by Rucker, Shay
Facing forward, she turned to look out the passenger-side window. It was too dark to see much because the moon had slipped behind a shield of clouds. She knew she was in some kind of industrial area, close to a port maybe. She’d smelled water when she walked out of the warehouse. They were close to either the bay or the ocean, most likely the bay, though, which hopefully meant she wasn’t too far from home.
Speeding toward she didn’t know where, she couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to her once they got there. Her mind flashed to the four dead bodies, remembered the man who had killed them aroused and dripping blood on her, his eyes promising she would be next. She doubted there would have been a quick death for her. He would’ve fucked her first, maybe fucked her during. Who knew the level of his derangement? She grimaced. She didn’t need to know. She needed to get the hell away from these people, hide, hole up, and figure out how and why she had been attacked and kidnapped. The dead guys weren’t Ernesto’s men; that much she knew.
Both the kidnappers and the people who had rescued her had addressed her as Sabrina Samora, her actual name, not one of the aliases she had used most of her adult life. Not until she’d run away from Ernesto in Florida and moved to New Orleans to be close to her sister Sam had she begun to use her birth name again. Ironically, it was the one name she’d gone by that Ernesto never knew. She sighed. At least she didn’t have to worry about that problem.
“You okay, Sabrina?” the man across from her asked. She nodded once, quickly lowering her eyes.
He’d held her, protected her in those first moments of confusion and fear. He was the only one to show her comfort, and she appreciated it. She’d guessed he was the defender-of-the-innocent type, but she knew by the way he’d spoken to the one who would do her irreparable damage that he could be as threatening as the rest of this group.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked because they sure as shit weren’t taking her back to her studio apartment in Oakland. She could see a freeway coming up, the golden lights of a bridge on the dark horizon, but not the Bay Bridge. They passed a sign indicating that an on-ramp for the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge was to the right. She knew then that she was somewhere in Richmond or Point Richmond, heading farther away from her home, not toward it.
“We’re taking you to a place where it’s safe to talk freely,” the driver said.
“Seems safe enough to talk in here,” she said, keeping her voice hesitant.
“Seems that way.”
Those were the last words spoken for the next hour or so.
The vehicle maneuvered seamlessly from road to freeway, highway to small-town main streets. They climbed up a twisting, two-lane highway sheltered by trees, which turned into a dense forest that blocked the moon. It was dark where they were, stretches of uninterrupted black except for the SUV‘s headlights. The streetlamps seemed spaced as mile markers instead of illumination devices meant to keep the darkness at bay. They were more like stingy oases of light engulfed by a desert of dark. At this early-morning hour they hadn’t passed another car for miles. She’d lost her bearings again once they had passed the Point Reyes area. The national park was the farthest she’d ever been in Marin County.
Shit. At this distance it was going to be hard to escape from them and get someplace safe and familiar. It’s okay, she reassured herself. She had done hard in the past; she’d do it again if it meant saving her ass.
They slowed and turned left onto a dirt road she never would have seen had she been driving. This guy, Price, must have some kind of inhuman night vision.
The ride turned bumpy, the incline steep. The forest and vegetation crept ever closer as the road became smaller. There would be no passing if another car came from the opposite direction. One of them would simply have to drive in reverse until they reached a point where they could pull off to the side. Luckily they hadn’t met a descending vehicle.
They took a right on what felt like a gravel path, and the truck slowed more. Ahead, Sabrina could see a large shack of a building, above which a neon blue sign proclaimed it to be MAMA’S HOUSE.
Two other vehicles were parked in front of the building, and as she looked about, she saw another gravel trail toward the back right of the building. She supposed it was the road that led down the mountain.
The driver, Price, parked on the outside right of the other two vehicles and shut off the engine.
Sabrina froze when she felt fingers gently pull on one of the twisted locs at the back of her head, followed by a knuckle gliding down the back of her neck. The caress was brief, as if the man behind her had restrained himself the whole ride and could no longer resist the temptation to touch now that they had come to the end of their journey.
