by James Moore
“What else?”
“Mary took a bullet in the shoulder.”
“And?”
“She’s recovering, just meat, no bone struck, but she lost a good amount of blood.”
Evelyn’s lips pressed together and she looked toward George, who was eavesdropping exactly as she would have expected him to. Without a word spoken, he walked across her office to the bar and began pouring her two fingers of scotch. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but now and then she needed something to help her relax.
“Did they suffer any injuries?” Her fingers sought her tokens again, the reminders of her past.
“No. They got away.” She could hear the frustration in his voice.
“So.” She nodded. “Get them. Either get them at the address I provided or before then.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And Rafael?”
“Ma’am?”
“Do I have to express how disappointed I’ll be if you fail me twice?”
“It won’t happen a second time, ma’am.”
“Good boy.” She took a sip of her drink and let the heat wash through her before she spoke again. “Now then, one last thing.”
“Whatever you need, Ms. Hope.”
“When you see them, I need you to say something for me; I need you to yell it out.”
“What’s that?”
“Say it exactly as I do, understood?”
“Of course.”
She spoke the words and made him repeat it twice to be sure.
After the call was over, she placed the scotch on the desk in front of her and steepled her fingers. “That should level the playing field a bit.”
Chapter Eleven
Hank
HE KEPT HIS SMILE in place and looked around the bar, nodding at all the right spots. They were talking endlessly, going over the variables of what could go right and what could go wrong and all the while he could feel the dozen or so small wounds on his body fading, healing.
Meanwhile Joe said pretty words to calm Sam down. Apparently he wasn’t the only one that didn’t want people looking inside his head. The difference was, he could feel it when Joe started looking inside his skull, and it seemed like the rest of the group lacked that talent. He didn’t know why he could, but it was something he intended to investigate.
He’d seen the losers in the van first, of course. He wasn’t blind or deaf. Cody would have been lost, but that wasn’t his fault. Cody was weaker physically and he was shy. Hank didn’t have those problems. Hank was, well, Hank was pretty damned cool.
Not-Tina—who was staring daggers at Not-Kyrie in his lap when she wasn’t drooling over Joe and Sam alike—asked what they’d do if they ran across the cops anywhere along the way. The question was interesting enough to get his full attention.
Joe shook his head. “No one wants cops here. Not us, not them, but it’s always a possibility. The police show up, we run. They don’t know who we are and we don’t have ID for all of you yet. We could get out of the cells, I guess, but what if you change? What if you become Tina again? Last I checked, she had a few people who wanted her dead or alive.”
“I can cover them.” She waved a dismissive hand.
Joe got that stern look on his face again, as if he were here to parent all of them. “No, you can’t. You think you can and maybe you could if it was just you.” He held up a hand to stop her from protesting and Not-Tina’s open mouth closed slowly, her objection held in check for the moment. “But you have Tina to consider. She’s not you and she’s not as strong as you. She breathes fire just fine, but there’s no way she could hold her own against a bunch of goodfellas with a serious need to cut her down.”
Not-Tina nodded.
“And by the way, have you figured out what we should call you yet? Not-Tina is hardly the best name.” Joe raised an eyebrow and smiled as he spoke.
Not-Tina shot him a one-finger salute. “I’m gonna come up with a name, it’s gonna take more than ten minutes, loser. I have to think about it.”
“Don’t think too hard. The longer you take, the longer we all have to wait to get you set up with papers.”
Not-Tina bristled, putting her hands on the table, ready to stand up and start swinging.
Joe blinked and Hank smiled. Bronx thought he was charming enough to be a dick all the time, but he wasn’t. What he was at the moment was in serious danger of having Not-Tina take a swing at him, and none of them needed to be beating on each other.
Sam looked to Not-Kyrie in Hank’s lap—which, for the record, Hank was not complaining about at all—and said what was likely already on Not-Tina’s mind. “She doesn’t have a name yet either.”
