by Rie Warren
“MERCY AND ANGEL?” SAINT had chuckle-chuckled. “Y’all gonna start your own cult or something?”
“Angel and Mercy? What are you gonna name your kid . . . Saint?” Revenge had snorted. “Oh, wait. That’s already taken.” He’d slid an evil glance at his buddy.
“Angel and Mercy.” Slade had shaken his head. “Fuck’s sake. I feel like we’re losing our street cred here.”
Yeah, as soon as they found out the name of my mystery woman, the dudes began piling on the bullshit. It was funny at first.
But that was three friggin’ days ago, and Mercy hadn’t called me.
No sign of my honey-haired, honey-voiced gamine. She’d left me with a sweet kiss that dug down deeper in my bones than any one-night-stand with any cherry I’d ever taken to bed.
Something felt seriously off, and that rankled. I’d even cruised the roads and combed the streets on my bike just in case she was out there wandering around somewhere.
Worry drilled new holes in my heart and in my gut.
I’d never felt like this about a woman before. Protective and anxious and I just plain wanted her. Shit, I hadn’t even glanced at a broad let alone bedded one since I’d laid eyes on Mercy.
Just before opening the bar for the night, I’d pulled up a chair next to Sol’s stool out front.
I scowled into the distance after scanning up and down the street to see if by some goddamn miracle I’d catch a glimpse of Mercy.
Sol gnawed on a soggy toothpick, tapping his ancient battered tongs against the grill in time to music only he could hear. “Who you be lookin’ for? The fantôme?”
“You saw her? That girl? Mercy?”
“She be hungry as a baby bird without a momma dat night. Fed her up on some good vittles before I sent her into the bar.”
Spinning right around on my seat, I gave him my full attention. “Did you see what direction she came from?”
“She a haint.” He squinted at me.
“Merde, Sol. Don’t give me that mystic juju voodoo bullcrap. You fed her. You talked to her. She’s not a ghost.”
“’Bout skinny as one.” He plugged his toothpick back into his mouth. “Pretty petite mamzelle. She haunted at least.”
“Yeah.” I sighed and slumped, weary to my bones. “I thought so too.”
Now a couple hours later, she’d turned up at the bar just like a fantôme. Sol ushered her inside, and I knocked fuckers out of my way to get to her faster.
She looked pale as a ghost, appearing even more waiflike. And fading bruises marred her face.
Murderous rage zipped through my vitals, followed by a cold premonition when she looked up at me—eyes turned a dull brown color—and said, “My family’s coming after you.”
The joie de vivre party atmosphere in Thunder Road pulsed around us, and Saint looked about ready to rip another Angel and Mercy zinger. One dark look from me, and he dragged Revenge with him to the opposite side of the bar.
Taking Mercy’s hand, I led her to the chapel where at least we’d have some privacy.
I shut us inside and carefully traced the yellow-green bruise on her cheek with just my fingertips.
She shuddered, eyes closing.
She swayed toward me, but as soon as I ran my arms around her, she popped upright.
“You said your family’s out to get me, cher?”
“Did you know it was me?” Sudden accusation hardened her voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Did you know who I am? Is that why you pretended to be so interested in me the other night?” A world of hurt seemed to drown the bright gold flecks from her eyes.
“Look, Mercy, all I know is your name.” I ached to take her in my arms, but I held back. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“You killed my brothers!” she spat out, flinging blame for something I was sure I hadn’t done.
“Whoa there. Your brothers? I don’t think so.”
“Maybe you did me a favor.” Anger dissolving, she slumped like I had outside earlier. “But the rest of my folk have come to town now, and they want revenge against Blood Legion.”
I had no frigging clue who her folk were . . . or her brothers . . . but maybe they were the reason she seemed to be so haunted.
Maybe some other man had done her real wrong.
“I’ll just show you,” she whispered, one tiny teardrop escaping to course down her swollen cheek.
Wearing what looked to be the same T-shirt as the other night, she began tugging on the loose neckline.
To show me her breasts?
