The Vigilantes Collection

by Lake, Keri

  I silenced his argument with a kiss, feeling his fingers curl into my flesh. His mouth tasted like whiskey and sorrow, wrapped in guilt. A familiar cocktail. Threading my fingers through his hair, I pulled him tighter, reveling in his taste, wanting to suck every last drop of shame from his lips. And just like that, my mysterious cravings had a name. Dax.

  Grinding against him elicited visuals of his large body rocking against mine, pinning me to the bed.

  Fucking me.

  Something dark and fervent rose up from my belly, as I kissed him with the same frantic need as a junkie who couldn’t quite get enough of him. My addictions took over, oxygen waned, and my head felt light with dizziness.

  Hands gripped my shoulders, pulling me away, breaking the kiss on a pop of suction.

  Dax breathed hard, his chest rising and falling with every exhale that filled the space between us. “I can’t do this. I want to, but I can’t. And if you think kissing me is going to get me to change my mind about taking you with me, you’re wrong.”

  Any other man and that might’ve been the case. After all, I’d grown accustomed to offering my body in order to get what I wanted. Smile painted on my lips, I slid from his lap, my body trembling with the sudden withdrawal.

  At the doorway, I paused to look back at him hunched forward, still trying to catch his breath. The sight of him taunted me to sit back down on his lap and test his resistance, to toy with my restraint.

  “I didn’t do it for you, Dax. I did it for myself,” I said, and left the room.

  18

  Dax

  Knuckles white, I gripped the steering wheel, staring off at the building across the street from where I’d parked.

  I thought I’d been in just about every abandoned building in Detroit, but I’d never seen the one stood on the corner of the surrounding shithole neighborhood, like something straight out of a horror flick. Some carried an aura about them—sad, abandoned, lonely. The one across from me screamed of bad shit. Evil vibes, like it’d swallow a passerby who’d never be seen, or heard, from again.

  The fuck was I doing there?

  I tossed my gun into the glovebox and double-checked the blade stuffed into my boot by running my finger over the hilt of it. The gun would be obvious, but the blade? Hopefully, not so much, or I’d be a dead man before night’s end.

  Earlier in the day, I’d moved Nicoleta and myself into an apartment owned by an old friend of mine, Frank Bojanski. He and his brother owned several buildings throughout the city, most of them designed for laying low. Single units located in areas with little traffic and small conveniences, like the party store a block up, where I could buy my liquor to deal with the fact the place only had one bed. A discovery that didn’t seem to bother Nicoleta anywhere near as much as it did me.

  Seemed like every day took me one step closer to losing my grip. Each day—as the bruises healed, her eyes beginning to shine, her body to fill out in all the right places—was another day I had to remind myself to control the urges burning inside of me. I couldn’t give in to the temptation. I wouldn’t.

  I knew myself well enough to predict just how much that woman would fuck me up, if I allowed even one small slip. Like that kiss in the bathroom. I could still feel her lips on mine, that sweet poison like sugar on my tongue.

  No, I had to stay focused. Get her what she needed, so I could get what I needed, and the two of us could part ways afterward.

  Climbing out of the car, I scanned the empty streets, before landing on the front entrance. A ratted hotel awning, propped up by two rusted poles, carried the name Grand Hotel. Couldn’t imagine anything grand about the shithole, but maybe in its heyday, it’d been one of the nicer joints on the block.

  Chipped concrete led to a door covered in particle board that’d been spray painted black. More black particle board covered the windows at either side of the entrance, too. Thought it might’ve stood completely empty, until the door flew open, and an older man, perhaps in his sixties, stumbled out. Tall, skinny, wearing a disheveled suit and wire-rimmed glasses that made him look like the quiet accountant who worked in the basement of a big corporation. Definitely not the homeless junkies, or scrappers I’d encountered while exploring abandoned buildings. The smirk on his face held a sort of permanence that reminded me of something straight out of Silence of the Lambs.

