“Shit,” Candy said with a laugh, “that it survived this long having to hold up your fat ass is nothing short of a miracle in-and-of itself!”
“Good, keep those thoughts out for the ol’ girl,” Danny said, strapping his helmet on along with a hockey goalie chest protector along with the arm gear.
Even though Danny had originally said he’d be fine, I’d pressed that he’d at least wear those. Sitting on the bike now, looking even bigger than he already was, I tried not to laugh at how ridiculous he looked. Holding back my laugh, Candy ruined it by offering one of her own. I glanced back, hoping that Danny wouldn’t just throw everything off.
“S-sorry,” she said, trying to hold back her laughter. “You look so ricidulous!”
“Shuddup, whore!” Danny said, grumbling under his breath. “It ain’t my choice, leader-boy over here said to.”
“And leader-boy here still sticks to this order,” I said, smirking teasingly. “Even though I do agree that you look pretty ridiculous.”
“We gonna go or what?” he said, changing the subject.
“Let’s roll!” I called out.
Candy pointed out the way for us and as we reached the gate, I held the others back. Turning to Danny, I gave him a nod. He smirked, pointing his bike at the gate. I watched, holding back the fear that the protective gear wouldn’t be enough. He was about to smash through a metal gate, after all. How much good would hockey gear be?
Guess we’re about to find out, I thought.
I watched as Danny moved the bike back some, giving himself some distance to speed up. I took a deep breath, watching as he began to rev the engine, hitting the accelerator. As he picked up speed, I fought not to cry out, to call this whole thing off. We needed to do this, needed to at least come in with a bang.
And what bigger of a bang was it to bust right through their gates?
I watched, feeling the others’ growing wave of concern the closer Danny came to the gate. I sucked in a deep breath as he closed the distance. He let loose a loud roar, slamming right through the gate and skidding to a stop in the middle of the circle of the cul-de-sac. I watched, trying to see through the cloud of smoke he’d made in the process. Deciding we couldn’t wait any longer, I roared out to the others.
“Let’s go!”
We screamed forward, heading through the opening that Danny had made seconds ago. As we went through, I saw that Danny was standing by his fallen bike, holding up a shotgun in one hand and his fist in the other. I smirked at the sight, glad to see that he hadn’t been gravely injured.
“Good to see you,” I said, slipping off the bike and retrieving my own gun from the bag on my bike.
I handed the rifle that Danny had packed for Candy over and glanced around as a series of spotlights began to turn on, aiming directly at us. I took a deep breath, waiting for whatever they had planned to appear.
Silence filled the area.
I looked around at my crew, seeing that they were all prepared, holding their guns forward, aiming towards the houses. They’d formed a circle, following the cul-de-sacs outer driveway. I frowned, wondering if they’d decided to move locations.
What if this was a trap again?
What if they’d already evacuated?
As the thoughts ran through my mind, I heard the sounds of garages opening. I looked around, seeing all six houses’ garage doors sliding open. The spotlights shown brightly down, creating a hazy outline of the houses in the darkness, but my heart began to race. Every garage was filled with men, armed just the same as we were. I took a deep breath, glancing over at Candy.
“Which house is Mia in?” I asked.
“That one,” she pointed to the largest house that faced right in front of us.
As the doors opened wide enough, a loud cry was issued from the house Candy had pointed to.
Then the chaos began.
SEVENTEEN
~MIA~
Chaos erupted around me in a winding, dizzying spell.
One minute I was being unchained and taken up the stairs and the next, a warning shot had erupted from above. I looked around, trying to make sense of whatever was happening upstairs.
Then I heard it.
The roaring sounds of motorcycles.
The roaring of my heart.
He had come.
Jace was here!
I turned towards my brother, smirking at the pale-shade his face had taken. I could see the panic on his face, just as palpable as the panic that surrounded wherever this was. Jace and, from the sounds of it, his entire crew—all of the Crow Gang—had come.
Then the gunfire began.
I froze at the sound, unsure of who had started the fight. I glanced around again, seeing more guys heading up the stairs and leaving me with just Malcolm by my side. I glanced down, seeing that the restraints they had poorly done had begun to come undone. I looked back at my brother, thinking of a way to distract him.
The distraction came from one of the men heading back downstairs.
“Has Papa Raven been moved?” one of them asked, ignoring me for the time being.
Perfect.
I began to wiggle in the restraints, careful not to alert their attention as I did. If I could just get out of these things, I’d be able to get out. I had to make sure Jace was alright, I didn’t know what I’d do if he was dead. I shook my head, knowing I had no time to worry about that right now.
I had to get to him.
With that on my mind—with nothing else on my mind—I continued the process; listening slightly at the mention of the name Papa Raven.
Where had I heard that before?
It sounded familiar. Then again, why shouldn’t it, right? I had been forced to work for the Carrion Crew, and with a name like “Papa Raven” I didn’t think I was really climbing on thin limbs of logic in assuming he probably held a sizable amount of clout with the gang. Might even be a leader. Made sense, especially since he seemed to be a major priority now that the shit was hitting the fan.
As Candy had put it, I thought.
