“You love her.”
“Yeah I do.”
“Good, get your shit together because we are here.”
I hadn’t even realized that we arrived at the meet up spot, a mile away from the house. Pulling over on the shoulder, I park right behind Rosey’s pickup. Silver slips his cell out of his pocket and sends a message. Within moments, the back of my truck bows with the weight of bodies jumping into the bed. The bikes were too loud for a sneak attack.
“Let’s roll.” Silver whips out his piece, then two more that are strapped to his leg holsters and starts loading them all. My truck follows behind Rosey’s with just our low beams until the house comes into view. It is blacked out, not a beam of light anywhere. Rosey’s rolls past the house, and I stop short of it, flipping the four wheel drive on and turning down a service road. Once the trees become thick enough for cover, I park and we all get out. Eight fuckers jump out of the back of the bed, eyes trained on us, eagerly waiting for assignments.
Silver barks the minimum, giving each orders before communicating to the others via text. Everyone begins checking their weapons as we wait for the sign. The worn out, emotionally unstable Leo begins to shift in the frigid night air. My breath expels in hot clouds, each inhalation breathing life into the bastard within that I battled back in order to calmly get us to this point.
“Whip, that shit is shifting in your eyes, dial it back for just a few more, son.” Silver’s face appears right in front of mine as his penetrating eyes reel me in. He and the other elders are the only ones who know most of the truth about what I battle, they being the ones to rope me in the last time I became completely unhinged. Perhaps Pops is right, I will be heading back to the res after this.
“Allright, first wave go.”
Four of the guy’s head around the back to secure the exits, and from a distance, I see some shadows moving toward the front from Rosey’s direction. As they all get into position, my eyes travel up to the second story. The wrap around porch roof will be perfect, I can climb up to one of the windows. My instincts are telling me that’s what needs to happen, and they never lie.
“I’m gonna go up through that second story window.”
Silver nods, and doesn’t fight me one bit, he knows that my tactical training is kicking into high gear. “You two, go on up with him, we will stand watch here.” Silver motions to the two meat heads I can’t seem to shake these days.
With that, I holster my gun, pat myself down for my knives, rip my coat off, and thrust it at Silver. Game on. As my feet traverse the uneven ground toward the towering house, my insides shift into that other part of myself, that blood thirsty killer that was, in essence, a form of deliverance. The sound of his cage door being blown off echoes in my ears as we swiftly move like shadows. Through my years in the field, I was able to train the demons bloodthirst to focus solely on means of retribution of sorts, the only semblance of a moral it could be taught. Like those ancient stories of shapeshifters, I transform even if my outward skin stays the same. Edge and Stix keep up with ease, their instincts highly trained as well. Stix grew up on the res too, we started hanging out around the club since that’s where we got dragged by our old men whether we liked it or not. This was always going to be our life. Even with my detour in the service, and Silver’s best intentions, I never really had a chance of escaping this.
The soft, wet ground shifts under our heavy boots making our footing difficult in the wake of freshly melted snow. Scattered left over patches of white here and there help us navigate as we near the structure.
With ease, I use the railing to hoist myself up onto the wrap around roof, barely making a sound, the wind providing the best sound dampening there is. The other two effortlessly scale it right behind me, only finely trained ears capable of detecting their ascent. Military life might have done some serious damage to some of us patched members, but it also gave us skills that can’t be taught in civilian life. Using hand signals, I direct them to which windows we should try. My fingers trace the nearest window frame, searching for a decent grasp. The old, unkempt wood begins to give way, splintering, and sending up a little dust cloud as I work it open, my strength eventually winning over the worn out wood.
