The Vigilantes Collection

by Lake, Keri

  Gun in hand, Conall held Lucy pinned to the table while dodging the kicks and bucking hips she aimed at him. “Keep fighting, bitch. It’ll make it that much sweeter for me.”

  Barreling forward, I drilled Conall’s kidney with my fist, knocking him to the ground. As his gun clanged to the floor, I straddled him before he could recover and hammered my fist into his face. Like an old friend, rage surged up from the darkness, and, lost to madness, I gripped the bastard’s throat, squeezing until his face turned red.

  Pain lashed my shoulder, knocking me off balance and loosening my fingers, and as I released his throat, he rolled over, gasping for breath.

  Black Betty stuck out of my arm when I glanced down. Gritting my teeth, I slid it out, allowing the smooth edge to slice my skin while dislodging the hook, and propped the bloody blade up under his balls.

  As he fought to catch his breath, I sliced his nuts clean off.

  His bleating scream splintered, and waiting for it to die, I braced the knife against his throat.

  The click of his gun brought me face to face with the barrel he'd pointed square at my forehead.

  “Fuck … you,” he rasped.

  59

  Lucy

  Without a beat of hesitation, I grabbed a blood-stained screwdriver from a host of torture devices lining the shelf behind me, and with my broken hand curled against my body, I spun around and thrust the blade into Conall’s chest with my good hand.

  Conall’s crackling bellow echoed inside the room, as I twisted the tool. The wounds on my back seared with the effort as I pressed my weight into it before kicking away from him.

  His eyes widened, before his gaze fell from mine, and, dropping the gun, he bent his bloodied fingers around the hilt of the tool.

  Pushing away, Jase rose from the floor. A patch of blood saturated his right arm, from a stab wound I hadn't even noticed, and in my rush toward him, a grip caught my ankle, and I hit the floor.

  I flipped onto my back, the gravelly concrete biting into my cuts, as Conall scrambled over top of me and pointed the gun at my forehead. I’d never seen eyes so crazed and murderous before, so devoid of humanity—beady, with a spark of death behind his nearly black irises.

  “Fuckin’ die,” he rasped.

  “No, no!” I squinted my eyes, bracing for the bullet

  The gun went off, startling my muscles, but the bullet pinged on a ricochet, and I caught sight of the metal skidding across the floor beyond my head.

  Above me, Jase held Conall by the throat in a headlock, and his heavy weight slid over top of me as Jase dragged him toward the chair. Rolling onto my stomach, I scrambled for the gun with my good hand. As soon as my fingers folded around it, I clambered to my feet and swung its aim toward where Conall kicked and swung out like an animal squirming in the grip of its predator.

  Jase threw him into the chair and wound the chain around him, before he clicked the lock into place.

  Blood saturated Conall's crotch and a white pallor clung to his face. “See you in hell, fuckface.” Conall spat out and licked his lips, before his gaze fell on me. “How’d that whip feel, darlin’?”

  I trembled, holding the gun on him, gritting my teeth as those images passed through my mind, a flare of pain across my back reminding me they were real. I lifted the gun higher, toward his head, and curled my finger around the trigger.

  “Lucy, don’t!” Jase drilled a fist into the bastard’s cheek, kicking Conall’s head to the side, and reached up under the chair, from where a beep alerted that he’d set the bomb’s timer. “Two minutes. Let’s get the fuck out of here!” His sharp tug of my arm broke me from the fantasy of blowing Conall’s head clean off his shoulders. “We have to go! Now!”

  I spun on my heel and hobbled after Jase, out of the vault. He twisted the wheel of the door behind us, locking it, and we hauled ass up the stairs.

  I took one step onto hardwood floor of the foyer, and the earth shook beneath my feet, the force knocking me to the floor.

  A pitchy ringing in my ears kept me from hearing Jase, but I looked up, watching his face mouth the words. Let’s go!

  He stripped out of his shirt, throwing it over me to cover my bareness, and slid his arms beneath me, lifting me up from the floor, as another explosion rocked the house and shook its foundations.

