by Ace Gray
“Don’t promise.” Cole’s voice matched the caress of his fingertips on the outside of my thighs. “Swear on the moon, on the stars.” Cole ran his nose along the edge of my ear and shivers ran down my spine.
“I swear on the sun itself.”
The sun itself disappeared when Cole and Horse did. No amount of distraction could keep my mind from tunneling down into the burrow of worst-case scenarios. Not when every other time, it seemed they’d come back battered, bruised or broken.
I started printing test bills. Sheets and sheets of older twenties carpeted Cole’s apartment. There were minor issues here and there, but I figured most of them would go away with the mechanized printing press Mickey had procured. I printed and reprinted. Mixed ink and re-mixed it.
And when I couldn’t put it off any longer, I called Conrad, guilt already balled in my throat.
His phone rang and rang. Repeatedly. Each time his message came on. Until the last time.
“Hi, you’ve reached Conrad’s voicemail and I’m not in right now. I’m busy getting over the image of my best friend porking my ex-boyfriend because they’re both selfish pigs who like to lick each other’s slop. Coincidentally, I’m becoming a vegan. All the better for my beach body. If you’re not the swine of the earth, leave a message. Bye.” He dragged out the last syllable then oinked.
“You’re a fucker and you know it. You’ve been in the middle of it before and didn’t mind much. What kind of filthy animal does that make you,” I sighed loudly then let silence record for a moment or two. “He’s looking for you, ya know.”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I clicked off the phone and stared at it for a moment. I willed it to ring. If Conrad called me back we could rail, we could fight, but we’d be talking. Most likely loudly and at each other rather than to each other but still…
Nothing.
After a few minutes, I called back, only to get the straight click to voicemail. I meant to leave an apology but the outgoing message had been changed again.
“Hi, you’ve reached Conrad. Elle, stop calling. Horse, crawl across glass.” The beep blared in my ear.
“How are you even going to know if he crawls across glass?” I snapped and hung up.
I stood at the kitchen island and stared at the phone. This time I knew it wouldn’t ring but I watched the clock. After two minutes, I called back.
“Hi, you’ve reached Conrad. I have two words for you. Bye. Felicia.”
I waited for the beep. “That’s real mature,” I snarked.
When I waited my few minutes to call back, though, everything changed. This time, there was no snarky message. There wasn’t even a ring tone. He’d shut me out the most efficient way possible—shutting off the phone.
I made sure to roll my eyes all the more wildly as I flipped through my contacts to dial his work. They simply informed me he had walked out this morning and wasn’t coming back. He hadn’t left a forwarding address.
“This is a touch dramatic. Even for you,” I said to no one in particular but somehow hoping Conrad could hear.
He obviously wanted Horse to chase him—he’d said crawl—but he’d given none of us a place to start. And it wasn’t as if we had tons of time to spare searching for clues. But then again, he didn’t realize how serious things were with Mickey. We’d never made him understand.
I flopped back onto the couch, sending a few sheets of twenties shooting across the floor, and blowing out a breath deep enough to ruffle the layers of my hair hanging in my face. What was I going to tell Horse? Would it make him give up or fight furiously? Cole would dismantle the globe boulder by boulder, of that much I was sure, but Horse and Conrad were different. They hadn’t had time to grow into those dark corners. They’d barely had a chance to explore the edges.
My lip was growing raw from my constant worrying. Hours had gone by. Hours to think about money laundering, Conrad’s disappearance, and Cole.
Would he have cuts? Scrapes? Bullet wounds? Would he come back breathing right at all? Every time my eyes couldn’t drink him in, it was all too easy to convince myself he was only dream.
As if on cue, he and Horse all but kicked in the door, covered in blood like something straight out of a nightmare.
22.
Cole
I couldn’t tell if it was getting easier to kill or if that was my imagination. Maybe I’d just played monster so long, I was comfortable wearing something mangled on the outside. Perhaps it was that my soul didn’t feel so damaged, so threatened by the black. Elle filled up the space prone to shadow before.