  I stood watching him, as he kept on down the sidewalk, occasionally glancing back with that questionable smugness plastered on his lips.

  Something told me I was in for a serious hankering to kill someone before the end of the night.

  Pushing through the front door set me standing in an empty foyer, no less abandoned in appearance, with its decaying wood and peeling curls of paint. Broken furniture, and what must’ve once been the concierge desk, lay toppled and ruined. Papers and grime plastered the floor, just like in every other abandoned shithole in the city. Only it wasn’t like any other. I’d already seen the evidence of that skipping his happy ass down the front stairs a moment ago.

  The abandonment gave it anonymity, concealing what I suspected was going to be some really bad shit.

  A dark and ominous hallway stood before me, and I strode forward, boots crunching against the broken glass scattered across the floor. Hairs on my neck stood high. I didn’t want to see what lay on the other end of the corridor, but that was the shit thing of it, why so many places like that one existed—no one wanted to see. Only those brave enough to open their eyes could put a stop to it, but I’d be lying if my guts weren’t telling me to get the fuck out of there.

  It’d been a couple years since I’d lost Livvie, but finding out how she’d died, seeing it play out on some fucked-up video, would stay with me forever. It’d messed with my head so much, I’d gone in search of a total stranger, putting myself in the crosshairs of one of the city’s most notorious criminals.

  I arrived at a door, and the moment I knocked, a small square peephole door slid to the side, the light from within slicing the surrounding darkness. No word spoken. No instruction, at all.

  I warily slid my tattooed wrist through the hole, and something rough and abrasive scratched against my skin. I clenched my jaw as the burn fanned out from where the tattoo sat on my forearm. The second I slid my arm back out of the hole, the door opened, showing a large, obese man sitting on a small stool—a sight that would’ve been humorous, if not for the anxiety muddling my head. A tiny anteroom, like a coat check at one time, muffled the sounds faintly bleeding through the door ahead of me.

  Staring off, I held my arms up while the guy performed a quick pat-down.

  Something jabbed my arm, and I looked down to see a white mask dangling from the bouncer’s fingers. He didn’t bother waiting for me to slip it on, before he opened the second door and stepped aside for me to pass through.

  That was when I noticed everyone wore the masks, except for the strikingly young girls walking around in bondage wear. One must’ve only been seventeen, standing alongside a husky figure in a suit and tie. She wore a leather under-bust corset, with a strap that climbed up between her bared breasts to a cuff attached around her throat. Two cuffs at her wrists had been attached to small chains fixed to either side of the corset, limiting her movement. Another strap hardly covered her front bits, leaving a small patch of hair peeking out from either side.

  A second girl, maybe slightly older than the first, set her hand on the arm of another man, her getup similar to the other girl’s, aside from an O-ring gag and nipple clamps.

  Must’ve been a dozen girls walking around, while the men sat fondling them, or interacting with each other. Some wore suits, while others wore more casual clothes, like mine.

  Muscles keening with tension, I slid the mask on for anonymity, in the event I ended up killing one of the other disguised motherfuckers by accident.

  The room beyond opened up to what I guessed had been a banquet hall, in its time. Slightly more restored than the lobby of the place, the walls had been painted black with silve
r accents all throughout. Silver trim, silver sconces, and small silver tables and chairs, closing me into a small cage, as I stepped inside.

  Making my way toward the bar, I breathed hard through the mask, a piss poor effort to calm the storm brewing inside of me. Felt claustrophobic all of a sudden. I needed a drink before I risked doing something stupid.

  The bartender strolled up with a rag in his palm, which he used to wipe down the bar’s surface. “What can I get ya?”

  “Whiskey. Double-shot.” The words beat against the plastic covering my face, and I wondered if he could hear the wobble in my voice as I started to lose my shit.

  “You got it, my man.”