Not-Kyrie looked at Sam like he was aching to get his ass kicked. “It’s none of your business what I have.”
Joe looked at Sam and then at Not-Kyrie and opened his mouth, and Hank reached for the mostly empty beer pitcher on the table.
“What did you say to me?” Not-Tina was snarling.
“Hold on now, I didn’t say a damned thing to you.” Not-Kyrie’s voice was just under a growl and he could feel her body tensing as she got ready to defend herself. She was looking at Sam, and Hank had no doubt that she was perfectly willing to clobber him for bringing her into the argument and killing her buzz.
Cody wasn’t there. He was wherever he went when Hank was in charge, but Hank knew it was Cody’s experiences that were painting his decisions. Cody was good at making distractions and cracking wise to defuse the situation. Cody would have probably made a few comments about how stupid he was and hammed it up to make sure that the angry people looked at him instead of at each other.
He wasn’t Cody. He didn’t play like that.
Cody wanted peace and quiet, and what Hank wanted was to have some fun. He looked at the bikers who’d been hogging the bar for the last hour or so and from time to time eyeing the girls at their table, and he hurled the beer pitcher at them as hard as he could.
“Heads-up!” His voice cut across the entire room and every last one of the bikers looked toward him, including the fat, bearded slob who managed to catch the pitcher with his face. The thing was plastic. If it had been glass, it would have probably knocked the biker into next week. Instead all that happened was he got a beer bath and let out a strangled, sputtered profanity as he headed for their table.
“You lost your mind? Just needed to get your stupid ass kicked?”
Hank was still grinning as he pulled Not-Kyrie off his lap, holding her as easily as an adult holds a baby. She let out a startled yelp and even through the shock, Hank could see the smile starting on her face. She wanted it too, the adrenaline and the noise and the fight.
Hank’s foot caught the bottom of the table and he pushed it in the general direction of the approaching biker. Before the table could fall completely over, he kicked it the same as Cody would have kicked a soccer ball and sent it flying at Beer Boy.
“Bite me, loser!”
The table crashed into the beer-splattered biker and both of them went backward, skidding and staggering back into the rest of the Road Kings.
Joe looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. Joe didn’t get it. He was used to this, all of this. He had his goals and he knew what he wanted from the world. Hank and the others, they were still new. While Joe wanted to plot his next move for getting rid of Hunter, Hank wanted to experience everything.
He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck.
“Bring it, bitches!” He roared the words and started toward the bikers.
The Road Kings were hard men. On a national level, the motorcycle club dealt arms, sold drugs, probably had its hand in prostitution, and had a reputation for violence that had marked its members as trouble in almost every state in the continental US.
They didn’t seem at all impressed by Hank despite his formidable size. The one closest to the bar charged right back at Hank, a battle cry starting on his lips.
Not-Kyrie grabbed the guy before he could reach Ha
nk and spun him in a half circle before she smashed him back into the bar. Hank caught the next one at the same moment, his hand wrapping into the guy’s face like a jock catching a basketball.
After that Hank didn’t pay attention to the details, he just started swinging. He needed this. They all did.
They took out the Road Kings or they took out each other.
Joe was just too slow to notice that.
Chapter Twelve
Tina Carlotti
SHE OPENED HER EYES and immediately squinted against the glare of sunlight sneaking into the room from the dingy hotel window.
“Ow.” Tina rolled over in the bed and almost smashed into Gene Rothstein’s snoring face.
That took care of waking her up. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might break out of her chest and run away. Yeah, okay, so Gene was cute and all, but she didn’t need to keep waking up in bed with guys she barely knew or she was going to get a complex.
