Lost : The Little Sisters Book One

by H. M. Irwing

  The sense that everything was swiftly spiralling out of his control was nothing new. His hand moved from the gear-shift stick to flick on the high-beam lights. With its neon glow eating up the night, he shifted his ute back into high gear, cleaving through the silent darkness and his looming sense of foreboding. The fear that he was finally losing his mind was always there. It was a fight to keep the dark tendrils of impending doom from consuming him whole.

  Nazareth, I’m fucked up

  Homie, you fucked up

  But if God got us, then we gon’ be alright

  His deep voice stretched and dropped in bass to ring out hauntingly as he sang along to the famed lyrics of Kendrick Lamar’s Alright, in sync with its smooth beat. The music worked its magic, its beat entrancing as Blaise belted out his own vocals to the song, drawing on its deep well of meaning in shoring up his will. His grip tightened on his steering even as his mind revolted but delved helplessly over the recent past, and even as his body shuddered from the pain of loss.

  “You are not my son!”

  The passing words of the only woman who had been his mother still rang jarringly in his ears. His heart thudded and wept silently with each syllable ricocheting off his senses, but his eyes remained dry.

  “I am not your mother.”

  Blaise Shubert had known that he was not her son. He couldn’t have been. No more than he could have been the son of his piss-pot father. They were too different from him to have thought otherwise. Not necessarily in appearance, but in everything else. Everything that mattered. But instinctively knowing it… and actually hearing her confirm it… was another matter entirely. Blaise had looked at the worn woman, once beautiful in her blond hair and blue eyes, and had known instinctively that there was nothing of her in him. Sure, they shared the same blue gaze, but where his offered a glimpse into his soul, hers had been devoid of anything but the barest link to life. His gaze ran over her bare arm to settle on the most recent of puncture wounds and had instantly known—this time the drugs-induced glaze would not clear from her starry-blue eyes. He had sat with her for the moments it took for the life to seep out of her, and had still been staring when the glaze left her eyes to leave behind only the stillness of death.

  His hand hit the steering in agitation, then Blaise pulled over his ute up onto the grassy embankment at the side of the road. He was here. Turning off the ignition, the silence of the cold dead surroundings crept hauntingly in. Blaise stared out into the dark, straining his eyes searchingly. Ever alert. Breathing out a warm puff into the chilled night air, he waited until the tremble in his limbs eased before he resolutely stepped out into the night.

  It was dark and rank outside, as any cemetery deep in the night could be expected to be. The marble town of the hood planted with uncharted graves. Not every grave reached as deep as six feet under, but those that did were legit. The unmarked graves that demanded respect. Graves that belonged to the real deaths of the heads of the hood, long immortalised through their officiated untimely demise for the black and white of the law. What ain’t alive can’t get imprisoned, and so it was not only money that got laundered through these soggy pastures but the people who worked it.

  But the smell of rotting flesh appealed to Blaise’s sensitized nose. As did the scent of the white powder of power and addiction that was also lay buried within their midst. The old kings that die don’t exactly get buried with their treasure, but their graves were a safe enough site for Blaise to bury his. It was probably not the best place to hide his stash. But a fucking kilo of the potent stuff was freakishly hard to hide, and unlike the other losers who use this patch, Blaise buried his deep enough so that even the sniffers would have trouble finding his shit.

  Blaise shivered with hidden satisfaction at the sight of the oddly shaped stone that marked his patch of the cool, dark earth. Only the smallest pebble, dark and otherwise insignificant, gave his patch away. He was the only one who knew what lay buried beneath it. His loot. His treasures. They all made it to this very spot. His turf. Claimed, but not officiated.

  The scent of the dirt rose strong and inviting, freshly stirred. Always, it called to him. The need to draw him into its cool embrace strong… as strong as the call to the dead.

