Man Made Murder (Blood Road Trilogy Book 1)

by Z. Rider

  New plan, if he didn’t lose the fucking vampire as soon as it got full dark: wait until the show was starting. Fans would be inside, along with the band and, hopefully, the crew.

  After another twenty minutes, the street took on that cozy evening feel—the pizza place was lit up, headlights were on, the sky a deep magenta heading toward black. The first few stars twinkled in the heavens.

  Carl shifted his weight to his other foot, arms crossed, neck stiff from sitting and sleeping in his car.

  One last huddle of fans hung on, reluctant to leave the proximity of the bus to join the crowd shuffling into the building.

  Carl pulled in a deep lungful of air. He had to do something. Letting it out, he said, “Hey, do you know who’s opening for them?”

  A guy with his back to him half turned. “Thieves.”

  “Shit. Really?”

  “You heard of them?”

  “My brother saw them open for Aerosmith. He’d fucking kill to see them again. I wish he’d known.”

  “They’re that good, huh?”

  “That’s what he says. He’d know better than me. He deejays, out in—” He caught himself on the brink of naming his own town, leaving something for the cops to go on, assuming he managed to get away after taking care of the biker. “Out in Los Angeles.” There, that should have enough prestige. “They’ll probably be hitting the stage soon. You should check them out.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m just waiting for my sister. Supposed to take her to dinner for her birthday. If I’d known Man Made Murder was playing…Hey, you guys have a good time in there.”

  The guys talked for another minute or two amongst themselves before shrugging and heading up the alley, around the corner, digging in their pockets for tickets.

  Carl let out a pent-up breath. Grasping the stakes in one hand, he turned his attention to the bus.

  It jostled. He chalked it up to the guy inside walking around.

  Moving quickly, he crossed the alley and stayed close to the venue’s wall, praying the door didn’t swing open and spit more people out.

  He made it to the rear tires and slowed, calculating distances, stopping shy of where he wanted to be, giving himself a chance to duck for a look.

  With the sun behind the building, the underside of the bus was black as night.

  He didn’t see what he’d expected to see—but it was dark. He slid over a few feet, to where he wanted to be, and checked again.

  Shit. His eyes must be fucking with him. He’d been right here the whole time it’d been getting dark. He’d have seen the fucking biker walking around.

  Swearing in a whispered breath, he flattened himself to get underneath the bus, just to make sure.

  There was fucking nothing there.

  8.

  * * *

  As his third cigarette burned down to the filter, Dean heard a scrape from farther up the bus. His orange juice, hopefully—which meant he’d be able to put in an order for whiskey. He stubbed the cigarette out, his lip curling at the thought of the juice.

  Another scrape, and the skin behind his ears tightened, his chin lifting toward the bus’s roof. He got slowly to his feet, an arm out to steady himself, a hand reaching back to his pocket, where he’d stowed his knife. He turned his eyes to the ceiling.

  The voice of a rational Dean—the old Dean, before all of this—was telling him it was just a pigeon or something.

  At night?

  An alley cat then.

  A quick shuffle overhead, farther up the bus, was followed by a thump he felt through the bus floor.

  Your orange juice, old Dean said, but today’s Dean unfolded the knife, gripping the handle tight. He switched out the light in the back lounge before darting a glance through the darkness, trying to think of where he could go.

  It’s Nick, fucking around. He’d been eying those hatches on the roof.

  He flattened himself beside the door. Trying not to breathe.

  His bones felt like they were starting to crack under the weight of dread. He felt like he was back in his truck, out on that black road—like he’d never left it. Like there was no escape, really. His throat held back the edge of a noise. He touched his fingers to the back of the door—cheap plastic with a lock a four-year-old could break.

  He didn’t need to hear footsteps: he could map the approach with that weird sense high in his nostrils. He turned his cheek to the wall, teeth gritted. Breathing out his nostrils so he wouldn’t breathe in the fermented meat smell.

  The knife handle was hard in his fist.