“Coen, keep her close,” Price ordered as he opened the door. “We don’t know who’s inside or what business they’re about.”
The woman they called Bride was typing into her phone, and Coen was checking his weapons, all oblivious to the threat posed by the sociopath fondling her from behind.
Sabrina leaned forward, feeling her hair slip free from his fingers, breathing easier when the break in contact didn’t provoke him into grabbing a handful of her hair and dragging her by the head into the backseat.
She reached for the door handle and eased it open. Coen’s hand settled on her knee, stalling her exit.
“The others are about five minutes behind us,” Bride said from the front.
Sabrina watched as Price walked up the porch stairs and went inside the building, exiting a minute later to wave them in.
“All right, Sabrina. When we get inside, I want you to stay close, okay? Don’t try and go off anywhere alone.”
She resisted the urge to look behind her. No way in hell was she going off alone with him around.
“Okay,” she whispered, moving out of the car carefully, not because she naturally moved so deliberately but because she was hurt and instinct cautioned that she didn’t make any sudden moves when being watched by a predator.
Coen followed her out of the vehicle, and the man drenched in blood was not far behind. Coen reached out as if to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. She took two steps back when the big man behind him frowned, reaching toward the small of his back.
“Hey, hey, I know you’re scared.” Coen tried to soothe her, unaware. “But we’ll keep you safe, Sabrina. I promise.”
She looked over his shoulder. The big man’s hand relaxed at his side again, gaze boring into hers until she looked at Coen and allowed him to steer her, without touch, toward Mama’s House.
“Doesn’t look scared to me.” The deep voice countered in the darkness behind them. “Anyone else wonder about that?”
Of course he couldn’t just be run-of-the-mill crazy; he had to be the kind of crazy that was too perceptive, watched too closely. Probably killed more effectively because of his uncanny insight about others. It didn’t seem to lead him to be more humane. Likely it led him to be more efficient at using, controlling, and killing.
I have to be careful, she thought as she entered the dimly lit establishment. She didn’t want him, didn’t want any of them thinking she was anything other than the terrified victim they had found on a warehouse floor.
“Well, if it ain’t Mama’s Brood…plus one.” A voice rang out from behind the bar. Sabrina leaned forward to see around Coen. The owner of the voice was a fiftyish man with long straight black and gray hair. He was about Coen’s height—five feet nine, five feet ten—and was whipcord lean in his worn blue jeans and indigo T-shirt.
“Chief,” Bride muttered to the older man as she sat at the bar and waved a finger toward a bottle of whiskey.
“Aw, Princess, I keep telling you I’m too old for you. You can’t come in here playing pretty and think I’m going to leave my woman and give you the world.”
Bride rolled her eyes and downed the double shot he poured, motioning for another.
Sabrina walked over and leaned against the bar beside Bride, opting to stand in
stead of sit. Coen stepped up on the other side of her and reached out to shake the bartender’s hand. Up close she saw the man behind the bar was Native American. He had the bearing of a leader, so it stood to reason that he could be a chief, but she had a feeling Bride was just being derogatory.
“Still got the mad dog playing tame?” the bartender asked, looking over Sabrina’s shoulder.
She snorted. She couldn’t help it. The idea that the man standing behind her could be tamed, even in play, was ridiculous. Maybe Zeus could be put down like a mad dog, but she had a feeling he’d be hell on hell just like he’d been hell on earth.
“He killed four men before we could get to him,” Coen informed the bartender.
“Well, that does account for the amount of blood soaked into him,” the bartender said, tossing a key to the big man.
Sabrina turned to see him walk toward the back of the bar and exit through a riveted steel door. She sighed.
“You’re next,” Chief said, sliding a glass of clear liquid across the bar to her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing back the glass. “I don’t drink.”
