So what if her boss, Mick, owned a few local strip clubs and bars? And if those clients came ’round the diner at 3 a.m. for a very late dinner or aggressively early breakfast? Big deal. She made decent money working the morning and lunch shifts, and no one expected her to take her clothes off.
The van complained and the engine sputtered but she eased it onto I-95. Getting the vehicle up to speed always made her nervous. It ran like a workhorse, never failing, but it was not a racehorse, either. Normally she took surface streets to avoid the frustrated honks of other drivers, but she had no time today. She’d get down to Packer Avenue and to the dockyard fast, unload her delivery of crummy bagels and cold coffee, and look the other way if someone slipped something into the back of the van.
Not her problem. She was just the driver.
Old Louis Lancer ran his business just close enough to the legal side of the law that the cops and public officials looked the other way. One of the legendary colorful characters of Philadelphia, he always had a cigar clenched between his teeth and a pretty thing on his arm. He drank, smoked, and ate a fatty diet much to the dismay of his heart doctor. It didn’t matter, because Louis was larger than life. Everyone understood on some level that he was a bad guy, selling drugs on the streets and laundering the dirty money through his strip clubs, bars, and restaurants, but he had a robust laugh and a twinkle in his eye, like a naughty Santa. You couldn’t help but like the guy.
He died, under his mistress, from heart failure. “With a smile on his face and pussy on his dick,” Little Mickey said at the funeral. Well, everyone called him regular Mickey by then. Couldn’t go around calling the new boss by his pet name. Still, the neighborhood admired Louis’ grand exit, even if it was cliché. Died while having sex? Better than dying on the toilet, she guessed.
Mickey took over the family business, but it wasn’t the same. He lacked his father’s affable disposition. Everyone in the neighborhood grew up calling him either Little Mickey or Blue Eyes because they couldn’t call him Crazy Eyes, which sprang to mind looking at his flat, dull-eyed stare. Well, you couldn’t call him that to his face, and no one had the balls to call him that behind his back.
Old Louis was never the jolly criminal that Juniper imagined. He had been a dangerous man. She just saw the smiling public front that made people forget all the bad things he did and only remember the Christmas toy drive or handing out baskets of food at Thanksgiving.
Mickey had none of that. He didn’t smile and no one would ever dare describe him as affable. He didn’t pretend to be anything other than what he was.
He also believed that the Illuminati and a shadow government ran the world, so he was clearly cuckoo bananas crazy pants.
Traffic crawled. Juniper pressed her head to the steering wheel, dreading the coming face-to-face with Mickey. What was she going to do? Who knew how much longer Mickey would honor his father’s agreement? She’d never get out from under this loan, and it was only a matter of time before Mickey decided that he couldn’t trust her. There was only one way this situation could end, and it wasn’t happy.
She never should have taken the loan from Louis, but how could she pass up the opportunity for Chloe? Her sister had been accepted into Longwood Academy, one of the most prestigious—and expensive—private schools in the city. Chloe would have the best education and a real chance to get out of the crumbling neighborhood. Of course Juniper took the money. She’d be an idiot not to.
Why Louis even offered, she had no clue. He wasn’t in the business of funding fancy-schmancy educations, and he knew she’d never be able to pay him back. His own son, Little Mickey, went to Longwood, so he knew how expensive the tuition ran. Perhaps he wanted the satisfaction of sending another Frankford kid to the poshest school in the city. Perhaps he had a moment of genuine charity, but Juniper doubted it. Men like Louis always had an angle.
Juniper didn’t like it when Mickey called in her tab, but she couldn’t pretend that his father, Old Louis, never did the same. He ran a business, not a charity. Usually, he had her work a private party at his house, which was tolerable. House parties stayed nearly respectable. As long as she wore a tight little black number and didn’t mind a hand or two on her ass, she survived the night. She served drinks and had no obligation to entertain the lusty requests of Louis’ guests. She could have—and would turn a pretty penny for her trouble—if she wanted, but she was also free to say no. If anyone insisted, she found the nearest bit of muscle and they kept the situation from getting out of hand.
Damn. Juniper couldn’t believe she felt downright nostalgic about a sleazeball who didn’t make her prostitute herself to pay off her debts. That was all kinds of fucked up. Mickey only wanted her to drive and not ask questions. She could do that with a smile on her face, happy to oblige.
Juniper had no good answer. She had been damned if she did, damned if she didn’t.
At least Chloe had a shot. She could still get out.
tas
Moisture condensed on the inside of the crate as the temperature dropped. He licked the droplets of water, never more than enough to wet his lips. His tongue sat thick and heavy in his mouth. He could go days, weeks with minimal food, but he needed water.
Perhaps Agent Rhododendron wanted him to die in this box. She starved him, chained him, sent him across the ocean, and left time and dehydration to do the rest.
Tas did not have time to entertain any further maudlin dramatics. The rolling motion of open water gave way to choppy, shallow waters. Machine oil and exhaust layered over the sea air, creating a strange miasma. Human voices shouted over machinery. The crate lurched as it was lifted, moved, and finally settled onto solid ground. The warmth of light bled around the edges of the crate’s lid, and he pressed his fingers to the crack, relishing the burn of solar radiation. It had been decades since the sun warmed his skin.
