by Dark, Raven
Doc and I both grinned.
“Si’an Hawk, think first before you make this decision,” Leif called.
Hawk kept walking, across the halls and right toward the temple gates.
So did we.
Well, that was fucking awesome.
Chapter 9
Hitting Bottom
Walking out of the temple, my blood boiled with what that fucking bastard Leif had done. It was bad enough that he’d put Setora in such danger. But pitting Hawk against Setora like that? That was a dick move, man.
Worse, I was pretty sure why he’d done it. He’d been testing Hawk’s loyalty to his Order as much as Julian’s abilities.
What a piece of work.
Which was why I was also riding high on what Hawk had done, every second we walked through the grounds toward those front gates. And why I didn’t feel like an assfuck for what I did on the way out.
The warrior woman and Hawk with Setora still in his arms, strode for the gates without waiting for me and Doc. Hawk apparently wanted to get Setora out of there as quickly as possible. Halfway to the doors, as Doc, Savak, and I crossed a walkway between the tower we’d just left and another like it, I whispered something to Doc. He smirked. Then he stopped Leif on the path and figured out a way to stall him, talking him up.
“Master Leif.” Doc’s voice oozed interest and respect.
Leif stopped, and he joined him at a banister that ran along the path. I doubled back and looked out over a large courtyard, pretending to take it in while Doc talked.
“May I have a word with you?” Doc asked. “I have a few questions about what just happened in there. And about the temple.”
Leif nodded. Doc asked him questions, but I wasn’t paying attention to them. I took in everything around me, mapping out every tower, every entrance, while keeping one apparently interested eye on what was going on in the courtyard.
I didn’t need to pretend to be interested. Part of me still lived with one foot in the world of the Gladiator; anything to do with battle, I soaked up. And what I saw was awesome as fuck.
Across a cobble-stoned expanse of yard surrounded with trees and too many pink-ass flowers for my liking, rows upon rows of Yantu warriors practiced what must have been a strict regimented sequence of fighting moves—forms, I thought they were called. All dressed in the same black or red outfits, faces covered with those clothes that hid all but the eyes, they moved as if in a graceful dance even a man’s man like me could appreciate. Each wielded a thin wooden staff, their bodies and the staffs moving as one. Twisting, bending, staffs whirling. Now and again, they punctuated harsh strikes or blocks with a loud chorus of battle shouts. The staffs thwacked and thumped the paving stones with rhythmic sounds like drums beating.
Maker’s Tits, I had to give these guys credit, even if I didn’t like them. They looked badass. It also meant that if the plan forming in my head went even slightly off, PB and I were dead.
Shit. I wasn’t a planner. I left that shit to Sheriff. But I had to be one now.
“What did you inject her with, though?” Doc was asking, his doctor voice in full force. “The medication I’ve been giving her at night to keep Julian at bay is an extremely high dose. How did the injection counteract her medication?”
Much as I wanted to hear the Leif’s answer, I tuned it out and focused on mapping this crazy place out in my head. Doc would tell me whatever I missed later, anyway.
This place had so many fucking towers, and rooms within each of those, I could easily get lost in here. I must have had a death wish to even consider what was in my head.
“Ah,” Doc was saying now. “So Ali’san can teach her to block him and use the connection against him. That’s what Hawk thought.”
Doc asked a few more questions and then backed up toward me. “This has been fascinating, Master Leif. I’ll be sure to tell the others.”
He nudged me toward the gates. I played along, following him out and down the temple steps. “Did you get what you needed?” he asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“Oh, yeah.”
“You’ll have to wait for the right time.”
“I know.”
The gates thudded shut behind us.
“No one’s gonna like this, Steel. Not Setora, and especially not Hawk. He broke protocol with Leif, but he’s still one of them.”
“I don’t give a fuck.”
“You think Pretty Boy will go along?”
“He will,” I said. “Hawk’s going to kill you, though.”
“That’s all right. I’ll just see a doctor.”
I grunted a laugh. “I can’t believe I took my fucking cut off for that guy.”
