Crossing Stars

by Nicole Williams

  I worked the words out in my head, repeating my replies before I spoke them for fear of slipping and giving something away. “I’m someone who’s about to call the cops if you don’t leave me alone.”

  After an exaggerated yawn, he moved closer. “Go ahead and call them. We own the cops on this side of the city.”

  When he took another step toward me, I swallowed and held my ground. Sadly, I guessed he was right. My father owned plenty of the cops too. Sometimes it was as easy as a hefty annual “stipend.” The more honorable ones caved once a child came down with an illness that no cop’s insurance plan could cover, and a very few others plain refused. The ones who didn’t love or care about anything. Those were the ones you couldn’t buy, the great Krait had said, because a person who doesn’t love anything won’t go to great lengths to preserve that love.

  “You’re right,” I said, patting my purse slung over my shoulder. “Who needs the cops when I can take care of myself?”

  That got a hard, sharp laugh out of him. “My, my, you’ve got some spunk, I’ll give you that.” He let out another bark of laughter which was followed by a crooked smile. “It’s a shame I’ve got to do what I have to.”

  My hand slipped into my purse, searching for the stun gun. “What do you have to do?”

  With that crooked smile still in place, he lifted his hand and kissed a ring . . . on the ring finger of his left hand. “Brand you.”

  My throat ran dry. The fear I’d damned up broke through as I stared at the Dark Claddagh. When heated by a flame and pressed into flesh, it left a permanent mark. More than a few Italian women wore the raised scar of the Dark Claddagh on their cheeks, and I didn’t doubt who the next victims would be.

  “We’re not Italian. We’re not one of the Krait’s.” My words came out in a trembling flood.

  “You sure don’t look Italian, but she is.” The man pointed at Serena—a dancing swirl of curls and limbs—as if he was accusing her of murder. “And that makes you guilty by association.”

  As I continued to back away, the guy stayed in place, watching me with a look that read you can run, but you can’t hide. I’d never felt so aware of that. When I was a few feet from Serena, a couple who was as drunken as their dancing crashed into the man. He stumbled back, giving me the opportunity I needed. Grabbing Serena’s hand, I pulled her from the dance floor, shoving and pushing through a sea of bodies. Her shouts of confusion were only outdone by the man cursing up a storm at the drunk couple.

  “What the hell, Josette?” Serena shouted, pulling against me. “Did you forget to take your extra-strength crazy pills today?”

  I didn’t let her go. My hand was a vice around hers as I charged toward a back corner that had an exit sign glowing above it. I couldn’t hear the angry man anymore and was hoping that he’d lost us in the maze of bodies. Only after we burst through the exit door into some back alley did I pause long enough to take a breath.

  “What was that?” Serena shrieked, staring at me like I was the love child of a lunatic and a mad scientist.

  “One of Moran’s men. He was wearing the Dark Claddagh.” I panted, feeling jumpy and exhausted from the adrenaline in my system.

  Serena’s face ironed out as she glanced over her shoulder, finally grasping the gravity of the situation.

  “We need to get out of here, Serena. They threatened to—”

  “Brand you,” a voice answered from the other end of the alley.

  I couldn’t see him yet, but I recognized his voice.

  Serena spun around, her eyes widening. “You want to show your face, jackass? Or are you going to keep hiding in the shadows like you Moran pieces of chicken-shit like to?”

  I hushed her, but all she did was wave me off and move toward the shadows. I felt like I couldn’t move, and there she was marching toward some hidden danger like she didn’t know how to be afraid. She was owning her fear . . . which made me want to do the same. But when I tried taking a step, I found my feet still stuck to the asphalt.

  “Those are big words coming from a small girl on the wrong side of the city.” The man stepped out from the shadows. Inside the club, he’d been intimidating, but out here, I couldn’t imagine a more terrifying menace. The harsh light from the street lamp cut his face into sharp planes of dark and light, and as he guarded the only way out of the alley, his shoulders seemed as wide as he was tall.