All I knew was that I was supposed to bring a man to The Butcher, and tonight, that had been enough. Once we found him, I laid him out and without Horse’s coaxing. He’d helped me carry him to the trunk.
“That was easy.” Horse shot me a look when he shut the trunk tightly.
“I have places to be,” I said simply as I slid into the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, deep inside her,” Horse snarked as he turned to look out the window and watch Chicago pass by.
“Maybe. Maybe just near her.” I really did ache for both moments.
The silence stretched between us for a few blocks but then Horse’s voice, timid and tired, mingled with the hum of the engine. “How’d I screw it up so bad?”
“You didn’t fight for him.”
“You didn’t fight for her after that night.” Horse’s voice wasn’t sharp or acidic but the words burned all the same. I expected they always would.
“I thought I was.” I sighed. “I was just fighting though. I wasn’t fighting for her,” I emphasized. “And she has made all the difference.”
I could tell he was chewing on my words as we pulled up to the warehouse. We both shivered as we stared at the barely opened door. Only black peeked out but we both knew the field of death and decapitation that was hidden in front of us.
“Why are we bringing him here?” Horse’s voice was thick with disgust. And skepticism. Something about it raised the hairs on the back of my neck too. “Why don’t we just off him and cement him up like everyone else? Why is he involved?”
“Torture,” I said with a shrug.
“Mickey’s favorite pastime,” Horse answered stroking the knotted scar on my thigh.
“He’s had quite the stomach for it since Siobhan.” I shuddered at the memory of the things Mickey had made me do since that day. Her wickedness had fallen like a cloak on my shoulders.
We both slid out of the car and rounded to the trunk. Together we hauled the bloodied body out of the car and into the warehouse. His hands were tied and we used the rope to hang him on a butcher hook highlighted by one of the only pillars of light left inside.
He hung, blood on his face and speckling his shirt, swaying gently in time with the creak of the rope. His head hung, bruised and battered toward his chest. My heart constricted but this time I didn’t fold under the weight. Elle’s birdlike fingers reached all the way here and stroked ever so gently on my soul.
“A toy? And from Cole no less.”
“Help me.” The ragged voice finally pled for its miserable life. “Please. I’ll make it up to Mickey.”
“There’s no help for you,” Horse said roughly.
“Are you going to torture him or kill him outright?” I asked, studying the body slightly swaying in front of me.
“Why? You want the honors?” The Butcher stepped toward me, angling his head to scrutinize me a little too closely. “I heard you bathe in blood these days.”
“We all have our vices.” I shrugged.
“That we do.” The Butcher turned from me and simply drew a hook from his belt, where it wrapped around the thick nylon of his slick apron and reached out. The man screamed as The Butcher gutted him in a single swipe.
“Please,” the man said one more time with a gurgly final breath.
I rushed forward on pure instinct and tried to shove his guts up into his stomach cavity. Intestines and blood oozed warm and hot onto my hand
s.
“I didn’t expect you to be so literal, Cole.” The Butcher laughed as he dipped his hook into the blood pooling on my hands. “You bathe in blood and I have a taste for it.” He lifted the metal to his mouth and licked the blood from the tip.
His maniacal laugh began, soft at first then louder, until it was ringing like unholy church bells through my head. He got close enough that the droplets of his spit amongst his wild hysterics splattered on my cheeks. I wiped at the liquid and fought the heave of disgust in my stomach when blood streaked across my cheek in stark lines instead.
“Give Mickey my regards. Thank him for payment.” The Butcher’s words were still loud, brash and punctuated with laugher. “It’ll be done just as he asked.”
“Payment for what?” I asked despite myself.
“You’ll see.” The way he said it sent shivers up my spine as he turned. Horse and I watched him fade into the darkness behind hunks of hanging flesh.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said as soon as we were alone. I didn’t need to add that the place reeked of dying stench and rotted flesh. Or that I was desperate to be back with Elle.