  Staggering through the foyer, he nearly tripped, but our bodies clashed into the wall, steadying his balance, and he kicked through the front door, where he set me down on the pavement. Hand in hand, we ran across the yard toward the Camaro and climbed inside.

  The cold leather seats seeped into my skin, soothing the burn of my wounds, as he fired up the car. I closed my eyes, as a flashback tore through my head, and the heat of Conall’s whip trailed the crack of pain against my spine. Rocking in my seat, I covered my eyes, and a whimper of panic bubbled in my throat.

  “He’s dead, Lucy. He can’t hurt you now.”

  Jase’s voice hardly carried over the memory of Conall’s sadistic laughter beating through my skull. I could still smell my blood on him, and taste his hands inside my mouth while he'd tried to silence my pleas.

  Eyes clamped shut, I clutched my temples, rocking back and forth. No, no, no.

  “Lucy,” Jase said in a distant fog beside me, but it wasn’t until his fingertips skimmed my arm that I broke from my nightmare, and I flinched away from him.

  We hadn’t left yet. Beyond him, tendrils of smoke climbed through the windows of the mansion to the sky. Trembling in the seat, I studied the house from across the yard through the windshield.

  Conall burst through the front door, his face bloodied, the gun I’d held to him pointed at the car.

  “Jase!” I kicked against the floorboard, backing myself up into the seat. “He’s coming! Oh, God! He’s right there!”

  Jase twisted away, leaning forward, and the image of Conall faded, but as Jase turned back around, the face I saw was Conall’s.

  I screamed, my chest tight with cold panic, as I reached for the handle of the vehicle to get out of the car. I batted his hand away when he tried to stop me. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

  “It’s me, Mia Luce. It’s Jase.”

  His words reached my ears and echoed inside my head, smothering the nightmare that held me captive. I stopped scrambling for the door and hid my face behind my hands. My heart beat rapidly in my chest, and I was taken back to the moments when Conall’d assaulted me. The sound of my own breaths in my ear. The smell of burning flesh filling the room.

  “Lucy, look at me.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t look at him. The shame of knowing he’d watched all of it curled like a tight fist in my gut, telling me my insides were ruined. Dirty. Worthless. Conall’s hatred had seeped into me, all over my skin, an ugly muck that I wanted to wash away. The scenes of earlier curled around my mind like a thick weed that strangled every other thought.

  “I need to get you to a doctor. The cuts on your back. And your fingers.”

  “No!” Oh, God, what if they found me there? What if Kelley came for me? Tied me up and tortured me all over again. I couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk going through that all over again. “No, no, no. No doctors. No hospital.”

  “You need—”

  “Don’t tell me what I need!” Panic burst inside of me and I tucked my head into my knees. Why couldn’t he understand the danger? “I’m not going to a hospital!”

  “Okay, baby, I’ll take you home.”

  Home? I didn’t even know what home was, anymore. What I’d once considered home had become nothing more than a fading memory, leaving me cold and alone.

  The sensation of motion told me we’d pulled away from the house, but I kept my face buried, After what seemed like only seconds, we stopped, and I looked up to see we were back at the apartment. Tears welled in my eyes at the relief of being there.

  The door beside me opened, and Jase slid his hands beneath my thighs, grazing one of my cuts. I flinched and cried out, striking at him
on reflex. He nuzzled his face in my hair, whispering words I couldn’t hear behind the noise inside my head. I sucked in a breath, inhaling his scent, warm and spicy. Familiar. Comforting.

  He lifted me out of the car, carrying me up the stairs. Limbs trembling, cold and weak, a surge of nausea gurgled in my stomach.

  “It’s okay, Luce. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”

  Warm. In his arms.

  He unlocked the door, kicked it open, and crossed the apartment toward the bathroom, where he set me down gently, the cool tiles sending tingles of ice up my shivering legs. So cold. Behind me, he flipped on the faucet to the bathtub, the heat swarming me, and I breathed in the thick steam, letting it sterilize the filth inside of me. Beneath my hung head, my legs quaked, my skin almost blue from the cold spikes shooting through my body.

