Bones by the Wood

by Johnson, Catherine

  Her head snapped around at the sound of scraping. The first man was dragging a chair over, the twin of the one Dizzy was tied to. He dropped it in place, and came for Thea. She tried to struggle, which earned her another disabling punch to the gut.

  Dizzy roared again in impotent rage.

  It was all she could do to gulp air past the pain. She couldn’t stop them tying her arms to the chair. She was weak without the power of oxygen.

  What the fuck were they doing to Josh while she was here?

  She wasn’t there to protect him.

  He was alone.

  Please God, let him be alone.

  Please God, don’t let there be any of these men in that room with him.

  Please God, don’t let them be hurting him.

  The man with the beard crouched down by the side of her chair so that he was more or less on eye level with her.

  “So puta, we have you, we have your son, we have your man. And for what your man did to our leader, for trying to exterminate us like roaches, we will have revenge. We will exterminate his family, his club. Where he failed, we will succeed.

  “But first, we’re going to make an example of the three of you.

  “As you can see, we’ve started on your man. We’re going to keep going, but we will leave him alive, just enough that he will be able to watch what we do to you... and to your boy.

  “Then the three of you will die. When we will it, you will die. You will beg us to kill you before then.”

  Oh God. Please let Josh be on his own in that cell. Please God, let them leave him alone. There had to be a way out of this. She had to find it. Just, please God, let them leave him alone. He’s just a child, my child Lord. Please make them leave him be.

  The second man aimed the gun thing at Dizzy and pulled the trigger.

  Thea called out with what little sound her abused lungs could muster.

  But there was no bullet. Two thin metal wires shot out and the tiny metal pin they were attached to embedded in the damaged skin of Dizzy’s torso. He was shaking and jolting, grunting through clenched teeth. It wasn’t a gun. It was a Taser. They’d electrocuted him.

  The bearded man walked over, and calmly yanked the electrode out of Dizzy’s body. It left a small wound among the mass of injuries, a tiny circle. A thin trickle of blood ran down Dizzy’s torso.

  The bearded man walked back, took aim and fired again.

  He fired over, and over and over.

  Each time Dizzy refused to, or couldn’t, scream as his body locked tight and spasmed violently against the restrictions of his bonds.

  There were lots of the little trickling wounds now. Each time the shock finished, Dizzy went limp in the chair, not even twitching as the electrode was pulled from his flesh.

  The man who had dragged from her cell, who hadn’t had any problem hitting her like she was a stray dog, kept stroking her bangs out of her eyes and brushing her hair off her shoulders. The tenderness in those light touches turned her blood to ice. At every caress, she flinched, and every time she flinched, he slapped her. Not as hard as the blows that had cost her a tooth, these were quick, stinging flicks of his wrist.

  And through it all, neither of the men spoke a word, and that in itself was chilling.

  Twice she’d called Dizzy’s name. Now she was gagged with a stinking rag that smelled like shit. It literally smelled like someone had wiped their ass with it. The thought as much as the smell made her retch.

  The bearded man had put the Taser down somewhere and was heading towards Dizzy with a knife, a fucking huge knife, and the first guard was coming for her. Oh shit, they were done playing.

  Please God, let Josh be okay.

  There was a bang in the corridor. Another bang. More bangs. Gunshots? Scuffling. What the fuck was happening now?

  Were there more of them? Two would be bad enough. Two would be too many.

  Please God, let my son be okay.

  The door burst open.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Brotherhood.

  Trust in that.

  Always brothers.

  Forever.

  And they hadn’t let him down.

  They’d found them.

  He could barely see. His face was swollen. His eyes wouldn’t work. His mind was clogged with pain, pure pain that was white hot. Sharp knives and wicked spikes lined every nerve.

  But he saw enough.

  He saw a man’s head explode in a burst of red like a macabre firework.

  He saw a hail of bullets turn another man’s chest to ground beef.

  He saw Thea.

  And she was alive. Mercifully, she was alive.

  Brotherhood.

  Always brothers.

  Ride together. Fight together.

  Live.

  Trust in that.

  He saw his brothers.

  And then the darkness fell.

  ~o0o~

  When Dizzy woke up, or more accurately came around, for one ball-shrinking moment he was blind. And then he felt the weight of something over his face, something cold, very cold. Oh fuck, what were they doing to him now? He tried to lift his hand to move whatever it was that was covering his eyes. Not tied, that was new. He grunted as the pain of all of his injuries coalesced into one throbbing, agonizing mass. He grunted. He would not scream. Would not.

  “Here, let me.”

  He knew that voice, that gentle, female voice.

  The weight lifted off his eyes. He tried to open them. One was still very definitely swollen shut. He wouldn’t be opening that bastard for a while. His balls tightened again as he considered the possibility that it might not work all that well once he could open the lid, and he wouldn’t know until then.