“Me neither. It’s water. And I meant you’re next in line for the bathroom.”
“Thank you.”
She lifted the glass to her mouth and gulped the cool water, careful of her split lip.
“So you’ve found yourself in a bad situation.”
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she mumbled, head down, both hands wrapped around the cold glass.
“That’s why you’re here, Sabrina. So we can all understand what Kragen wants with you.”
“Who’s Kragen?”
Bride hissed with what sounded like irritation.
Chief frowned at her. “She deserves to know the name of the man hunting her down. The more information she has, the more she can help us and herself.”
Bride rolled her eyes, shrugged, and knocked back another shot.
“She drinks enough to make up for the both of us.” The bartender smiled at Sabrina, holding out his hand. “I’m Terry.”
“Sabrina,” she said, introducing herself formally.
The front door of the bar opened, and Terry saluted the three figures that entered.
“Firewater would be good ’bout now, ol’ man,” Big Country said.
“One day you’re going to get enough of courting those fire spirits, boy.”
“Since that day hasn’t come yet, make it a double.”
Sabrina heard the three advance as Terry reached beneath the bar and pulled out a mason jar with clear liquid inside. He unscrewed the lid and poured two single shots so carefully the alcohol could’ve been acid.
Juarez beat Big Country to the first glass and inhaled the shot. And paid for it. His eyes teared, and he fell to the floor, grabbing at his throat as if invisible fingers were choking him to death. It was at least two minutes before he was able to fight himself free of what she presumed to be the fire spirits’ wrath and sit up, inhaling and exhaling one deep full breath. Everyone stood around and watched—Sabrina mainly out of surprise, the others in humor.
“Where’s Mama?” Big Country asked as he stepped over Juarez and took the second shot of firewater, downing it smoothly before shaking his head in disgust at Juarez.
“Diablo,” came Juarez’s hoarse whisper as he used a bar stool to stand.
“She’s in the dungeon with Price,” Terry answered.
“Why y’all hanging around up here?”
“Getting acquainted.”
Juarez stood next to Sabrina, glaring down at her as if his display of anger would reclaim some of his pride. “You don’t seem worth kidnapping.”
Asshole, she thought, but she wouldn’t say it, not if she wanted to continue to appear the frightened rabbit ready to bolt to the nearest hidey-hole. Instead she bit the inside of her lip so hard tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. “I don‘t know why anyone would want to kidnap me. He’s right; I’m nobody,” she said, warm tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Don’t go taking anything Juarez says as something worth listening to,” Big Country said.
She forced more tears out as she held her hands over her face.
She heard Bride stand, making a sound of disgust as she walked away. “Stupid ass,” she muttered. Sabrina thought the other woman was speaking of her until she heard Juarez say, “Hey, I’m just calling it how I see it.”
She heard the metal door open and close, and for at least five heartbeats no sound distracted her from the raspy voice of Bobby Blue Bland singing in the background. As she cupped her face in her palms, she could feel the swelling around her right eye. Shit. She hoped it didn’t swell itself shut. Aside from the aesthetic detractor, it would hinder her ability to see when she decided to run away.
Unnerved by the lack of banter and the silence, she looked up and saw all the men were facing the back door. Expecting to see Bride, she turned and saw that Bride had exited the room. The one person Sabrina never wanted to encounter again was standing there. The fact that the blood was gone, that his hard muscled chest was bare, scarred, that his powerful legs were in a pair of loose-fitting blue jeans and his manly feet were bare, didn’t make her want to see him more. Especially not when he had a knife in his hand bigger than the one he’d left the room with.
“She’s crying,” the big man, Zeus, said.
Sabrina wiped the tears off her face, then wiped her hands on her jeans to try and erase any evidence of her tears. The way he said it, eyes burning, face and voice emotionless, made her fear that tears might trigger his homicidal tendencies.
“Juarez was just being an asshole,” Big Country said.