He had arrived but knew not where. Perhaps somewhere off the Mediterranean or across the Atlantic in North America. So strange to think that when his crew arrived on Earth, the two hemispheres had no contact with each other and were unaware of each other’s existence. They could barely navigate their own coastlines, let alone cross an ocean.
One of his captors claimed that humans had traveled to their solitary moon. Not Rhododendron. The one before, with the silly name. Winterberry. Grack, what a ridiculous name.
Even if humans had gone to the moon, Tas remained unimpressed.
He worked his hands and feet free of the cuffs. The crate was barely large enough to hold an adult male and offered no room to rest comfortably. He crouched or sat on his knees for days. Another indignity. His captors thought of everything.
Soon they would open the crate and Tas would have his revenge.
He hoped Rhododendron would be there when the crate opened. While he couldn’t see her face, he imagined she had a sharp, brittle smile, and he wanted to wrap his chain around her throat and listen to her desperate gurgling as the life left her body.
The crate lurched again before a vehicle moved it smoothly. It slid into place, a heavy door closed, and the brief warmth of sunlight vanished. An engine rumbled to life as the vehicle moved.
Soon. He stretched his cramped limbs before shifting the last of his energy to toughen his shoulder. He threw himself against the weak point in the crate, knowing he had a limited window for escape. If he waited until they arrived at whatever destination the Rose Syndicate chose, a dozen humans would greet him with guns when the door to his cage opened.
His revenge fantasy with his handler was just that: a fantasy. The human’s projectile weapons were laughable but he lacked the strength to fight his way through a dozen all shooting at him. Experience taught him that humans were dangerous in crowds. Their flimsy toy weapons multiplied in effectiveness when coupled with nets, hooks, and even sticks with pointy ends.
Tas growled with pleasure, remembering the last human he saw who did have a long pole with a pointy end. The male had been determined to jab Tas, so he broke th
e pole and then broke the male’s arm.
No, he needed to make his escape in transit. Now.
His days of captivity were over.
juniper
Mickey had two rules: don’t look at the cargo and don’t stop the van. Simple. Juniper never had a problem following the rules. Black plywood separated the cabin from the back of the van, which made the not looking part easy.
Eyes forward. Drive.
The radio and the road noise filled the cabin with a pleasant drone. Juniper focused on traffic and what she would make for dinner. Considering she had a pound of ground beef that would spoil soon, something with that. Spaghetti with meat sauce or meatloaf. That sounded nice.
The insulation on the stove was a joke and the whole house got unbearably hot if she tried cooking anything in the oven during the summer. The weather had turned cooler though, allowing her to bake for the first time since May.
The more she thought about it, the more she set her mind on meatloaf with mashed potatoes. Normally she wasn’t interested in cooking anything too complex after her shift, but the coffee did its magic. She felt energized and wanted to make a proper meal.
As she turned off the interstate, she heard thumping in the back of the van.
Shit.
In a panic, she turned up the volume of the radio. Maybe if she couldn’t hear…
Thump.
No. Oh, no no no.
That was a person.
Thump.
That was a fucking person in the back of the van.
Look, she knew the catering gig to the docks was shady. She wasn’t an idiot, but she never thought too hard on it, either. She just had to deliver the bagels, leave the back of the van unlocked, and not ask questions. Easy. Someone slipped a package in the back of the van and Juniper brought it back to the diner. She never looked in the back. Not ever. Keeping her nose out of Mickey’s business was the only way to play this game.
Mickey was beyond paranoid. If he ever thought she peeked at the cargo, he’d… She didn’t know, exactly. Nothing good. Mickey had so many ways to hurt her. She’d suffer a beating if she had to, but if he threatened to hurt Chloe—
Yeah, right. She heard what he did to Raul and his cousin when the cash drawer came up short. Mickey had her over a barrel. Complete loyalty and willful blindness kept her and her sister safe.
Thump.
The van shook with the force of the thumping. Black painted plywood vibrated as if someone intended to punch their way through. She needed to pull over and sort it out, even if that broke both of Mickey’s rules.
On her first catering run, one of Mickey’s enforcers sat in the back, ready to catch Juniper if she got curious and tried to check out the cargo.
She had kept her eyes forward the entire time and just drove.
She needed to do that now, but her gut churned. It was easier when she figured the cargo was drugs or a stolen batch of the hot new cell phone. Whatever. She didn’t swell up with pride at her choices, but her driving didn’t hurt people. Those drugs were already in the port. Those cell phones were already stolen.
But that thump—that was a person and they clearly didn’t want to be there.
Shit.
She turned the van off the main road into a stretch of mostly abandoned warehouses. She pulled into a pothole-riddled parking lot. She needed to think.
That annoyingly upbeat music rubbed her the wrong way with its positivity and sunshine lyrics. She turned off the radio while the engine idled.
She was okay with smuggling and theft, but not human trafficking. That could be a kid. Or some woman who had been promised a job as an au pair but would find herself in a brothel.
The thought made Juniper’s skin crawl. Drugs and stolen gadgets were things. It was easier to stomach the shadiness when she just drove a box of most likely stolen or illegal stuff.