“Merde. Stop!” I covered her hands with mine. “Whatever you’re thinking, I don’t want us to be like that. I’m not an animal, Mercy.”
She wrenched away from me and exposed the upper hill of one breast. She exposed . . .
A sick twisting sensation roiled in my belly.
She’d been fucking branded?
Her skin flamed red and puffy in the shape of a hideous swastika.
That cold premonition crept back in. Coupled with white hot fury. My hands shook so much I had to ball them into fists. And to make sure I didn’t punch a hole through the wall right next to my bullet slug, I clenched those fists beneath my armpits.
“The White Lair.” My voice emerged like a husk of sound.
Nodding, she pulled the shirt back into place.
“They did this to you.”
She nodded again, another tear joining the first.
“Your folk. The neo-Nazis.”
The bleakest of eyes lifted to mine. “You can’t choose your blood.”
Those motherfucking Tenn-tucky cunts! I didn’t know if I’d killed her brothers or not, but right then I really hoped so. I really fucking hoped so. Because they’d be joined in hell soon by the rest of her folk if I had anything to say about it.
“They did it because they found out you’d been here?” Fist at my mouth, I was flushed with adrenaline racing through my system.
But I already knew the answer, and I didn’t hear Mercy’s reply because Slade shouted loud and clear from the bar, “We got company!”
Company meant bad shit.
Company probably meant those fascist thugs.
I went for my shotgun stored in the lockbox on the side table. Loading bullets, I turned just in time to see Mercy fleeing.
“Wait! Mercy, goddammit!” The last thing I saw was her hair streaming behind her as she bolted for the bar.
Then Slade was in my face. “Did you hear me?”
I held up my gun. “What do you think?” Stalking past him, I loaded two bullets into the chamber. “The White Lair is back.”
“Figured that.” He unsheathed his KA-BAR.
In the barroom, I encountered mayhem, Crescent City style, just as Mercy whipped outside the front door.
“What should we do?” One of the man buns bleated while the rest of Legion pulled out hidden blades and guns.
“You ever handled a weapon?” I looked out the front windows, almost blinded by huge fog lights on giant pickups decorated with Confederate flags.
“No.”
“Then I hope you’ve got life insurance.”
Passing by the hopeless hipsters, I barged outside. My first shot took out the tire of the nearest hick vehicle.
Sol brandished a pistol that could’ve been as old as he was. As Saint, Slade, Revenge, Chase, Lennox, and the rest converged around me like the usual wall of black leather and bad fucking ass, the Aryan assholes leaped down from their mud-runners.
Thought we’d wiped those cunts out the last time. Now there was a whole goddamn clan of them.
Or was it Klan?
“You see which way Mercy went?” I asked Sol.
“Got Mercy girl right here.” The leader of the rank pack shoved my girl down to her knees in front of him as he came right into the spotlight. “Most men pay to fuck this cooch, so I think you owe me.”
I cocked my gun and took out one of those fucking fog lights. “There
’s my down payment!”
My shot heralded a call to arms.
Everyone rushed at once, a mob in the middle of the street. Skinheads against big burly bikers. Fists flying. Shots whistling. Shouts and cries and gurgles of pain.
Maybe they were out for revenge, but I felt no guilt for culling their clan that one time.
I ducked as a slug whizzed past my head then I blocked a knife aimed for my gut. “Not so fast, racist punk.”
I used the butt of my gun to knock some sense into the skinhead. He conked out on the pavement, and I jumped over his body to back up Revenge.
Taking on three brass knuckle wielding whities, he sparred with bare fists. He popped off body shots like a trained boxer. I blasted one of the scumbags to the ground—nonlethal force of course—and Revenge unleashed a right hook that sent another Nazi-tatted twat into next week.
The third punk jabbed Revenge in the face, and I took his attacker down at his legs, hogtying the dirt-bag with his own belt buckled around his wrists and ankles.
Revenge merely laughed as blood burst from his nose. “Haven’t been in a brawl like this since lockup.”
Shit.
