by Zoey Parker
Yury nodded and pulled a walkie out of his jacket pocket, barking orders into it in Russian as Ivan climbed the steps to head back into the warehouse.
“Alex, make sure Ivan gets out okay,” Yury said, smoothly slipping into his role as acting leader all too easily. “Then I want you to check the perimeters.”
Alex reluctantly turned to walk upstairs, glancing back one last time at Felix’s limp and bloody form. It was the only time he had actually looked at either of them. His face was unreadable to Georgia, but the anger inside her quieted. Alex tore himself away, quickly shutting the door behind him, and leaving Georgia and Felix alone with Yury.
There was a long pause as Yury stared at Georgia. “Just you and me now?” Yury said, his voice a mocking surprise. “I can’t say I haven’t been waiting for this moment.” He stepped closer and closer to her.
“Don’t,” Felix gasped. In order to beat him properly, Ivan had separated the siblings, tying Felix to a support pole in the basement, and Georgia to a desk leg.
Georgia and Yury both turned to him, startled. It was difficult to believe someone could sustain such a beating and still be conscious.
“Don’t touch her,” he repeated, his voice sticky with blood. “Ivan…promised.”
Yury, annoyed at having been interrupted, chuckled nastily. “He did, but I don’t see him around. So if he shows up, you let me know and I’ll stop right away, okay?” Yury patted Felix sharply on the cheek, painfully hitting one of the deep gashes in his face.
“Where were we?” he said, looking back at Georgia, who began to frantically pull on her ropes.
Yury reached forward, trying to touch Georgia’s face, but she kicked at him and struck him in the shin. Angry now, Yury’s hand shot towards her and grabbed a fistful of her hair just behind her left ear.
“That hurt,” he growled, twisting Georgia’s hair.
“Yeah? Well, what about this?” Georgia asked just before sinking her teeth into Yury’s forearm.
Yury began screaming in agony, trying to yank Georgia off of his arm by pulling her curls, but that only caused her to bite down even harder. Finally, Yury let go of his hold on Georgia’s hair, instead using the hand to punch her squarely in the face.
Red exploded in front of Georgia’s eyes, and she fell back with a hard thump. Blood dripped from her nose into her mouth and she wiped her face on the shoulder of her shirt. Sneaking a peek at Yury, Georgia noticed with satisfaction that he seemed to be bleeding a lot more than she was.
A small trail of blood drops led to the corner where Yury was hurriedly trying to bandage his arm with a scrap of torn, expensive-looking fabric.
“You fucking bitch!” he hissed, keeping up a steady stream of what Georgia correctly assumed to be Russian insults.
Yury practically sprinted over to Georgia. He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up, ignoring the dangerous angle at which her elbow was bent. Georgia refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was hurting her.
He drew his fist back, ready to beat her until she and her brother looked like twins, when there was a low rumble. The chandelier tinkled gently as the noise reverberated through the room.
“What the…” Yury said, slowly lowering his fist, staring at the ceiling.
Urgent pounding came from the trap door. Yury looked at Georgia with a desperate, angry desire, then dropped her and went to the stairs. Georgia tried to listen in, but whomever Yury was talking to was speaking in Russian.
Yury came back down the stairs to stand in front of Georgia. “There is a matter outside that requires my attention at the moment, but don’t think for one second that we won’t pick up right back where we left off.” He roughly pulled on her ropes, double checking they were secured. He didn’t bother with Felix—the boy was half dead, after all—and headed back up the stairs.
Georgia immediately began yanking and twisting at her restraints. “Felix!” she whispered, keeping a close eye on the door. “Felix! Are you okay?”
“Never…better,” Felix wheezed.
“Can you move?” Georgia tried to pretend she see how terrible Felix looked right now.
She watched his fingers close into a weak fist. “Barely,” he said. “Walking…doesn’t look good.”
“If you can get free, and come to me, then I swear, I will carry you out of here, Felix,” Georgia said desperately.
Felix’s already thin arms feebly struggled against the coarse twine. “I’m sorry, Georgia,” he whimpered. “I can’t. I’m not…not strong enough.”
“That’s okay, Felix,” Georgia comforted her brother. “Hey, that’s okay. We’ll figure something out, we always do,” she said, turning back to her own bindings, trying to hide the tears streaming down her face.
“I tried,” Felix continued between labored breaths. “I tried to buy us some time, in case Spike…I just wanted to take care of you for once.”
“Spike’s not coming,” Georgia said after a moment. “It’s just us.”
So fucking what he’s not here to save me, Georgia spitefully thought, now tearing at her restraints with her teeth. I’m here to save me.
Chapter Thirteen
The bikers had all perched atop the same abandoned warehouse overlooking Ivan’s warehouse; it was there they had seen Ivan and three other men peel out of the garage.
“If we go, we should go now,” Cleo urged. “We will never get another opportunity like this.”
“You’re not worried about why he left, or when he’ll be back?” Spike asked.