She pressed closer to the bar when the blade streaked by, embedding in Juarez’s shoulder.
“Son of a bitch,” Juarez shouted, both in anger and in pain.
Zeus had another knife in his hand and walked toward Juarez unhurried, loose. Images of the gritty warehouse floor strewn with bloody bodies flashed through her mind. Juarez was going to fall to the big man’s blade like those warehouse men. Terry and the others tried to talk to Zeus rationally, Coen and Big Country reaching for their guns when words didn’t seem to penetrate.
Acting on guilt-inspired instinct, Sabrina threw herself at Zeus, hugging him to her, hoping she didn’t get cut up or shot in the back for her efforts.
Zeus stopped, and she wrapped her arms tighter around his back, resting her head on his massive chest. His heart beat strong and steady, none of the rapid hammering that came from strong emotion. His skin was warm, feverish even, but he’d just showered, she remembered. He smelled clean, not the rancid smell of someone who walked so closely with death. Nothing about his scent would alert the senses that some inhuman entity dwelled within him. But she knew. Every cell of her body had objected to even acknowledging his existence; yet here she was molding her body against his to save someone else. Self-sacrifice was, until this moment, foreign to her. Guilt was not.
Having interpreted her actions as only a sick individual would, Zeus’s hand gripped her ass and pressed her against a rapidly growing erection. Shocked, she looked up, and he was watching her, his mouth tilted up on one side. Jesus, was this him happy? She struggled to free herself from his hold.
“Be still,” he ordered, and she froze, his voice having a Medusa-like effect.
Fast and agile, he turned her around to face the others. Two weapons were pointed toward them. Lynx helped to support Juarez, while Terry grinned behind the bar.
She didn’t see what was so funny, but apparently a necessary skill of bartending was being able to maintain a jovial attitude. She wasn’t feeling jovial. She had been beaten, kidnapped, had possibly escaped rape and murder at the hands of the very man she was shielding, and for her efforts she may get shot by the ones who had claimed to want to protect her. Whatever she had done to piss off the spirits of good fortune must have been some kind of bad for them to abandon her so completely.
“Zeus, put th
e knife down and let Sabrina go,” Coen said. His voice was hard, demanding obedience. Unfortunately crazy people didn’t respond well to the rational demands of others.
The big man pulled her tighter against him. The finality of that one action made her want to cry. If two men with guns trained on him didn’t convince Zeus to let her go, it felt like nothing would: not her rejection, not her eventual escape attempt, not anything. If she succeeded at eluding the Brood, the man responsible for her kidnapping, even Ernesto, who she was sure was still searching for her, she had a bad feeling it would be near impossible to hide from Zeus. He would be the genie and she the bottle he always returned to, or the demon ever bound to the one it possessed. She had fought so hard to make a seminormal life for herself, and this big fuck was threatening all of it.
She would not cry.
He was big, he was crazy, but she was a survivor. She would fight, even if the outcome resulted in her losing.
Sabrina tilted her head back and looked Zeus straight in the eye. “I’m not yours.”
One side of his mouth tilted in what she was coming to identify as humor. On him it held none of the lightness of the emotion, more a dark caricature, a primitive display on par with a beast baring its teeth at an opponent.
“Until I’m done with you, you are. You ran to me, makes you mine.”
In what fucking backward world was that true? She’d run to him to prevent mayhem. She already felt bad enough that her little playacting had resulted in Juarez taking a blade; she didn’t want it to be the reason for his death, for any of their deaths.
“She ran to me for protection,” he said, looking back toward Coen and the others. “Anyone touches her, hurts her, makes her cry…well.”
Coen looked over to Big Country, apparently coming to some agreement, because at the same time they lowered their guns.
Terry whistled. “You’ve gone and done it, sister. Sure you don’t drink?”
“Rum, overproof, Haitian if you have it,” she ordered, not fully believing even an alcoholic haze would diminish the fact that she may have just been claimed by a sociopath.