Horse waited until we were back in the car to ask, “What was that about?”
“I honestly don’t know.” But there was a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Should we be…” Horse couldn’t seem to finish his sentence.
“Worried? Always.”
My bloody hands gripped the steering wheel and stuck the slightest bit. A small part of me realized that I should have washed them but Elle’s name thumped through my veins in time with my heartbeats.
“Don’t speed,” Horse scolded when I let the engine rip and snarl on the highway. “She’s gonna be there, she’s going to be fine. And if you get pulled over, you won’t be so fine.” He nodded at my crimson-colored hands.
I barely let the speedometer waver, unable to convince my foot to follow suit. Something about the way The Butcher had spoken… I revved the engine as I turned onto our block and all but slammed the car into the first available spot.
“Cupcake, calm the fuck down.” Horse was almost laughing at me as I ran to the stairs and up to the apartment.
I almost kicked in the door, my chest heaving and my palms all the more sticky from the sweat beading down my body. Elle had been gnawing on her lip, aimlessly tracing her tattoo for the split second before my ruckus startled her from the couch.
“Ladylove,” I breathed as I rushed toward her, my hands outstretched desperate to feel her between my fingers.
“Cole,” she shrieked, her hands flying to mine, then frantically to the stains I’d forgotten on my face. “Are you okay? Please, God, tell me you’re okay.”
“He’s fucking insane but he’s fine, Tart.” Horse was behind me, and the door gently clicked shut a moment later.
“And you?” she asked him even though her eyes didn’t fall from me.
“I’m fine. I was just there to lug the body.” He passed us and pulled open the fridge, coming out with a beer and taking over the couch.
Elle nodded but she still didn’t look over at Horse, her eyes were too busy darting around my face, and down to my hands. Wordlessly, she started pulling, leading me to the bathroom.
Button by slow button she undid my jacket then my shirt. Her tiny deft fingers worked at my cufflinks despite the thick and still-slick blood coating my wrists. She shoved both pieces of clothing off my body and let them pile on the bathroom floor. With whisper soft tiptoes she slid behind me and wrapped her hands around me.
She flipped on the water and tested it with her fingertips as she pressed her front to my back. The way her body shuddered as she blew out a deep breath and nestled against my skin was downright heavenly. She stayed draped across my back as she collected my hands and pushed them under the water and started to rub.
The water ran pink but she simply scrubbed on my skin. I blew out a deep breath as Elle washed the sin from me, erasing the last few hours and how they had weighed on my shoulders. She could baptize me, wash me clean, but it was her touch, not the water that purified my sullied soul.
A warm kiss pressed against the bare skin of my back then she turned me. With a cupped hand, she pulled some of the warm water up to my cheek and gently washed the bloodied streaks from my face. Water ran down from my neck and across my collarbone then down the ridges and muscles of my torso. Her tiny fingertips followed the droplets and my whole body jerked under her delicate touch.
I bent down so that my face was all she could see. Her eyes focused in on mine, widening and lightening a shade or two.
“What would I do without you?” I asked earnestly.
“Languish in the dark when you were meant for the light.”
My heart jackknifed in my chest and it was all I could do to grab her cheeks and pull her directly to my lips.
They started moving their familiar dance against each other, alive and electric, as they breathed life into me. I tried to send some sort of message back, some sort of desperate gratitude for loving me, flaws and all.
“Don’t come home bloody again,” she whispered against my lips. “My heart can’t take it.”
“My sole purpose in life is to protect your heart.”
I leaned in to devour her lips again, sucking on her plump pout before slipping my tongue along the seam of her mouth then pushing inside. We kissed until I was sure my chest would explode, rigid with desperation and want of breath, but there was no way I was going to stop.
But then she pulled away and her mouth found the trail of water dripping down my body and kissed every inch.