  He stripped out of his clothes and lifted my blood-stained shirt over my head, tossing it behind him. The room widened then shrank before my eyes, the blackness threatening to close in on me. A tickle in my chest and the lightness in my stomach had me reaching out for something, and my muscles gave out, the sensation of falling brought to an abrupt halt when his arms enveloped me, holding me steady.

  In Jase’s embrace, I continued to tremble, even as he climbed into the bath, pulling me in with him.

  As I lay across his naked chest, his warmth swathing me, tingles of heat ran up and down my skin and swallowed the cold as water filled in all around me and sizzled against the wounds on my back. I arched, until the prickling sensation faded to numbness, and his hot skin slid against mine as I lay shaking across his chest.

  “Jesus, you’re so cold.” He tightened his grip around me, his scent anchoring me to the present, while my mind fought to pull me into flashbacks. He cradled me, and he held me like glass, broken and fragile, as if I’d shatter to unfixable pieces before his eyes. Only a whisper of his touch across my skin. “No one’s going to hurt you, baby. I promise.”

  The tepid water, along with his soothing strokes, battled the images still dancing through my head. Conall’s black, lifeless eyes. My blood on his hands. The smell of burnt flesh.

  Jase watching all of it.

  An ache throbbed in my fingers that I couldn’t move, and I held them in front of me to examine the grotesque deformations.

  “You need ice.” He shifted below me as if to climb out, but I tightened my arms around him.

  “No, not yet. Please don’t leave yet.” I couldn’t trust being left alone with those visuals taunting me, tricking me into seeing things that weren’t real.

  His muscles softened as he settled again and held me against him once more.

  Tipping my head back showed that his eyes were cold, jaw taut. An angry vein pulsed in his neck as he held me close, arms tight around me.

  “No one’s ever going to hurt you like that again.”

  My lip quivered as I watched hard lines form on his face, his nostrils flaring as those horrific scenes must’ve played behind his eyes, too. Blood had stained his neck, and the image of him slicing Conall’s scrotum, the darkness in Jase’s eyes, wild and feral, like he’d snapped, had me curling tighter into him. He’d killed before, I’d seen him wield his knife, but a thick layer of madness masked his eyes, and I wondered if he’d mutilated Conall not so much out of necessity, but for his own enjoyment. Had he been ruined, too? Had he dipped too far into that blackness alongside me? As if both of us had been yanked beneath the water, with our ankles shackled to concrete, reaching for the air we’d never breathe again.

  A manic stroking sensation drew my attention to where his thumb rubbed the back of my palm, back and forth, back and forth. “I remember lying in the grass. The way sunlight hit your hair. I wanted to touch it, but I was afraid my hands were too dirty. You smelled like flowers, and your eyes were the color of clouds before it rained. You held my hand and I remember never wanting to let go.” His fingers curled around my shoulders, holding me tighter.

  In those brief seconds, my mind quieted at the picture he painted for me. As if he knew I'd needed something to replace those fucking images invading my headspace.

  Below me, the water had turned a faint shade of red, and I lifted myself from him, remembering he’d also been injured. “You … you were stabbed.” The tremble of my lip locked my jaw and added a stiff clip to my words.

  “I’m okay.” He pulled me back into him. “He didn’t cut me deep.”

  He had, though. I’d seen the fascia beneath peeking out of the gash.

  “Let me see it.”

  “For fucks sake, Lucy, don’t worry about me.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” My voice cracked, dancing on the cusp of a sob.

  “Don’t be sorry.” He stroked my hair and kissed the top of my head.

  “If you’d have died …” The tears filling my eyes spilled over and slid between his warm skin and my cheek. “I would’ve …”

  “Shhh.” He continued to pet my hair and held me tighter. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  Even if I didn’t believe him, even if I was certain I’d never be the same again, I needed to give him some peace from the pain I could see in his hollowing eyes. So, I allowed myself to detach. Forced myself to disconnect from the hollow ruins of what Conall had left of me.

