Shadow & Soul (The Night Horde SoCal Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  “What if it’s a woman?”

  Muse laughed. “You don’t run out and buy takeout for a whore, brother. He’s not married, and he’s been running solo all this time, so I don’t see it being a girlfriend, either. It’s probably a contact. Laredo is a border town. Must be seven, eight major transport companies right here on the Rio Grande, most of ‘em dirty. My money’s on him sitting in there waiting for a contact to bring him papers and a seat in the back of a truck. We get him now, or he crosses the border and is out of our reach.”

  “If that’s true, couldn’t K.T. call Sam, ask for the Perros to handle it?” This was a Billings job. Demon thought it made sense for the Billings President to call the President of the mother charter, who had a close relationship with the leader of the cartel most of the club worked with, and seek help on the Mexico side.

  Muse shook his head. “This is not a job you subcontract, Deme. This is club payback. I want him. He’s not walking out of that room again.” He pulled out his gun and checked the magazine, then screwed a suppressor into the barrel. “We’ll give him a few minutes, see if he gets company. But we go either way.”

  “Okay, Muse. We go.”

  ~oOo~

  It wasn’t a woman. Or a contact. It was a boy.

  A small, scared boy about ten years old, wearing nothing but a pair of Fruit of the Looms. He had dark, sticky traces of duct tape on his wrists and ankles, and a rectangle of patchy red skin over his mouth. Jennings must have bound and gagged him so he could go out and run his errands.

  Those were details Demon thought about later. In the moment, he barely thought at all. He saw the boy, sitting at the little table in the corner with cartons of Chinese food spread out in front of him. He saw Jennings, also in nothing but his underwear, showing the concave chest and pallid paunch that skinny men sometimes got when their dissolute lives reached the fifty-year mark. Demon saw all that, and he didn’t even bother to think.

  When Muse managed to pull him off of Jennings and throw him against a wall, Demon saw the boy, curled up tightly on the chair he’d been on, staring at Demon as though he were, in fact, a demon. It was him the boy was most afraid of.

  He scrambled to his feet and tried to get out. He had to get out. But Muse flung himself between Demon and the door. “I need your help here, brother. You can’t run. You have to chill.”

  But he couldn’t. He couldn’t look at that boy. He couldn’t be in this room. Grabbing Muse by the shirt, he tried to pull him away from the door. But Muse was bigger and stronger than he was. Demon had been trying to bulk up, but he was still fairly lean. Muse grabbed his shoulders. “Chill, brother, chill! Take a breath.”

  Demon shook his head. He couldn’t breathe.

  “Yes. You’re gonna get us both locked up. Texas prison’s no fun. Trust me on that. Take a fucking breath.”

  He tried, but his entire body was on lockdown.

  “Try this. Listen to your heartbeat. I bet it’s loud. You hear it?”

  Demon couldn’t answer, but Muse went on anyway.

  “Count, but slow. Try to make your heartbeat match. One…two…three…four…five…”

  By Muse’s count of five, Demon could think. He was agitated but back driving his body again. He relaxed, and then Muse did, too.

  Before Muse let go, he asked, “We good?”

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “Good. We got us a mess to handle.”

  “We can’t—not a kid. Please.”

  “No, brother. Not a kid. Do me a favor. Wash yourself up and go get the van, back it up close. I’ll fix it with the boy. We’ll get him home.”

  ~oOo~

  Much later that night, Demon sat at the bar in the Corpus Christi clubhouse. He was achy from killing a man with his bare hands and then digging his grave in rock-solid Texas dirt, and he was on edge, waiting for Muse to want to talk about what had gone down.

  When Muse came out from the back and sent off, with a swat on her ass, the girl he’d taken back there, Demon felt sure he’d come over and want to talk. And he did come over.

  “Cuervo. Silver,” he barked at the Prospect behind the bar as he sat next to Demon. “You’re not partaking, Deme? Meat’s pretty fresh here.”

  “Nah.” He could not have been less interested, not after the night they’d had. His own mouth betrayed him, and he started the conversation himself. “What was that kid doing there?” He knew the boy had been stolen from the street, but it didn’t make sense. “Why would he take a kid like that when he was on the run?”

  “We’d know if I’d had a chance to grill him first. We’d know other shit, too. Important shit.”

  “Sorry.”

  Muse shrugged. “Can’t be undone. No use getting tangled up in it. I called Gizmo. He said there was some perv shit on Jenning’s hard drive, but he didn’t know about more than that. My bet is the stress got to him, and he was looking to ease it.”

  “If that kid decides not to go with the story you gave him, he’ll take us both down.”

  “Yep. But like you said, we weren’t gonna kill a kid. We saved him, Deme. Gave him back to his mom. We’re heroes to them. They won’t sell us out.”

  “Okay.” Demon finished his beer and waved the empty at the Prospect. “Cuervo this time.” Tonight, he wanted to get drunk.