  “You think those are big words?” Serena huffed. “You haven’t heard big yet. Although given your stature and ethnicity, I’m going to go out on a limb and say your notion of big is a teeny-tiny”—Serena pinched her fingers together as her eyes circled a certain region south of his belt—“bit skewed.”

  Whatever bit of amusement had been etched on his face was wiped clean. “I’m going to enjoy this, you mouthy little bitch.”

  “No doubt that’s the only way you’ve ever been able to enjoy a woman, you itty-bitty, teeny-tiny bastard.” Serena picked up an empty beer bottle and flung it at the man, her temper at the run-away-train level. I’d learned from experience that nothing one could say or do would talk her down now, the threat of branding included.

  Standing like a frozen, helpless lump, I glanced behind us. Nothing but a tall cyclone fence. To either side was a building. To the front was a man who looked like he’d been eating three dozen raw eggs for breakfast since he was a child. If we both charged him, one of us would likely be able to get away to get help . . . but who knows how long that help would take to get here. I couldn’t think of any other option. I might be able to climb that fence, but not before any other person could have climbed it over and back five times.

  If I could manage to throw myself at the guy, Serena could rush by to get help. It wasn’t an ideal plan, but it was better than the others I had. My feet were still stuck in place though, and just as I was about to pry them free, two more figures emerged from the shadows. One tall young man, one small, but both wore the Dark Claddagh on their left hands.

  So much for charging by. With three of them, there was no chance of that.

  “Time to send a message back to the Krait.” The man in the middle pulled a lighter from his back pocket and produced a flame.

  “And here’s a message for you three,” Serena shouted, throwing her middle finger into the air.

  The tall guy wearing a track suit clucked his tongue as their trio approached. Serena had thankfully stopped midway between them and me, but from the looks of her fists balling, she was ready to charge again.

  “You Italian women never know when to shut up,” the tall guy said as the muscled man in the middle held the lighter’s flame against his ring he’d just slid off his finger.

  “And you Irish men never know how to get it up,” Serena snapped right back.

  And then the alley erupted into chaos. The small guy charged Serena, moving like he was on wheels. He already had his arms around her and was holding her head back, cheek in the air, before the other two had taken a step. When the guy whose Dark Claddagh was glowing orange started toward Serena, the vines tangling me to the ground split free. Screaming, I charged, not having a plan other than helping Serena—who still didn’t look scared.

  Somehow the stun gun had found its way into my hand. I was only a few paces back from the guy with the smoldering ring when my legs were kicked out from beneath me. Instead of crashing into the man with the brand, I crashed into the loose asphalt of the alley. Pain originated at my knees, traveling up my body, but it was soon drowned out by the chorus of laughter above me. I went to stand, but a foot thrust into my back and kept me down.

  “You want to come at me with millions of volts of electricity?” The man with the glowing ring kneeled beside me, his smile tipping the maniacal scale. “I’ll come at you with a little heat of my own. Give you a personal explanation as to why we’re called the Heat.”

  That was when Serena screamed. She shouted and cursed and stomped, trying to get free, but the guy holding her didn’t budge. As the red-hot ring lowered toward
my face, I sucked in a breath and locked eyes with the man above me. I wouldn’t let myself clamp my eyes closed. I wouldn’t let myself whimper in fear. I wouldn’t let myself coil away.

  I would, if only in this one moment, be the fearless person I’d always wanted to be.

  I could feel the heat pulsing off the ring as it drew nearer, and just as it was a moment from sizzling into my cheek, someone stepped up behind the man beside me. The sound of a revolver being cocked followed. The man with the glowing ring froze, his smile vanishing, as the entire alley went still and silent.

  “Brand her, and I’ll splatter your brains all over the asphalt, Murphy. They’ll be a good deal more useful to the rats than they have been to you.” The voice was male, deeper than it was high, and held just the faintest hint of an accent. An Irish accent.

  “I thought you had the night off, Rylan,” Murphy replied, nothing but his mouth moving.