Creeping in, Stix and Edge like shadows right behind, I grab my Maglite from the utility clip and scan the room. Stale, dank air fills our lungs as we access the barren space. Our footsteps lightly echo as a glowing light from under the main door gives us direction. The floorboards begin to creak terribly so we fan out, shifting our combined weight around the room and consciously proceed toward the door. Arriving first, I crack it open, my eyes on high alert, searching the top floor for any clue. A moving shadow off to the right shows one of the tweekers holding a gun over the banister, aiming at someone. Without taking another breath, I pull out my piece with a silencer from its holster and tag him. He falls backwards as Rosey comes up the stairs. Thank God my aim is still on point. Rosey barely nods my way in thanks as he narrows back in on the prey he was tracking.
Sound erupts from downstairs as the whole gang joins the party, making us all redirect our focus as shots are fired throughout the first floor. More movement shifts around the top floor toward the noise as the cunts try to help their fellow assholes but keep their cover. Stupid motherfuckers. The handle of the door we are hiding behind slips from my hand as I let it fall open. We begin to pick them off; scattered, irrational mice running through the halls not knowing what to do. They made it easy.
A door closes off down the hall, setting my spine straight. I wave for Stix and Edge to cover me and I head straight for it. A bullet whizzes past my ear, and I swerve to the right, the air shifting as the hot metal skims by and lands in the wall off to my side. More shots are fired by my cover as I reach for the brass handle, but it won’t budge. Fuck this. With a swift kick I blast my heel into the wood right next to the lock and it splinters open. Three guys rush toward us but they are no match. Clickety clack motherfuckers, the voice in my head evilly laughs as I squeeze the trigger and scale up the flight of stairs, dodging the falling bodies. Edge yells for me to duck, and immediately fires another shot, taking another down. A high-pitched scream takes me into overdrive, a roar rips from my chest as I leap the last few steps.
The sight before me has the beast stopping short at the top of the stairs; Edge and Stix almost crash into me. Pinky is standing on a balcony just outside a large floor to ceiling window, the breeze shifting the ripped up curtains around, partially blocking two struggling figures. The savage in me winces at the sight, for he loves that woman just as much as I do. Pinky has Luna by the throat pushing her toward the railing, the moonlight bathing her body that is barely covered by what’s left of her clothes. Dark liquid is blooming around the scraps of fabric, the smell of heinous acts thick in the air.
“Take one more step, and I’ll push her over the edge. I got what I wanted, she’s no good to me anymore.” He sniffs and licks his lips, his body trembling like an erratic mess. His voice sounds older than what I remember from the last time we had the unfortunate pleasure of running into one another. His clothes are disheveled as well, his pants loose around his disgusting hips. Snap.
What came next, I couldn’t even tell you if I tried. The demon pulled the curtains down on Leo’s vision and went to work. One moment the love of my life is looking over the rail at her certain death, and the next she is thrown back into Edges arms. Hands that could have been anyone’s as far as I’m concerned roped Pinky up to the railing in a four point spread. What came after that… shit that is a throwback to those medieval days of torture. Luna’s crying, combined with the guys behind me telling me to stop, all mixed in my ears much like background music. But those strange hands kept working. It’s always like I am detached completely from what I am doing when this happens. The smell of blood doesn’t register, their cries and pleas fall on deaf ears. Words fail me. Nothing has ever been able to pull me out of this trance, when I am in this deep, it’s usually best just to let me ride i
t out. I mean, once someone tried, but they ended up like the one that had been pinned down first.
A cool night breeze blows across my sweaty, dirt stained face, and the clouds serenely shift in a wave overhead, blinking out the moonlight before it reappears. As another soft caress comes from the light wind, the soft, sweet sound of Luna’s voice carries in on it through the darkness, the bloodshed.
“Leo, baby, please stop.” There is no panic or fear in her voice, all I can hear is her love. It takes a moment for the sound to fully saturate my brain, and when it does, the spawn of Satan in my head looks up from the dark place in surprise.