  Only he was not the dead, nor the undead as some liked to think, even though he could well be called either. He was certainly the walking dead. A condition that could end at a moment’s notice. Just a well-placed shot in his chest and he’d be gone, much like the rest of his tribe of sewer dwellers. A stretch of unused pipelines that linked to an equally unused stretch of the underground railway. Old tunnels forked out by his ancestors marked the secret route out of the railway and patched them to the sewer system, giving them the run of the city. But like all plots of turf, hidden from the sun or otherwise, these too had been fought over and won—the hard way. And yet, most of the city’s scum had cleaned out when Danny Might rolled in and declared himself the new king. Blaise had been street savvy enough to maneuver the veins and make his way out in time. But he’d failed to bring any of his old team with him.

  Now it was time to fight back. To avenge his fallen brothers, and reaching down into his coffers was the only way to forward. Blaise dragged his spade behind him, making his way past the bush and shrubbery until his boot-shod feet were placed squarely over the stone. Blaise tossed aside his spade and with a brutal tug, shoved aside the stone. Shrugging off his worn leather jacket and whipping off his equally worn excuse of a t-shirt, Blaise unknowingly basked in the luminous moonlight. Allowing the glow of the super blue blood moon to play lovingly across his skin. The light sculpted across his smooth, muscular chest, lighting up the electric green of his dragon tattoo before glinting off the platinum rings that looped snug about his earlobe. His smooth, tanned scalp glimmered in the moonlight and an eerie glow lit from within the blue depths of his iris, the only memento aside from his mixed skin tone that he inherited from his dead mother. Or so he was told, never having met the real man who sired him. Knyte Starr was his true father.

  “Go to your father. Go to Knyte Starr.”

  His dead mother’s instructions had been clear in her passing. He was not her son nor the son of the man who had claimed was his father. Instead he belonged to the superstar singer, Knyte Starr. A man who lost his son as an infant. A story that had tears welling up in the eyes of his fans all over.

  But Blaise was not a fan. Nor was he about to go running off to Daddy. Not at Stacy Shubert’s bidding. She had been dead to him long before she died and there was no way she would be ruining his life from the grave. Not anymore.

  Blaise eyed his patch now, assessingly. The clouds rolled in, blocking out his only source of light. His pupils widened, adjusting to the dark. Then, rolling the kinks off his stiff shoulder, Blaise bent down and set to it, his tanned coloured skin and dark clothing blending in well so that he was one with the night. Soon the spade was back in his hand and being applied ruthlessly into the ground as he worked his way relentlessly on. But the blue blood moon seemed rather taken with him; it shimmered past clouds to boldly challenge the darkness of the night into revealing his presence to all and any who lurked about.

  It was only lady luck that assured he remained undisturbed and that the gravesite remained dead and silent all around him. An eerie howl rang out in the distance. But Blaise remained unconcerned. He worked the dark, using it and revelling in it. The glimmer of moonlight ricocheted off the metal of his spade as he dug in hard and deep. Blaise drew in a deep, ragged breath before wiping the sweat off his brow and throwing his shoulder in it, giving in to the unrelenting demands of life at nightfall. He hardly saw the day anymore. Torn between staying in hiding and protecting his mother, and the need to make his move in stealth, he had all but shied from the light. Now, his eyes had no problem making out the shadowed patch of the cemetery with only the teasing glimmer of the moonlight.

  Another howl rang out of the dark, drawing an incredible pull within him to lift his head and let loose a howl o
f his own. Blaise lifted his head, his anguish visible in his eye as he stared up at the entrancing moon.

  So many dead. So many.

  The shooting rampage had begun only a week earlier. His men had retreated into the very bowels of the city’s slums, but Danny Might’s men were relentless like that, flushing each and every one of them out. Hunting them down like a sport and leaving a bullet lodged clean in their brain. It was not a good way to go. Not an honourable death. Lowered to their knees and shot at the back of their heads, execution style. There was no way he was letting that go unavenged. Not even for the lure of untimely peace. Blaise glared up at the moon and the part it played in enticing him to surrender himself within the earth’s dark, grainy depths. Its hypnotic beauty, inviting him to simply let go and surrender. The never-ending struggles will cease then, and life with it.