  “I do. But given there’s so many shit-for-brains like you around, I never really have the luxury of a night off.” There was anger in this Rylan’s voice, anger as red-hot as the ring that had almost been plunged into my cheek.

  “We weren’t looking to make any trouble,” the tall guy said, coming up beside the small one still holding Serena.

  “I’m sure. Trouble just has a way of looking for you three. And finding you.”

  With the foot in my back gone, I was able to twist enough to get a look at this Rylan, who may have come to our rescue or may have only delayed the inevitable. He looked a couple years younger than the other guys but still a few older than me. He was lean and long. His dark blond hair fell past his ears, framing a strong jaw and light eyes. Even in the harsh light, it was obvious that he’d induced plenty of wistful sighs, but his inherent beauty was tempered by the gleaming gun in his hands and the sharp slant of his brow. Even though I tried, I couldn’t stop looking at him. His gaze had yet to flicker my way.

  “Whether it finds us or we find it, trouble surfaces when a couple of Costa girls wind up on our side of The Line,” Murphy said, his chest rising and falling heavily. No doubt because of the cold metal jabbed into the back of his head.

  “Right now, they’re the least of your worries. What you should be worried about, what should be making you piss your pants and plead for your life right now, is that you were about to break the rules.” Rylan’s voice had morphed from anger to eerily collected.

  The other three men almost looked as scared as I had minutes ago.

  “We didn’t break no rules,” Murphy protested, keeping his hands in the air.

  “But you were about to.”

  “Branding Costa cunts doesn’t break no rules.”

  Moving so quickly his arm was a blur, Rylan spun the revolver around and cracked it into the back of Murphy’s head. His heavy body collapsed over me, making me shriek. Murphy’s companions gaped at their friend’s body, waiting for him to rise. From the looks of the bump forming on the back of his shaved head, he wouldn’t be rising anytime soon.

  “You killed him, man. He’s dead, Rylan.” The tall man scampered toward me, rolled Murphy off of me, and pressed his fingers into his throat.

  “If I wanted him dead, I wouldn’t have made it so quick and painless.” Rylan slid the revolver into the back of his jeans and gave each man a warning look. “Leave these girls, and any others who might cross The Line, alone. Branding won’t be tolerated, and if you decide to give it another crack, I’m going to brand my fist into each of your faces. You hear me?”

  A couple of heads bobbed their agreement.

  “Get out of here. If I catch you getting into any more trouble this weekend, I’m cutting off all of your balls and feeding them to my dad’s dog. While you watch.”

  The tall guy swallowed, and the smaller one crossed his hands over his crotch.

  “And take Murphy with you and pass on the warning when he comes to,” Rylan said.

  The short guy practically scurried to the downed man’s body, and after wrestling him up, the two men scurried off, dragging Murphy between them.

  With those men gone, I felt relief flash through me . . . until I considered what kind of person could make three hardened men run away with their tails between their legs. My relief shifted not so much to fear, but more toward caution. Whoever this Rylan was, I knew one thing—he was dangerous.

  “They’ll get a brand of my fist in their faces if they even think about trying that again,” Serena huffed, glaring at the spot where the men had disappeared.

  Rylan’s head whipped toward Serena, the whites of his eyes flashing. “Don’t get me started with you. I might not know exactly who you are, but I know enough. Just like you should have known enough not to cross The Line. I should have let them brand you to teach you a lesson.”

  Serena kneeled beside me, inspecting my face. Her mouth turned down as she studied a spot on my forehead. “The only lesson they would have taught me was that Moran’s Heat are a bunch of brutal, witless thugs. That’s not exactly a lesson I need to be reminded of.”

  Rylan towered over me, seeming to take up the entire Chicago night sky. The bright lights no longer cast across his face, making it appear much softer. “Now that is one point I won’t argue with you.”

  That got both Serena’s and my attention. Our eyes shifted to his left hand, where the ring I’d assumed would be was absent.

  “You’re not one of the Heat?” Serena asked.