“He’s not even letting calls go to voicemail anymore.” Horse’s voice at the bathroom door made Elle’s lips freeze. I thought long and hard about whether I could strangle him within an inch of his life. Elle, however, sighed as she stepped back. She innocently clasped her hands behind her back and casually leaned against the wall just opposite me.
“He left.” She sighed a world-weary sigh and let her gaze flit between the two of us.
“What do you mean, Fucktart?” Horse’s features darkened as he cocked his head and asked.
She started telling a story that could only come from Conrad. Extravagant, dramatic and downright unnecessary.
“He changed his outgoing message each time?” I quirked my eyebrow up in Horse’s direction.
“Yeah. He was pissed, and wanted everyone to know.” She shrugged her shoulders with a heavy sigh. “He wanted you to crawl.” She looked up from under her long eyelashes with a small wince coloring her features.
“Can you blame him?” I barely believed the words coming out of my mouth.
Conrad was… obnoxious, whiny, ostentatious. He was a million different things than the last man Horse had loved. But he went weak-kneed for Horse. He folded under Horse’s grip and nuzzled in against his skin. Horse likewise smoothed the neurotic ripples out of Conrad’s. Like Elle for me, Conrad was the resilient one, the one determined to hold Horse upright. For that, I could overlook the hysterics.
“So you’d crawl?” Horse’s skepticism was written plain on his face.
“To the very point where the sun slips over the horizon and lights the world on fire.”
23.
Elle
I dreamt of snow even in the blazing heat of the Chicago morning. Soft white flakes dancing as they fell and blanketed my body where I lay sprawled across the mattress. Each one was a kiss and caress to my blazing skin.
I’d barely covered myself in the soft, light sheets last night, but the lack of breeze made the unseasonably blazing September night stick to my skin and all I could handle touching me was Cole’s big, strong hand. A smile had softly split his lips as our fingers wove together. When I’d woken alone in a damp hurricane of sheets, I found him hunched in front of the fridge. He’d coaxed me back to sleep and not too long after, the world cooled in a brisk haze of glittering snow.
The golden sun turned the snow a brilliant gol
d as I opened my eyes. As they adjusted to the light, I realized the snow was real but it wasn’t snow at all. I was blanketed by tiny, white paper cranes.
“Cole,” I breathed.
“I couldn’t sleep. The heat…” His voice trailed off as my bleary eyes searched for the rich honey voice that was my home. I found his smile first and could almost convince myself his dimple was coming back. “Hi.” His smile widened when I focused in on him. “Can I sketch you?”
“That’s a little corny don’t you think?” I asked as I stretched then propped myself up on my elbows.
“I didn’t ask if I could draw you like one of my French girls.” Laughter danced in his eyes every bit as much as it did in his voice.
“Never figured you for a Titanic fan.” I let my giggle ring out loud and clear.
“Horse.” He shrugged as if that was enough of an explanation then collected the sketchpad already sitting beside him.
I let a lazy smile hang on my lips as my eyelids fluttered shut. The sun was already pulling a glisten to my skin and the cranes weren’t cool anymore. They stuck in random places, teetering on the swell of my breasts or against my neck. Each moved in time with my breaths—the only sound besides the scratch and shade of Cole’s pencil.
Just once, I cracked my eyelid to peek. His tattoos had the same sticky sheen slowly working up on my skin. His naked body was a testament to all things holy and all things dark and wicked. Only a combination could be responsible for the man folded on the couch. Artful ink and mangled scars, rigid muscle and warm, smoldering eyes.
I couldn’t lay there anymore. My tongue was watering, begging to taste the salt of his skin. I pushed up, unconcerned with his sketch, completely oblivious to the cranes tumbling this way and that.
“Ladyface,” he scolded as I rose and walked to him. I simply smirked.
His eyes narrowed as he set the sketchpad aside to watch me. I noticed the outline of my body in graphite, covered in cotton and cranes, but barely. I was too busy being fixated on Cole.