“I’m worried about why you sent one of our best members away when there are already so few of us,” Cleo said, glaring at him.
“Look, I know you think it’s a useless risk, but it might very well save our lives, so do me a favor and shut the fuck up about it. If we die, you can say ‘I told you so’ in the afterlife.” Still, he gave a low whistle, indicating it was time for Satan’s Disciples to move out.
They climbed down the warehouse and split up into groups of four and two, circling the block to come up behind Ivan’s warehouse where a couple of his men were patrolling outside, Nicholas being one of them. Spotting the dirty cop, Spike looked down the block where Jinx and Vince were hiding and gave them the signal.
Jinx immediately ran out onto the sidewalk, crying for help. “Someone! Please! Oh, please, someone help me!”
Nicholas whirled around to see who was yelling. Seeing the beautiful, chesty young woman, he instantly announced himself to be a police officer.
“What seems to be the problem, miss?” he called, jogging across the street.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Jinx cried dramatically. “Someone just stole my purse!”
“Why don’t you come with me and I’ll see what I can…” Nicholas trailed off as a large shadow fell across him. He turned around to see an enormous, incredibly dark black man standing behind him.
“I don’t think she’s going anywhere,” Vince said.
Spike watched as Vince physically picked up Nicholas and took him down a dimly lit back alleyway. Confident they were going to be able to handle that part of the plan, Spike decided it was time for Step Two.
Vince met up with the rest of the gang a few minutes later, holding the keys to Nicholas’s police cruiser aloft.
“Jinx?” Spike asked.
“She’s getting the rest of the information we need from our friend,” Vince replied, grinning. “Car’s parked down the block,” he told them.
The members of Satan’s Disciples walked down to Nicholas’s car. They drove it around to the abandoned warehouse they had been using, and, after a few short minutes, were piled inside of it, bandanas firmly wrapped around their noses and mouths.
Spike gave a questioning thumbs-up and was met with four thumbs in return. Giving a silent prayer to whatever god there might be, Spike drove down the back passage to Ivan’s. He approached the garage door, the engine echoing loudly as he anxiously waited to see if his plan would work, or if they were all about to be mas
sacred.
The garage door rumbled upwards, and there was a collective sigh of relief in the car. Spike pulled forward, the tinted windows casting a grayish tinge over the inner warehouse. Spike took the time to spot the security office dead ahead, then gave Hector and Roxy in the backseat the signal.
Spike pulled the trunk lever, and Hector and Roxy leaned against the small barrel, shoving it out of the car where it thudded heavily, its contents glugging across the cement floor.
The two guards standing at the edge of the garage door craned their necks to look inside the trunk where the barrel had come from. There was just enough time for them to see Hector and Roxy waving merrily to them before Hector produced a match and threw it on the puddle in front of them.
A wall of flames erupted between them, and the guards jumped back, running out the door. They remembered how the girl downstairs had barbecued their friend Sergei. Thick black smoke quickly began to fill the room.
All five of them jumped out of the car, Spike and Vince providing cover for Hector, Roxy, and Cleo as they ran out into the room, each one of them holding a Molotov cocktail.
“Hurry up!” Spike cried. The initial surprise of the explosion was beginning to fade, and the two men were starting to get shot at in return. He bent down to reload his gun and saw a man aiming at him from above.
There was no time—Spike was considering his chances of dodging the bullet, when the man upstairs suddenly collapsed. Spike looked behind him to see Jinx, a literal smoking gun in her hand.
“Careful there, boss,” she warned, winking.
“What happened to Nicholas?” he called, finishing reloading his gun and shooting a woman creeping up on Vince’s left side.
Jinx thought back to the alleyway where she had held the cop at gunpoint.
“What do you want my keys for?” Nicholas had asked, nodding to Vince’s rapidly shrinking form. Vince had taken Nicholas’s handcuffs, and handcuffed him so that he was hugging a large telephone pole.
“None of your business,” Jinx had smartly replied, shoving the gun in his face. “Here’s the deal. I need to know some stuff, and you’re going to tell me, okay? And the more you know, the more blood you get to keep in your body. Let’s start with where all the entrances and exits are located.”
Nicholas had chuckled. “I’m not scared of you,” he had said, spitting at her.
“Well, then. We’ll just have to see what we can do to change that,” Jinx had said, firing the gun directly next to his ear, then pressing the searing hot muzzle to his forehead, burning his tender flesh. Nicholas had screamed, but a dull explosion prevented anyone nearby from hearing it.
“How are you feeling now?” she had whispered in his good ear. “What if the next time I pull this trigger, I put that red-hot muzzle right here.” Jinx had lowered the gun and nudged between Nicholas’s legs suggestively. “Will you tell me what I want to know then?”
A dark stain had spread down the small man’s jeans as he wet himself in fear. Jinx had laughed loudly at him. “I wanna know where Ivan went, I wanna know where they’re keeping Georgia, and I wanna know all the ways in and out of the warehouse,” she had demanded, “or I’ll shoot you right in the dick. It might take me a few tries—from my perspective it’s a pretty small target.”
