Burnt: A Devil's Spawn Novel

by Natasha Thomas

  Leaning down Dec kisses my forehead, my cheeks, and my eyelids. His kisses are so soft they resemble whispers. Butterfly kisses almost.

  “Good girl.” He kisses my hair again as I settle more heavily into the mattress relieving the pressure from my chest. “I called your dad. He and your mom should be here real soon sweetheart. Only us, Reaper, and dad will be coming in for now. I said everyone else can wait until you’re ready. Reaper’s telling Lou and Billy as we speak, so, prepare sweetheart that bitch isn’t going to want to wait long to get down here.”

  I meet his eyes and stroke the side of his stubbled face with one of the fingertips of my good arm and tell him,

  “I missed you Dec. I was so scared I’d never see any of you again.” Tears hit my eyes and begin running down my cheeks again. I can’t believe for months I believed I was incapable of tears and in the last half an hour I’ve managed to cry more of them than in the last year combined. It must be seeing Dec, and finally feeling safe again that’s prompted the waterfall.

  Climbing on to the bed he gathers me in his arms. As carefully as he can Dec moves my head to his shoulder and wraps his arms loosely around me.

  “I promise NO ONE,” he says fiercely, “will ever hurt you again sweetheart. I’ve got you now and you’re not leaving my sight for a fucking long time, if ever. I missed you too fairy. Fuck but I missed you.” It sounds like it pains him to say it, but I’m glad to hear he feels the same way.

  Hearing the door open again and a soft gasp, I tilt my head and see my mom and dad walk in. Mom looks tired. Like she hasn’t slept in months, and dad looks like he’s aged, got a little more grey, harder somehow. Making their way quickly to the side of the bed Dec isn’t occupying mom picks up my casted arm, entwining her fingers with mine and begins to cry great big wracking sobs. Dad is crying too when I meet his eyes. His tears are silent but they are no less real.

  “Little girl. Fuck. Kendall you’re safe. Thank fuck baby girl.” Dad looks ruined and it hurts my heart all over again.

  “I-I-I’m okay dad.” Moving my good hand from my belly I place it on mom’s hand. “Shhh, mom. I’m alright. I’m here. It’s okay now. Don’t cry.” She only cries harder and I feel Dec moving to get off the bed. Grabbing at his shirt desperately I look up at him and beg him not to leave with my eyes. “No!” It comes out more like a wail. A high pitched screech almost. Desperation hit me. He can’t leave. Not yet. Maybe not at all. “Don’t go. Please don’t leave me Dec.”

  Settling back in, he, cups my face again brushing away new tears reassuring me, he says,

  “I’m not goin anywhere fairy. I was just makin room for you dad baby.”

  I don’t want to hurt mom, but I have to talk to Dec and dad. Uncle Pipe and Uncle Max when they get here too. This isn’t a conversation I’m looking forward to however I’ve seen how the men deal with these things, and its best I get it over and done with as quickly as possible.

  “Dad how long until Uncle Pipe and Uncle Max get here? Dec told me they were coming.”

  Answering quickly but with no small amount of hesitancy he says,

  “They’re about five minutes behind us so any minute now sweetheart. You want me to tell em’ to wait?”

  Shaking my head I say,

  “No. No. But can you call someone to come sit with mom? I need to talk to all of you guys alone, please.”

  Mom looks hurt, she tries to hide it albeit unsuccessfully, and manages to cover the look with a small smile.

  “Don’t you worry about that, Honey, I saw a nice little coffee shop down in the lobby and I sure could do with a cup of coffee right about now. How about I go down and see to that and send your Uncle’s in if I see them in passing?” She stands and kisses dad’s cheek looking at both him and Dec in the eye before making her way to the door. “You look after my little girl now Dec. I’m trusting you.”

  Before she can reach the door handle, Uncle Max and Uncle Pipe come in.

