Cross Your Heart: Inked Angels MC

by Zoey Parker

  After a quick scan to confirm that Growler wasn’t in the room, I spotted Steezy and Big Tuna in a corner. I lumbered over to them. My body was ringing with twinges and aches from the manic lifting session I’d had, but I ignored it.

  “What the fuck is happening?” I demanded as I stomped up to the booth where they were sitting.

  Big Tuna’s eyes were low and downcast. “It ain’t good, Croak.” He jerked a thumb at Steezy, telling him to finish the story.

  Steezy chose his words carefully as he filled me in. But the second he started talking, my blood ran cold. “He took Corinne.” I knew right away what he meant. He didn’t have to say much else for me to get the gist of things.

  “Ricardo,” I said.

  He nodded. “A prospect coming back from a quick run to Austin saw him driving like a fucking lunatic down the road. Ricardo’s got a pretty conspicuous car, and the kid had done his homework, so he knew right away who it was. The prospect tried to tail them, but his bike blew a tire and he had to pull over. But he was with ‘em long enough to see that the son of a bitch had her.”

  I tried to keep a cool head, but fireworks of anger were popping off inside of me like the Fourth of July. I would have murdered the bastard with my bare hands right then and there if I could’ve just laid a finger on him. This was more than anger. This was bloodlust. This was rage. This was ‘don’t-touch-my-girl’ anger. Funny how quickly I’d shifted from running mode to hunting.

  Just then, I heard a deep voice call for attention. All eyes shifted towards the bar. Growler settled into a stool with his head in his hands, rubbing the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. He didn’t look up as he started to speak to all the men assembled.

  “I’m sure y’all know what’s happened by now. If not, well, here’s the basics: some low-life son of a motherfucking cunt took my daughter. From what I’ve gathered, he thinks we’ve been cutting him a raw deal in terms of the tribute we demand. Between that and the drugs he’s been snortin’ or injectin’ or whatever his vice of choice is, he made a very bad mistake. Well, he ain’t seen a damn thing yet. We’re about to show him what the fury of the Inked Angels really feels like.”

  Heads nodded and fists slammed into the table as the men around the room gave voice to their support. Damn, I’d never seen the prez looking so downtrodden. He was talking like he was full of fire, but I could tell this had struck too close to home. He felt vulnerable. All of the sudden, the man looked old as hell.

  The funny thing was, I knew how he felt. I didn’t even have to look him in the eyes to know that he and I were going through the same thing right now. Someone had touched the thing we cared about. Maybe I was even worse off than Growler was. He’d had his whole life to realize how much he cared about Corinne. I was just now coming to terms with it.

  Well, no time like the present.

  “I want a team of our best to load up and follow that slimy fucker to get my daughter back. We leave in ten minutes. That’s all.” He stood up, wincing with a hand on his lower back. I tasted blood and realized for the first time that I’d chewed a hole in the side of my cheek.

  I whirled around and looked at Steezy. “Where’d you say Ricardo was headed?” I growled.

  He looked at me curiously. “The only thing out that way was Devil’s Skillet. Otherwise, it’s bushes and flat land all the way to Brownsville, more or less.”

  The state park. If I rode hard and fast, I’d be there in less than an hour. I couldn’t sit around and wait for the rest of the Angels to wake their asses up and get ready for battle. I was ready now.

  I turned to leave. “Where are you going?” Steezy asked me.

  I didn’t look back at him as I answered, “I’m gonna go kill him.”

  Chapter 12

  Corinne

  Ricardo was dragging me up a long, winding hill. I was kicking and screaming but my voice echoed throughout the empty park. No one was around to hear me, so my screams went unnoticed.

  The rocky dirt was tearing my back and legs raw. Where Ricardo had a fistful of my hair, my scalp was burning, bringing stinging tears to the corners of my eyes.

  “Please, let me go,” I begged. I hated that I’d resorted to pleading for my life, but the way things were going, it didn’t seem like I had much time left.

  The last traces of the withdrawn phase he’d gone through were completely vanished by now. He was a roiling, spitting blur, twitching and spasming in every direction. He swung his knife and lopped branches from trees as he muttered and cursed to himself. He didn’t seem to show any signs of getting tired, despite the several hundred uphill yards he’d dragged me since we parked the car at the bottom of the plateau.

  He ignored my pleas, not even so much as glancing back. Instead, he stepped inexorably upwards and forwards, higher and higher, until we emerged from the trees that clung to the upward-sloping part of the hill and onto the flat top.

  It was a clearing maybe twenty yards in diameter, roughly circular, with thick, closely-set trees forming a half-circle border. The other edge looked out over a steep, hundred-yard drop to the rocks below. From here, I could see for miles and miles, until the horizon became nothing but a blue haze in the distance.

  Directly in front of us was a box-shaped rock. The sides and surface were smooth, almost polished, from years of erosion and human touch. It rose from the dirt at nearly perfect right angles, as if it were meant to be there.

