His words shouldn’t have been the catalyst, the stench and the flies should have been, but his statement kicked us in the ass. As one, we stepped into the shack, peering around and seeing jack shit. We swept our lights over the ground, saw the cellar door, and rushed over.
The clanging sound came again, softer this time. Weaker. Like someone who’d either given up hope or who’d lost the strength to carry on.
Heart fucking melting, I scrambled to find the handle, but if the gloom outside was bad, in here it was worse. And with the stench making my eyes water and the flies fucking with my ears, it was a wonder I could do anything.
“Stand back,” I roared, the second I found a smaller padlock in the bottom corner of the opening. Giving whoever was down there a few seconds, I shot the lock off as I braced myself for what I was about to see.
But even as I prepared myself, even as I told myself to man the fuck up and deal with whatever chaos Lancaster had left behind, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.
Nothing.
Seeing the shit Nyx could do to sick fucks was nothing in comparison to this.
It coated all five of my senses. In comparison to the sight, the smell, the fucking taste—I could taste it. The sheer evilness, the fucking horror of what I was witnessing drowned all five of them, making me falter for a few seconds as I tried and failed to process it.
Only seeing the girl slumped over, with some kind of pipe in her hand, twitch, jerked me into action.
As I staggered down the few steps into that pit of hell, I realized there were four cages down here. Four fucking cages I wouldn’t have put a goddamn pit bull in. They were half the size of a single bed in both length and width, and how the fuck the one out on the floor had escaped was beyond me.
“Go get the blankets and food, Giulia!”
Nyx’s command had me jerking in surprise, and it had the women in this pit jolting too. A woman, filthy, so filthy I didn’t even see her eyes at first because she was covered in shit and piss—fucking shit and piss—moaned as she slumped onto her back.
My mouth twisted into a snarl as the desire to string Lancaster up by his balls, to eviscerate him, filled me.
I forced my thoughts away from violence and tried to focus on the women. One of them, at least, was dead. That smell, those flies? Someone had to be dead in here.
I flashed my light over the cages, cringing when I saw more fluids, more insects, more of everything no one ever wanted to see, and finding relief when I heard two sets of moans as the women reacted to the light. Only one didn’t flinch. The four cages were lined up in a row. The one to the far left, against the wall, didn’t move, and when I trained the light on her, Steel doing the same, I saw—
My stomach roiled once more, and how I didn’t puke, I’d never fucking know.
Staggering down the stairs, feeling dazed, I made it to the woman on the floor. Hauling her up, I lifted her into my arms, wincing as she pretty much goddamn rattled in my hold. She was a bag of bones, and I passed her up to Steel who I knew would pass her to Nyx.
With her out of the way, I approached the cages. My boots had them flinching, and I whispered, “Luke Lancaster is dead. My brother’s woman killed him. It was slow. She twisted the knife, made sure he hurt, but no amount of hurt is payment for this. My name is Link.” I pointed to Steel. “He’s Steel, and my brother upstairs is called Nyx, and his woman is Giulia. She’s the one who ended that cunt’s life.”
“He’s dead?”
The voice was softer than a whisper, and it was the spookiest shit I’d ever heard. Ghosts were louder than this poor creature.
“Yes.” I gulped. “We’re here to help.”
A cough came from the cage beside the ghost. “Too late for Sarah. Almost too late for us.”
“Too late for Sarah, but just in time for you. What’s your name?” I asked, even as I stepped into the puddles of human waste and tried to find where the openings to the cages were.
“I’m Tatána,” one woman replied, her voice stronger than the ghost’s. “She’s Alessa, and the one you carried out is Amara.”
I hummed at her words, trying to split my attention as I sought a way out for them. It took me longer than I’d like, but there were tiny padlocks keeping them barred. When Steel stepped forward, I cut him a look, saw he had something from only the fuck knew where, and he smashed it into the padlock. On the brink of telling him that wouldn’t work, it worked, and he handed it to me.
It was a brick.
A fucking brick.