  “Jesus Christ. I thought this one,” tilting his head towards dad he goes on, “was fucking drunk off his ass calling to tell me you’re found. I see he wasn’t fucking wrong.” Taking up the spot mom vacated he adds, “You fucking scared us little girl. Don’t fucking do that again yeah? I only got so many good years left and I can’t have you stealing them away before it’s my time.” Uncle Pipe has always made me laugh. This time is no different but it does prompt another round of excruciating coughing scaring Dec into growling at him.

  Uncle Max punches Uncle Pipe in the arm and hisses,

  “Shut the fuck up asshole. The girls’ hurting. She don’t need your fucking mouth making it worse.” Meeting his eyes I gasp. Uncle Max looks worse than dad. He has big dark bags under his eyes, his hair is overly long for the Mohawk he usually wears, his face looks a little gaunt, pale, and he must have dropped as much weight as Dec’s gained.

  My gasp triggers Dec to pull me tighter to his chest. Not that I’m complaining or anything.

  “It’s ok fairy. Everything’s…”

  I interrupt him because everything is okay at the moment, but seeing how my disappearance has affected everyone is a bit overwhelming.

  “I know Dec. Uncle Max come closer.” I stretch out my hand willing him to take it. “Uncle Max Did you miss me because of all the work I left you? You look like shit. You must have been working hard for a change instead of hardly working.”

  All four men laugh, and the tension in the rooms lightens. Uncle Max’s eyes drill into mine as he speaks.

  “Fucking truth Kenny. You left me hanging. Shit you not, been busier than ever since you’ve been gone. Have you been running off my business when I’m not looking?”

  Giggling I shake my head,

  “Yep,” I say popping the P. “You know how I hate working for you. I figured if I ran clients off when you weren’t watching I could sit on my ass all day and you’d still have to pay me.” Before I lose my nerve I have to talk to them. “Um… I need to talk to all of you. I need you to listen though because I don’t really want to have to go over it more than once. I’ll tell you everything I know and then if you have questions I’ll do what I can to answer them. I know you’ll have to talk to the brothers and I get that but…”

  Dad cuts me off,

  “Sweetheart, I’ll only be telling the club what they need to know. No more than that, and what you want to share with everyone else is your business. I’m fucking proud of you doing this so soon baby girl. You take your time though. You want a few days, a week, you got it. We’re just fucking thrilled to have you home.” I know he means what he says, but this is important for me to get out. There are more people at risk than just me, and I can’t help feeling like this is far from over.

  Uncle Max and Uncle Pipe pull chairs up to the end of the bed and before taking his, dad flicks the lock on the door. Most people would be intimidated being surround by four huge bikers after surviving what I have. To me it, it feels safe. It feels like home. Launching into my story because my nerve is already wanning I speak. My voice is still a little hoarse so I clear my throat a few times to clear the cobwebs.

  “I don’t remember much about the day I taken. All I know is that they injected me with something and everything went black.” Taking a shaky breath I go on, “It was only about twenty minutes after Dec and Lexi left that morning. When I woke up I was in a concrete room that was about ten by eight. It didn’t have any windows, and the only light source was a hanging bulb from the ceiling. The room also had a small toilet and metal sink in the corner. I think we were basement level because when the door did open there was only artificial light then too.” Wriggling a little to get more comfortable I feel Dec’s arms spasm. He shifts me gently, crooking me into the space between his shoulder and neck. “I couldn’t escape, there wasn’t an opportunity anyway. I never left that room and I was shackled by my ankle 24/7. There wasn’t a time I was un-cuffed either. I was cuffed at the wrists for a while in the beginning too, but they took those off after a few weeks I think.�
�� I hear Dec’s growl but continue. “I honestly don’t think that they ever intended to let me go. They never hid who they were or what they wanted. They were just TOO open about it. It was strange.”

  Dad cuts in,

  “Who were they, Baby?”