  Blaise tore his gaze away with a shudder. Perhaps it was too soon. His need for vengeance had urged him out of hiding before he’d had sufficient time to mourn. To cry over the loss of his brothers and… the loss of his unwanted mother. He hated Stacy Shubert with every drop of his blood. He hated Mary Shubert, Stacy’s identical twin and his real mother even more. He didn’t need parents. He didn’t need family. He only craved vengeance.

  Crack!

  His spade hit wood. Barely containing his harsh laugh, Blaise quickened his pace, skilfully flicking the dirt off the sides. The coffin that got uncovered was his. The mark on it was discernible. A trait of his gang. His previous gang of gangly youths. Drug pushers trying to make ends meet. A bunch of misfits who were too young to die.

  Blaise dropped to his haunches and edged his trusty knife beneath the lid. It was, as expected, nailed shut. Throwing his weight into it, the lid popped. Chips of wood flew in the air.

  “Wat Da fuck?”

  Blaise scrambled out of the hole with some haste. He reached urgently for his jacket for his trusty LED torch key ring. Something he never thought he would need. Its glow was unnaturally bright. He sped back to the hole, peering into the darkened void before unleashing the glow of his keychain… to reveal a woman?

  Wa da fuck? Blaise gulped down his unbidden fear. Come on man, everything’s gonna be aight! A shawty bitch with nary a stitch of thread in my crib is nothing new. He would deal. He had to deal. Blaise breathed in and out deeply. He lifted his hand to brush the sweat off his brow. The sultry heat of the night was abnormal. As was the girl in his coffin. Who put her there? Was she dead? But more importantly… where was his fucking Al Capone?

  Feeling shaky by this unexpected turn in events, Blaise muttered out the chorus that had been playing in the back of his mind… to the rhythm of his frantically thudding heart.

  Nigga, we gon’ be alright

  Nigga, we gon’ be alright

  We gon’ be alright

  Do you hear me, do you feel me? We gon’ be alright

  Nigga, we gon’ be alright

  Huh? We gon’ be alright

  Nigga, we gon’ be alright

  Do you hear me, do you feel me? We gon’ be alright

  The beam of his light clicked off. Blaise glanced around frantically, stilling his being and slowing his breathing. He listened to the dark, willing his other senses to pick up what his sight couldn’t.

  Silence greeted his silence. Thankful this was no grave rave, Blaise dropped his gaze back to the ebony depths of the pit before him. Once again, the girl was eclipsed by the dark. Perhaps it had all been his imagination. His usually underworked imagination playing a rather vivid trick on him. Unable to resist, the light of his torch flicked on once more, chasing away the shroud of darkness that concealed the girl from his sight. Dropping back down to the coffin, Blaise bent over, casting his light over her unmoving features. It was hard to tell if she was truly dead but then he caught sight of the tubes running through her nostrils from an unusual looking breathing apparatus. Oxygen! He couldn’t hear its soft hiss before but now that he knew it was there, he listened to the soft whizz of the pump expand and deflate with each hiss of breath.

  Leaning in to brush his chilled fingers against her warm skin, he rested them against the weak pulse at her throat. The beat was reassuring. At least this wasn’t yet another stiff he had to deal with. Even so, he’d rather not be seen dragging an unconscious girl about through the boneyard. There was no knowing what booby trap he would be walking into. He was not so much of a dumbass not to realise someone had it in for him and had it in a big way. This was not the work of Danny Might. This was something else.

  It was not sun-up yet. He had a couple of hours still. Shuddering away his reluctance with a deep shaky breath, Blaise got down into the dirt to rest on his knees. He started to work the tubes slowly out her nostrils. Then, running a cautious look down her length, he clicked off his light and tucked it away before leaning in to haul her out of the coffin and over his shoulder. Her arms flopped down uselessly before him. Sighing in resignation, Blaise took the few strategic leaping steps needed to scramble clear of the grave. Stopping only for his jacket and his spade, Blaise swept out of there, uncharacteristically leaving the dune of dirt piled up high as it was. What did it matter if whoever had done it was on to him? He already had too many after his back to care at this point.