  Ricardo lurched towards it, still muttering to himself. His stream of consciousness rambling had taken a bizarre twist. I noticed his skin was feverish and red as he talked. “If they’re Angels, then yes, yes, I will do what they want, I will give them blood, yes, blood of a girl, bring the demons upon them, yes, yes…” He trailed off and I couldn’t hear him anymore. Nothing he said made sense to me, but he kept going on and on about angels and demons and sacrifices. It didn’t matter that I didn’t understand. It was still enough to horrify me. His intent was clear: I was about to die.

  We reached the rock and Ricardo dropped me unceremoniously into the dirt. My temple slammed against an upturned stone lying on the ground and I saw stars. Dust spiraled around me and swooped down my throat and nostrils. I coughed until my eyes watered.

  “Please…” I said again between hacks. “Please don’t do this.”

  For the first time since we’d left the car, he stopped and looked at me. “You stupid girl, yes, you dumb, ignorant little slut, don’t you know what they did to me?” His voice started as a whisper, but as he talked, it grew louder and louder, until the last words of his sentence boomed across the landscape below, rebounding and reverberating until they took on a life of their own. Did to me, did to me, bounced from rock to rock until I imagined that everyone in the state could hear him shrieking.

  His eyes were completely bloodshot, now. The veins in the whites of his eyeballs were engorged to the point that there was hardly any white left. It was a hideous, devilish look, like he was barely human anymore. I wondered for the umpteenth what horrific substance was clawing at the inside of his veins.

  I didn’t know what to say. He was beyond reason. He wasn’t going to stop.

  Ricardo stooped down and threw me over his shoulder, then tossed me on top of the flat rock. He reached into the small satchel he’d brought from the car and withdrew another long coil of rope. Dropping one end to the ground, he sidled down to my feet and began the work of binding me to the rock.

  This was my chance. If I was going to make an escape — somehow, some way — it had to be now. My head was still ringing and my hands and feet were still bound, but if I just gave in and laid there, he’d have his way with me. I refused to imagine what that might look like just yet.

  As he bent over to tie a knot around an outcropping of rock below, I swung my feet together as one, like a long, whipping fish tail, right into his jaw. I connected with his lip. Blood flew. He stumbled backwards.

  I rocked onto my side and tried to throw my weight around so I could stand up. But
I barely got the chance to move. I’d hit him as hard as I could, and as he turned to face me again, I could see that I’d made a disgusting mess of his lip. It was bloody and torn. The white gleam of a shattered tooth shone out among the crimson chaos. But he didn’t seem to notice or care. The drugs had made him damn near invulnerable.

  He reached a hand far above his hand and delivered a vicious backhanded slap to my face. My teeth clacked together and I fell from the top of the rock onto the ground a couple feet below. Now, it was my turn to taste blood. I could already feel the bruising and swelling along my cheekbone. My jaw was a blazing star of pain. It hung limply, maybe even broken.

  “Stupid, stupid whore!” he bellowed. He grabbed me roughly by the front of the shirt and threw me back across the top of the rock. His muscles were ropey and stood out in high relief along his forearms. “Why must you struggle so? Yes, learn your place, you whore, you bitch, you wench, yes!”

  He grabbed the loose end of the rope he’d started tying and cinched it tightly around my ankles. I was crying, I noticed, tears pouring down my face like waterfalls, mingling with the blood trickling from the inside of my mouth. But I didn’t feel anything. I was too numb, too scared. I always thought that I’d feel afraid right before I died. It turned out that I wouldn’t feel anything at all.

  He pulled out another rope and tied this one across my chest. His hands flew, wrenching knots into place. The tightness of the ropes was cutting off the circulation to my hands. I felt harsh pins and needles in my fingertips before they lost all circulation.

  Ricardo started at my head and moved down, checking each knot carefully, testing it to make sure it would hold if I struggled. “You will not go anywhere again, yes, yes, you will make this rock red and beautiful, won’t you? Yes,” he mumbled as he worked.

  I watched his face while he talked. His lips were as blue as his eyes were red. Everything about him screamed of wrongness. He was burning up in front of me. His humanity withered more with every second. And he was going to let me die with it.

  Satisfied that I wasn’t going anywhere, he reached into his bag once more and retrieved a whetstone. He picked up the knife he’d set down and started sharpening it. Every pass of the blade over the whetstone made a shink noise that hung and vibrated in the air for long seconds. He studied it cautiously, holding the weapon up to the light after a few passes to see if it was enough yet. He gave an unsatisfied grunt and went back to sharpening.

  My heart was beating a crescendo in my chest. It was such a funny feeling to realize that what remained of my life could be measured in minutes or seconds instead of months and years. I was scared and calm at the same time. Both feelings froze me in place. I didn’t even struggle anymore. The blood in my veins retreated to my core, leaving my extremities feeling cold and lifeless.

  I turned my gaze to the sky. It was a bright, beautiful morning. The blue of the day had just started to push away the purplish night. I could still see the hint of stars between the setting moon on one side and the rising sun on the other. The air was warm and soft. As good a day to die as any other, I guessed. At least the last thing I saw would be something pretty.