  Shushing him I reply,

  “No questions yet dad. I promise I’ll answer at the end okay? I just need to get it out before I forget anything important.” Nodding he lets me go on. I can see he’s not happy about it, but he relents. “For the first two days they left me alone. I think they were trying to let the drugs wear off before they questioned me. They left bottles of water but no food in the beginning. The first guy to come in was wearing a cut. A Satan’s Son’s cut.” All four men curse but don’t interrupt. “They were all patched to the Boulder chapter and I saw the VP, SAA and a few others that didn’t hold positions too. Never the President though. The one that gave me food and water and the occasional change of clothes was just a patch. He said his name was Digger. He was nice enough. He never hit me, and he would turn his head when I got dressed. I think he was the one that let me go.” I tell them I think because the morning I got dumped on the side of the highway was a blur. I was injected and knocked out again, the next thing I knew I found myself waking up here. “They wanted to know what runs you had scheduled. What you were shipping. How much you were being paid for them and the drop off locations. I don’t think they understand you run your club the same way all MC’s do. Women and children aren’t told anything, and I’m not sure why they believed Devil’s Spawn are any different. I told them over and over again that I didn’t know anything and you guys didn’t share club business but they thought I was lying because they just kept asking.” I remember them laughing and calling me names, slapping me around, but they weren’t the ones who beat me. “After about two weeks of questioning, me giving them the same answers and slapping me around.”

  I feel Dec tense again and his arms spasm around me so tightly I squeak.

  “Sorry baby. Fuck sorry.”

  Patting his chest in a placating gesture I keep going.

  “They sent someone else in to question me. At first I thought I was seeing things. I mean I was so hungry and tired from sleeping on the floor I thought I must have been imaging her.” Dad looks confused. Uncle Pipe’s brow is so furrowed he’s sporting more lines than I’ve ever seen. Uncle Max looks angry, and I can feel Dec’s fury rolling off him in waves. “I worked out pretty quickly who was lying to them, and telling them I knew more than I was letting on when she walked in.”

  Dad waited a second before asking,

  “Who, Sweetheart. Can you give us a name?”

  Nodding back at him I do just that.

  “Isabella.”

  Dec extricated himself from me and starts pacing. His shoulders are tight and I can see the muscles of his back twitching beneath his shirt.

  “Are you fucking saying my cunt of an ex-wife had somethin to do with you being taken from us Kendall?”

  At first I thought he was angry with me. Mad I was telling him his wife was part of this. Before my thoughts could go too far down that line of reasoning Dec quickly erases them when he sees my eyes well with tears. That’s when I also realise he said ex-wife. That part of his statement gives me a feeling of utter relief. I’m ecstatic he’s no longer tied to the woman that will be part of my nightmares for a long time to come.

  “No. Shit no baby. Don’t cry.” He uses his thumbs to brush my tears away. “I believe you baby. I just, fuck. Thinking that someone that had any-fucking-thing to do with me was the person that took you. Who hurt you fucking guts me. It’s my fault sweetheart. My fault y……..”

  Dad cuts him off,

  “Shut the fuck up boy. It’s no more your fault than it is fucking ours for not killin the cunt after what she did a couple of months ago.”

  That causes me to sit up and take notice instantly.

  “What do you mean? What did she do? She didn’t hurt Lexi did she? Oh God. Is she okay?” I can feel the panic rising at the prospect Lexi might have been caught up in all this.

  Uncle Max answers me before I can think about it much longer.

  “Lexi’s fine Kenny. She wasn’t even there when it happened. Isabella got into Cage’s house when he was drunk off his fucking ass and tried to fuck him.” I gasp at his bland delivery. Turning to Dec my eyes widen. What is wrong with that bitch? A lot obviously. I can tell you from my recent experiences with her in a tiny room, restrained and at her non-existent mercy Isabella has more than a few mental deficiencies.

