SACRED GRIP

by Allen, J. C

  I stared back, knowing how true that was. Roost had been there for my father and brother as well. I knew how close he was with him and knew that Roost would feel the same about getting to Falcon as well.

  And he knew that if I went rogue, not only did that deprive him of that chance, it depressed my own chances.

  “Alright,” I said, sighing. “I won’t do this alone. I promise.”

  “Good,” Roost said, grinning widely. “Now ya kids get the hell outta here.”

  2

  Eve

  Although Matty had left us with specific instructions to go on a date for a late lunch or an early evening, it was obvious to me quite quickly that Derek was in no mood for such a thing.

  Whether it was the mention of the name “The Falcon,” or the sight of the gruesome photos, or something else that had triggered him, he just wasn’t going to be able to enjoy an afternoon brunch, a trip to Samsville, or anything of that nature. Plus, we’d benefit by being indoors, far away from the dangers of the streets. Better to be over a dozen floors up in the sky, far away from the madness, than to be a dozen feet and on the same plane.

  “Hey babe,” I said, squeezing his hand just before he hopped on the bike. “Why don’t we just take a day date inside? Like a staycation, but instead of that, we could call it a staydate?”

  “A staydate,” he said, chuckling at the word. At least he’s still got the humor right now. “You sure? I don’t want you to feel trapped in there.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said, and then, realizing how passive that sounded, I ratcheted up the words. “I’ll be more than fine, actually. I’ll be with you. Whether I’m with you in Samsville, the museum, or at a shop, the common denominator is you. So yeah, let’s go home. We can Netflix and chill.”

  “Actual Netflix and chill? Orrrr the special, deluxe version?”

  I smirked and raised an eyebrow.

  “Why not both?”

  Derek just blushed, laughed, and kissed me.

  “I knew I liked you for a reason.”

  “And I knew I liked you for many reasons,” I said as I hopped on the bike, hugged him close to me, and felt the engine kick to life.

  Despite the flirting and suggestive nature of my words, however, I was actually dead exhausted by the time we got home. I think Derek picked up on the same thing—yes, we could have had sex, and once we got into it, it probably would have felt amazingly pleasurable and I would have craved more… but just taking that first step, compared to falling in bed and passing out, seemed more insurmountable than surviving a fall from his window.

  We made it to the bed, but the first thing I grabbed wasn’t Derek’s face or groin but my pillow.

  My… pillow.

  Funny how that sounds.

  Funny…

  Before I could even finish the thought, I was already drifting off into the dream world.

  * * *

  “He just came, don’t you think he’s a little tired?”

  My fake sultry voice disarmed the guard who had just entered our private room momentarily. He looked at me, with my top off, and smiled at me as his pants expanded. Little did he know I had not pulled these out for his amusement.

  And then his words seemed to do anything but align with his evil smile.

  “You’d do well to shut your mouth, whore, before—”

  But he never got to finish his words, because Derek punched him right in the back of the skull.

  That was a mistake.

  The man rose, looking at him with a smug look of amusement, as if he had done nothing more than tapped his shoulder.

  “I knew you were a Savior,” he growled. “Boss is gonna make me a rich man for bringing him a Savior.”

  Then, with what could only be described as light-speed movement, he punched Derek right in the ribs with a force like that of a bulldozer. I’m pretty sure that his heart stopped for a few seconds. I’m definitely sure he broke a few ribs.

  “Ugh, shit,” he said.

  “You were obvious the second you walked in here, you fool,” the guard said, kicking him in the chin, dropping him to the ground. “And now you’re going to regret it more than you ever regretted joining that pussy club over there.”

  I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t fucking take it!

  “STOP!”

  My cry didn’t fully stop the man. But it did distract him just long enough for Derek to reach into his belt, pull out his gun, and fire.

  The bullet went straight through the man’s skull.

  But he did not die.

  Instead, he began laughing cruelly, a laugh that sounded… no…

  It sounded like Chuck’s.

  He turned, looked at Derek, and killed him with a single stomp of his foot.

  “DEREK!” I screamed in pain.

  But then the zombie man turned to me slowly, his height seeming to grow by the moment.

  “You thought you could kill me?” he said, his voice a warped version of Chuck’s. “You thought you’d be rid of me, whore? You pathetic excuse for a life.”

  The man moved toward me. He took off his sunglasses, revealing eyes like Chuck’s. I was… I was trapped…

  “DEREK!” I screamed once more.

  “There’s no getting out of here alive, Eve,” the man said. “You a whore or not? Huh? You a whore or not? You a whore or not?”

  “DEREK!”

  “Eve!”

  “DEREK!”

  “Eve? Eve!”

  I opened my eyes, seeing Derek’s concerned face looking down at me. The way he was looking at me, the worry and panic in his eyes, made me wonder just how bad I had reacted to the dream.

  If it was even half as bad as I felt in the dream…

  It may have been a dream, but… it still feels so real… like he shouldn’t be here… like this is the dream… oh God…

  Embarrassed, I wanted to shrink back and hide my shame from him, but I was too flustered to do much more than just lie there, pant, and shake. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible to wake up feeling so exhausted, but the proof was in the moment—I’d obviously been thrashing and screaming enough in my sleep to make me physically tired only moments upon awakening.

