“Well, if you heard it, then it must be real,” I snarked at him, earning myself the bird he flipped my way.
I took another look around, sweeping my phone’s flashlight in the area. Steel, evidently doing the same, mumbled, “Some kind of truck has been here. SUV maybe. Something heavy.”
I stared where his light was directed and saw what he was seeing and agreed, “SUV. I recognize those tires.”
Giulia snorted. “Of course, you do.”
Nyx tapped her leg. “Link runs the garage for a reason, babe.”
My lips twisted. “Just ‘cause I hate cages doesn’t mean I don’t know how to fix them.” I knew how to fix them too fucking well. Meant most of our customers wouldn’t be coming back as often as they should because I knew my shit.
Of course, I’d tried not to work at the garage. When Rex had dumped the MC’s new businesses on the council’s shoulders, I’d hoped some other fucker would want to run it. No dice. I was stuck getting engine oil in my asscrack for the rest of my natural life.
“That bodes well though, doesn’t it? If there are tracks that means someone’s come here recently.” The hope in Giulia’s voice was painful to hear.
I sucked in a breath. “Could be anyone. Could be hunters.”
To counter my words, there was that noise again.
I whipped around, my phone with me, trying to fucking see where that goddamn sound might be coming from.
“Never heard a bird sing like that before,” Steel grumbled as he slowly turned, his gaze drifting along the tree line. “Something’s here.”
“If that isn’t the creepiest thing you could have said,” Giulia retorted, shuddering as she wrapped her arms around her waist. “This is like the setup for a horror movie.”
Nyx snorted and hauled her into his side. “You’re safe with us.”
“Yeah,” I teased. “Giulia, ain’t you realized it yet? We’re the boogeymen.”
Her only response was to huff, which either meant she thought I was full of shit or she was agreeing. Never could tell with Nyx’s bitch.
“We’re going to have to go into the woods,” Steel stated grimly, and I knew he was just as freaked as Giulia but he wouldn’t say shit.
I’d have goaded the motherfucker for being a pussy but hell, it was creepy. It reminded me of the opening scenes of a horror movie too. When the director was setting shit up to get the audience in the mood. Even the lighting wasn’t on our side. It was bleak and there was a haze to the air. Plus, knowing that some women might be held in captivity around here didn’t exactly make the place fucking cheerful.
Grunting at my thoughts, which were goddamn stupid, I strode forward. The crunching of grass beneath my feet was a giveaway—there was more crunching when my brothers and Giulia joined me. Three more streams of light joined mine as we pushed between the trees and began walking over the soil. It was pretty peaceful in here, but there was a low mist that made it hard to see the ground.
Okay, so this place was beyond creepy as shit.
I’d admit it.
Even if it was only to myself.
As we walked, our feet making too much noise as we stomped through the forest, it was a miracle we heard that weird ass sound again, but we did.
And we all froze.
I thought about what it sounded like, and could only compare it to the clank of a wrench or something clanging against the body of a car. Metal against metal. A dull whine.
Ears pricking up, I peered through the mist, then groaned with relief when a shard of light from the sinking moon pierced the trees.
Giulia whispered, “Oh my God, over there.”
I followed the direction where she pointed with her finger and grimaced at the sight of a shack. Fifteen by fifteen, minimum.
As we processed its sudden appearance, we took off at a run. The sound echoed again, and my belief that it was metal ringing against metal was reiterated as the dull, shrill whistle seemed to be on repeat.
My heart began to race with hope. Someone who was being held captive, who’d managed to hear someone in the vicinity, who was trying to call for help…they’d make that kind of noise, wouldn’t they?
I heard the click of a gun behind me and dug into the back of my jeans where I kept my weapon. Knowing Nyx had armed himself made me want my gun in my paw too, and when I heard Steel’s safety snick off, I knew we were all feeling the same vibe. The same hope. The same concern. Especially as we slowed down the second we got to the shack.
It was made of wood, almost entirely, except for a window beside the door—four dirty glass panes held together by a cross, loaded with spiderwebs and filth. There was guttering around the roof that quivered when a gust of wind whispered through the trees.
“Shit, did we bring anything with us? Food? Fucking clothes?”
Steel’s remark had me jerking in surprise. I twisted around to glower at him. “You serious right now?”
“Yeah. If there are women in there, we need to help them.”
“Yeah, by not shooting the shit,” I ground out, even as I strode forward and pulled the door. It was, not surprisingly, locked. “There are space blankets in each of our saddlebags as well as water and protein bars,” I informed him absentmindedly. The door rattled and shook under my grip, the padlock old and rusty, but there was some wear around the hinges that told me it was used.
“When did you do that?”
“When you were taking a leak before we set off,” I muttered. Twisting to Nyx, I ordered, “Hold the light steady so I can shoot off the padlock.”
The second the stream of his flashlight hit it, I angled myself so it wouldn’t ricochet into my damn face and shot it off. That clanging sound appeared again, confirming that someone was behind it.
Someone in the fucking shack.
Breathing in sharply, I pulled open the door, and the second I did, the stench hit me.
I was a hardened criminal. I’d killed. I’d watched Nyx torture fucking pedophiles. I’d helped torture them. I would kill and kill again for my MC, but that smell? It had me staggering back with my hand to my face to try to cover it.
“Holy fuck!” Nyx spat, and Steel’s curse echoed at the same time.
I wasn’t surprised when Giulia dashed off and the sounds of her puking soon followed.
That stench?
It was death.
We were too late.
Too fucking late.
Then the clanging sound came again and fuck, I realized someone had to be alive in there.
Someone had been living with that goddamn stench.
The prospect of heading toward the smell made my stomach roil like I’d eaten ten ghost chili peppers, but step forward I did. I tried to breathe through my mouth, tried not to inhale the scent, but it was impossible. And then the humming started.
“Coffin flies,” I bit off, the words coming out nasally.
“Sweet fuck, someone’s down there with a corpse,” Steel rasped.
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 relief 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—”
Link: SATAN’S SINNERS’ MC: TWO Page 4