“You didn’t. You did it for Setora.”
Okay, that made me feel better.
When we reached the village, Pretty Boy was nowhere to be found. Figures. I was dying to tell him everything. And if I told him about what Hawk had done walking out like that, he might get his head on straight and make good with him without them having to kill each other first.
We walked through the village, and I was practically whistling. I stopped to talk to Bear near Hawk’s hut, but as soon as he came out, I had a hell of a time concentrating. I doubted I heard a word he said, not with what was going on at Hawk’s.
Setora was leaning against the open door of the hut. Scratch that—Hawk had her pressed up against the thing.
“Master, we should take this inside.” Her voice was throaty, dripping with need.
“Not a chance.” Hawk grabbed her hair in his fist, pulling her head back just hard enough to make her moan. The sound made my dick hard as iron.
“People will see,” Setora groaned.
“I don’t care. I could have lost you today. Again.”
Her eyes turned misty. “Hawk, I broke your wrist.”
Someone put a splint on it; I saw it covering part of his hand when he put his palm on the door, penning her in.
“I told you, woman, I’m fine.” His head bent and he kissed her like he was trying to eat her mouth. His tongue made several appearances.
“It wasn’t fair of Master Leif to make you do that, my love.” She sniffed when he pulled back.
No shit.
“It was cruel.”
“Enough talk, Kitten. I want you using that mouth for other things.”
More kissing, and then he ripped open her road rat shirt, letting her tits spill out. Fuck me, I was hard.
“Did you hear me, you big galoot?” Bear. When I didn’t answer fast enough, he whacked my shoulder.
“Huh?” I shook myself. “Yeah, sure. The saloon down the street sounds good.”
His response didn’t make it to my brain, which had apparently shrunk to the size of a pea, largely because Hawk had yanked Setora’s skirt up to her waist, baring her perfect ass for all to see. Then he hauled her onto his hips.
Shit, he’d gone mad. So much for Yantu self control.
Setora yelped and wrapped her arms around him, breathing his name into his mouth.
I’d missed whatever Bear had said.
“Steel, what the fuck is wrong with you?” He was grinning. Then he saw where I was looking and turned. “What is…oh. Wow.” He turned back to me hastily and coughed, smirking.
No wonder. Hawk had started fucking Setora hard and slow against the door, taking her like a starved man who couldn’t get enough of her perfection.
“That Leif guy must have really fucked with his head.” Bear jerked his thumb back at Hawk.
Setora grabbed the sides of the door, whimpered and bucked her hips faster.
“For him to bang her right out in the open like that, where the Yantu might see? I know how they are about sex,” Bear went on.
I grunted incoherently and rearranged my cock, which tried to punch a hole through my pants.
“Okay. Well, since talking to you is useless right now, I’ll go help Blade and Grim with…stuff.” Bear cackled and walked away.
“Steel—” Do
c started, coming up to my door. He cut off when I waved at him to shut up and nodded to the action going on at Hawk’s door.
“Would…” Doc’s lips pulled into a grin and he visibly struggled to keep his eyes on me. “Would you go feed Sheriff? I gotta take care of some stuff.”
Feed… Ugh. Talk about cock blocked.
“I am not going near him, Doc. Fuck that.”
Setora was practically screaming now. Hawk’s door was rattling like it was trying to come off its hinges, both drowning out what Doc said.
Atta boy, Hawk.
“Steel, just do it, please.”
“Nope.”
“Why? He needs your help.”
“Because. The last time I went near him, he tried to take off my head.”
A half-assed excuse if ever there was one. I didn’t want to do it, because I didn’t want to see him hurting. Because I didn’t want to see one of my best friends, my Brother, slowly killing himself because he’d rather die than live like that.
“So?” Doc said. “He can’t see, you’ll manage. Don’t be a baby. There’s a guy in the village that needs my medical attention.”
I sighed and looked at Hawk’s hut. Damn it, they’d gone inside. “Fuck. Fine. Buzz kill.” I stomped toward the path leading to Sheriff’s hut.