The occupant jerked when I slammed into the metal, and maybe fortitude was on my side too, because within five slams, the padlock was broken and I could open the door.
I crouched down, peered inside, and muttered, “You’re going to have to crawl out, honey. I can’t get you out. It’s too small for me.” It was too small for her too. She was crouched on her side in a fetal position, but her legs were relaxed in a way that told me this was as far as she could stretch.
“Too tired,” she mumbled.
“You’re not too tired,” I countered, my throat thickening with tears. Tears! Me. I hadn’t cried at my momma’s goddamn funeral, yet here I was, ready to bawl. “We just got here. You gotta help me help you.”
I flickered a glance at Steel and saw he was chivvying the other girl out. Grabbing her arm, he was half dragging her out of the cage, and although I wanted to shout at him, I knew these women were on the brink of death. If they couldn’t help themselves, we’d have to do the heavy lifting.
Wishing there was more fucking light in here so I could see what I was doing, I reached in, winced when I touched something wet, and tried not to think about it.
Fuck.
Every moment of these past five minutes were going to stick with me for a lifetime, so there was no forgetting any of what was currently going down.
Shoving the thought aside, I grabbed something soft and frail, and started hustling the woman, Alessa, toward the opening. She cried out in pain, and I understood, I did, but fuck, what choice did I have? I had to get her out of there.
Sweat beaded from every single pore as I strained to get her out. She wasn’t struggling, but she was a dead weight, making the job ten times harder. When I managed to maneuver a part of her out of the opening, I wanted to crow with delight, but she slumped, and suddenly, I knew what a deadweight truly felt like.
My heart in my throat, I shook my head, unable to believe we’d come so close only to fucking lose her.
Rage filled me, it burned me from the inside out, and though I was pretty strong anyway, a level of power I’d never tapped into hit me at that moment. It helped me haul Alessa out of the tiny space, helped me drag her onto the filthy floor, and it helped me carry her out of that poisonous prison and into the outside world, where there was only the vague scent of death, rotting flesh, the pungency of a mass wave of insects, and human shit.
Giulia was there immediately, and I wasn’t surprised when she retched, even as she held open the space blanket so I could wrap Alessa in it.
“I-I think she’s dead,” I bit off, even as I pressed the bundle to the ground.
“No. She just fainted,” Giulia rasped, as she pressed a hand to Alessa’s chest. “Feel. There’s a slight vibration. She’s breathing.”
Hope swirled inside me. “She needs help.”
Giulia nodded, but after she licked her lips, she whispered, “But how?”
These women needed medical attention, but I knew why Giulia was at a loss. If we got involved, somehow the cops would make it so that we were the ones who’d abducted the women. They’d squirrel into our lives, into our world, ruining it because they could Capone us—get us on a charge that had nothing to do with our business to shut down our operation and jail us, even if we’d done nothing wrong to these women.
“Can you drop us off somewhere?”
I jerked in surprise at the ghost’s voice. It was a gentle susurration of sound that whispered along my ears, filling me with r
elief that she was awake again. “You’re too weak to move. You need help. A lot of it.”
The ghost’s laugh was eerie. “You’d be surprised what we can do. We’ve survived this far.”
Gutturally, I responded, “I know you have. You’re warriors, but now’s the time to heal. You’ve done the fighting, now you need to rest.”
“I know your MC. I heard of them when I was working over in Newark.” She smiled, her brutally thin lips pulling taut against her jaw. That smile told me she knew something about us, something she probably shouldn’t know.
I twisted around so I could look at her, and when her eyes caught mine, there was a stillness there that, oddly enough, calmed me.
Whatever had happened to her in that pit, and it didn’t take much fucking guessing, she knew that sometimes, self-confessed sinners weren’t all in possession of midnight souls.
“I have a burner phone,” Nyx inserted from his crouched position at Amara’s side. “We could place you somewhere and you could make the call for help.”