  “You want to tell me what that was tonight, brother?”

  Demon had known the question would come. He’d fucking invited it. But he shook his head.

  “Fair enough.” Muse swallowed down his tequila and tapped the glass on the bar for a refill.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “PA! PA! PA! NO! PA! PAAAAA!”

  “Tuck, c’mon, honey. Pa’s not here. I got ya. Shhh. Shhhhh.”

  “NO! PA!”

  Faith got up from the sofa, where she must have finally fallen asleep, and went down the hall, following the sound of Tucker’s wails and screams. She stopped in the open doorway of his room and saw Bibi struggling to hold the hysterical toddler.

  “Can I help? Is he hurt?”

  At her voice, Tucker looked over. Whatever he saw when he saw her, it wasn’t what he’d wanted to see, and he increased his struggles. Obviously frazzled, Bibi snapped, “I got it, Faith. Just go!” Tucker screamed, responding to the edge in her voice.

  Chastened, Faith turned and went back down the hall. She stopped in the kitchen for a glass of water, then went back to sit on the sectional in the family room and continue her vigil. Tucker wasn’t the only one who wanted his pa to be home.

  She heard the bath running in the bathroom between Tucker’s room and Michael’s. She’d spent the previous night in that room with Michael, feeling happy and loved. But now she was alone, waiting and worried.

  It had been hours since Peaches had brought her back to Hoosier and Bibi’s. Bibi had been there for her, sitting with her, ready to talk, but Faith hadn’t been able to talk much at all, other than to try to describe what she seen, how she felt. Sense was beyond her.

  There was just too fucking much going on—her mother, her life, Michael, his son, his past, her past, their past, everything they’d lost, everything they might be able to have, everything getting in the way. The past crashing into the present and maybe leaving nothing but wreckage.

  What that woman had said—it was true. Some of it was true, enough to make Michael so upset. When he was a kid, she’d said. He’d been abused, then. She’d had no idea. She’d known he’d grown up in foster care, and that his life had been hard, but she’d never had details, and it had never really occurred to her to wonder. She’d had, she supposed, a middle-class teenager’s idea of what foster care meant. She’d thought he’d grown up poor and unloved, and that was heartbreaking enough.

  But it was more. Sitting in Hoosier and Bibi’s family room, the images and sounds of the scene in the clubhouse careening in her brain, she understood that she should have known, that the things about Michael she’d thought seemed unusual were signs of his torment. But then, before, she had
n’t had the experience to see it.

  She had been a kid, though she’d always insisted that that wasn’t true.

  Tonight, she’d seen deeper into him than she ever had before, and the sight made her heart sore. It scared and confused her, too. She’d known he could be violent. It was one of the things her father had shouted at her, that Michael—Demon—was a ‘psycho.’ She’d never really seen evidence of it herself until tonight, though. She could still hear the crunch of bone, the wet sound of blood spattering, and the way the crunch and spatter softened into something else after a while.

  The way the men in the Hall had stood back for a long time and just let him hit that woman.

  The way she’d laughed.

  His bloody face racked with regret, and the swirling miasma of rage, guilt, and fear in his eyes when he’d seen Faith watching.

  The way he’d run. The way he always ran.

  Possibly worse than any of that—Faith was jealous. She hated it, but it was there. That woman, that sick, cruel, pathetic woman, had had a child with Michael. Tucker, and through him Michael, would always be hers in a way Faith couldn’t touch.

  She hated that it was true, and she hated the way it hurt.

  Bibi came out of the bathroom, holding a much calmer Tucker in her arms. When she took him into the kitchen, Faith got up and went there, too.

  With his head on Bibi’s shoulder, Tucker eyed Faith, but not with fear or suspicion. Just interest. Whatever had made him so upset, the storm had passed.

  “Hey, buddy.”

  He held out a small, green rubber frog.

  “Is that for me?” She reached out to take it, but he pulled his hand back. A little smile lifted the corners of his mouth, though.

  Faith laughed gently. “You’re a little stinker.”

  “A stinker who needs more sleep. Let’s get your milk, Tuck.” Bibi looked at Faith. “He gets night terrors. There’s a routine to settle him back down—a bath, some warm milk, and a story. Deme lets him watch television instead of a story sometimes.”

  It sounded like Bibi was giving Faith instructions for future need, and that abraded her sore heart. After tonight, she felt like the little bit of new foundation she had started to build in Madrone might just have been broken apart.

  And that jealousy was there. She hated that woman—for what she’d done to Michael, for what she must have done to this helpless little boy, for the way that she could claim them both despite it all. She wished Michael had killed her.

  But she’d been alive, flopped on a chair with an ice pack held to her face, when Hoosier had sent Faith here.

  “Does he love her?”

