Passing the Torch (Devil's Knights 2nd Generation Book 1)

by Winter Travers

  I dropped my keys and purse on the kitchen counter and kicked off my shoes on the way to the bedroom. I pulled my shirt over my head and screamed as it dropped to the floor.

  “You’re home.” Harry stood in front of my open closet, a ladder behind him, and a rope in his hand.

  I pivoted on my heel, escaping my only thought, but Harry lunged toward me and grabbed my wrist. He yanked me down onto the floor and covered me with his body. He wound the rope around my neck and tightened it. The fibers of the rope dug into my skin, and a sick smile stretched across his lips.

  His legs clamped down on mine, and he pinned me into place. “Your skin is even prettier when you’re awake.”

  I clawed at his arms trying to get away. “No, please no,” I pleaded.

  He grabbed my wrists with one hand and wrapped the ends of the rope around them. “The more you struggle, the more I’m going to hurt you.” He leaned down to me and licked my cheek. “I like to see you hurt,” he hissed.

  My mind raced with a thousand thoughts and panic washed over me. “Harry, please. I don’t know what I did. Please just let me go.” Why was he doing this? What did he want? How was I going to get out of here? What should I do?

  My eyes darted around frantically looking for something to help. He had me pinned in front of the closet, and I saw the hatch to the crawl space was hanging open.

  Oh, my God.

  I quickly connected the dots in my head.

  Harry had been sneaking into my place through the crawl space. But how? Why? There wasn’t access between his place and mine. At least, there shouldn’t have been.

  “We don’t have much time,” he said it out loud, but he wasn’t saying it to me. I looked around frantically but didn’t see anyone else in the room with us. “Because her fucking boyfriend will be here to fuck her.” He yanked me off the floor, the rope around my neck loosening.

  “Harry, stop please. Listen to me.”

  He looked straight at me and shook his head. “There isn’t anything left to say.” He reared back and punched me square in the nose. Stars flashed before my eyes, and I stumbled backward. He hit me again, this time in the eye, and I fell to my ass. He kicked me in the stomach. My breath whooshed out of me.

  His knee connected with my forehead, and I fell back. “Not time for sitting, Sunshine.” The nickname Hero used for me dripped with disgust from his mouth.

  Harry bent over and threw me over his shoulder. “Let’s get her fat ass over to our place.”

  His words were again out loud, but they weren’t meant for me. Harry was having a conversation with himself. He was off his fucking rocker and was hauling me up a ladder to the crawl space above my duplex.

  I tried to scream, but I couldn’t get a deep enough breath. Someone would hear me if I screamed. I just had to scream until they heard me.

  Harry grabbed the rope that was hanging from my neck and twisted it tightly. My breath whooshed from my lungs again, and I squirmed against him.

  He yanked my head back. My body slid off his shoulder and hit the ladder. He pushed my head up into the crawl space and hefted my body through the hole.

  The rope on my wrists loosened, and I flipped over on my stomach. My head rolled, and I slammed my eyes shut. Bile climbed up my throat, and I gagged violently.

  “Where the hell does she think she’s going?” Harry called.

  I had to get up. I had to figure out how to get away.

  Harry grabbed my foot and yanked it backward. I fell down on my stomach, and my face slammed against one of the two by fours. I groaned groggily and opened my eyes. Across the span of my crawl space, there was a large hole cut into the drywall that originally separated my place from Harry’s. A bright light shone through the hole, and music echoed up from his duplex.

  “Why are you doing this?” I slurred.

  A firm hand gripped my hair and yanked my head back. Harry’s mouth brushed against my ear, and disgust rolled through my body. “You were mine. Now you’re his.” He laughed low. “Now you’ll be dead, and we’ll be together.”

  He lifted me up and pushed me toward the hole to his duplex. I stumbled, crashing down on my knees. He grabbed me around the waist and dragged me through the hole.