Steel shook his head. “No. We need to keep this shit under wraps. Giulia’s already in enough shit because of that Lancaster cunt. Last thing we need is to have the cops sniffing around us over this. You know as well as I do that they’ll pin this shit on us.” He sucked in a breath, one that sounded oddly shallow as he muttered, “We need to bring Stone in.”
My eyes widened at that. “Fuck me, has the world just come to an end?”
He scowled at me. “What?”
“You heard me. Thought the only time you’d even fucking breathe her name was if Bruce Willis was stuck on a meteorite above us.” I peered up at the sky. “Where’s Aerosmith? They gonna burst into song?”
He flipped me the bird. “Fuck you.”
I just shrugged. “Too many ladies want to fuck me for me to waste my fine self on my fist.”
A soft snort escaped the ghost, and I peered down at her and grinned. Maybe now wasn’t the moment for a conversation about classic movies—and fuck yeah, I considered Armageddon a golden oldie classic—and maybe I shouldn’t be joking when these women had been laying in their own shit for only fuck knew how long, but Christ, that smile on the ghost’s face? I knew Steel was right.
Stone could help.
If she’d agree to come to the clubhouse, that is. We all knew Steel and Stone hadn’t exactly parted ways as friends, and considering that was all they’d ever been, I wasn’t even fucking sure how two good friends with a solid relationship like theirs could sour so damn badly.
He slipped his phone out of his back pocket. The screen lit up and he put in the code—don’t know why he bothered. Everyone knew he used Marilyn Monroe’s birthday for all his fucking passwords—and started scrolling through his contacts.
“You don’t have to do this, brother,” Nyx rumbled, sounding, as usual, dark as fuck.
“Yeah. I do. For the MC.”
I pulled a face at that, because even if it was best for us, I wasn’t sure if it was best for the women. “Stone can’t do all that a hospital can for them,” I pointed out softly, and I wasn’t even joking when I said, “Save the sacrifice for another time, bro. These ladies need proper medical attention. They’re starved, their bodies are—”
“Please. Don’t take us to a hospital.”
Ghost’s words had me rearing back in surprise. If anything, I’d have thought she’d want to go back to civilization. “Huh?” I asked, dumbfounded.
“Please.” When she started shifting on the ground, moaning as she moved, I realized she was trying to sit up. “Don’t take us to the hospital.”
I considered myself a dumbass because, just that second, I heard the accent. “You’re an illegal, aren’t you?”
She sagged against the ground. “We all are.”
“That changes things,” Nyx rumbled. He cut Steel a look. “Get Stone on the line. I’ll talk to her.”
“Ain’t no one gonna mention that it’s fucking weird as shit you still have her number?” I questioned.
“I keep an eye on her,” Steel rasped, even as he connected the call and put it on speaker.
“Have pigs started flying? Or has hell frozen over? Far as I know, that was the only time you said you’d talk to me again.”
Steel’s top lip snagged into a snarl, but he turned his face away at the sound of Stone’s voice and left it to Nyx.
Never thought Nyx would be the rational one in a situation like this, but fuck, these were trying times.
“Stone, it’s Nyx.”
“Nyx?” Stone sounded confused. “Oh my God,” she rasped. “Oh, God. I’ll be right there! Don’t you let that fucker die, do you hear me? I’ll drag him back from hell if I fucking have to. Do you hear me, Nyx?” she screamed, making the ghost jolt on the ground in surprise.
“I hear you, honey,” he replied, tone soothing as he shot me a wry look. “We’ll keep him going until you get here.”
“Good,” she barked, then cut the call.
I blinked at Nyx before we both turned to Steel.
“She thinks I’m dying?” Steel growled. “And that’s the only way she’ll come back?”
“Look on the bright side, she doesn’t want you to die.”
He didn’t appreciate my help because he glowered at me.
“At least she’s coming to the compound.”
“Because she thinks I’m dying,” he reiterated.
“Some men would think that was a compliment,” the ghost whispered, but again, I heard a sliver of amusement in her voice.
