Desolation Road

by Feehan, Christine

  He had told her about Sorbacov when he disclosed the information about his murdered family. This was something that also rang true. She had looked up psychic gifts when she was trying to find ways to improve her own meager talents. She had traced the more detailed experiments back to Russia.

  Master returned with two bottles of cold water. Up close he was daunting-looking. She could see tattoos running under his shirt and climbing down very muscular arms. He had faint scars on his face and neck.

  “Scarlet, Master. Master, miledi, Scarlet.”

  Master had a killer smile. “Nice to meet the woman who conquered the unconquerable.”

  “Is that what I did?”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s exactly what you did.” Master saluted her and sauntered back to his seat.

  Absinthe hadn’t protested, but his eyes looked more crystal than ever. His thumb slid over her inner wrist, landed directly on her pulse. “You seem very susceptible to him. Do you prefer him to me? Tell me the truth.”

  “No woman would prefer him to you,” Scarlet blurted before she could stop herself. “All I can think about is you. I can’t sleep or eat. I just want to be with you. Sometimes I think I’d do anything for you and then I remember I barely know you and that it’s crazy to be so obsessed.”

  He brought her wrist to his mouth and pressed a kiss over her heartbeat. “Funny that I feel exactly the same way about you.”

  “Do you?” She was horrified that she’d told him the truth. What was wrong with her?

  “Yes. I’m giving you things about myself I’ve never told anyone else. No one knows what I’m going to be telling you outside of those that are the charter members of Torpedo Ink. If you stay with me, you’ll know things about me that even they don’t know.”

  That was a lure right there. Absinthe wasn’t the kind of man to just share everything about himself with everyone. He didn’t have relationships. She looked around at the other tables. If she were to make an educated guess, she doubted if any of these men or women really did. Or if they did, like Absinthe, they didn’t go into them easily or often.

  “We weren’t the only children that were ripped from their parents over the years. It became a very common practice of Sorbacov’s. He established four schools. All were brutal. Three were legitimate schools training the children of the parents he had murdered to be assets for the country. The fourth school he set up for himself and his friends to use to play in. Although Sorbacov was married with children of his own and well-respected, although feared, he was a very sick man. He was a pedophile. He liked very young boys. More, he liked to torture the boys as he raped them. He especially enjoyed watching the torture and rape of young girls while he raped the boys. The fourth school he put in place was on the outskirts of the city, hidden away, and run by the criminally insane.”

  Scarlet heard the difference in his tone immediately. There was absolutely no question that he was telling the truth. He had gone from casual to disconnected. He could have been telling her about the weather. There was no expression in his voice at all. Her lungs began to burn for air, telling her she had to breathe, she needed to take a breath. He was holding on to her hand and she was afraid he might crush her fingers, but instead, he held her with infinite gentleness. She didn’t understand how that was possible.

  “I was taken to that school along with Demyan, when I was four and he just turning seven. We were taken there, more, I think, because Sorbacov liked our looks than because he understood our parents’ psychic talents.”

  She wondered what those talents were, but she didn’t want to interrupt him to ask. She glanced again around the patio at the other members of Torpedo Ink sitting there, talking low to one another as if they didn’t have a care in the world. She couldn’t imagine what had been done to all of them, only that it was so terrible, Absinthe couldn’t speak with any inflection when his voice was always so expressive.

  “There were two hundred and eighty-seven children taken to that school over the years and only eighteen survived. Those eighteen survivors are the charter members of Torpedo Ink.”

  Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered the fact that he had used the term charter members multiple times, but the number of children dying in that vile place that had not been a school was horrific.

  “We were raped, beaten and tortured. We were taught to use sex as a weapon and multiple ways to assassinate for our country, although we weren’t really expected to survive. We were thrown together in a freezing-cold environment without clothes or much in the way of food. Most of us continually had open wounds from whips and burns, the beatings and rapes. It never stopped. We were starving and hopeless. Often, if any of us fought back, they would chain a child up in front of all of us and beat them to near death and then leave them to die slow so we’d see what would happen to us if we resisted.”

  Scarlet had to turn away, her stomach threatening to heave. She pulled her hand away from his, vivid images finding their way into her mind. “Absinthe. How did any of you survive under those brutal conditions? My God.”

  She looked around her again at the various members of the Torpedo Ink club. Could any of them be sane? She wasn’t entirely sane after what she’d been through. She knew Absinthe was telling her his history fast, whitewashing it to some degree, maybe to a huge degree. She heard the “assassinate for their country” part. They were every bit as lethal as she thought them.

  “It took us years to get out. We were there until some of us were well into our twenties. One of us had to take an assignment to assassinate the international president of a motorcycle club. We discovered he was the brother of a billionaire and ran one of the biggest human trafficking rings worldwide. One by one, when we could, we joined the club he rode with in order to protect his back.”

  Absinthe handed Scarlet her water. “Drink something, baby. You’re so pale. I want you to hear this, but if you need a break, just say so. We can go next door to the Botanical Gardens and walk around for a little bit.”