  From the bunkroom came the light scrape of curtain tracks, the soft rustle of fabric.

  Then silence like a precipice.

  He wanted to be anywhere but here. Anyfuckingwhere.

  The door made a quiet click before it juttered on its tracks.

  He felt like he was free-falling off the precipice.

  The full smell of the biker rolled in—leather and exhaust, road grit and oil, and that hint of fermented meat.

  Two eyes reflected what light the lounge had in it, and Dean raised his arm.

  The biker grabbed his throat with a gloved hand, slamming him to the wall. His weight leaned against Dean’s shoulder. The arm with the knife wasn’t pinned; Dean swung it around the biker’s back like he was giving him a hug and buried its blade in leather and flesh.

  Cold breath puffed over Dean’s lips.

  In the darkness, a grin.

  Gritting his teeth, Dean pulled on the knife.

  “You’re a pain in my fucking ass.” The hand gripping his throat tightened. Dean’s air cut off. He scratched the biker’s jacket with the fingers on his pinned arm. The knife wiggled in the biker’s side, but wouldn’t come free.

  “Bet you’re feeling pretty shitty these days, huh?” The biker’s thumb jammed harder into his neck.

  He wrenched the knife from the biker’s side. The rich scent of blood burst into the room. His mouth opened wide at the smell. His head pushed against the cheap wall at his back. It was so rich, it made the edges of his brain fuzz.

  “Gimme that fucking thing.” Without releasing Dean’s throat, the biker grabbed Dean’s arm.

  Dean sank the blade again, higher, steel sliding along the underside of bone, making his teeth tingle at the sensation.

  “Enough of this shit.”

  With a grating, almost burning pain, Dean found himself on his knees, bent over the couch, his now-empty knife hand pinned to his back.

  His chest heaved against the couch cushion.

  He should just let the asshole kill him.

  Just get it the fuck over with.

  His nostrils flared at the smell of blood all around him. His throat opened, wanting it.

  The biker yanked the knife from his side. It thumped on a couch cushion. Another blade snicked softly against its leather sheath.

  The tip dug into Dean’s cheek.

  His stomach contracted, drawing in against itself. He hadn’t eaten in days. His head was going light. He was so hungry all of the sudden; he felt like he was going to puke. Pass out. His eyes rolled, his lids fluttering. He moaned and at first didn’t even realize it was him.

  “Yeah, that smell’ll do it to you,” the biker said, close. “Sadly for you you’ll never get the joy of it.” He twisted Dean’s arm higher. Sharp pain, something on the edge of breaking, forced a choked noise from his throat.

  And he didn’t care. He let out a broken breath—desperation for what was so close—even as the tip of the knife pierced the flesh of his cheek with sparks of cold pain.

  “I don’t know you from fucking Adam,” the biker was saying. “You’re not one of us. You don’t get to be one of us.” He forced the knife deeper.

  Its tip pushed through Dean’s flesh. Metal scraped tooth with an electric pain that flew through his nerves like ice.

  The biker twisted the blade.

  Dean cried out.

  It tugged flesh as the biker worked it back
out. He wiped it clean against Dean’s cheek.

  Dean had time to push his tongue against the hole, taste the tang of his own blood, and then his mouth and eyes stretched open in surprise at the cold pierce of pain at the side of his neck. His throat constricted, his body trying to swallow by reflex around the steel blade lodged across its opening. He dragged air in to yell, but all he got was a wheezy gurgle.

  “Shhh,” the biker whispered, jerking the knife out.

  The gurgling became louder.

  His flesh made a sucking sound as the last of the blade pulled free.

  His eyes were still open in surprise, his fingers weakly grasping for purchase on the couch cushion. The knife plunged into his back.

  Air stopped almost completely. He tried to suck, but the bag wasn’t filling.

  He scratched at the cushion. The knife’s hilt leaned on the hand the biker had trapped behind him, but there was no getting a grip on it.