The wrongness of where I’m standing shifts, throwing me back into reality in one nauseating blow. My head begins to spin from the transition, my breath quickening from the rapid realizations. And just like that, for the first time in my life, one simple command from another brings me back. The request coming from the one person in this life who could save me from myself. My hands stop slashing and automatically holster the knives as my vision refocuses to the scene before me. Jesus, Leo, what have you done now? Wiping my hands on my jeans, I don’t even bother looking at the gore as I stand because I won’t really remember it anyway, not in a normal way that will ever make sense. It may come up in flashes later, who knows.
My head hangs as I gather the strength to turn to face her, fearful of what she might think of me. Here in this moment, her opinion is the only thing that matters. I’m scared shitless that she might run screaming from me, or worse, be broken beyond what I thought, and lying limp like Bex. What if that wasn’t really her voice that stopped me? Perhaps imagining that voice to be a ghostly one is easier than stomaching the possible damnation that might be coming from her eyes.
“Leo, baby, come back to me.” There it is again, the sweetest symphony calling me back.
Even that fucker upstairs with his glowing red eyes looks ashamed as he retracts his claws and drags the back of his hand over his worried brow.
Taking a deep breath, my shoulders drop as I turn in unease, searching for the source of that voice; praying as I go.
What I find mere inches away is not an apparition or damaged woman; it is a glowing angel with her arms spread wide, welcoming me into her embrace. Hot tears of relief slip down my cheeks as I step into the waiting figure, a pure, liberating love stemming all around us, enrapturing my broken, hell bound soul.
Chapter 14
Luna
2weeks later
Leo’s body is too hot, too suffocating, I can barely move under the weight of his heavy limbs. The more I try to wriggle out, the firmer his hold becomes. For the love of God, I can’t take this.
“Leo, let me up,” I grumble. He snickers a ‘no’ and pulls me closer, defeat obvious.
“I’m never letting you go again.” He plants a sloppy, nasty kiss on my forehead with a loud smack, pissing me off even more; he knows how I hate that. Such an asshole.
“You more than slayed the big nasty monster, crisis adverted. Now, I have to pee.” I groan the constant reminder to the knight in fucked up armor that I’ve had to keep spouting while throwing back the covers to let some of the body heat out. He reluctantly lifts the limbs he was using to encapsulate me while giving off that lost, haunted look. Refusing to want to deal with it, I focus on the matters at hand. We’ve both been a head case for the last two weeks. I’ve also been trying to learn patience with the entire situation as he has been relying on me this go around.
The cool stone of the bathroom floor is an unwelcome greeting as I hurry about my business. It still hurts to pee a little, but the antibiotics the doctor gave me are working well. I avoid the mirror all together, quickly wash my hands, and hightail it back to the cocoon we’ve been locked up in. The bruising has gone down on my face but I still can’t stand to see it. Any reminder of the setback takes a truck load of energy to handle, and I’d rather save that for later. My body bounced back pretty damn quick, all things considering, so there is that. It is going to be a few more weeks until everything has fully healed, on the outside that is. Thankfully, nothing that bastard did to me was anything new; he didn’t really have much time before the troops rolled in. Thank God. Like a memory foam mattress springing back, my body knew how to compensate and recover after years of surviving him.
“Come here.” Leo doesn’t waste time enveloping me once more. I sigh in exasperation but end in a giggle as his whiskers tickle me. “You okay?” He’s asked me that a million times, and I am about to throat punch him. I’m fine; it’s him I worry about. His night terrors are finally calming down some but, good Lord, it was getting bad there for a minute.
“Yeah,” I answer for the umpteenth time.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Again with this? Am I not intelligent enough to convey my real feelings?” I’m tired of talking about it, processing it, facing it. All I want to do is disconnect for a while, to run away from the truth, but that is one thing no one around here will allow.
“Too smart for your own damn good.” He play bites at my neck sending a thrum of excitement through my body, and I groan.
“You know what the doctor said,” Leo reminds me as his erection digs into my hip. Truth be told, I wasn’t ready to have sex, but my body sure thought it was. My body was a betraying, stupid bitch-in-heat when it came to this heap of man. Its reactions to him are impossible to hide, even on the worst day.