  “What a Wonderful World” by Louis Armstrong played loudly through the open hatch to his duplex. “This was supposed to be our song,” Harry drawled. “But then you went and fucked it up!”

  Harry was absolutely insane. I had barely spoken to him, and he had us together in his head. “We need to talk, Harry.” Maybe I could calm him down enough that I could get away.

  He dragged me to the hatch to his duplex, and I looked down at the white carpet beneath us.

  “Sure. We can talk down there.” He knocked my feet from under me, and I fell forward into the hole. My head smashed against the hard wood framing, and my body crumpled on the floor of Harry’s bedroom. The world rolled for a second and then everything went black.

  *

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Hero

  “You know Reva?”

  I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head. “Yeah.”

  “That her car?”

  I looked back at Reva’s car parked in the same spot it always was. “Yeah.”

  “Then where the hell is she?”

  “You her landlord?” I asked.

  I had stopped over at Hair of the Dog, but Reva’s car wasn’t there. I figured she had headed back to her place to meet with her landlord.

  “Yeah. I tried to call her when I was on my way over, but she didn’t answer.” He hitched his thumb toward the door. “I’ve been knocking on the door for five minutes, but she’s not answering.”

  I stalked to the door and pounded on it. “Reva!” I shouted. A sick feeling rolled through my stomach when she didn’t come to the door. I pulled out my phone and called her cell.

  “Her phone is ringing in there. I can fucking hear it. She fell asleep or something?” her landlord asked.

  I listened closely and heard her ringtone through the door. “You got a key?” I demanded.

  He shook his head. “She said she would meet me here, and I didn’t think to bring my keys.”

  Son of a bitch.

  I walked around the back of the duplex and pounded on the back door. I called her name again but there was silence.

  “Yo, I’m gonna call the cops, buddy. This isn’t right,” her landlord called.

  I jogged around to the front of the house and pounded on the front door one last time. “You got insurance, right?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he replied.

  I rammed the door, crashing my shoulder into the hard wood. It didn’t budge. I stepped back. “You wanna fucking help here?” I growled at her landlord.

  He dropped the phone and stepped next to me. I counted to three, and we both planted our shoulders into the door. It slammed open.

  Reva’s purse was on the kitchen counter along with her phone and keys.

  “I’m calling the cops.”

  I didn’t care what he did. I had to find Reva.

  She wasn’t in the living room.

  She wasn’t in the bathroom.

  The door to the second bedroom was open, but she wasn’t in there.

  Her bedroom door was wide open. The shirt she had been wearing this morning was on the floor, along with a smear of blood. A ladder was tipped over in front of the closet, and the trap door to the attic was open.

  What the fuck? I righted the ladder and quickly climbed up. I peeked my head in, and my heart dropped out of the chest.

  A large hole was crudely cut into the dry wall that separated Reva’s attic from Harry’s. I hoisted myself up and made my way through the hole. I pulled my gun out of the waistband of my pants and leaned over Harry’s open attic door. No one was there, but a large blood stain on the carpet turned my stomach.

  I dropped down through the hole. My knees hit the floor, and I looked around frantically. She had to be here somewhere. Music wa
s playing loudly from a speaker set up by the bathroom. “Reva!” I called. My finger rested on the trigger, and I made my way over to the bathroom.

  I turned off the music and slowly moved down the hallway. I plastered myself against the hallway wall and peeked around the corner into the bedroom.

  Harry stood there, naked as the day he was born, and he was looking down at Reva’s lifeless body.

  “Don’t fucking move, asshole!” I pointed the gun at Harry’s head and stepped out from the hallway.

  Harry slowly raised his head and smiled. “You’re too late. You can’t stop us from being together now.”

  I wasn’t too late. Reva wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. My eyes darted to her lifeless body, and my heart sank.

  Harry quickly raised his arm, a gun in his hand, and pressed it against his temple. “She’s mine now.” He pulled the trigger, his brains exploding all over the wall, and he crumpled in a pile onto the floor. His brains seeped out onto the carpet.