  The sound from the final pass of the knife on the sharpening stone had died down. Ricardo was incanting something under his breath that I couldn’t make out, and then that, too, fell to silence. I heard the crunch of gravel under his foot as he took a step closer to me. He brought the knife high over his head with both hands wrapped around the hilt. The reflection of the sun off the knife flashed across my face.

  “They took what’s mine,” he said. “Now, I will take what is theirs.”

  I closed my eyes. Everything was still. Time paused.

  The next thing I heard was not the sickening thud of the knife into my chest or the whoosh of my soul leaving my body, whatever that might actually sound like. It was a sound I never expected to hear again.

  The roar of a motorcycle.

  I opened my eyes and saw that the knife had not moved. Ricardo’s attention had switched from me to something below us. He peered out over the edge of the plateau to where the entry road snaked around the foot of the hill. The roar had grown louder, and as he saw whoever it was, he smiled.

  I grimaced when I saw his foul teeth again, but the sounds and smells of the world around me came careening back into my senses. The engine was deep and throaty and it grew louder as the biker screeched around to the base of the trail that we had taken.

  Ricardo looked at me. “They have come, yes, yes, just like I supposed. Now you will not have to die alone!” His grin stretched another tooth wider. Then he turned and ran. I craned my head as far as I could to see him race into the trees huddled on either side of the mouth of the trail. His eyes gleamed from the darkness between the trunks.

  Whoever was coming, I prayed they were ready to fight. Ricardo was waiting.

  Chapter 13

  Croak

  I’d taken off from the clubhouse like a bat out of hell. My baby had been retro-fitted and fine-tuned until she was the hottest thing smoking in the whole damn state. It was time to see what she could really do when I pushed her to her limits.

  The bike was a roaring, bitching beast beneath me as I flew down the road. The heat and smoke from the engine, the crackling thunder of the exhaust — it was music to my ears. Under normal circumstances, I might’ve had a shit-eating grin plastered across my face as I sat back and enjoyed the ride.

  But these circumstances were far from normal. I had one thing on my mind: blood.

  Steezy had said that Ricardo was headed for Devil’s Skillet. I made it there at lightning speed. The sign came swimming into my vision as I rounded a long curve in the highway. I barely slowed down as I moved from the smooth asphalt of the road to the packed dirt trail. Every bump jolted my frame, but I was tensed against it. The muscles in my body were all coiled, ready and eager to spring into action.

  I emerged onto a straightaway that aimed for the base of the plateau before swooping around to the right. The rock towered above me, easily a hundred yards high. A pile of huge, pillar-like rocks stood sentry at the foot of the hill, their tops sharpened into needle points by endless days and nights of the weather carving them into weapons.

  I reached the kink in the road and swung hard to the right. My right leg skimmed the ground as I lowered the bike as far as she could go. The frame groaned under the stress of the throttle opened wide and the crazy angle, but there was no time to spare. I had to shave every second possible. If I was even a moment too late, there was no telling what this crazy son of a bitch would do to Corinne. I wasn’t about to wait and find out, either.

  The curved road led me to the beginning of the forest that clustered along the slanted side of the hill. I saw a bright orange sedan parked ahead with the trunk left open. It must be Ricardo’s. That meant they were on top of the hill.

  I slammed on the brakes and leaped off the back of the bike after it had come to a near-halt. As I sprinted up the hill, I reached for my belt and withdrew the knife I always kept with me. I had left in such a hurry I hadn’t even bothered to grab a gun. Looking back on it, that was about as dumb of a decision as I could have made, but it was too late to worry. The knife would have to do. She was a pretty little baby and she’d gotten me out of plenty of scraps before, so I had to trust that she’d get the job done this time, too.

  The climb was long and steep. My breath came in short gasps by the time I saw the top. “Almost there, you bastard,” I said to myself. “One foot in front of the other. Come on.” My quads were on fire, but I forced myself to keep moving.

  Finally, I broke out onto the top of Devil’s Skillet. It took me a moment for my eyes to adjust to the sudden bright light after the shaded darkness of the trail. When they did, I saw Corinne. She was fastened to a rock on the far side of the circle, just twenty yards away from me. The rest of the clearing seemed to be empty. No signs of Ricardo.

  I took two steps towards her. Her mouth was a wide-open O as a ter
rorized scream came pouring out into the stillness of the early morning. At first, I couldn’t make out what she was saying, then I realized.

  “Look out!” Corinne screamed.

  I turned just in time to see a blur out of the corner of my right eye and a heavy rock come smashing down onto the side of my head. I fell to the ground as Ricardo hit me with his full weight. The knife went skittering from my hands.

  He landed on top of me, knocking the breath from my lungs. Hot blood oozed from where he’d hit me with the rock in his hand. I looked up to see him cock the knife high above his head. His face was twisted into a feral snarl. He looked like a chained-up dog, or he would have, if his lips weren’t frozen blue and his eyes weren’t a hellfire red.

  I couldn’t spend long looking at his face, though, because just then, his knife reached its apex and all his muscles threw their force behind it as he brought the steely blade hurtling down towards my face.