  60

  Jase

  From the chair I'd propped beside the bed, I watched the slow rise and fall of Lucy's chest, thankful that sleep had finally pulled her under, though I'd had to do an entire sweep of the apartment before she'd contemplate even putting her head on the pillow.

  Only streetlights shining in through the window allowed me to see her face, the cuts where the bastard had sliced her cheek, a reminder that tormented every corner of my mind. The murderous thoughts spinning through my head made it impossible to sleep. My whole body felt wired, primed to annihilate anything that attempted to hurt her again.

  After a little convincing, she’d agreed to have a doctor come visit her, so I'd contacted Frank Bojanski, who knew a guy that made house calls for those trying to stay low-key. Doc Harper, an older guy who carried a black medical bag around, like something out of the early part of the century, was very familiar with the place we were staying, and never once asked questions. He’d examined and dressed Lucy’s wounds, set her fingers, and even stitched my arm up. He’d also left her with some Ambien pills after I’d told him about the nightmares.

  The nightmares had been the worst of it.

  I hated the way she flinched every time I touched her. I hated that, while she slept, her mind might've seen me as the rotten piece of shit who’d hurt her.

  The visuals of Conall defiling her, and the murderous sensation of being strapped to a chair, burned inside my chest every time the thought crossed my mind, which happened to have been most of the night.

  You didn’t protect her. You should’ve protected her.

  The words played on repeat among the shadows of the room. As many times as I mentally slaughtered him, the way I’d wanted to kill him—tearing him apart with my knife and watching his eyes go blank while the blood seeped onto the floor—it didn’t keep the truth from snaking into my thoughts. That I should’ve kept her safe.

  A bright glow hit the surrounding darkness. My muscles tensed when Lucy shifted on the bed, and as the light faded, my eyes sliced toward my cellphone on the nightstand. I reached for it, just catching the flash of a text from Dax.

  News about Kelley. Call me.

  I scrolled through four more texts I'd missed from him, each of them urging me to call right away. Anxious to know what he'd found out, my body damn near shook as I pushed out of the chair and strode across the room, brushing my hand across Black Betty at my hip on the way.

  Not wanting to risk waking Lucy, I stepped out into the dark hallway of the building, scanning the surroundings for any movement, before dialing his number.

  He answered on the third ring. “Jase. Been trying to call you all day, man.”

  I couldn’t have answered ear
lier. I’d spent most of the night, and well into the day, calming Lucy’s nightmares.

  “Viktor gave me the location of the auction,” he continued. “Kelley will be there. They have a girl. Some crime boss’s daughter.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “The old community building. I’ll meet you there at ten.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was already after nine. “I’ll be there.”

  First, I had to find someone to stay with Lucy. I’d thought about calling her father since shit had gone bad, but I didn’t trust the bastard. He was among a handful of men I considered to be the city’s most ruthless, and I sure as hell didn’t need to expose her to more of that.

  Sneaking back into the apartment, I padded quietly into the living room, grabbing Lucy’s cellphone from the coffee table. I scrolled through the contacts until I landed on her friend, Craig, and dialed his number.

  “Hello?” His voice sounded smooth and calm, the complete opposite of mine.

  “Craig. You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Lucy’s.”

  “Who is this?” Suspicion laced his tone.

  I couldn’t blame him. Had I gotten the same call, my alarms would’ve gone off at ‘you don’t know me’ and exploded with ‘a friend of Lucy’s’. “My name is Jase Hawkins.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “For now, yes.” I glanced back toward the bedroom. “But I have to finish something, and I need you to stay with Lucy.”

  “Stay with Lucy? Is … is this a joke? How do I know you’re not some psychopath?”

  Again, I couldn’t blame him, but the clock happened to be riding my ass, and impatience bled into my voice as I snapped, “If you don’t believe me, ask me something personal about her. Something she wouldn’t tell another person.”

  “Okay … what’s the name of her skull on the nightstand? The one she talks to.”