Stuff. Not people. A person. A human.
Whoever was back there, they needed her help. She’d tell Mickey… something. They escaped while she was on the road. With all the thumping in the back, that was probably true.
Decision already made, she grabbed the bottle of water and the candy bar from her bag.
Warmed by the afternoon sun, the uneven pavement poked at the soles of her shoes. A low growl sounded nearby. Juniper spun, looking for a stray dog but found nothing.
“Hello?” She knocked on the rear door. The thumping stilled, but the threatening growl remained. “I don’t know you if you can hear me. Or speak English. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m going to open the door now. Okay? Okay.”
Taking a deep breath, she mentally prepared herself to find a starved, naked person desperately needing water, food, and medical care.
The door creaked open, revealing a shattered wooden crate. Something shuffled in the back, lurking in the shadows.
“Hello? I have water. Agua.” She set the bottle down on the floor and backed away.
A figure moved into the light, so massive that Juniper couldn’t believe it ever fit into that wooden crate.
Its skin was a dark gray, almost like granite, that did not seem to absorb the light. Her eyes slid off of him, as if the light bent around him. His ears were slightly elongated. Spikes sat on its head like a crown, the two in the back taller than ones in front. It took her an embarrassingly long moment to realize the spikey crown was horns. The creature had horns. Something moved behind him, sinuous and winding.
A tail. Her mind took a moment to process that the creature had a tail.
It snatched the bottle of water and ripped off the cap. As he guzzled the contents, wings stretched out behind him, filling the back of the van with the pure menace of his physical presence.
Her eyes took all of him in and realized at once that the creature was a him and he had a very large, angry-looking hard-on. Half obscured by shadows but pointing directly at her, his cock was dark gray at the base and a vivid pink at the head.
Juniper took another step back.
He launched himself out of the van, knocking her to the ground before she had time to scream. Bits of stone dug into her back.
His weight had her pinned. She struggled to ignore the erection pressing into her stomach. She didn’t move. Barely breathed. She didn’t want to feel it—or for him to get any ideas.
Oh god. A gargoyle with an erection sat on top of her. If she weren’t terrified, she’d be squealing with delight about living out one of her earliest fantasies. The aloof hero of that gargoyle cartoon gave her younger self feelings, all right? It was a crush. It was normal.
This was normal.
Dull gray eyes with a purple sheen stared down at her. She felt as if he was inspecting her but not seeing her. The gargoyle leaned in, sniffing her hair and giving a shake of his head, his top lip curled back as if in disgust.
Her breath hitched at the sight of his sharp, very pointy fangs. Panic flooded her mind. Why had she opened that van door? The gargoyle would eat her. Consume her. Tear her apart.
His hand covered her throat. Rather than squeeze, the thumb brushed her skin. Her hips twitched, unable to stop herself.
His body moved stiffly, as if touching her revolted him, sure, but that wouldn’t stop him from having a quick snack. She needed to give him something else to snack on.
She wiggled her right hand, still clutching the candy bar. “You like chocolate?”
His head tilted. Hope surged in her chest. Maybe gargoyles did like chocolate.
He snatched the candy bar, claws raking the back of her hand, leaving burning welts, and roared in her face, breath hot and wild.
With a push of his massive legs, he leaped away.
3
Juniper
A gargoyle.
A fucking gargoyle.
Juniper pulled herself into the cabin of the van and sat in stunned silence. A gargoyle—she still couldn’t wrap her mind around that—jumped out of the back of the company van and tackled her.
Her hand drifted down to her stomach, findin
g the fabric damp but she couldn’t think about that right now.
What would she tell Mickey? The gargoyle was gone. She broke the rules. She stopped and she looked in the back.
Maybe the gargoyle broke free and then came through the back? She twisted in the seat. The barrier that separated the cabin from the cargo was only thin plywood painted black. It did nothing except prevent the driver from seeing the cargo.
She pushed at the plywood and it rattled, loosely held in place with screws. Maybe she could knock a hole in with a sledgehammer but not with her bare hands.
Could she just park the van in the back of the diner and sneak away? Risky. She looked a mess with her scraped hands and tousled hair.
Shit. Her hand hurt. The gargoyle’s claws had caught her good and etched four lines into the back of her hand. The welts now beaded with blood. She dug into her purse for a pack of tissues and dabbed at the skin, assessing the damage. Thankfully, the gouges were shallow and wouldn’t need stitches. What if it got infected from gargoyle bacteria? What if getting scratched from a gargoyle was like getting bitten by a werewolf?
Because these were average, everyday things that people worried about. More importantly, was this a worker’s comp claim?
A bitter laugh caught in her throat. She couldn’t even tell her boss what happened, but here she planned to file a workplace injury claim.
Best to keep everything as close to the truth as possible.
Breathing deeply, she mentally rehearsed her story. She heard a noise. The whole van shook. She thought she’d blown a tire and pulled over. Something jumped out of the back and knocked her down before running off.
Cell phone in hand, she just couldn’t bring herself to make the call. She stopped. She looked. She broke the rules.
Taken for Granite Page 2