  Too tired, even, to try to hide my shame from Derek.

  And so I just began to cry.

  Still uncertain of just what he was comforting me from, Derek pulled me close to him. The contact and his warmth helped to calm my thundering heart, and as I worked to get control of my labored breaths I wrapped my own arms around him. I didn’t want to remember the dream—didn’t even want to think about it—but the scene of Derek dying cycled back around, again and again, inside my mind.

  The recurring dream had struck again and this time it found a way to snake its way out of my head. I didn’t know what was worse. Replaying the dream over and over in my mind, or fearing that somehow it represented a prophecy of sorts, an omen of what was to come.

  “Babe, what is it?” Derek finally whispered as he gently worked to face me, asking the question I both knew he’d ask and dreaded having to answer. “You OK? Eve?”

  I could see how worried Derek was and bit my lip, not sure what to say. I didn’t want to let him know how Chuck’s death had affected me, even considering all of the cruel, evil things he had done to me. I couldn’t add one more thing for him to worry about.

  Not when we were so close to ending all this. Not when these nightmares would be pages on the story of my life and not actual, ongoing events to worry about. Not when Derek might actually die tonight.

  “I’m so sorry, Derek,” I said, averting my gaze as I indirectly dodged the question. “Just a bad dream, I guess. Nothing more… no, nothing more.”

  “Must’ve been a really bad dream. You were screaming, Eve,” he said as his hands captured my face and lifted my head, looking me in the eye. “I hope you’re OK.”

  He seemed to be searching me for answers and seemed to know there was something I wasn’t telling him.

  Much as I
wanted to look away, I forced myself to look back, refusing to let myself believe he could see the truth behind my eyes; refusing to let on how bad things were in my head. Things were bad enough in the real world that to be dumping all the bad that was in there into the mix just felt cruel to Derek’s workload.

  I had to keep it contained. I had to stay strong for Derek. For the time being, at least, I had to do what I could so that he could do what he needed to do. He’d worked so hard to be strong for me, and I wouldn’t let him shoulder this on his own. I could do this, could be just as strong for him.

  I had to. There was no other alternative.

  I just… I had to!

  “What’s going on, baby?” he asked, his voice pleading me to tell him. “Baby, please… you can tell me anything.”

  Damnit, Derek, stop. You’re making me want to tell you everything. Even when I shouldn’t.

  How could I though? How could I tell him that him killing my brother hadn’t been as easy as I pretended it was? How could I let him know that I was terrified about having to fight again?

  Having to kill again?

  I wasn’t so naïve as to believe that there wouldn’t be more killing. I’d come to accept the violence in this world. I hadn’t had much of a choice in that regard.

  But it had never been my violence. As a whore for the Black Falcons, I’d been the victim of violence—I’d been beaten and raped enough by Rock alone, and Lord knew he hadn’t been the only one—and, bad as that had been, there was a degree of freedom in knowing that I wasn’t a part of that world. I could stomach being a victim so long as I could keep myself from being on the other end of that line of violence. At least I knew that I wasn’t a rapist, that I wasn’t an abuser, that I wasn’t a killer.

  But now I was a killer.

  And I was likely to continue to be so.

  In a single… no, in multiple acts of desperation, I’d stepped over that line, and it had felt like something black and unholy had been left within me ever since. And now it was like the entire world expected me to let that black, unholy thing consume me entirely! It was like, now that I’d pulled the trigger once, I was expected to go on being a killer…

  Or, at the very least, like I’d be forced to be a killer yet again.

  And worst of all, it came from the people I trusted, loved, and believed in the most.

  “Yeah. Y’know, li’l target practice, couple of trusty self-defense moves… stuff like that. It’ll give ‘er somethin’ to do while yer out playin’ biker boy, an’—who knows?—it might even come in handy, right?”

  Matty had sounded so casual, so blasé, about the subject of teaching me to hurt other people. And, bad as that was, it wasn’t the worst part.

  No. That was far from being the worst part.

  Because, much as I wanted to resent the world and others for how casually they treated the subject of me learning to hurt others more effectively…

  I couldn’t.

  Because…

  I liked the idea.

  I liked the idea of turning the tides, of being the one to hurt others instead of being the one getting hurt. I liked the idea of being the one with the gun instead of being the one staring down the barrel of one. I liked the idea of killing everyone who had ever put me in this spot…

  I had talked for so long about wanting to get rid of Chuck, but it had never felt real. And while I never got that chance, killing Tyler had unlocked a part of me I never… well, a part of me knew I had it inside me, but most of me just pretended I wasn’t capable of it.

  But I knew the truth now.

  And, God help me, that was the worst part.

  Because no one should like that sort of thing.

  But it’s better than the alternative. Better to kill than to be killed. What could be more simple of a law of nature than that?

  I shivered, felt a whimper wriggle free of my aching throat, and I slumped against Derek. A fresh series of sobs were boiling up inside me, and I wanted to stifle them in his chest rather than have to face him through my increasingly blurring vision.