  At seeing my distressed look Dec explains the rest shaking his head rapidly. “Fuck no Kendall. Don’t look at me like that. She didn’t get far. I might’ve been fucking wasted, but by the time I came to enough to see what she was doing I still had my boxers on and everything essential was in them. I locked her in the fucking bathroom, called dad and Tank, and they came around to make sure she got the fuck out of town complete with a two bike escort. It’s just fucked they didn’t follow her the whole way to wherever she was headed because that may’ve led us to you.”

  Shaking my head slowly I dispel his idea,

  “No. No it wouldn’t have. I heard Digger talking to someone in the hall a few months ago asking when the ‘she devil’ was coming back. He said that if she kept hurting me the way she was they would never find out anything.” Looking back to dad I finish my story. This needs to be over. I’m so tired. My throat is hurting, and I can feel a headache starting behind my eyes. “Isabella never asked many questions, not ones the Sons wanted answers to anyway. Mainly she just screamed at me calling me names, telling me Dec would never look at me after she was finished with me, shit like that. She told me she was Lexi’s mother and that won’t change regardless that she isn’t in the picture anymore. She asked how long I’d been seeing Dec behind her back. It was all personal stuff related to her marriage and me. I told her Dec and I are just friends, but that didn’t seem to matter. I don’t think she had any intention of believing me, or getting closure for herself.” The bitch really was crazy that was for damn sure. “Most of the time she just punched or kicked me Yelled that she was so much better than me. More beautiful. Smarter. Isabella said she’d proved that was the truth by getting Dec to marry her. I stopped listening after a while. It was the same old shit I’d been hearing for months. It was easier to just tune her out. After months of the same thing she came in with a gun waving it around threatening to kill me if I didn’t tell her the truth about me and Dec, and own up to trying to steal Lexi from her. Her belief was that the night Dec kicked her out, I’d coerced him into it. Nothing I said helped, so she shot me in the arm first.”

  Dad jumps to his feet punching a hole in the wall. He turns to me and apologises, but honestly, if punching holes in walls, yelling, screaming, and ranting makes him feel better then I’m more than happy to let him at it. I hate that he’s pissed, upset, and having to hear all this but I truly think it’s better he hear it all now and learn to deal with it rather than it coming out in bits and pieces over the coming weeks.

  “Sit down dad,” I choked out. I didn’t think he’d listen, but he surprises me by sitting. “When I didn’t react to her first shot like she expected, I mean look.” I lifted my arm gesturing to it, “It’s broken. It was already beyond fucked up. She must have broken it more than once because of the number of places it’s damaged in. When I didn’t scream and beg, to be honest I was just so tired and over it I couldn’t be bothered anymore, she shot me in the thigh. That one did hurt, and I did scream that time. That’s when she smiled looking pleased with herself. The other men came in, Digger, a guy I’d heard them call Train, and the one that wore the SAA patch. They were told her to put down the gun down, that it was enough for now, I couldn’t answer their questions if I was dead, stuff like that. At first it looked like she was going to put it down, but that was when she shot me in the side. I’d lost a lot of blood by then because I passed out cold.”

  The memor
y of the warm thick, sticky blood running down my arm, the back of my leg, and my waist makes me shudder.

  “When I came to, Digger was sitting in the corner opposite me. I think he was there to see if I would wake up. When I moved he told me he’d do what he could to help me. I figured he was just going to patch me up, or something. Maybe give me some painkillers. I don’t know really, my head was foggy by then. A couple of days later he came in again with a needle. I was hoping it was something for the pain because my side was burning stinging like a bitch. I swear I thought it was on fire. When he injected me everything went black and I woke up here end of story. I breathe out a sigh of relief and feel my eyelids begin to get heavier. I really want to go to sleep for a while, but I know dad is going to have questions.

  “I’m proud of you sweetheart. I’m so fucking sorry this ever happened to you baby girl but you fucking did us all proud surviving through that shit. I promise you though I’m going to hunt that cunt Isabella down and all those other fucking bastards with her, and when I find her she’s not going to die easy.” I knew she would have to answer for what she had done. And honestly, I hoped she would.