Still…
Papa Raven.
I made a mental note of the name, decided I’d ask Jace about it later, and then returned the entirety of my focus to the task at hand. Or, more appropriately, the task of freeing my hands.
“Yeah, he’s been moved,” another answered, nodding, and then glanced over at me. “What should we do about her?”
I forced myself to stop moving, terrified that he had caught me. I stared back, trying my best not to look guilty of anything and trying to suppress the pounding of my heart, certain they could all hear it. I begged whatever gods who might be out there listening at that moment to, for once, show an ounce of decency towards me and my efforts; to either throw me a break or, heaven forbid, actually help me out of this.
I wanted to be back in Jace’s arms; felt like I needed it like I needed oxygen. From the sounds of things, he was bringing hell down on the entire neighborhood to get me back, and that fact alone was pushing me to an unbearable need. I suddenly felt like an iron shaving being drawn towards a powerful magnet.
Then, as if answering my prayers, the Carrion member who’d been staring at me turned back to the others.
A decision had been made:
“She isn’t priority right now,” the guy said. “Much as I hate to admit it, and much as it’s gonna piss off the buyers, Papa Raven has new plans.”
Mack suddenly looked like he was going to be sick. He glanced at me—no sign of his normally lecherous gaze now—and suddenly began stammering. I wondered then if he was remembering what I’d said about him being expendable, because he certainly looked like he was fighting against an impending sense of doom.
“Wh-what about me?” he asked, almost demanding. “I can go now, right?”
The man shook his head, sneering. Even he, I realized, was disgusted by Mack.
Not that that means a damn thing, I’m sure, I thought.
“No,” the man said, and I could all-bu
t hear the word “unfortunately” tailing that single word. Then he said, “Papa Raven says you’re coming with us. Though I can’t begin to imagine why, we’re under strict orders to bring you with us. That said, you’d better get your ass upstairs.”
Mack sneered, suddenly looking defiant; proud. “If Papa Raven says I’m so important, then maybe you’re not the one who should be slinging orders.”
The man earned a gold star in my book at that moment. He drove a mean-looking fist into my brother’s stomach.
Mack keeled over, wheezing and whimpering, and the man, already beginning to walk past him, grabbed his shirt collar and began to drag him along.
“Just because Papa Raven says he has plans for you doesn’t mean you’re important,” he said matter-of-factly. “Keep in mind that he has plans for his whores, too.”
I could see the pure terror in Malcolm’s face at that as he was pulled along. If I hadn’t been working so hard to not get the focus on me, I would’ve erupted in laughter. He deserved whatever this Papa Raven had planned for him.
Before the men and my brother were out of sight, the one dragging Mack glanced back at me. “Don’t go getting any stupid ideas,” he called back. “Assuming your boyfriend doesn’t get all of you killed, there’ll be somebody along to collect you soon enough.”
I think I’ll take Option C, asshole, I thought with a smirk as the door was slammed shut. Then, free to do so, I finished my work, feeling the last part of the restraint come undone and suddenly I was free.
****
The sounds of more gunfire tore me from my thoughts and I moved faster, needing to make sure Jace was okay. Then, as a secondary thought, it occurred to me that it was just as important that I let Jace see that I was okay. Thinking on the madness—the empowering-yet-risky sense of immortality—that I’d felt when I’d woken up from the dream, a madness I was sure was on par with Jace’s own, I couldn’t help but imagine that this—all of this—was his response to my being taken. Granted, he’d said that something like this had been coming to fruition for some time, but I couldn’t imagine that, without my abduction, this would all be happening at this moment. And if I didn’t reveal myself to Jace—help both of us by bringing us back together—his noble effort might get himself hurt…
Or worse.
But, in order to do that, I had to not get myself killed. And, with the whole neighborhood turning into a warzone, that might be something easier said than done.
As I snuck out of the basement, I took care to glance around. I was officially in unmapped territory as far as my senses were concerned. I couldn’t be sure which way led where, what sort of rooms awaited me in either direction, or even which spots on the floor might be old and creaky.
I suppressed a shiver at the screaming possibility that any step I took from this moment might inadvertently alert some unseen member of the Carrion Crew of my attempted escape.
And then what?
Would they finally just grow fed up with trying to juggle the whore and finally put me out of their misery?
For Jace, I thought then. For us!
I leaned a bit more, craning to get a better angle, and saw an opening to a hallway a short way to my left. Beyond that, though the angle was bad and offered only what looked to be either a TV stand or a bookshelf from the side, was what I imagined could be a living room. Seeing this, a bizarre-yet-plausible idea came to me, and I had to fight to keep from laughing.
Had they truly been keeping me in a plain, old house?
I’d been expecting to find untold horrors up here—body parts on meat slabs or stacks of blood-stained cash neighboring giant bricks of drugs—but, instead, it looked like my late grandmother’s summer home back in Florida! I was suddenly under the impression that there was a picture of Jesus playing poker with a table occupied entirely by cigar-smoking dogs somewhere in this place.
Dodging laugh-inducing thoughts of Carrion Crew members catching me and wielding rolled-up copies of Reader’s Digest or, worse yet, folded up dinner trays, I found a fresh well of courage and snuck forward.