How the poor woman could find anything humorous about this fucking situation, I didn’t know. But sweet fuck, I was just grateful she wasn’t sobbing and was coherent.
“Stone always did know how to fucking insult me,” Steel ground out.
“Not sure it’s an insult. She doesn’t want you to die, bro,” I pointed out. “I mean, she wasn’t all, ‘let me roll up so I can spit on his grave.’ She wants you to live. Ghost’s right, that’s pretty much as big of a compliment as someone can give to another person.”
“If she’s on her way, we need to be on ours too,” Nyx stated, putting an end to the conversation with a firm tone. Just because the dude was a sick motherfucker didn’t mean he wasn’t the bomb at being the Enforcer.
“They can’t ride on the back of a bike,” Giulia muttered weakly, and I cut her a look, unsurprised to see she was close by but had propped herself up against a tree.
This situation would traumatize anyone. But someone who’d only recently been traumatized? Fuck, it was a wonder she wasn’t catatonic.
When Nyx glanced at her, I knew he saw that too and his face darkened in a way that, usually, he dedicated to the bastards he slaughtered. This one was only softened by the love in his eyes.
Yeah, the love.
Giulia didn’t burn to nothing at the sight. Didn’t disappear into a puddle of ash at the foot of the tree. If anything, she shot him a shaky look and rasped, “I’m okay.”
“You’re not,” he instantly countered.
“I’ll be okay then.” She blew out a breath. “We need transport. The MC is too far away to help.”
“It’s three hours away, Giulia. Not Mars.”
“Look at them and tell me we have time to fuck around?”
Ghost cleared her throat. “If we could just eat something, maybe that would help?”
Steel pulled a face. “Don’t you need, like, fluids or something?”
“You got sports drinks in those Mary Poppins bags of yours? Or just water?” Nyx questioned.
“Just water,” I hissed under my breath. “Dumb of me to forget.”
“Water would still be nice,” the ghost whispered.
I flinched, because of course it fucking would be.
“I’ll go get the bags.”
“Nyx brought them already,” Giulia murmured, as she began to riffle through the saddlebags that were at her side. Bags I’d only just seen.
In my defense, it was still gloomy as fu
ck around here. Couldn’t see for shit, and trust me, there was enough shit around this place for that to be true.
The dawn light was too weak to make that much of a difference on the forest, and it was a reminder that even though I felt like I’d aged a good two years since I’d first entered these woods, it had probably only been sixty minutes from start to finish.
Sixty minutes from hell, and fuck, if a Satan’s Sinner said that?
He meant it.
Three
Link
It took four hours to get shit sorted.
A quick Google told us there was a rental place a thirty-minute drive away, and Nyx and Giulia took off to pick up a van and a fuck ton of water and sports drinks from the nearby Walmart.
I didn’t want to know what Giulia had to do to help the women, but giving them some privacy to do it had been hard enough. There’d been cries of pain, moans of discomfort, and each and every time I heard their hurt, I wanted to grind Lancaster’s dick into dust.
That my violence would never be able to come to fruition pissed me off all the more.
I was glad the fucker was dead, but you could only die once, and that bastard? He needed to die a thousand times.
With our backs to the women as they cleaned up using the baby wipes Giulia had also brought with her, I wasn’t entirely sure how they thought they could scrape off what appeared to be weeks’ worth of grime with some wipes. I mean, Johnson’s were good, but that good?
Hell, I wasn’t even sure if a good old soak would get the crap off their skin.
But, try they had, and though they didn’t look or smell much better when Giulia came to us to let us know they were done, the women appeared a bit perkier, and by perky, I meant they didn’t look like they were going to die on us.
Which, considering we were leaving Sarah behind until we could return with the appropriate gear to bury her, was too apt.
Death was on the horizon if we didn’t make it home and fast.
Amara was the weakest, and I figured that was because she’d expended the most effort by escaping her cage—I wasn’t even sure how she’d done that, but I was grateful she had. Only that clanging noise she’d been making had given us a clue as to her location.
Forgotten & Found: A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Boxset Page 32