  I scrambled to get to Reva and gathered her lifeless body in my arms. She was still warm but not breathing. “Come one, Sunshine. You’re not leaving me,” I sobbed. Her battered face was caked with blood, and her bottom lip was swollen.

  Voices sounded above me. “Help!” I screamed.

  Loud banging came on the door, but I didn’t leave Reva. I wasn’t going to leave her. I laid her flat and placed my lips on hers. I blew into her mouth, trying to do anything to get her breathing.

  I heard the back door slam open at the same time as the front door exploded. Police swarmed around me with their guns drawn.

  It was a clusterfuck with no one really knowing what was going on, but all I wanted them to do was help Reva. “She needs help,” I screamed urgently.

  Two officers dropped next to me. One started compressions on her chest while the other moved me out of the way. Sirens wailed in the distance, and I sat back on my haunches while I watched two strangers try to bring Reva back to life.

  I watched in shock, people moving around me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Reva. I only had her for a short time, and she was gone.

  “Come back to me, Sunshine,” I croaked. “Come back to me.”

  The officer blew into her mouth and then stopped to check her pulse. “It’s weak, but it’s there.”

  She had a pulse.

  She wasn’t dead.

  The siren of the ambulance filled the duplex, and I jumped up to my feet. Two paramedics rushed into the living room and quickly loaded her up onto the stretcher. They wheeled her out, and I followed close behind.

  “Hero.”

  My head snapped over to the walkway to Reva’s. Ransom strode over to me and laid his hand on my arm. “You’re gonna have to stay here.”

  I ripped my arm from his hold. “The fuck I am. I’m going with Reva.”

  He tried to grab my arm again, but I took a step toward the ambulance. “I’m going with her. If you’ve got any fucking questions, you can ask me them at the hospital.” I wasn’t up for Ransom acting like his usual asshole self. I had nothing to do with what happened. All I wanted to do was make sure Reva was going to be okay.

  He pointed his finger at me. “You so much as step foot out of that hospital before you talk to me, I’ll arrest your ass, you got me?”

  I hopped into the back of the ambulance with Reva and grabbed her hand. “Is she okay?” I asked the paramedic.

  He was hooking her up to all sorts of machines and getting IV bags ready. “She’s got a weak pulse. We’re doing everything we can for her right now.”

  I squeezed her hand and closed my eyes.

  She was going to be all right.

  She had to be.

  *

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Hero

  “I brought you a change of clothes.”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  Greta dropped the duffel bag at my feet and sat down next to me. “She’s sleeping, Hero. I can sit with her for ten minutes while you haul your ass to the shower and wash the blood from your skin.”

  “What if she wakes up?” I asked.

  “Then I’ll come running for you like the British are coming.”

  Reva was going to make it. She had some recovering to do, but she would be fine in the long run. After Harry had dropped her from the ceiling into his bedroom, he smothered a chloroform rag to her face and thought she had died. His plan, which he only half succeeded with, was to kill Reva and then kill himself to meet her on the other side since he couldn’t have her here.

  The guy was a fucking lunatic who was obsessed with Reva. His obsession had turned deadly when Reva and I got together. It had pushed him completely into the nuthouse.

  “Luna is outside. She’s talking to Ransom.”

  I scrubbed my hands down my face. “I don’t know why he’s still here.”

  They had cleared me without even talking to me. Reva’s landlord had told them exactly what had happened and that I had nothing to do with Harry dying or Reva being hurt.

  Ransom had, of course, still come to the hospital to harass me, but in the end, he knew I hadn’t done anything. Ever since King had told me about Ransom wanting to be part of the club, I knew he was just on my case because I got the chance to be part of the Devil’s Knights.

  Reva shifted in her sleep, and I shot out of my chair. Her eyes fluttered open, and she smiled up at me.

  “Hey,” she whispered. She had been in and out of consciousness and each time stayed awake a little bit longer.