  Why the fuck should I feel so awful for pulling the trigger on everyone who had hurt me? Why should I feel bad about killing members of the Black Falcons? Why should I feel such guilt for that?

  For all that they’d done! For making me feel so weak and insignificant! For making me… for making me nothing…

  Why the fuck should I care? Why shouldn’t I like it?

  Because I always thought it would be Derek pulling the trigger when the time came.

  And now, it has to be you if you want to ensure your survival.

  Sure, I’d known there would be dangers.

  I’d just never imagined that I’d be dangerous.

  And realizing just how dangerous I could be—realizing just how good it felt to be dangerous—scared the ever-loving shit out of me.

  But…

  I couldn’t tell Derek that.

  I couldn’t tell him how all this was affecting me.

  Because if I did, not only would it burden him, I feared he would want to protect me even more from the darkness. I couldn’t just tell him that a part of me relished the violent revenge—I would have to also say that I hated that I relished such violence. And, well, Derek being the good man that he is, he would refuse to let me help in any way other than remaining a prisoner of security.

  And if that happened, maybe I wouldn’t be there to pull the trigger the next time he needed me as I had with Tyler. Maybe nobody would be.

  Maybe, next time, he’d die because he was trying to protect me by keeping me away.

  And I could not let that happen.

  I would get over this.

  I had to get over this.

  “I’m alright, I promise,” I said, offering a soft smile. “It really wasn’t that bad of a dream. Maybe something I ate last night or something. You know how these things can combine together to make some pretty nasty combos.”

  “Something you ate?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  It was too obvious that he didn’t believe me. But it was also perhaps too obvious that Derek would not press me on these kinds of things, perhaps believing that my past and my darkness was too much to verbalize in times of stress.

  It wasn’t the most inaccurate assumption.

  “Well, since we ate the same thing, I hope I don’t come down with whatever you have.”

  “Don’t tease me,” I said, pouting and slapping him gently on the arm.

  “Alright, alright,” he said, grinning that heart-stopping smile at me.

  I couldn’t help but smile back at him. He may have known that I was full of it and not telling anything, but I appreciated enough that he was putting it to the side for now.

  “So, what’s the plan today?” I asked. “Now that we’ve, well, had something of a chance to recover.”

  Again, it was… kind of true. True enough, anyways.

  “First: we have to make a pit stop at the shop,” Derek started. “Then, while you were sleeping, I thought about your suggestion to stay in. And while it made some sense, I think that’s giving up too much power to uncontrollable circumstances. So, with that in mind, you and I are going to go on a date.”

  “A date?” I said in disbelief. Granted, he wasn’t exactly calling me a liar, but my words weren’t wrong either. “At that time of night? Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I think it’s a perfect idea, Eve,” Derek said, sliding out of bed. “We won’t let Falcon and his club stop us from living. That’s how we let the Black Falcons win. Got it?”

  That seemed way too simple of an assumption.

  But, then again, just as going after Falcon was suicide without extreme planning, the Falcons had to know that going after Derek without an intense amount of planning was also extraordinarily dangerous. This wasn’t the type of violence I was looking for, but with Derek by my side, it did feel pretty safe.

  “Alright,” I said, agreeing with the sentiment but still concerned.
“And then?”

  “Then I’ll go on the first wild goose chase,” he grinned, saying the words from earlier in a high-pitched, mocking tone, teasing himself.

  “Very funny, Derek.”

  “I thought so,” he said, shrugging playfully. “Anyway, Roost’s waiting for us, so we should probably get a move on.”

  For the briefest of moments, I thought of grabbing him back to me and using sex as a means to keep him here. I didn’t want to see us going out, risking a shootout without security, and all of that.

  But I was still tired. And frankly, the depressing dream had suffocated my libido a little bit. It wouldn’t take long to come back, but for right now, I just wasn’t really in the mood.

  Instead, I got out of bed, still fully dressed, and followed Derek back down the elevator.

  We got to the shop with relative ease, the late afternoon traffic having died down, the calm before the rush hour storm. Derek parked his motorcycle at the side of the building and helped me off. I smiled at the gesture.

  Despite all the times that we’d rode together—despite the fact that I was more than capable of dismounting on my own—he still made an effort to help me off the bike every time we rode. Even though it was a little thing, just a small gesture, it left a big impact. It made me feel loved.

  Between that and the freedom that I always celebrated whenever I rode with Derek, I was feeling much better than I had upon awakening. The drive had helped, and I was glad that I was feeling back to myself by the time we walked through the shop’s doors. Granted, I wasn’t all the way back, but I was back enough that if this was taking place in our apartment—our… apartment. Feels weird to say but…—I would have had something to do about it in bed.

  Matty stepped forward, peeling off what looked to be a pair of clunky, giant headphones off his head. I glanced over, noticing that the ear muffs were a lot more heavy-duty than any of the headphones I’d seen before.

  “What were you listening to?” I asked.

  Matty looked at me askance, pulled off the headphones when I pointed to them, and busted out laughing. It was a sweet laugh, and even Derek chuckled a bit.