by April Lust
The thought made my stomach roil and it took everything I had not to retch right there in the middle of the house. I kept it together. This wasn’t over yet. Not until I had Blade.
“We got her, boss,” the Vultures man told me with a nod of his head. “What you want us to do with the rest?”
He indicated a group of men who were being herded together. Some looked like they were wounded. Some just looked scared. They were all Slayers. I let my gaze slip across each one of them, cold and calculating. Then I spoke to the room as a whole, “At your discretion boys. Just remember who they are and what they’ve done.” My eyes drifted to Lucy and I hoped we had somehow gotten here in time.
Thunder looked just short of terrified, his eyes wide, his lingering bruises making him look like some kind of caricature. “I think…I think she’s okay,” he managed to get out, looking to Lucy then to me and back again, over and over.
I nodded tersely, unable to say much. When I finally got the words out, they were short and to the point. “Get her out of here. She’s your responsibility, Thunder.”
He swelled up to his full height—much taller than he seemed with all his extra blubber—and gave me a stern, serious nod. He wouldn’t let me down. He left just as the last of the Slayers were being hauled out. They were lined up against the wall and I could guess what my men were going to do. I wouldn’t stop them any more than I would give them the go-ahead. I wouldn’t make murderers of them; that was a personal choice for each man to make.
Focusing my attention on the door in front of me, I knocked again, motioning behind me for everyone to give me just one moment of silence.
“Open up, Blade,” I told him in a tone that was calmer than I felt. “I just want to talk.”
“Yeah fucking right!” he answered.
I sighed. Kneeling, I put my guns down on the floor where he could see them beneath the crack under the door. “I’m unarmed. My guns are here on the floor; check for yourself.”
There was a moment, shuffling, then finally I thought I heard a sigh of defeat. The door unlocked. I stepped inside and closed the door mostly behind me. Blade looked increasingly nervous, but I could see defeat written across his features. He already knew he’d lost. I took a seat on one side of the desk that took up half the room and he sat on the other side.
After a moment, the house filled with the sounds of a dozen gunshots at once. It echoed for a moment. Blade flinched. Then it was over and I didn’t have to tell him all his men were dead.
He knew.
Chapter 25
Lucy
My head hurt. The inside of my eyelids felt like sandpaper, scratching and burning against my eyeballs. I fought between blinking them open to clear out some of the lingering sand and clenching them tighter so the peeking sun I could feel against the skin of my eyelids would be kept at bay. I sensed that it would make my already throbbing headache worse. It was beating like a heart, pounding like I’d just had a pint of whiskey to myself the previous night. At first, I wasn’t sure why. I was lying down and the bed beneath me was soft, forgiving and—
The man grinned at me, not as malicious as Blade, but just as eager. His expression was a mask of lust, but not that delightful, edible lust that I saw shine in Max’s eyes before he took me until I screamed. No, this was different. This lust was as much for the violence as it was for my body.
I couldn’t let this happen.
I watched as the man began to undo his belt buckle. I realized that beneath his jeans there was already a bulge, telling me he wouldn’t need any time to get ready for me.
My eyes shot open and I shivered as memories began to wash over me, terrible, awful things that I would carry the rest of my life. Panic swept me, terrible and uncontrollable. I needed out of this bed. I needed away from these blankets. I needed out!
I tried to sit up, tugging the thick blankets off me, tearing at them as though they were restraints holding me down. I felt nauseous, sick to my stomach. My body was cold and sweating at the same time and I just wanted to throw up, like that might get rid of the awful things that had to have been done for me. That I hadn’t even been awake for.
Tears pricked at my eyes. I tried to blink them away, but they spilled down over my cheeks as images and memories, fuzzy from whatever Blade had given me, flashed vividly through my mind. I couldn’t shake them.
I was in the midst of a panicked, desperate search for a way out when I felt a pinch in my arm. I whirled around to see Blade had come up behind me. He was grinning and held an empty syringe in his hand.
“I changed my mind,” he said easily. “I figured I’d do you this small mercy. Besides, I can’t have you trying to run away, now can I?” He pointed to the camera then. “Don’t forget to give me the money shot.”
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to fight. I wanted to run. I wanted to be anywhere but here.
But I couldn’t do anything.
I began to sob in earnest. Heavy, thick sobs escaped my throat, building up in my chest until they crawled out like tiny beasts desperate to reach the surface. I tried not to think of that small room…
The lights had been dimmed except for the large spotlights that illuminated my half-naked body to all those terrible, degrading bastards. I clutched at my chest as I struggled to breathe. It only got worse as I remembered the man. That awful, awful man...
I let out another sob that was more like a cry, a plaintive wail that was less a call for help and more a pathetic admission of guilt. I’d been violated and I couldn’t even remember all of it. I’d been forced into…I’d been made to…And they had it on film. Those bastards had it on film!
What would I do when Max found out?