  His slow thread back through the bushes and on to his rusty vehicle parked at the roadside was relaxed, almost languid, and even silently challenging in his bold unflinching steps. Blaise glared into the dark, willing anyone dumb enough to try to take him on now. But the still of the night was broken only by his mobile phone vibrating in his pocket. Blaise reached for it, and without pausing in his stride or bothering to glance at the screen, he clicked receive and casually raised it to his ear. An unexpected voice rang in his ear, shouting out his exact sentiments.

  “O-m-f-g, my night has been shooding horrific! I have been waitin’ all night for you, babe. It’s fucking Valentine’s! You fucking stood me up! I can’t believe it, babe! Don’t think I don’t know you have some naked hoe thrown over your shoulder for a quick fuck! I am fucking mad at you, bae. Oh, and you won’t believe who I ran into at the boozer…”

  But Blaise had a screaming concern of his own to pay much attention to Josie’s ranting. His most recent squeeze had this irrepressible need to be constantly in his ear. The ratchet bitch could go on and on for an undetermined amount of time. But his determined silence must have gotten to her at some point for she muttered back into the cell after a time, “…Blaise? Bae? Are you there, baby?”

  With a resigned sigh, he flicked his cell off and slid it back into his pocket. He knew from experience that he was only strong enough to handle one woman at a time, and he already had his hands full with the waking dead. His limit for the night was reached.

  The woman in his arms barely stirred as he lowered her without ceremony into the back of his ute. Sliding the lid half- shut over her slight form, he moved forward to slide into the driving seat and gun his way back to the city lights. His mood was shot for the night. His hopes dashed. He’d fucked up. He’d fucked up good. The drug money he had hoped for was not forthcoming. Hopefully, the girl would carry her weight in gold.

  The drive back didn’t take long. Once he neared the digs, his headlights dipped, and the rest of the ride was completed in hollowed darkness. The splash through the low-lying waters was relatively muted under the roll of his tires. Travelling in the pipes at a crawl was necessary if Blaise wanted to return with no one the wiser. It was never easy knowing who was out there listening. But thankfully, the ride through the abandoned pipelines was uneventful. Then he was there. His crib beneath the city lights.

  The hound that rushed out to greet him drew a crooked grin to slant across his lips. The lick that followed almost widened that twitch into a grin, but the words that came after from the silhouette behind him chased the effort away.

  “Where the fuck you been at, man!”

  “Bruh!!” Blaise murmured, hauling in his find past a befuddled Andy as he made his way towards his bed. “W
here the hell do you think I’ve been?” He added mildly.

  “This is all yo’ fuckin’ fault.” Andy breathed out immediately in whispered awe as he stared down at the silent girl splayed over Blaise’s bed. Entranced by the shawty piece of ass, but unwilling to take the heat that came with it.

  Blaise merely shrugged. He was used to being made to shoulder the shit around here. Bringing in an unconscious girl none of them recognised clearly spoke trouble. Andy was new to the blood. He would be wary, and he should be. But Blaise was done taking a piss in his own dump. He was done ridin’ and shinin’ his ass to Danny’s bidding. Guns loaded or not, it was time to come out shooting. He’d make his ammo out of dust if he had to. Working with this fine piece of ass was as good as. Blaise ran a critical gaze down her length before he turned heel to stalk back to the front. Andy followed at his heels, shaking his head in worry.

  But Blaise merely ignored his disapproving look and suggested mildly, “Put the word out on her. Let’s test these waters and see how far this shit goes.”

  He suspected they were going to be in for a whipping backlash once the word was out, but at this point he was ready to try anything.

  - To Be Continued –

  Review Request

  Please don’t hesitate to leave your reviews on Amazon Kindle and Goodreads. Hope you have enjoyed the book. Keep a watch out for the next instalment of this amazing series.

  Other Books by H. M. Irwing

  Little Sister series (Out Now)

  Lost

  Twinkle

  Spice

  Sugar (Coming Soon)

  Lost

  Lucy Little was born Luxy Ara Starr. She grew up not having a clue she was the hybrid of two different worlds. Born to an African American singer superstar for a father and an Australian free-thinker for a mother, Lucy grew up taunted by the missing limb that was her kidnapped-from-the-cradle twin brother, Blaze Starr.