No time to be thinking about home ownership, Mia! Find. Jace.
I nodded to my own thoughts and shook my head, glad no one was there to see how crazy I must’ve looked just then. Turning towards the hall, where the sounds of gunfire got louder, I began to head down the area. The entire house was dark and I fought not to let fear take hold of me. I was so close to Jace, just a bit longer and I’d get to him. I continued down the hall, wondering just how long this damn hallway was.
Get a grip, Mia. This is just your fear talking. It’s a normal hallway!
I took a deep breath and suddenly I was standing in a dining room with a large window to the right. I looked over, seeing that the window looked out to a driveway leading out to a circular drive area. I frowned, realizing that they must’ve set up in some sort of housing community. I wondered (again) if they owned all the houses.
That’s when I saw him.
Jace.
Standing back-to-back with Danny, shooting out around the area. My heart swelled at just how awesome he looked; how strong he was.
I’m dating a badass! I crooned to myself.
The gunfire stopped suddenly, though the two still stood poised—guns raised and sweeping here-and-there along with their scanning gazes—and I realized that the last of the Crew they’d been firing upon must have been killed. As the sudden silence swept the immediate area, a distant series of pops telling me that there was still killing being done elsewhere, I began asking strange-yet-logical questions.
Will the police be responding to all this noise?
Just how much of this area is owned by the Carrion Crew?
Will the next people to arrive likely be with us or them?
And, riding just behind these questions: How much time do we have?
That question, on its own, was enough to motivate me to move forward. Unfortunately, it was also enough to motivate me to move forward without being mindful of my surroundings…
I turned away, from the sight of Jace and started to head towards the door.
I was so close now!
Then cold metal pressed against the nape of my neck, stopping me in my tracks.
“Imagine my surprise,” Mack kept his voice low, but he sounded confident and empowered. I muttered a soundless curse to myself for offering that to him. “I told them, ‘I think she’s up to something.’ I said, ‘She’s never that quick to let you leave a room without talking your ear off.’ I told them that the only time my bitch-whore of a sister wouldn’t go around acting like a whiny victim…” he pressed the gun that much harder to my neck, “was when she actually thought she wasn’t a victim.” He took a deep inhale then, seeming to huff up the aroma of what he viewed as success. “So imagine my surprise when they told me—allowed me, more like—to stay behind and make sure you stayed put until somebody came with a dog carrier to cart you away properly?”
“You like surprises, don’t you?” I muttered, feeling a hot rage cook in my stomach. “You like this?”
I spun then. The gun barrel tensed against my skin, and I let my knees give out—letting my body drop in mid-spin—and felt the air burst from my lungs as the sound of the gun firing forced me to exhale in surprise.
I felt the heat from the shot against my head; felt the damn bullet kiss the topmost hairs of my head!
Something like a cry escaped me then, but it was distant and muted through the ringing in my ears.
But I was alive, and I was facing my brother.
But I was also on my knees in front of him, a fact that, in an instant, I saw him reveling in.
Disgusted by the wide grin on his face, I did what whores do best in that situation:
I went straight for the guy’s dick.
That I went straight for it with a closed fist was just a personal bit of Mia-sass, I decided.
EIGHTEEN
~JACE~
Fuck.
I’d never shot for this long. Tru
th be told, I’d never really been the killing-type. There’d been deaths, sure—a decent number some might even say—and some had even been directly by my hand. That number was substantially less, however; while I might have been partially responsible for the destruction of T-Built’s first drug lab, and while there might have been a decent number of drug-peddlers still inside when the place went up, one couldn’t exactly compare this to personally taking aim with a gun and pulling the trigger.
So, depending on who you asked and the perimeters of their beliefs, I was either responsible for the deaths of roughly thirty people or exactly five. Before T-Built, that would’ve meant somebody could count the number of people I’d personally killed on one hand while still letting a finger take the day off.
I’d more than doubled that number in just a few minutes.
Fuck, I thought again, reminding myself that, yes, it had only been a few minutes.
And, just like that, the number of people I could personally claim to have intentionally killed—looking them right in the face when it happened and everything—was up to eleven. I felt numb to the reality of what that number represented and more perplexed by the realization that eleven just felt like a weird number of people to have killed. Hell, eleven just seemed like a weird number in general.
Didn’t it?
Or was I in some sort of funky killer’s shock?
If Mack was still out there then I could make it an even twelve. Something about that seemed right. I couldn’t be sure if it was the Mack-part or that the number twelve seemed more appealing than the number eleven.
I paused on that thought, circled it, studied it, and came to the conclusion that it was a truly fucked-up thought to be thinking.
“Thought to be thinking.”
Thinking thoughts makes the thoughts that I’m thinking into thoughts that I thought I thought… I think.
Fuck. I think I’m…
Think I’m thinking?
“Jace!”
I thought I felt thinks—no, slaps! I felt slaps at my cheek. There was a ringing in my ears—that was something real I could hold onto in that moment; like a thought preserver in the vast, roaring sea of my rattled mind—and a face inches from mine.
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