  While he poured the double, I looked around the room again. How the fuck would I find the asshole, particularly as I didn’t know his face, even if I could see it? I lifted the mask just enough to tip back the shot, letting the burn kill the string of curses trapped in my throat.

  At the brush of something soft against my arm, I turned to find what had to be the youngest girl in the place. Bile rose up in my throat, while a twinge of panic shot it back down. I’d have been surprised if she was twelve, walking around in tight, black, boy shorts and a top that cut down to her stomach. I wanted to remove my jacket and cover her up, take her out of the shithole, but I fought the urge prodding at my muscles.

  Patience.

  “Wanna hook up?” Her slight voice matched the shame in her eyes, and the way she looked away told me she wasn’t prepared for the rejection she was about to get hit with.

  I couldn’t even look at her without wanting to stab the shit out of every cocksucker in the place.

  How the hell did a young girl like that end up there? A runaway? Did they swipe her up from her family? She go willingly?

  I scanned down to the skinny metal band, so tight around her wrist, it almost seemed fused within her skin. A circular silver object, attached like a charm, had a plastic face that looked like a digital watch. “What’s that?” I asked, ignoring her question from before and trying to keep my eyes on her face instead of the outfit that put her too-small breasts on display. Not as bad as the BDSM suits, but not what I’d call better, either.

  My skin crawled with the encounter, and even if my intentions were to track down and kill one of the assholes in the place, I felt dirty just being there.

  She glanced down and back to me. “GPS tracker. You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I turned slightly away from her, but not so much as to draw too much attention to what was becoming obvious. “First time.”

  Thankfully, she turned, too, hiding herself against the bar top. “I can tell. You look out of place.”

  “You know a Jasper? Comes here, sometimes?”

  With a trill chuckle, she shook her head. “You are new. Only the men call each other by name. We’re not allowed to ask.”

  Probably for the same reason the men wore the masks. Kept it all anonymous and impersonal. In case some bigwig politician, or some shit, showed up. Girls couldn’t identify them.

  My stomach spooled tight at the thought of the girl with some pig four times her age. I wanted to scoop her up and take her the fuck outta there. Get her cleaned up and bleach her brain of however many years she’d been subjected to that depraved hell. I couldn’t, though. Had to stick to the plan.

  “Look, you wanna hook up, or not? I have to meet my quota for the night, and you’re holding me up.”

  “Quota? How many?”

  “First tier is five. If I do more than that, I get a bonus.”

  A bonus? For letting a bunch of sick motherfuckers do whatever they wanted to her for the night?

  I could feel my chest tightening again, the muscles clamping down the way they did just before a fight. “Think I’m gonna have a couple drinks, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself.” She strode off, and the sudden ease of my muscles told me I’d been tense throughout the whole encounter. Three guys down from me, she sidled up next to a slim-built clown, whose grease-stained fingers told me he worked mechanics.

  My foster dad had been a mechanic, his fingernails constantly black, no matter how hard he’d scrubbed them. Always the last thing I’d see before he’d strike me across the face. He’d clocked me in the jaw once, and all I could smell was motor oil, over the coppery tang of blood in my mouth.

  The guy sized her up, eyes scanning through the mask, and when he touched one of her breasts, I had to look away to keep from throttling him.

  Black curls of smoke shifted behind my eyes as something dark and evil brewed inside me. It taunted me to grab my gun from the car and shoot up the place, starting with the fat fuck at the door. I breathed hard through my nose to calm the rage. In the mirror behind the liquor, I caught the reflection of a few men lined against the wall, their holsters sticking out from the waistbands of their pants.

  Couldn’t make a scene in the place. Not when all I had was a knife stuffed inside my boot.

  A body slammed into the bar beside me, and I twisted to see a guy wearing a mask, his wedding ring sunken into chubby fingers. “Hey, Griff, you see where Jasper went?”

  My ears piqued as a shot of victory swam like a school of wriggling goldfish through my veins.

  “Nah. Was just here with a girl a minute ago,” the bartender answered.