  He was so thoughtful, worried about her when he was the one having to relive his childhood for her. She shook her head. “Keep going. Get it over with so you don’t have to think about it.”

  “Sorbacov tried to put out hits on all the students in the various schools he thought might reflect badly on him or his son, Uri, who wanted to be president. Eventually Sorbacov and his son, Uri, were killed and we were free to live the way we wanted to live. Czar, the one sent on the original assignment, rather than abandon it, after putting so much time in and working his way close, even putting his marriage on the line, decided to stay. He told us to go, but each of us made the decision to stay and take down the ring. Someone had to do it.”

  Scarlet closed her eyes briefly. Of course that would be something men like Absinthe and the others would do. After what they’d been through, they would detest anyone who trafficked in children or men or women. She took a slow drink of the cool water, letting it slide down her burning throat. She had never expected anything remotely close to what Absinthe was telling her. Not even remotely.

  In Thailand, she’d lived with a Russian, Adrik Orlov, for a year. Rather, she trained with him, cleaned his home and cooked for him. She had her own tiny place on his property. She suspected he also had been from one of those schools, obviously not the same as the one Absinthe had been in, but one of the others. His brutal training methods made much more sense now. At first, he had been horrible, but she had persevered, determined to learn everything she could from him. Once he saw she would stick with him, he hadn’t been quite so inhumane. She had bruises and he’d broken her arm once and on two occasions her ribs, but she’d turned up for training and he’d been the one to call it off, not her.

  “Once we took that down, we came here to the coast to find Czar’s wife, Blythe. It took a bit to set things right with her. They took in some children from the trafficking ring with no relatives and then another boy we found when we stopped another pedophile. So we ended up setting up the c
lub here. All of us bought homes and started businesses here. We’d like to make this our permanent residence. We’re very careful with all the locals including law enforcement to keep everything good. We want to raise our families here.”

  “You’re serious?”

  He picked up his water bottle, broke the seal on the cap and took a healthy swallow. “Very serious. I have a house I’d like you to take a look at. You don’t like it, we can sell that one and look at others.”

  She sat back in the chair and regarded him with a small frown. “You’re moving way too fast, Absinthe. We’ve had two dates. You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “Actually, I do. That’s going to get us to the me-pissingyou-off part.”

  “Don’t piss me off yet.” Scarlet hated to admit it, but she had to use the bathroom. She’d driven all the way from Sonoma and now she was chugging water down so even though she wanted to hear everything he had to say, it had to wait. “I need to go inside and find the restroom.”

  “Small place, babe. I think you’ll see it right away.” Absinthe stood anyway and walked with her inside, his fingers tangling with hers.

  He was right. It was a small coffee shop, but obviously popular. All the tables inside were taken as well, but not by Torpedo Ink members. That didn’t surprise her. None of them seemed the indoor type to her, especially in close quarters. She went straight to the bathroom, grateful it wasn’t in use.

  The roar of pipes was very loud through the open window even over the sound of running water as she washed her hands. There hadn’t been eighteen members of Torpedo Ink sitting at the tables, so maybe the rest of Absinthe’s club had come to join them. Still, just the sound of the motorcycles made her tense up. She couldn’t help herself and she needed to get over that if she was really going to make a real effort at a life with him—and she wanted to. This was her one chance with a man who would match her in everything she needed or wanted. Everything. They might have a million issues to work out, but every single one would be well worth the effort.

  Before Absinthe got to the part where he pissed her off, she had to do some confessing of her own. He had definitely told her things about himself he wouldn’t have told to just anyone. She had to learn trust all over again. The way her parents had died had shaken her belief in them and in their love for her. She’d lost faith that anyone could actually love her. That was really at the heart of her issues. Not only did she feel the guilt of her sister’s death weighing her down, but she didn’t believe anyone could ever really love her. If her own parents couldn’t stay alive for her and see her through Priscilla’s rape and death, if they blamed her, how could anyone else really love her? Wasn’t a mother’s love unconditional at least?

  She looked at herself in the mirror. Her green eyes stared back at her. She’d come into the room believing she had a chance with Absinthe, and just that quickly she’d talked herself out of it. She had to stop and grab at life with both hands while she had the chance. If she didn’t, if she was a coward, the chance wouldn’t come around again.

  The moment she stepped outside the restroom door; she knew something was wrong. The man named Savage was inside, one hip leaning lazily against the wall right next to the entrance. Absinthe waited for her beside the glass case of ice cream toppings.

  “What is it?” Scarlet asked, looking up at him.

  “Stay right in between Savage and me,” Absinthe said. “Give us both room to maneuver just in case. We’re going to walk to my motorcycle. We’ll leave your car here. Savage will cover you while you get on and we’ll head to the clubhouse.”

  He spoke very low, but there was something in his voice that told her not to argue and, more, made her want to obey every word. As he talked, he walked her straight toward the door. Savage opened it and then fell into step with the two of them.