  “There’s my Sunshine.” I brushed her hair from her face and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

  She wrinkled her nose and brushed her hand over my cheek. “You still haven’t washed up?”

  Greta busted out laughing. “Girl, I was just trying to get him to wash his stinky ass and then you woke up.” Great grabbed the bag and swung it from her fingers.

  “Go get cleaned up, Hero,” Reva insisted.

  “I’ll wait until you go back to sleep.”

  “Ha,” Greta scoffed. “And then he’ll say he can’t because he has to be here when you wake up.” Greta shook the bag. “Go clean up and I’ll keep your woman entertained.”

  “Go,” Reva ordered.

  I grabbed the bag from Greta. “Then you better stay awake until I get back.”

  “I’ll try my hardest,” Reva promised.

  I gently pressed a kiss to her lips. “I’ll be right back.”

  Greta shooed me out the door.

  Luna and Ransom were standing outside in the hallway and talking in hushed voices. I headed away from them in search of a bathroom. I had nothing more to say to Ransom. He was really on my shit list now for trying to keep me from riding with Reva.

  He could tell me he was just doing his job, but there was more to it.

  He hated the club.

  I ducked into the first bathroom I found and dropped the bag next to the sink. I splashed cold water on my face and washed off the dry blood on my hands.

  I looked in the mirror and tried to recognize the guy I saw.

  It had been close to twenty-four hours since my world had been almost ripped away from me. Having to face the fact that things could and would change in an instant rocked me to my core.

  From now on, I wasn’t going to sit back and let life give me whatever it wanted.

  Life was too short to not take what you wanted and not take no for an answer.

  Reva was mine, and no one in this world was going to take her away from me.

  *

  Reva

  “Be honest.”

  Greta raised her right hand. “Scouts honor, sugar. You don’t look that bad.”

  I rolled my eyes and wiggled my fingers at her. “I just want a quick look at what I look like.”

  Greta dug in her purse. “You’re alive. Who the hell cares what you look like?” She found a compact and slapped it into my hand. “Prepare to be surprised.”

  I was sore as hell, and parts of my face felt like they w
ere going to explode. I had to know what I looked like because I felt like complete shit.

  My fingers fumbled with the compact, but I finally opened it up. I surveyed my face and frowned. “Wow.”

  “Told ya,” Greta gloated. “You’ve got some bruising on your nose and a fat lip.”

  My nose throbbed, and my lip looked twice the size than it normally was. “I guess that’s better than dead.” I closed the compact and handed it back to her. “Thanks.”

  Greta dropped it back in her purse. “I’m here to make sure your man changes his clothes and to be your mirror bitch.”

  I laughed and settled back into the bed.

  “You sure you’re okay, girl?” Greta asked.

  I couldn’t tell you how many times I had been asked that in the past twenty-four hours. Hero had been the one to ask it the most. “Yeah.”

  I had gotten lucky. Besides from Harry hitting me and throwing me through a ceiling, he didn’t do anything else to me. I remembered everything leading up to Harry pressing the cloth soaked in chloroform over my face and the doctor assured me there was no trauma to my body from Harry trying to rape me.

  From the time Harry had taken me to Hero finding me had only been half an hour.

  In my mind, Hero had saved me because who knows what would have happened if Harry had turned the gun on me before he killed himself. Thankfully, the guy was a moron and didn’t realize he hadn’t killed me before offing himself.

  “The news is trying to sell the fact that Harry was the guy who had killed Bunny and Tanya.” Greta shook her head. “They’re wrong, but people will latch onto anything to make them feel safe.”

  I groaned. “Lord. I wish Harry would have been responsible for those, then all of this craziness would be over.”

  Greta clicked her tongue. “You and me both.”

  Hero walked back into the room with the duffel bag in his hand. He looked refreshed and not as tired. He had been sleeping on and off the past twenty-four hours in a chair next to my bed.

  I cocked my head to the side and read his shirt out loud. “I do it for the hos.” In the center of the words, Santa was checking his list.