I stopped, frozen by a fresh bout of terror. What if Max found out? How would I explain all of this to him? How I hadn’t even fought it? Oh, sure, I’d been drugged there at the end, but what about the time leading up to it? Blade had thrown that lacy negligee and I’d just put it on for him! For them. Three of them. I’d stood there in that cage, knowing full well they were watching me, and taken off my clothes for them. That made me a willing participant, didn’t it?
And even if it didn’t, what did it matter? I was ruined. I was a piece of shit. There wasn’t anything worthwhile left of me, and as soon as Max saw that tape, he’d know it was the truth.
I tugged at the shirt that was pulled over me—who had put me in a shirt?—and used it to cover my mouth as I sobbed into it.
My vision was blurry and I was sobbing so hard that I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t the only one crying. When I took in a shuddering breath, I finally noticed it. It made me stop—was someone else here?
Now that I wasn’t crying anymore, I started noticing a lot of things. Like how I was in my room, back home. And the shirt I was wearing? It was mine, given to me in high school by Max. It was my absolute favorite, worn so often that it was incredibly thin and soft. The bed I was sitting on was my own, the one I shared with Max.
The door to the bedroom was half closed, open just enough that a stream of light shone in through the hall. That was where the crying was coming from and now that I was listening to it I realized it sounded familiar. It took me only a second to place why: the crying was my mother.
Sliding out of bed, my head still pounded but everything else seemed fine, I made my way over to the door. I carefully pushed it open and was rewarded with a strange sight. My mother sat on the top steps of the staircase, head in her hands, sobbing to the point of hysteria. Next to her sat Thunder, who was awkwardly patting at her back and murmuring unimportant things in a soft, sweet voice.
I stared at them for a long time, trying to figure out what was going on, but then Thunder stiffened. He seemed to have noticed the silence coming from my room, a strong contrast to the noise that must have been coming from it only moments before. He looked over his shoulder and when he saw me, there was a mixture of emotions plastered on his squishy face. He looked sad, sympathetic maybe, and a little embarrassed.
I had a thought I wasn’t very comfortable with: had Thunder put me in this shirt?
After a moment, Thunder tapped my mother on her shoulder and whispered something to her. She stopped crying almost instantly, only sniffling a few times to get it under control, then she stood and turned to face me.
“Oh, Lucy, baby,” she muttered, her hand going to cover her mouth. Her eyes were red, bloodshot, and her hair was a mess. She’d been crying for a while now.
I bit my lip. For a moment, the feelings of worthlessness and despair flooded me again, making me want to turn away from her, but then she came to me. She wrapped her arms around me and I held her tightly.
Thunder, who seemed very uncomfortable, cleared his throat quickly and said, “I’ll go make some coffee.” He disappeared down the stairs. After a moment, I could hear some clanking around in the kitchen.
Returning my attention to my mother, I opened my mouth to try to explain. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, but I felt like she needed to know. But before I got a word out, she smiled at me softly.
“Let’s sit down. I think…I think we have a lot to talk about.”
I nodded and let her lead me back into the bedroom. We didn’t sit on the bed, because I wasn’t good with that just then. Instead, we both took seats on the floor, our backs pressed against the edge of the bed. I leaned my head against her shoulder and let my eyes slide closed. But that was quickly a mistake. Images of what happened with the Slayers flooded my mind, and I immediately opened my eyes again. I fixed my gaze on the window instead. Light had been trickling in for a while now, the heat from the pooling sunshine better than anything else had been today.
After a long pause of silence between us, my mother spoke again. “I know,” she whispered, sounding softer than I’d heard her for a while. “I know what you’re going through and I know it seems impossible to deal with right now, but I want you to know how strong you are. You…you’ll be okay.”
I frowned deeply. “What do you mean, Mom? What were you told? Who…who else knows?” I asked the last part in a barely audible whisper, certain that I didn’t want to know the answer to it, but sure also it was something I needed to hear.
Mom shook her head. “Don’t worry about that now. What matters is that you’re safe.”
“Mom.” I fixed her with a hard look, as hard as I could muster, willing her to just tell me. Finally, it worked.
She sighed heavily, clearly unhappy, but she admitted what was going on. “Years ago…back when Max was still trying to convince your daddy he was good enough for you and Bills was his right-hand man, something…something terrible happened. Something I co-couldn’t stop. I tried, please, but…I was powerless.”
I was frozen in my seat, realizing what she was beginning to tell me was not about who knew what had happened to me at all. Instead, she was telling me a deep, dark secret she hadn’t shared before. A secret that was just like mine.
“The first time wasn’t by choice,” she said, her voice quiet and timid, like she was waiting for reprimand. “I hadn’t wanted to, but he’d slipped me something. I was—I was half awake for it. But that didn’t matter, because my body responded. I might as well have just told him yes for all the difference my consent did.