Gene continued snoring, oblivious to her dilemma. A quick check convinced her that she was still clothed. That helped. She didn’t even like to think about her other self. So far her Other had robbed the neighborhood branch of the Mafia of a couple million dollars and gotten her in deep trouble with Tony Parmiatto and his boss, Paulo Scarabelli—and that was not going to be easily forgiven. She’d possibly brought about her mother’s death—there would be no forgiveness for that—and she had guaranteed that no part of Tina’s life was safe from getting screwed up beyond any hope of repair. And that was just in a few days, really. So she wasn’t going to be too surprised if the bitch managed to get her into bed with a guy she barely knew. Gene could be as shy and cute as he wanted, but she wasn’t exactly looking to hook up with anyone.
She looked around the room. Cody was sleeping on the cheap desk in front of the equally cheap hotel room mirror. He was small enough to get up there without trouble, but if Hank had been the one climbing up there, she was surprised that the desk hadn’t collapsed under the weight of him. Cody was stripped down to his tighty whities, and he was apparently having a pretty good dream because while he was sleeping, parts of him were definitely awake. She didn’t want to think of him that way, but there it was, loud and proud.
She turned away and saw that the other twin bed in the room was occupied by Hunter and Kyrie. She felt another twinge of jealousy flare through her. Kyrie was smoking hot, that was all there was to it. Every one of the guys had been trying to stare through her clothes since they’d met her. So far they hadn’t much bothered with Tina, and while she wasn’t actually looking for any romance—her life was crazy enough, thanks—it would have been nice to at least have them look now and then. Kyrie could wear a cardboard box and they’d check out her butt.
Tina carefully extracted her leg from between Gene’s. He was clothed too, thank God. Unlike Cody, he was actually wearing his jeans. Once she’d untangled, Tina crawled out of the bed as quietly as possible and headed for the bathroom.
Her reflection in the mirror looked wrong. A flash of color that shouldn’t have been there. Tina stopped and looked carefully, absolutely unaware of the shriek that started in her belly and boiled out past her lips like steam from a teakettle.
She was too busy looking at the long, serpentine shape that twisted around her arm. It slithered from her shoulder and wrapped itself around her bicep, her elbow and her forearm, ending at the striking snake head tattooed onto her wrist.
“Ohmigod!!!” She staggered back into the main room and sat on the bed, face level with Cody’s belly button. Cody woke up with a sputtering moan, his eyes flying wide as he looked toward her. She looked at her own face, reflected on the other side of him, and screamed a second time. Cody tried to roll away from her screaming and instead bumped into the cold mirror. Half a second later he fell off the desk, his eyes wide and panicked.
Gene and Hunter and Kyrie all sat up, startled out of their unconscious states by her screams.
“What the hell did she do to me?” Tina’s voice shook with fury as she looked at the snake tattoo, studying the details. “What the hell did she do?”
“What? What did who do?” Hunter was right next to her, his eyes projecting concern. She knew he wanted to protect her, but he couldn’t. It was too late for that.
“That other me! She tattooed me!” Tina blinked hard to stop the tears that were threatening her. Not a chance she’d let any of them see her cry, not now, not ever.
Gene covered his mouth and looked away and in that moment she hated him. He was laughing at her! Oh, he was trying to hide it, but he was laughing just the same. She looked away from his smug, rich boy face before she could lose her temper.
Hunter stared hard, shocked, as if the idea that one of the Others could do such a thing never crossed his mind. That was crazy, he’d been dealing with Joe for a long time, and yet there he was, freaking out.
Kyrie moved closer to Tina and took her hand. She wasn’t mocking or cruel or anything but kind, and Tina hated herself a little for her earlier jealousy and for the fact that part of her still wanted to be angry. Kyrie was nice. Kyrie was everything that a nice person was supposed to be, and that wasn’t something Tina was used to in her world.
Kyrie’s voice was no nonsense. “Come on. Let’s see if we can’t fix it.”
“How can we fix this? It’s a tattoo! It’s permanent!”
“Maybe not. I heard you can wash them out if they haven’t healed all the way. We just need to scrub your arm.”
Even as she spoke, Kyrie gently pulled Tina toward the bathroom.