“You’re a saint, Steel,” Doc called with a tone of amusement.
“Yeah, yeah.” Then I turned back to him. “Wait, Doc, where’s PB?”
“I dunno. Around? Drinking himself unconscious again, probably.”
“Figures. I got plans, and he’s getting shit-faced.”
I marched toward Sheriff’s hut.
When the hell had I started living in a world where I had to feed the strongest-willed, most ornery man I knew like a newborn baby? Where Doc, who’d handled the worst patients, who’d handled me, for Maker’s sake, was foisting the job off on me because he didn’t want to deal with Sheriff anymore?
Damn it. I loved this club, I loved Sheriff too damn much to let the Legion fall apart now.
I marched faster.
As soon as I got into Sheriff’s hut, I was glad it was a hundred feet or more from of the rest of the village. I was also sure if he wasn’t dead, he was well on his way.
The place was dark, overhanging trees throwing the hut into near blackness. The place already reeked of unwashed male. Sheriff’s clothes and belongings were everywhere. There was food drying on the fucking walls, where he’d obviously chucked it at anyone who went near him with a spoon. We’d only been in the village for twenty-four hours and already every surface was filthy.
And I thought I was an ass when I was sick.
“Sheriff!” I bellowed, half running through the hut. Half expecting he’d fallen and couldn’t find his way to the door. Half expecting he’d hit his damn head and was bleeding out.
In the back bedroom, I stopped short. Sheriff wasn’t dead, but what I saw almost made me madder. He was sitting in a chair by the window with his head turned toward it. Leathers that looked stolen from the crypt were stuck to his frame. Over the past week, he’d lost a fuck ton of weight, and right now he looked down-right skeletal. His hair was nest, and his face had a scruffy beard that probably hadn’t seen a blade’s edge since leaving Mayhem’s.
I wanted to yell at him. I wanted to shake him. I didn’t.
“Sheriff, son of a bitch.” I went to the window.
He didn’t turn his face to me. Had he not blinked, I’d have thought he was a corpse. “All right.” Somehow, I put on a horribly pleasant voice. “Get up. Time to get some food in you before you waste away.” I reached for his elbow.
He turned his head then, and the expression on his face stopped me dead.
“Come to spoon-feed me, Steel?” His voice was hoarse, his eyes dead and mean.
“Yeah, actually. Get up.”
“Yeah? Will you help me take a shit, too?”
I ignored the poison in his tone. “Sure.” Since he wouldn’t stand up, I grabbed him under the arms and lifted him as if he weighed nothing.
“Get. Off. Me,” he snarled. He shoved at me, hard, but since I was way stranger than him, his efforts were useless.
“Come on,” I chirped. “Let’s go.” I dragged him by the waist to the water closet. For some reason, he stopped fighting and started laughing like a loon.
“Fuck, look at me now, huh? Damien would get such a kick outta this, wouldn’t he?”
The pain in those words cut deep.
“Why hasn’t Doc cleaned this place up? Why hasn’t he got Setora in here to do it?”
Sheriff hooted. “He did. Guess he got tired of doing it and gave up. And Setora’s not getting within a mile of here.”
I sighed, and when he tried to stop me from putting him in the water closet, I shoved him in, ignored his angry cursing, and slammed the door.
“Steel, let me out of here, you fuck!”
“No.” I leaned against the door, preventing him from doing more than rattling it. “Stay in there until you piss. You want to act like a baby, you can stay in there like one.”
“Assturd. I’m demoting you for this, Steel.” I heard him moving around in there, heard his pants unzip, then do back up. I moved away from the door only when I knew he was done.
“Go ahead, General. I’m not letting you kill yourself or give up.”
He yanked open the door.
I helped him to his bed and threw him onto it. I stubbed my toe on something and shouted. “Damn it, Sheriff, light a fucking torch or something.”
“Why? It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Tell that to my foot.” I lit a few torches and shuffled toward a few cupboards. “What do you have to eat in here? I’ll make you something.”