  Setting a small pot of milk on the stovetop, Bibi turned and gave Faith a sharp look. “No, baby.”

  “Did he ever?”

  Bibi sighed. “I honestly don’t know. She’s a hard woman. I guess she’s had a life to make her that way, but knowin’ that don’t make her easier to be around. Deme’s so sweet and quiet with women, I don’t know what he saw in her.” She laughed and shook her head. “That ain’t true. I do know. She looks like you.”

  Faith was offended to the point of outrage. That skanky, spotty, bad-dye-job, grey-toothed junkie bitch looked like her?

  Before she could find breath to express her affront, Bibi laughed again and waved her free hand, dismissing the vitriol Faith had been trying to gather up. “Easy, honey. I don’t know what she looks like now, but I can guess it ain’t good. The last time I saw her, she looked rough. Not like you. When Deme met her, though, she was pretty. Long, dark, shiny hair and big, light eyes. And that small frame. Like you.”

  Bibi shifted Tucker to her other hip, and, with a grunt, he protested being moved. Then he reached out both his hands and leaned toward Faith.

  She looked at Bibi, who stepped closer. And then she took Michael’s son into her arms. He was much lighter than she expected him to be. And much heavier on her heart. He smelled of lavender.

  He held up his frog. “Vog.”

  “Frog, I see. Pretty cool.” Faith had no idea how to talk to a child. None of the wacky people who had populated her life before, in San Francisco, or now, in Venice, had children. She saw Bibi watching and said, “He’s littler than I expected.”

  “Small for his age. Behind in everything, so far. But he’s catching up. She was using when she had him. He was born addicted.”

  “Jesus.”

  Bibi poured warm milk into a little blue plastic cup and then sealed it up with a rubbery lid. “You ready for a story, baby?”

  “Mins.” Tucker took the cup and stuck it in his mouth, holding the frog against the side.

  “No movie tonight, Tuck. Granny needs to go back to bed, and so do you.” She took Tucker from Faith. “They won’t let him run far, honey. He’ll come back, you wait and see. While you wait, you sort things through. Nobody’s got baggage like Deme’s got baggage. Make sure you’re ready to help him carry it. But don’t add more. Say good night to Miss Faith, Tuck.”

  “Ni-bye,” he said and laid his head on Bibi’s shoulder.

  “Night, handsome,” Faith said, and then Bibi took him out of the kitchen and back down the hall to his room.

  Faith went back to the sofa and waited.

  ~oOo~

  It was only another hour before she heard the low roar of slow-moving bikes coming up on the house. More than one, but not many. Hoosier and Michael, probably. She stood up and, without thinking about it, primped a little, combing her fingers through her hair and smoothing her top. She was still dressed in the top and leather pants she’d worn to the clubhouse. She’d ditched the punk heels, however.

  Though she was in the family room and watching the garage door, they came in the front. She turned and ran in that direction like she was expecting a romantic reunion or something. Realizing that she had no idea what to expect from Michael—or Hoosier, for that matter—she stopped in the middle of the main hallway.

  Hoosier was just coming in, with Michael right behind. Her father’s best friend, her Uncle Hooj, came up to her and gave her a quick hug and a reassuring smile. “I’m gonna head to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.” He looked back at Michael, who nodded. Then he headed down the hall, deeper into the house.

  And Faith and Michael were alone in the hallway, facing each other. He had washed the blood away. Faith was glad; that had scared her.

  “Michael.”

  He took a step backward, toward the door, and she thought he was going to run again. But he stopped after that single step. “I…need to check in on Tucker.”

  “Of course. But, Michael—please, please talk to me after.”

  He took a deep breath and looked past her, into the dark house, away from her eyes. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Do you love me?”

  His eyes moved immediately back to hers. “God, yes. Faith, I’ve only ever loved you.”

  “Then try.”

  They stared at each other, and then finally he nodded.

  ~oOo~

  He stayed in Tucker’s room for almost half an hour. Faith sat and waited, staring at the photographs on the tables and walls of the room. Photos of Hoosier, Bibi and Connor. Of her parents and Hoosier and Bibi. Of the club she’d known and this new one she didn’t know. Family times she hadn’t been part of.

  Then he came into the family room and stood behind the sectional. She looked up at him, and he winced.

  “I scared you.”

  “No.” That was a lie, but she couldn’t say the truth.

  He knew it anyway. “It’s still on your face, Faith. You’re afraid of me.”

  “Michael, no. I’ve never been afraid of you.” Until tonight, that had been true.

  He was on the same wavelength. “That was true. I never saw it on you before. But now you are.”

  “It’s not fear. It’s confusion.” As Faith said it, she recognized that that was the real truth. “There’s a lot I don’t understand. Or only half understand. But I want to. I love you
.” She patted the sofa next to her. “Sit with me, Michael.”

  He ignored her request. “Why don’t you call me Demon?”