  Up close to his ear, the biker said, “Don’t worry. You’re not gonna die from this. Not this. We’ll get to that a bit. First: payback.”

  The knife wrenched free, leaving him fighting to breathe.

  A hand clutched in his hair yanked him backward. The biker tripped him to the floor, planted a knee on his chest to hold him there. Dean wasn’t sure he could have gotten up anyway. He reached out, fingers grasping air weakly as he tried to suck air in.

  “Hurts like a bitch, doesn’t it?” the biker said. “Getting run over’s no fucking fun, either, just so you know.”

  The knife plunged into his gasping mouth. Its tip lodged in the back of his throat. He choked around it, his shoulders banging against the floor. Blood surged into his throat. He tried to claw the biker’s face, but he couldn’t even see the biker’s face for the panic and pain.

  He could hear him, though, every word as though it was whispered in his ear just for him: “I could suck what’s left of you out right here, leave you for your friends to think you’re dead. If you’re lucky, they’ll cremate you.”

  He braced a hand on Dean’s forehead to draw the knife back out.

  “If you’re not so lucky…I gotta say, forever’s a long fucking time to spend staring at the walls of a coffin.”

  A weak cry came out of Dean’s throat along with the blade. He grasped the biker’s arm. Watched the biker’s thumb flick the metal pommel off the knife’s wooden handle.

  The biker flipped the knife around, handle down, and Dean could see the wood had been carved like a fat pencil.

  “I’m not gonna leave you like that, though. You’ve been too much of an unpredictable pain in my ass already.” He raised the sharpened handle over his shoulder, his fingers tented on Dean’s chest. “My fucking luck, someone’d lean over your body with a bloody nose, and you’d be my fucking problem all over again.”

  Dean’s back was soaked in blood. One of his lungs had to have collapsed. Blood gurgled in his throat. He held the biker’s wrist, but his strength was washing out of him. The pointed end of that handle was going to swing down and end him with the cracking of chest bone and the sick squish of organs underneath.

  And he hadn’t even gotten to play that Mercy song for an audience.

  He coughed, and blood spattered his lips.

  His vision blurred.

  At least let it be quick.

  The door made a soft pop. Somewhere far back in his brain, he realized the latch had been lifted.

  No! broke in his chest.

  He was one thing, but not his guys—not his fucking people.

  9.

  * * *

  Think. Think. Think.

  The biker had come after the band—after Dean Thibodeaux specifically, or at least that’s how it looked. If he wanted to get to the band, where would he go? On the bus. He had no idea which of the guys it was who’d boarded earlier. If it was Dean, the biker had who he wanted. If it wasn’t, he had a hostage to get who he wanted.

  If he were the biker, he’d have gotten on the goddamned bus somehow.

  He backed up and looked at its blank windows, the rounded slope of its roof. The door—he should probably try that first. And if that didn’t work, he could always bang on the venue’s back door and say he saw someone get on the bus with a gun. It’d cause confusion and might make it tough to do what he’d come for, but he had to do something.

  Bus door first.

  And the door—was unlocked.

  He boarded and dragged it closed behind him.

  At the top of the steps, he listened. Voices. He followed them up the hall, no lights on in the place at all, but the fact that there was just one straight aisle made the going easy: just put one foot in front of the other. His fingertips brushed a tabletop, a doorframe, the stiff, scratchy fabric of drapes. He reached behind, into his waistband, and pulled out the gun. Pushed the pile of stakes onto a bunk, taking just one with him, clutched in his fist.

  Bodies thudded. Someone grunted. The sound of something hitting flesh, followed by wheezing, gasping. His hand found a wall. A crash against the floor shook it. He patted for a light switch. Nothing. Grasped the doorframe.

  “I could suck what’s left of you out right here,” someone growled, “leave you for your friends to think you’re dead. If you’re lucky, they’ll fucking cremate you. If you’re not…I gotta say, forever’s a long fucking time to spend staring at the walls of a coffin.”