“You, cook? Now I will be dead.”
“Fuck you.” I rooted around in a cupboard next to the front door for whatever food Blade put in here for him. There wasn’t much, only a few crusts of bread, water, and milk. I opened the bottle and sniffed.
Ugh. Sour.
I opened the hut door and stuck my head out, shouting at Oran who was talking with Hawk’s other guards nearby. “Hey, run over and get the General a bite to eat, will you?”
While I waited, I started picking things up from the floor, tossing them into semi-organized piles. This was probably the only time I’d ever cleaned up a room, mine or anyone else’s. Sheriff said nothing to me, and I let him stew in silence.
Oran returned with a paper bag of something that smelled good. I opened the bag and found three roast beef sandwiches, stole one, and tossed the other two in Sheriff’s lap.
“Here. Enjoy.”
Sheriff took the bag and opened it, sniffing its contents before pulling out a sandwich. “You call this food?” But the first grin anyone had probably seen in days surfaced.
“It’s got bread and something in the middle. Eat. If you shut up long enough, I’ll tell you what’s been going on with the club.”
At least he started eating the sandwich.
“Don’t bother. I don’t need to know,” he grumbled, his mouth full.
“Sheriff, don’t talk shit.” I knew what he was doing.
“I’m not.” He gestured to himself. “Does this look like the face of a General to you?”
I shook my head and went to get him some water. When I brought it back, he was sitting up in bed, leaning against the wall, those empty eyes staring at black nothingness.
I tried to put his hands around the mug. He pushed it away.
“Get out, Steel.”
“No. Drink.”
He found the mug and drank it down. I sat in the chair beside the bed. “Some interesting stuff went down with Setora today at the temple,” I started to report.
He turned his face away. “I don’t care, Steel.”
“What?” My heart sunk. So this was where he was now?
His sightless eyes turned to me. “I. Don’t care. I don’t want to hear about her.”
Because it hurt too mu
ch, my mind told me, and yet it felt like something more. Like he really didn’t give a fuck. After what she’d just gone through?
“Okay,” I said, standing slowly and speaking even slower. “Listen up, Sheriff. She just went through—”
“Don’t make me say it again, Steel.” His eyes were on my stomach instead of my face. “I. Don’t. Care.”
“What are you going to do?” I snapped. “You can’t avoid her forever!”
“Can’t I?”
“Wow. You’d do that?”
“Yes.”
Oh, hell no. I wanted to throttle him. I almost did. “Sheriff—”
“Get out.”
I let out a near roar and put up my hands. “Fine.” I leaned in so that my face was an inch from his. “You want to waste away in here and feel sorry for your fucking self, you go right ahead. You don’t deserve her. No one will help you. You can starve, and as far as I’m concerned, you can stay blind.”
Sheriff swung at me. I backed up easily and he missed.
“That was low, Steel.”
“How’s this then? I. Don’t. Care. Fuck you, Sheriff.” I stomped out.
As soon as I was outside, I marched a storm back to the village, fists tight, chest rumbling like a motor.
Shit, I hadn’t meant a word of that back there. I wished the hell I had.
Grim came out of his hut and gave me a worried look. Yeah, when a fucker as big as me went on the warpath, watch out.
“Steel? What happened?”
“Grim, get Doc.”
“Why? Is it Sheriff?”
“Just get him,” I snarled. “Tell him to deal with Sheriff himself from now on.”
“Why?”
“Because. If I have to do it again, I’ll kill him.”
Grim ran to find Doc, but I had a feeling he’d run away from me.
As soon as he was gone, I went and found Hawk and told him what happened. Then I went and found Pretty Boy in the village saloon.
Great, where else would he be?
When he saw me, PB almost fell out of his chair. “Whoa. Who’s ass need’s kicking now?”
“Sheriff, but that’s not why I’m here.” I nodded to a back hall that led to a water closet. It would give us the privacy we needed. “We have to talk. Now.”