  Rylan lifted his left hand, turning it a couple of times, almost like something had gone missing. “That’s . . .”

  “Complicated?” she guessed with an eye roll as she fretted with my coat.

  He kneeled slowly until he was crouching right in front of me. He was somewhere else as he studied the asphalt. “No, not complicated. More like . . . inconclusive.”

  “That makes no sense. Either you’re with them or you’re not.”

  I squeezed Serena’s forearm in warning, hoping she’d shut up sometime tonight.

  “What makes no sense is what you two are doing on Moran turf. That is what makes no sense.”

  I sat up and turned to Serena. Thanks to my tumble to the ground, the motion felt like I was being stabbed with a fork all over my body. I made myself take a slow breath to ease the anger pumping into my veins. “Next time you plan for me to get killed, why don’t you just slip some arsenic into the pizza? That would be a lot less horrifying than this entire wreck of a night!” Was I shouting? At Serena? It sounded like it and felt like it and, from the shocked look on her face, I guessed I was . . . but it was all so foreign. I could almost feel eighteen years of repressed emotions about to bust out.

  “It sounds like you ladies have plenty to talk about. But first, let’s get you on the right side of The Line,” Rylan said.

  “Who says we’re on the wrong side now?” Serena threw back, relentless. I didn’t doubt her last words in this life would be impassioned and tinged with defiance.

  “The wrong side is where a guy would as soon brand you as wink at you.” Rylan’s mouth looked in danger of smiling when his gaze drifted to me.

  I felt like I’d been staring at him for hours, but it was like he was seeing me for the first time. I suppose holding a gun to a guy’s head while scaring off a couple of others had kept him preoccupied. When his light eyes met mine, something inside of me latched on to something inside of him. I didn’t know what or why, but in that first shared look, a tie was formed. Tenuous as it might have been, I could feel it.

  And then his mouth pulled a fraction of an inch higher as he winked. “Lucky for you ladies I’d rather wink at you than brand you. So let’s get you out of here and see to it you stay on your side of the world from now on.”

  Serena shook her head but seemed to relent as she stood and moved to help me up. Before she or I could heave me off the ground, Rylan’s arms wrapped around me. In one seamless motion, he stood with me in his arms and moved down the alley. For a guy who carried a revolver the size of Texas, he was surprisingly graceful.r />
  “I don’t want to be carried,” I said, unsure if I felt more awkward or comfortable being carried by him. Looking at him had been one thing, but having him hold me was something else. The warmth of his skin, the firmness of his body, the scent clinging to him . . . all of it made it hard to tell up from down, wrong from right, his side from our side.

  “And I don’t want you getting blood all over my favorite shirt, but what we want and what we need are two very different beasts.”

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked as Serena caught up to us.

  To stay with us, she had to almost jog. Rylan’s pace was quick and his stride long.

  “Just that if more people focused on their needs and appreciated it once they’d been met, people wouldn’t be so unhappy. They wouldn’t long for some legend-worthy life they’ve convinced themselves they deserve.” At the end of the alley, Rylan paused, checking up and down the sidewalk.

  “I think it’s admirable to have big dreams,” I said.

  Serena nodded her agreement as he led us out onto the sidewalk.

  “Big delusions.”

  “And you?” I asked him. “You don’t have dreams of greatness?”

  His head shook. “Let the fools have their greatness. I want none of it.”

  Serena’s heels clacked on the pavement as she struggled to keep up. I knew he was only trying to get us across The Line quickly, but with all the sound she was making on those stilts, we’d be lucky if we didn’t wake Moran himself.

  “So you carry a giant-ass caliber gun because…? Since we’re so clear on the point that it’s not for greatness,” Serena said.

  Rylan was either growing used to her sarcastic spunk or was unfazed by it. With a wry smile, he replied, “I keep a fifty caliber on my person at all times to keep the fools in search of greatness from doing foolish things—like branding a couple of girls from the other side.”

  “Isn’t that what the law’s for? Keeping people in check?” Serena was almost panting.