  That was him. That was his fucking guy. His fingers found the latch on the door, worked it open despite the clumsiness of the stake clutched in his hand. Pulled the door open to near darkness, and got knocked so hard by what felt like someone’s shoulder into his thigh that his jaw slammed into the doorframe. The gun flew from his grip, landing in the bunk area.

  Half stunned, he got his footing and tried to shake it off.

  A boot heel stomped his toe. He put his hand against a hard back and felt no body heat, just denim shifting over a frame as muscles twisted, trying to wrestle free of the other’s hold.

  The denim jacket backpedaled, driven by the other guy, and slammed into Carl, making him oof, making the stake drop from his grip in a clatter. The weight of the guys against him sent him back a step, wood thunking softly under someone’s heel. Carl, with his hand against someone’s hip, crouched to retrieve the stake.

  “Pain in my fucking ass,” a voice growled, and the body Carl was bracing against pulled away from him.

  Carl closed his hand around a stake and turned, rising.

  “Fuck you,” said a different voice, the words sounding like they’d been bit between clenched teeth.

  Carl pushed through the doorway, his free hand feeling in front of him.

  Someone cried out as Carl’s fingers brushed leather. He reached higher, found the fold at the top of the collar. Closed his grip on the jacket and yanked, hard, dragging back and downward.

  The biker’s arm shot out and around, elbowing him just above the jaw so hard his knee started to buckle with the pain.

  The fist gripping the stake caught him against the floor, his fingers pinched under the wood. The biker tripped backward over him, driven by the guy in the denim jacket, who was yelling—a long wordless shout as the both of them tumbled over Carl’s shoulders, knocking him forward, their weight falling hard across his back in the bunk area. Carl’s hand slid out from under him. The two guys kicked, and Carl twisted sideways, crawling from underneath, shrugging his way free.

  His eyes were used to the dark now. He saw the punch come up, heard the musician’s head snap back. He grabbed that guy by a fistful of hair and yanked with everything he had, pulling him enough out of the way to get in there himself, between them, straddling the biker.

  “Oh, you fucking too?” the biker snarled. He grabbed for Carl’s face.

  Carl plunged the stake downward with everything he had. In that split second he had time for a thousand doubts—bone, wood, how fucked he was going to be if this didn’t work—and when the sharpened point hit chest, jarring his arms and the wood in his hands,
he thought for another endless split second that it had failed.

  The wood cracked.

  The tip did nothing but dent the leather.

  The musician’s arm knocked it out of the way, shouldering him aside. A knife swung down, the edge of its blade catching a gleam in the room’s thin light.

  Steel cracked bone, and a laugh huffed out of the biker, but the other guy, with a hand shoved against the biker’s chin brought it down again, pulling it like a gear shift when it stuck deep in the biker’s chest. Grinding out a hole there.

  The biker bucked against the floor, his fingers circling the musician’s wrist. Carl grabbed the biker’s arm, digging a thumb in to try and break the hold. And the musician kept working on his hole, widening it with sick wet sucking sounds.

  “Stake,” the musician breathed, adjusting his knee to hold the biker down, working the knife around in his chest.

  Carl had only the broken one. He held it out, and the musician took it, sliding the knife out and slamming the stake in its place. He leaned back as the musician rose to a crouch and brought his foot high to stomp the stake farther in.

  The biker coughed. His fingers moved weakly, trying to get a hold of the wood.

  Something in there squished, then burst with a gush, like an overripe tomato being stepped on.

  The coughing turned wet.

  Carl’s hands turned wet.

  The biker’s shirt—he was pressing down on his sternum, his ribs—became soggy with cool blood.

  “Get out,” whispered a voice near his ear.

  Carl looked over.

  “Get the fuck out now.” His lips were drawn back in a snarl, his eyes narrow and wild.

  Carl’s sneakers slipped. He struggled with the doorway, trying to get over the body lodged in it. He fought free, and then he was running down the bus aisle, his heart slamming, his hand wet to the wrist with blood.

  Those eyes clear in his head, even in the darkness.

  10.