  Scarlet didn’t ask questions because she saw the small group of bikers heading toward them. She could easily read the name of the club on the cuts. Venomous club. She’d been told by her new attorney how each of the witnesses had been visited by these club members and they were too scared to take the stand and tell the truth of what had happened that night. Her original defense attorney, and the judge, had known the witnesses had been intimidated and were too scared to testify on her behalf, although they’d written out sworn statements.

  The men stopped the moment they saw Absinthe and Savage with Scarlet in between them. One stepped forward. A patch proclaimed him as the sergeant at arms.

  “Absinthe.”

  “Iron.”

  “See you got to her first. We were supposed to have a few days’ start. Since you found her first, we’ll share the reward with you. And the fun. Holden wants her used hard, just brought to him alive. We can take her back to our clubhouse …”

  “You fucking bastard,” Scarlet hissed softly under her breath. The sense of betrayal made her sick. Her hand moved toward the gun concealed in her camisole.

  Savage caught her wrist gently, but his fingers dug deep. “Don’t be a fuckin’ moron,” he snapped, his voice equally as low. “Absinthe said you had a brain. You think he’d tell you all that shit about him—about us—if he was turning you over to Holden? You think you’d still have your fuckin’ weapons? Choose your targets but don’t tip them off. We don’t want civilians hurt and they’re all over the place. Be fuckin’ cool.”

  “Iron, if you think I’m turning my woman over to you for any reason, you’re wrong. She’s mine. Your club makes a try for her for any reason, any reason, we’ll consider that war.”

  Absinthe ignored the byplay between Savage and Scarlet as if he hadn’t heard it. He didn’t so much as look at her and she was glad. Savage was right. She just was so ready to always believe the worst, and it was really her lack of confidence in herself. Savage wasn’t gentle in the way Absinthe was. She had the feeling if she was his woman, he would have delivered some kind of punishment, if not on the spot, then later. As it was, she felt the heat of his glare and was totally humiliated that she’d made such a mistake.

  “War?” Iron smirked. “Last time I looked, you got shit members, Absinthe.”

  “Well I guess you’d better take another look.”

  Absinthe kept walking and Scarlet kept pace, although she wasn’t certain if it was really her own choice. Something inside wouldn’t allow her to stop. It was as if the moment Absinthe had given her that order in the coffee shop, she couldn’t find it in her to disobey him. She did as Savage said and chose her targets.

  She noticed that Lana was missing and did a subtle, quick look around, her gaze behind her dark glasses going to the rooftops. Lana was lying on a building behind a fence, rifle at her shoulder. She wasn’t the only one. A good-looking man covered in tattoos sat alone in a chair at one of the tables, wearing the Torpedo Ink colors. Gathered around him, on the ground, were six big ravens. She glanced at the telephone line overhead. A dozen more ravens with thick, wicked-looking curved beaks sat on the line, making it sag with their heavy weight, while at least six others flew in a lazy circle in the air. She gave a delicate shudder. The scene was a little too reminiscent of an old scary movie she’d watched once.

  Absinthe swung onto his bike while Savage faced the members of the Venomous club who had loosely trailed after them. Scarlet turned to face them as well.

  “Put the helmet and jacket on,” Absinthe commanded tersely.

  Okay, maybe he was upset with her. She couldn’t blame him, but it had been a momentary lapse. Hopefully, once she explained herself, he would be his usual understanding self. She vowed that whatever he had done that he said would “piss her off” she would be very understanding about.

  She caught up the Torpedo Ink jacket he all but shoved into her hands and slipped it on without a word. The helmet was next. She tucked in her hair and then put her foot on the peg and was behind him, wrapping her arms around him. She heard several bikes start up.

  “What about Savage?” She had to yell in his ear to have
him hear over the loud pipes.

  Absinthe glanced at her over his shoulder with a look that asked her if she was crazy. She looked at the man who just stepped right into Iron, backing him and the other six men he was with away from Absinthe’s Harley, making room so he could turn onto the road and drive onto the main highway leading back to Caspar. Several bikes dropped into formation behind them.

  Scarlet wished she could be in two places at one time. She wanted to see how many had stayed behind to make certain Savage was safe. He hadn’t seemed in the least worried facing the seven members of the Venomous club. In fact, they’d looked more scared than he had. She knew the reputation of the Venomous club because she made it her business to find out. They were working hard to make a name for themselves. To do that, they were getting as dirty as possible, which meant running drugs, guns and girls and getting bloody when they had to.

  They always looked for new allies. Only the smaller clubs who had no one else were aligning themselves with the Venomous club, yet all of a sudden they were gaining numbers in their ranks and picking off the edges of other clubs’ territories. They seemed to have money to purchase real estate. She couldn’t figure out where they were getting their money. Holden gave them work, but not the kind of money needed for the purchase of clubs and fronting the types of deals they were making.

  She pressed her hands tighter into Absinthe’s abs, moving with him as he took a long curve in the road. She loved riding with him on the Harley. She suddenly was very glad he was in a club. His hand moved over hers just for a moment and then they were speeding up a slight grade and slowing for a turn off the main highway into Caspar, the other bikes close behind. He went considerably slower as he maneuvered the narrower streets of the small town going toward the ocean.