“That I can kiss you anytime I want,” I smart and claim his mouth. All the shit talking and irritations aside, I can’t even begin to tell the world how much I love this broken, fucked up man.
“All right, you enchantress. We gotta go get Steel.” He tries to pull his mouth away but falls back onto my lips.
Our bodies begin to move together before I finally break away in a breathy gasp, the contact becoming too much. “Okay, but do we get to stay here longer or do we have to head back up?” I wasn’t ready to get back to the ranch, not after all that went down when I was taken.
“We can’t leave for a while yet.” He moves some of the blankets between us, breaking the skin to skin contact of his dick on my thigh.
“Good.” I needed more time.
“Says you.”
“I love it here.” We’ve been holed up on the family land right along the river running through the Crow Reservation. Silver had built his parents a home here as well as a few others for the rest of the family, forming a bit of a compound on a piece of farm land. It wasn’t all fun and games, though, that’s for sure.
“You love that I get tortured every day.” His hands trail dangerously close to the soft area under my navel.
“I love that they are helping even you out.”
“How have your sessions been?”
The question is one I didn’t want to answer so I roll back on the pillow, and attempt to burrow under the covers.
“That good eh?” He lies back too, propped up on his elbow, so he can keep an eye on me.
“Let’s just say studying different healing and therapeutic techniques from books and self-applying are two different things. Self-application with whole new ways sucks donkey balls,” I groan. The meeting with the medicine woman last night still fresh in my mind. The first three days they let us walk around like two useless zombies who were completely disconnected and barely registered the world around them. And then, it was on. I was thrown head first into a whole different realm of medicine I didn’t even have a basis of comprehension around. It was an alien world, but once I started to get past my own hang-ups, it made complete sense. It made so much sense that it had me questioning why their ways weren’t integral parts of modern day treatment.
“Yeah, their ways are different for sure, but they work.”
“Yup.” I sigh and consider closing my eyes for just a little while longer. We’ve been spending our evenings separated, undergoing individual healing treatments with the elders. He’s been with the men; I’ve been with the women. I don’t even understand what’s going on all o
f the time or the reasons why, but I’ve been operating on trust and my gut, my gut has never felt more grounded and sure. “Have you re-started your medications?” He has been on a variety for a long time.
“Only the critical one, I haven’t needed the downers or sleepin’ pills.” That is a huge improvement for sure.
“Why have you stayed away from here for so long then?” If he’s this even keeled here, why walk away, and drown in pharmaceuticals?
“Steel is going to be pissed that we took this long to come get him.” Leo sits up and makes his way to the edge of the bed.
“He will have lots of old man grumbles for sure.” We both chuckle. “Don’t avoid the question.”
“You don’t let me get away with nothin’.”
“Nope.” He doesn’t let me, so why should he get a free pass.
“I said some things to people I shouldn’t have, kicked myself out.” His features close down, telling me just how much he wanted to talk about it.
“To be continued then. It’s getting late in the day, guess we should get back at it.” One thing I learned quickly here was not to push this man faster than he’s ready to go. Not only have we been getting our heads together, we’ve been learning communication as a whole. My stomach growls. We’ve been keeping the oddest hours, working almost until the birds come up.
“Let’s eat first.” He grins, his five o’clock shadow extra sexy this morning. “Woman, you’ve got to stop looking at me like that.” He warns with a rumble, the energy shifting around us in an instant. Not only did the doctor say I couldn’t have sex for a few weeks because of the damage and infection I developed, thanks to less than clean objects used on me; the medicine woman said the same thing for healing reasons. On a cellular level and spiritual level, I wasn’t ready. I knew that, but fucking hell. Give me a taste of what Leo and I share, mix in the incredible ability to work past my issues with him by my side, and that’s like sticking a big ole perfect chocolate cake in front of someone and saying they can’t eat it.
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