“I didn’t know he’d been filming,” she said, choking on the word. “But he had been. And he had a copy of the tape. He used it to blackmail me.” She clenched her eyes shut tightly and I prayed silently to myself Blade wouldn’t use my tape the same way. “He threatened to show the tape to your father. It would have destroyed him. So I did as Blade said. When he asked me to sleep with him again—I didn’t say no. And when he asked me to sleep with another man, another Slayer, I didn’t say no. Not even when Blade told me to do it with this guy while he watched…”
Tears were streaming down her cheeks now, but they were silent tears. She spoke as though she were numb, her words pouring forth on their own accord as opposed to any will of her own.
“You have to believe me.” The plea was empty, as though it were impossible for anyone to believe her. “I didn’t want to do it, not any of it, but that tape would have killed your father. It would have eaten him up inside and he would have tried to kill Blade, and God, I wanted him to. But Marcus’s best days were behind him. Blade was young and ruthless. Marcus never would have won and Blade wouldn’t have made it a fair fight, anyway.”
I listened to her numbly, trying to sort through the things that slowly tore my insides apart, devouring my heart and soul until there was almost nothing left of me at all. I pictured Dad, angry, angrier than I’d ever seen him, but would it have been towards my mother or towards the men who did that to her?
I didn’t know, because Max’s face was overlaid atop my father’s and I couldn’t figure out which way Max would look at me when he found out.
My mom sucked in a shuddering breath, then finished her story. “But Marcus found out. Blade sent him a copy of the tape, just for spite. After I’d given him everything, he still did it, because he’d figured it out, too. That your father couldn’t handle it. If I had known—” Mom broke off for a moment, trying to tame her tears and her ragged breathing, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes. When she spoke again, it was in a barely restrained voice. “If I had known it would have killed him, I never would have done it. Not any of it.”
I stared at my mom. “What do you…?”
She smiled at me sadly and patted my knee. “He couldn’t protect me and that was the most important thing in the world to your father. So when that tape landed in his lap, and I came clean, telling him the truth, he went into the garage. I thought he was just working through it, trying to figure out if he could…ever forgive me. But I was wrong. It wasn’t about forgiving me; it was about forgiving himself. And he couldn’t do that. So he did the only thing he could.”
I looked from her sad smile to her bleak, watery eyes and pieced the last part of her story together for myself.
My father, Marcus Gilles, the Preacher and leader of the Sin Reapers, shot himself because he couldn’t protect my mother from the evil of the world.
Chapter 26
Max
Blade was pale and sweating. For a moment, if I ignored the scars, he almost looked like Bills. Except Bills wasn’t a chickenshit. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he was reckless. Maybe he was a loose cannon that had worried me on more than one occasion, but I never would have thought for even a single second that Bills would run. He wouldn’t abandon me or my men, wouldn’t leave us to the wolves outside the door when he knew we were losing.
That was the difference between men like Bills and men like Blade. Cowardice.
“I think it’s time for a conversation, don’t you?” I asked Blade calmly. There was a good chance Blade was still armed and I was obviously not. But I wasn’t worried about it. In a fair fight, I’d win against this man. In an unfair fight, I’d probably still win and if I didn’t, I knew Blade wouldn’t make it out of this room, much less this house, alive.
It was a small comfort at the very least that brought me a burst of radiant satisfaction. No matter what happened next, at least I knew this piece of shit in front of me wouldn’t live to see tomorrow.
Blade cleared his throat and smoothed his hand over his hair, trying to collect himself. It half worked, but he still looked scared, worried, like he had figured out what I’d just figured out.
That he was a dead man walking.
“All right,” Blade answered, forcing himself to sit back in the chair. He cracked a broken, shaky smile at me, trying to be his old self. It didn’t quite work. “What is it you’d like to talk about?”
I crossed one leg over the other so my right ankle was set on my left knee. I studied Blade for a long moment, like I was thinking, though I already had my questions in mind. It was just a ploy to make Blade sweat a little first. Judging by his flickering smile, it was working. Finally, I asked, “Who was that man? The one you ‘gave to me’ as a good faith present?”
A slow
smile spread across his face and, for a moment, he looked like the cat that ate the canary. I didn’t like that look, but I still felt confident. There wasn’t anything he could do or say at this point that would change how things were going to end. I finally had a leg up. I finally had him cornered. He wouldn’t get the best of me. Not now.
“Carl?” clarified Blade, as though I would know his name. He worked hard to keep his voice cool and calm, like we weren’t in the midst of a war that had gone horribly wrong for one of us at least. Him, specifically. “He was in bad shape, wasn’t he? I mean, you really went to town on him. Poor bastard.”
I gritted my teeth, but otherwise kept my expression neutral. I was in control and I wouldn’t let it show that his words impacted me negatively, whether they did or not. I waited for him to continue and after a moment, still grinning, he continued.
“Carl was a bit of a problem for me, you know?” he said casually. “A liability. You know what liability means, Max boy? I know that’s an awful big word for a pea brain like you.”