  He managed to crack the other eye open. The ice pack had helped some, but Jesus fuck, it hurt, but he wanted to see, badly wanted to see where he was.

  Everything was blurred, and he knew terror until, after several blinks, his vision began to clear. A shape. A woman. A blonde woman. The person and the room came slowly into focus. Ashleigh.

  “Tink?” His throat was sore, raw and dry. The splits in his lips pulled and cracked when he tried to speak.

  But none of it mattered. None of the pain mattered, because if he was looking at Ashleigh, then he was safe.

  “Hey Dizz. I’d ask how you’re doin’, but it’d be a dumb question. You hangin’ in there?”

  He grunted. He didn’t have enough words, or enough energy, to comment on the raging ache that was his body. And talking about it would make it hurt more. He knew that much.

  “Josh? Thea!” Despite the pain, because of the pain, he struggled to push himself up. He needed to see them. He needed to know that they were alive.

  “Shhh, lie back down.” He felt Ashleigh’s cool hand on his shoulder. The pain had weakened him. He wasn’t strong enough to resist her when she gently forced him to lie back. “They’re okay. They’re here, too. You’re at the clubhouse. Lie back down. Doc Anderson said you need to rest. You keep movin’ around like that and you’re gonna pull all your stitches.”

  “Are they alright? Where are they?” The words rasped more hurt in his throat.

  “In the room next door.”

  “Are they alright? Are they hurt?” Ashleigh hadn’t answered that. He remembered Thea bleeding. He remembered that very clearly.

  “They’re okay. Mostly.”

  There was a world of detail that Ashleigh was leaving out. He tried to sit up again, tried to get his legs to move off the bed. It felt like nearly every rib he owned was broken and they all screamed at once. He didn’t give a shit. He needed to see them for himself.

  “Okay, okay! Lie down you stubborn bastard. It took the doc ages to stitch you up. He’ll be pissed as anythin’ if he has to do it again. I’ll go get them. Your boys are all here, by the way.”

  He knew that. The last hours, day, however long, were a muzzy, agony-soaked fog, but he knew his brothers were okay. He’d known that since they flooded i
nto that room, since they had shot the kidnappers, since they’d dragged him out into the sunlight. He knew they were okay. Only he, Thea and Josh had been taken. Ashleigh wasn’t moving quickly enough. He tried to get up again.

  “I said lie the fuck down! I’m goin’.”

  He was embarrassingly weak, but he only complied when she left the room.

  He tried to take deep breaths to combat the rolling waves of hurt, but his ribs were singing a fucking symphony. If he’d been given any pain relief, it had worn the fuck off, and he wanted more. But he needed to check on his family first. He needed to see that they were okay.

  The door opened. He turned his head, unable to do much more for the moment. Thea walked in.

  The left side of her face was bruised in deep shades of black, red and purple. He remembered that fucker hitting her. Her cheekbone had to be cracked with bruising like that. Her face was a little swollen, but not misshapen. Hopefully just bruised, probably cracked, not likely broken. But it was still too much.

  “You’re okay? Did they...?” Jesus, just the thought of them laying hands on her, let alone anything else, brought an immediate and murderous rage flooding through his body, the first thing so far that had outweighed the pain.

  “No you’re lookin’ at the worst of it. I have to get back.” Her voice was distorted a little. That she wanted out of the room so badly, so quickly, so callously, set off blaring alarms in his already pounding head.

  “Josh?”

  “They didn’t hurt him, not physically, but he’s still terrified. Even here. I can’t leave him.”

  As if to emphasize what she was saying, Josh’s thin, panicked voice rose shrilly from nearby.

  “Mama?”

  The voice was so scared that it almost didn’t sound like Josh. Dizzy tried to force his recalcitrant body off the bed. He needed to see the boy, needed to tell him it was all going to be okay now. He needed to reassure his boy.

  “I have to go.” Thea was already half way out of the door.

  “Wait!”

  “No. I need to be with my son. He needs me.”

  And she was gone.

  He understood. He wanted to say that he needed her too, that he needed them both, but he didn’t.

  Ashleigh didn’t come back to his room when Thea left. Dizzy was just contemplating unconsciousness again when the door opened and Samuel walked in. His President sat down in the chair by the bed that Ashleigh had occupied.

  “S’good to see you’ve come to, brother. You had us a little concerned.”

  No shit. He was still a little concerned, about the extent of the damage he’d sustained, about Thea’s distance, about Josh.

  “What’s the damage?”

  “Superficial mostly. You’ve got cracked ribs, but the doc doesn’t think they’re fully broken. You’re a mess of cuts and burns, but you know that.”

  Yeah, he did. He remembered each fucking one being inflicted in vivid, Technicolor detail.

  “The doc said there shouldn’t be any effects from the Taser. Apparently most of the injuries and shit you read about are from people hittin’ the ground after they’ve been shot.”