Tina caught a glimpse of Cody as he watched them go past. His face set with an expression she’d never seen on him before. She didn’t know him well enough to figure out what it meant.
Tattoos are created by forcing colored inks under the skin and deep enough into flesh that the colors are effectively permanent. In order to get the colors down that deep, needles are required. In most people, the tiny holes caused by the ink are irritated and tender for a long while. But Tina’s skin was already back to its usual level of sensitivity.
Not-Tina was different from Tina. She healed much faster. Despite Kyrie’s very vigorous attempts at scrubbing the colors away, it was too late. The ink was permanent.
For just a moment, Tina thought about crying. She knew that Kyrie would be there to comfort her in an instant.
Instead she swallowed the tears and held on to the anger, letting it grow inside her. Tears were weakness. Anger was a weapon. Long as she remembered that, she’d be fine.
She told herself that until she believed it.
Chapter Thirteen
Hunter Harrison
HUNTER AND CODY LOOKED at the motorcycles outside their room with mutual expressions of shock. Not just motorcycles, but custom jobs. The sort of bikes that cost enough for a small house. Had anyone asked Cody what he knew of bikes he would have eagerly admitted that he knew nothing, but he knew enough to understand that the motorcycles in front of them—including the one he’d found the keys for in his pocket—were not the sort of thing someone would willingly let them walk away with.
“What happened?” Hunter asked the question to himself, but Cody shook his head in response.
“I think we’re in it deep.”
Hunter shot him a look. “Seriously? You think?” Cody shot him a look that said sarcasm wasn’t really appreciated right then, and Hunter tried to reel his attitude back.
“I’m getting a few memories from this, dude. They aren’t happy stuff. I think we took out a gang. And I think we took out the sort of gang that has a lot more members.” His voice shook and he took two steps back. “I mean it. We’re dead if they catch us with these bikes, man. Dead.” He ran his finger along the name painted on the gas tank of one of the bikes. The Road Kings. “Seriously dead, and maybe maimed real bad before they get to the killing part.”
Hunter shook his head. “Is this ever gonna stop?”
“Isn’t that why we’re here?” Cody moved around the parked
motorcycles, taking in the details of each vehicle and shaking his head. “Isn’t that why we’re doing all of this? So we can make it stop?”
Hunter thought about that for a moment and finally nodded. “Yeah. But it’d be a lot easier if this sort of thing wasn’t going on.”
Cody shook his head And a small, puzzled grin played at his face. “Dude, I know how to ride a motorcycle. How did that happen?”
Hunter shrugged. “I guess Joe must have taught you last night.”
“He can ride a bike?”
“Yeah, so can I. And I guess he must have taught me too. That stuff he said about us doing stuff that the Others learn, I guess it must go both ways.”
Cody got a deeply worried look for a moment and then seemed to shrug it off.
“What’s wrong?” Hunter needed them, all of them, to help him through this. While he wanted little more than to sit back and relax for a while—a chance to relax seemed impossible to find—he couldn’t risk Cody or any of them having a meltdown.
“What’s wrong?” Cody’s voice rose in volume and octave as he answered. “Dude, I’ve got King Kong hiding inside me and I apparently just stole a bike from a motorcycle gang. I can’t go home, I can’t even talk to my parents, I’ve got all sorts of memories that aren’t mine cramming into my head. Seriously, what isn’t wrong?”
Hunter understood what he was feeling. He’d been feeling it for as long as he could remember. “Just calm down. Freaking out won’t help.”
“I think I have a reason for going a little crazy here, okay?” Cody waved his arms frantically. “Didn’t exactly start my week with this crap in mind.”
Hunter moved closer and put a hand on his shoulder, speaking softly so Cody would have to listen. “You make too much noise and we’re going to get the wrong attention. Cops might not kill us, but they’re going to make it really, really hard to get this done.”
Cody stopped pacing and nodded. “We need to get out of here. I don’t care if we’re walking or taking these bikes, but we need to be gone—and soon.”