Hurrying to the next fray, I took a headbutt to my face that sent me spinning.
I lost sight of Mercy.
A knife grazed my bicep.
I disarmed the Tenn-tucky cunt and face-planted him against the wheel well of some redneck’s truck.
Slade lightly wounded a dickbag who came out of nowhere to aim a gun at my temple.
After disarming the fuck, Slade muttered, “You good?”
“Bien.”
“Where’s Lennox?” Slade pulled what looked suspiciously like a blasting cap from the pocket of his vest.
I looked around the melee until I saw Lennox standing in the center of four dancing monkeys AKA white supremacists. He seemed to be playing an impressive game of Eenie Meenie Miney Splat with his block-sized fists.
“Where’s Mercy?” I scanned the area again. “I can’t find her.”
“Jesus, Angel.” Slade pointed to the truck parked right up against the bar.
The leader—an older skinny skinhead—looked like he was about to bash Mercy’s head against the grate of the truck bed.
Stomach rising up to my throat, I ran.
The nasty bastard backhanded her so hard I imagined her eyes knocked around in her skull.
Bile rose to my throat too.
“Mercy!” I bellowed.
I hopped over brawlers, gun in hand, prepared to shoot and kill.
“What’d I tell you about running away again?” The hillbilly fuck reared back, hauled Mercy’s head up, and was just about to pistol whip her. “You keep on actin’ up, and I’ll belt you to within an inch of your life.”
The next thing I knew, Mercy kneed her captor in the balls. He bent over, hawking and cursing up a storm. Mercy scrambled away, snarled hair in her face, eyes wild in her head.
I hurried after her, lungs pumping, legs pumping. I’d just about caught up to her when the whole world went KABOOM!
Screaming noise and blinding light blasted out, and I’d been around an explosive or two. Enough to know to get down and stay the fuck down.
A pickup hurtled from the pavement, flying end over end over end as flames ignited in a white yellow glory.
The cab crashed down to the street, glass blowing out like deadly shards.
The dust hadn’t even settled yet when I shot off my gun, my ears ringing, my legs rubber.
The skinheads came out of the woodwork, hands raised.
“Get the fuck off my property and out of my quarter before I plug your chests full of holes and ruin every ugly supremacist symbol on your bodies!”
Scraping their wounded up off the pavement, they scattered to their trucks and skedaddled away.
Then I wheeled on Slade as soon as he stalked over. “Explosives? Really?”
“Just a little something I picked up from Walker.” A little grin eked out between his lips.
“Semtex?”
“What’s a little flash bang between friends?” He shrugged.
“Might be hard to explain to the po-po.”
“Don’t think anyone will report it.” Facing the bar, which he hadn’t blasted to smithereens, he pointed to the hipster crew out front and already on their phones. “On second thought . . .”
Fuck. Me.
Another mess to clean up, and I didn’t know where Mercy had run off to.
Toting my shotgun on my shoulder, I rounded on the fools who’d probably never seen a street fight before, let alone participated in one. “Listen up! Any one of you tweets or posts or Instagrams or whatever-the-fuck about what went down here and you’ll be barred from my bar for life.”
The phones were tucked away just like that.
But among the sea of faces, I didn’t see the one that mattered most.
“Where’s Mercy? MERCY!”
“Angel? Mr. MC President dude?”
I spun to find one of the man buns . . . carrying a pale white Mercy.
“Mon Dieu! Was she shot?”
Chapter Four
MERCY
I STRUGGLED UP TO consciousness, awakening in immediate battle mode. My fist connected with the first thing I came into contact with just as my eyes flew open.
Angel howled, cradling his ribs. “Damn girl, you don’t pull any punches, do ya?”
Chagrin swept through me, and I scrambled upright in . . . a bed? “Oh no! Oh I’m so sorry.”
“Shhh. It’s okay.” He winked. “Not the only hit I took tonight.”
“I . . . what happened?”
He moved a little closer to me, edging up on the mattress. “You don’t remember any of it?”