  “I run to take a piss, and the asshole leaves.”

  I spun around on the barstool, eyes skimming over the crowd. He’d be impossible to detect, but not her. At the entrance, a tall slim guy walked toward the door with the young girl at his side—a disgusting sight, the two of them. If not for the clothes, they’d have looked like a father and his young daughter walking off, the way he held her hand.

  I pushed through the crowd, eyes latched onto the two of them, as one of the rifle-strapped men, likely a guard, placed a gun-shaped object onto the band across her wrist and a red laser beam danced over the metal. A scanner of some sort.

  The two disappeared through the door.

  Someone’s hand brushed my arm. “Hey, wanna hook up?”

  Giving a dismissive wave, I kept on toward the exit. As I pushed through, the bouncer gripped my arm, and I paused, my muscles poised to draw back and pop the fat bastard in the nose.

  “Your mask. Gotta leave it.”

  Asshole.

  I peeled the mask from my face and tossed it to him, before pushing through the second door. I’d have to scrub the shit out of my skin later, knowing those things were probably shared amongst the men.

  A sliver of light cut through the darkness up ahead, signaling their exit out of the hotel, and I upped my pace to a light jog, following after them.

  No matter what, I couldn’t lose them.

  19

  Nicoleta

  I hated being alone in my thoughts. Particularly sober. My mother had always told me I overthought things as a child—looking into places I shouldn’t have, seeing things I shouldn’t have seen.

  Always defensive and wary of others.

  Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, but also trust in me, she’d say to me, as though she’d had any business asking for my trust.

  Cigarette half hanging out of my lips, I flipped through Dax’s wallet he’d left on the bathroom sink. About three hundred dollars in crisp bills thickened it, along with a few pictures of Luna. The fact that he’d left it told me he either didn’t care if I stole the money out of it, or trusted I wouldn’t. Either way, I couldn’t fathom putting that much faith into someone.

  After all, Dmitry had been like a father to me most of my life, and I still didn’t trust that he wouldn’t kill me if the mood struck him. He’d filled in the holes burned in my memories by the absence of my own father, and taught me things no regular parent had the courage to teach. Yet, the moment he’d gotten wind that the plans we’d made for Tesarik had taken a very selfish and one-sided turn, he’d quickly sought me out like a hound on a fox trail.

  If I’d returned to him, I’d have been punished for
my betrayal, because even if the end result was the same, there was no I in his game. The idea that I would take matters into my own hands would be unacceptable to Dmitry. He wasn’t a man who tolerated betrayal. Particularly from those he’d trusted most.

  * * *

  Marty, whom I’d come to know as the accountant, sat hunched over the books spread out across the small desk he’d been designated in Dmitry’s office. At the bigger desk across the room, Dmitry sat studying papers strewn all over the place, his face concentrated and focused.

  Moving around them, I busied myself with a feather duster, lightly brushing it over furniture that didn’t have much chance to collect dust, seeing as I’d dusted it the day before. Where I lived, dusting happened when I could write my name on the TV stand.

  Looking over the accountant’s shoulder, I noticed Marty working on the same spreadsheet as the day before. Pretty sure it was the same. I recognized the names, each with a dollar amount beside it, with the exception of one missing from the day before. The total at the bottom was off from the day before, too. Didn’t take a genius to figure the list was made up of men who owed him money, with all the numbers showing up green.

  With a glance back at me, Marty frowned, and twisted his computer screen until I could no longer see it.

  I kept along, dusting the bookshelf to the left of him.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” he announced, pushing up from his chair and flipping the screen down.

  “Make it quick.” Dmitry glanced up from a document he’d been reading. “I’m paying you by the hour to produce numbers, not to piss.”

  “Of course, sir.” Marty shuffled out of the office, since Dmitry refused to let anyone use his personal bathroom.

  “I think you’ve dusted enough in here, girl. Go on, find some other way to waste my time and money.”