  He remembered the Taser vividly, too. “Yeah, that shit just tickles.”

  Samuel chortled, fucking chortled. “You’re a tough son of a bitch, Dizz.”

  “Had to get through it, for them.” Fuck, did his voice really just crack, yeah, it had. Fuck it.

  “Here.” Samuel lifted a glass of water that Dizzy hadn’t noticed was on the nightstand. He hadn’t seen it through his fear for Thea and Josh and the sabotage his own body was wreaking on him. Samuel put a hand behind Dizzy’s head and lifted him to help him drink. Samuel was likely the only person in the world, certainly the only man, that Dizzy would have allowed to help in such a way, that he would have admitted such weakness to. The water helped. It wasn’t a decent pain pill, but it tasted like liquid life. If anything, he nearly knocked Samuel out for taking it away too soon.

  “Easy, brother. Too much too soon will make you sick, and you don’t want that in your condition. You’ll pull your stitches.”

  “Yeah, Tink nagged me about that.”

  “Well,” Samuel sighed, “The doc did put more’n three hundred in. Took him a while.”

  “What day is it? How’d you find us?” Dizzy was beginning to feel more like himself, a hurting knot of himself, but still.

  “It’s Sunday, afternoon, not sure of the time specifically. Fitz heard somethin’, an engine, but it was them drivin’ away with you. He tried to follow, but they lost him. He got everyone movin’ quick. To start out, we didn’t have the first clue where to look for y’all. We figured to concentrate on thinkin’ that it had to be the Perdidos, what was left of ‘em. We pinned our thinkin’ on there not bein’ a lot of them, otherwise they’d have killed everyone else, and maybe you, outright. They took who was most important, and who was most vulnerable. Y’all were there in the one room.”

  “Where the fuck else would I have been, Samuel?” Dizzy didn’t appreciate the comment, the insinuation that he’d fucked up. He’d been with his family, exactly where he was supposed to be.

  “Easy, brother, easy. Not sayin’ you did wrong, just sayin’ how it was.”

  Dizzy relaxed marginally.

  “We didn’t think they’d have the resources to take you far. Maison D’Oublié was the logical place.”

  Yes it was. Dizzy had been at least half conscious when they’d dragged him into the building. He’d recognized it from the cell. It was an old, long-abandoned jail. It was a place that the Priests had used on occasion for just such unsavory work, until they’d decided that the cabin in the bayou was safer, less conspicuous.

  “Thea, Josh, are they really alright?”

  Dizzy did not like the way that Samuel’s eyes slid away from him.

  “Physically, yes. You’ve seen her?”

  Dizzy gave a small nod. Making big movements with his head was beginning to hurt, more than it had.

  “She’s bruised some, but that’s it. I don’t think the boy was touched, but...”

  “Fuck, just spit it the fuck out!”

  Samuel leveled narrowed eyes on him. “The kid is terrified. Still terrified. I’m worried somethin’ happened to him that he won’t say about. But he wouldn’t let the doc anywhere near him. Anyone other than his mama touches him, he starts screamin’ holy hell. And she’s not feelin’ too friendly to anyone at the moment.”

  Dizzy had never known cold fury, the like of which engulfed him now.

  “They better all be dead, Samuel. I promise my family they’re safe, then they better be fuckin’ safe. I will rain fire and blood to make it so.”

  He knew he sounded ridiculous, he could barely move from the fucking bed, but he meant every word like a vow.

  Samuel softened. “I believe you, brother. I can’t make you guarantees. We killed the ones we found, six in all. No reason to believe there were more there. But we haven’t got a fuckin’ clue how many of those rodents are breedin’ in Mexico.”

  “I will salt the earth, Samuel. I will fuckin’ kill them and salt the earth.”

  “And we’ll be right by your side, brother.”

  ~o0o~

  Samuel had rustled up a couple of pain pills, something small, white and opiate-based and some anti-inflammatories and then had left Dizzy to a numbed, restorative slumber. When he’d woken again, sometime the next morning, he’d been able to move more easily by small degrees. Every time he shifted, the numerous stitches in various places pinched and tweaked at his skin. It was as irritating as it was painful. He still couldn’t open one eye, but the other was more or less under his full command now and it didn’t take long minutes for his vision to clear each time he opened it.

  Moira had come in to help him eat some coush-coush. If that was on the menu, he knew she’d cooked it. It was worth every bit of effort it took to eat it.

  He’d wanted to see Thea again, but she wouldn’t leave Josh, and more di
sturbingly, would not bring Josh anywhere near him. He knew he probably looked like a Halloween freak, and he hoped it was that she thought the boy would be scared by his appearance, and not because she was pulling away. But he knew. It was his responsibility to keep them safe. He’d failed her. He’d failed them both. That knowledge ate at his gut.

  ~o0o~