I remembered a heck of a lot more than I wanted to. My folk attacking the MC. Guns and fists and knives. Uncle Ned’s foul words and his head-jarring smack.
“Did I faint or something?”
A worried crease dented between Angel’s brows, and his fingers skimmed along my jaw. “Think you lost consciousness, oui. I don’t mind saying you had me worried there.”
I leaned into his reassuring touch. “How long was I out?”
“Maybe an hour or so.” He gnawed on his bottom lip, lids dropping down to hide the lupine blue of his irises. “Brought you up to my room over the bar after we chased off your . . . your people.”
I shrank back, so embarrassed, so ashamed.
“Missed the fireworks though.”
I chanced a look at him. “Fireworks?”
His chuckle sent waves of longing through me. “My guy Slade. And some explosives. And one of your relative’s pickups. Kaboom.”
Oh lord. I was gonna be in so much trouble. The fallout would be a thousand times worse than a brand burned on my breast or a pistol-whipping across my face.
Angel drew my hands between his, frowning. “I’m not sorry about your brothers, Mercy.”
I wasn’t either, but this could never end well. Ned would kill Angel, and I’d pay the price. I already was.
“Did anyone get killed tonight because of me?” Nothing but worn out weariness filled me. “Any of the people in the bar or your friends?”
“No. Nobody.” He gently caressed the new swollen bruise on my cheek. “None of us got hurt. No one but you.”
I shrugged away from him. “I’m used to it.”
“That makes it a hell of a lot worse.” His lips thinned into a grim line. “Look, I think I should explain though. About what went down last time.”
It didn’t matter what he said. Nothing but blood for blood would make any difference to Ned.
When I didn’t respond one way or the other, Angel dragged a hand through his hair.
“That night, Miller drew first. Back then we were . . . let’s just say we weren’t on the up and up. We’d gone to the Lair to do an exchange—coke for money—and one of our members was a Creole of color. Miller took offense.” Angel’s lips twisted, and more shame heaped onto my sh
oulders.
“I was there. I’m to blame as much as anyone else even though I wasn’t in charge back then. But like I said, we don’t hold with racist scum.” A hard expression settled on his face.
The shame trebled, and I wanted to crawl inside myself.
Angel exhaled a deep breath, rolling his shoulders. “Who was the bastard that took a swing at you.”
“Ned. My uncle.”
“Merde.” Gravel in his voice, Angel cut a somber look at me. “The others?”
“My cousin Ricky and my brother Vernon among them.” I swallowed down all the tears closing in on my throat.
A muscle in Angel’s jaw ticked.
He rose off the bed and stalked a few paces away. “Which one of them put that fucking brand on you? ’Cause I promise you, he’s a dead man.”
I sniffled, voice falling to a dry whisper. “All three of them had a hand in it.”
“Goddammit!” Letting fly with his booted foot, he kicked a chair halfway across the room.
I startled, wrapping my arms around my knees I hugged up to my chest.
“Sorry.” He rushed back to me, concern all over his rugged face.
He rubbed his large hands up and down my calves, squeezing my ankles through the worn leather of my boots. “Sorry. I’m sorry that happened to you, and sorry it was because of me.”
“It’s not really your fault, Angel.”
“The hell it’s not.” Shaking his head so the blond waves tousled even more, he blew out a breath.
Then he looked up, and something lighter danced in his eyes.
“Say. You always bring party favors to a brawl?” His gaze fell to the garrote sitting on the nightstand.
He must’ve found the wire clenched in my hand when I passed out.
“’Cause if so, I think I’d like to keep you around.” A heart-skipping grin curved his mouth to settle deep dimples in his cheeks.
But his words nettled.
Because more trouble waited for me the longer I stayed away from the Lair compound.
“I should get back.” Planting my feet on the floor, I shook off a wave of dizziness.
Angel’s hands on my shoulders stopped me from getting up, and his eyes blazed down at me. “The fuck you’re going back there. No way. No way, Mercy.”
“Why do you care? I’m one of them. I’m branded. I’m disgusting.”
