all I know…” He kept repeating those words, even as my hand reached behind my back to the piece that was tucked into the waistband of my jeans. The metal had grown warm from being pressed up against me for so long, and as my hand wrapped around the handle of it, I took solace in the solid feel of it in my palm.
Maybe he sensed what was coming, or maybe he was just so scared and desperate that he would have been crying and whimpering either way. I pulled out the gun and leveled it at his head.
“THAT’S ALL I KNOW!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, but I didn’t even bother telling him I didn’t care. That it didn’t matter. I pulled the trigger and the shot echoed too loud in the shop, making our ears ring. Mine felt like they were stuffed with cotton for a long while after the shot, but I didn’t mind it. I lowered my arm and stared at the dead man slumped over in the chair, a bullet buried somewhere deep in his skull.
I tucked my piece back into my jeans, then turned towards Bills. I caught a brief look at Thunder, still standing near the wall. His features had turned pale and he looked like he might even be a little sick, but he didn’t move or say anything. I nodded at him once and he stood up straighter.
I’d been right about him. He’d make a damn fine Reaper.
When I met Bills’ gaze, I jerked my head back over my shoulder towards the dead guy.
“Guess I’ve got another body to take care of,” Bills said in answer to my silent question.
I moved to walk past him and placed a hand on his shoulder. I gave it a squeeze and told him, “We’re brothers, you and me. We’ll see this through to the end, no matter what.”
Bills nodded in agreement, and I left. Thunder trundled along behind me after a moment. I thought about the body in the woods and the still-warm one in my shot. Maybe it should have bothered me that they were dead, that I’d killed them—but it didn’t. In fact, I didn’t give a damn about any Slayer.
I made a silent promise to myself as I straddled my bike and revved it up. I’d make it out of this and take Lucy, too, even if I had to do it by riding a wave in an ocean of blood.
Chapter 23
Lucy
I was on edge. It was hard not to be. There had been some comfort to be found when Bills showed up and revealed what was really going on. On the other hand, knowing someone was on my side but still couldn’t help me didn’t do me a lot of favors. It wouldn't save me when things got bad. And I knew they were going to get bad soon.
Blade had promised me that much.
I hadn’t received a meal in a while, not since breakfast, and I hadn’t eaten that. When the guard who replaced Bills came down, he took my tray away and gave me nothing but another juice box. I thought about protesting, but didn’t really see the point.
I sat on my lumpy cot and stared at the door at the top of the stairs. My only way out. I had to assume Max would come for me that way, though I imagined all kinds of alternate scenarios that were completely impossible.
An explosion would sound off next to my head, a crackling boom of concrete, twisted metal, and then the smoke would pour in. Billowing clouds rising through the room, eating up the oxygen. I’d cough and hack, trying to get a breath in as my eyes watered against the smoke. And then out of that smoke I would see the silhouette of a man. Tall and fit with strong muscles and a trim waist.
He’d come towards me and I’d back away, unable to see his features. I’d hit the other side of the wall, the one that hadn’t been blown to bits by dynamite or artillery or a pipe bomb. Once I’d hit that wall, his features would become clear.
It would be Max. I’d cry and wail and call out his name, so desperate and so relieved he’d come for me, that he’d rescued me. I’d throw my arms around his neck, clinging to him with all my might, and then he’d scoop me up into his arms. He would carry me away through the opening and Blade would yell and seethe against it. He’d rage at me, yell profanities until finally, Max would have enough of it. He’d pull his gun and—
I shook myself free of the daydream. It was strange to long for something so violent. Stranger still to long for the death of someone. Not so long ago I had tried to imagine a world without any violence in it, where I wouldn’t be scared. I hadn’t been able to do it. At the time, I’d blamed it on the lifestyle of being a biker’s bitch, his “old lady.” Now, I was beginning to wonder if maybe it weren’t just me to begin with.
Biting my lip, I decided I was being ridiculous. I wanted Blade dead because he was going to do terrible things to me. That didn’t make me a bad or violent person. That made me human.
I was stuck on these thoughts when the door at the top of the steps popped open. I surged to my feet, hope springing eternal, and searched the boots that were coming down the stairs. That same hope fizzled out almost instantly and my shoulders slumped. I realized immediately those were Blade’s boots. But it wasn’t just him this time. A second pair and then a third followed him down the stairs.
Stepping back away from the bars of the cage, I folded my arms across my chest, putting as much space between myself and these awful men as possible.
Blade grinned at me. He was holding something in his hands, something that looked out
of place. It was red and black, but lacy… I frowned, trying to figure out what it was. Blade must have noticed my gaze, because his grin widened. He unfolded the scrap of fabric in his hands and held it out for me to see.
I realized what it was and my body went cold.
He held up what looked to be a cross between a lingerie teddy and a swimsuit. The material was all made of black lace, but trimmed in red ribbon. There was obviously a bra portion of it that looked like it was probably designed to give lift, but the bra was attached to the rest of it. Lines of red traveled down over what must have been the torso leading to a pair of tiny, lacy black panties. They were attached, but I saw where there was a tiny flap that could be lifted, probably to release them from the rest.
I shivered as I thought, Easy access.
“Do you like it?” Blade asked eagerly, though there was a hint of malice in his voice that always seemed to linger there. The two men behind him chuckled in amusement, both huge men with bulging biceps.