After that, Nicholas had told Jinx pretty much everything she needed to know, and a couple of things she didn’t.
“Now what are you going to do with me?” Nicholas had asked sullenly once Jinx had called in all the info. His fear was quickly subsiding into a hot shame.
“I’m supposed to just sit on you until things are pretty much over,” Jinx had said. She wasn’t looking forward to it, watching a pathetic loser ranked pretty low next to “set off an explosion inside your arch enemy’s home base,” but that was the gig sometimes. “So just don’t do anything stupid for the next hour, and we’ll all be just fine, okay?” Jinx had slapped a bright, false smile on her face. She had quickly dropped it, rolling her eyes.
“I guess that makes you the flashy whore they send to distract a man from his job,” Nicholas had spat contemptuously. His shame was rapidly becoming anger—anger at Jinx.
Jinx had sighed and looked at her nails. “Yup. That’s me. Jinx is actually short for Jezebel,” she had replied sarcastically.
“You think it’s funny?” Nicholas had said, infuriated at Jinx’s lack of response. “People are going to die today and you’re, what, cracking jokes? Well, I’ve got a joke of my own: that bartending bitch you love, burning alive. You and the rest of your women, chained up, free for all to use.” He began to laugh in Jinx’s face; a great, big mocking laugh that went on and on until spit drooled from his lip and onto his shirt.
“You know what?” Jinx had said to the hysterical man. “You’re right. I don’t have time for this.”
And with that, Jinx had pulled the trigger and fired a bullet directly into his brain, thereby freeing Jinx up to go and help the rest of her family in the warehouse now that she didn’t have to watch over that insufferable idiot.
She had come in just in the nick of time as well, shooting a man that was aiming at Spike from the upstairs balcony while Spike attempted to reload.
“What happened to Nicholas?”
“I decided he was worth more dead than alive,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye.
“Can’t argue with you there,” Spike said cheerfully.
The three others returned, having used their Molotov cocktails to start fires in trashcans around the building. They set the fires over the vents in order to smoke out the whole warehouse—including anyone potentially hiding inside any secret back rooms.
Between them, Satan’s Disciples had taken out at least five of the hired security guards and one of the mobsters. Now that the other members were back, the gang was able to start pinning some of the mobsters down.
But Spike still didn’t see the secret entrance in the floor that would lead to Ivan’s private area that Nicholas had told them about after Jinx’s gentle urging. Even worse, they were beginning to sustain their own injuries.
Hector’s arm had been grazed by a bullet, and Cleo had gotten into a scuffle with one of the mobsters. The man had managed to break her nose, and possibly even her eye socket, before Cleo finally got her gun out and shot him.
A sound behind Spike made him freeze. He slowly turned around, ignoring the hail of gunfire surrounding him. There was a car in the alleyway. Ivan and his men had returned early.
“Retreat!” Spike’s voice boomed across the floor, and instantly, every head turned to look at him.
“I thought he wouldn’t be back for another few hours!” Cleo shouted to Spike.
“Someone must have managed to get a message to him,” Spike said angrily as he pulled Cleo to hide down one of the long aisles of Ivan’s products.
The gunfire from the Russians had temporarily stopped so as to avoid accidentally hitting their leader, but Ivan jumped out, pointing wildly at where he had seen Spike disappear and shouted, “Shoot him!”
The mobsters, now with reinforcements, began to hunt down the bikers, searching up the aisles, and under every table. The smoke from the trash cans had filled the room, casting man-shaped shadows around every corner that put mobster and biker alike on edge.
Yury sneered, watching as one of the security guards heard a noise and began shooting in panic—only for the smoke to clear and realize he had just killed his partner.
He stealthily crept along, trying to steer clear of the chaos and make his way into the basement along with Ivan. Just then, a shadow fell across his shoulder. Yury whirled around and saw Vince looming over him. He tried to raise his gun, but Vince slapped it out of the smaller man’s hands easily.
Yury snarled in anger. “I’ll kill you!” he threatened.
“Better men than you have failed,” Vince said, raising his own gun to Yury’s face.
Taking a risk, Yury lunged forward, knocking Vince off-balance, but not off of his feet—he
was far too large for that. But Yury didn’t need to knock Vince down, he just needed to buy himself some time. Yury reached behind himself for anything he could use as a weapon against the towering man. Coming up with a large bag of Adderall pills, Yury ripped them open and they scattered across the floor causing Vince to lose his balance once again.
Vince grabbed onto a shelf as he slipped on several of the little tablets. He pulled out his gun, intent on shooting the man and ending this once and for all, when there was a loud bang. Vince felt a red-hot point start in his chest and spread rapidly. He sat down, hard, barely noticing the pills that dug into his thighs. He was too busy looking down at the blood on his shirt.
“No!” Jinx screamed from across the room. She had been guarding Roxy, who was trying to clear the blood that was seeping into Cleo’s injured eye, when she saw her lover go down.