by Sophia Gray
The old man looked at me with tired eyes. “What do you need, Torque?” His tone was much more patient than mine would have been if I’d been in his shoes. “I can’t give you anything now. I don’t have anything left.”
I shook my head. “It’s not about Peyton. Or The Manticore, whatever. Now I need to find the boss of the Iron Angels. I need to know where to go as soon as possible. I have something I’d think he’d be very interested in hearing.”
The old man looked at me with a shrewd gaze. “Is that so, boy?”
“Don’t call me boy,” I snarled out. “This is serious shit, old man.”
The bartender leaned back against the wall. There was a bruise on his face from where I’d clocked him during one of my previous visits. For someone who I could tear limb from limb, he seemed remarkably cocky when I was around. It was irritating.
“You know something,” I blurted out. “Tell me. You know something, and you didn’t tell me before. What is it?”
He shook his head sadly. “I’ve told you before, I don’t want no more killings around here,” he said in a gruff tone. “It ain’t worth it to me to see my city blowin’ up every day.”
“Tell me, or I set this place on fire right now!” I grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the counter and my brass lighter from my pocket. When I knew he was watching me, I dumped the whiskey out all over the bar and lit my lighter. “I’m serious,” I warned. “Don’t fuckin’ test me or I’ll do this. And you won’t be getting the rest of your money, either.”
The old man blinked at me. “Fine,” he said in short. “Go find one of those junkies in the alley and bring him here. I’ll ask the right questions. Just pay attention.”
“You’re fuckin’ infuriating. I can’t fuckin’ believe you’re making me do this.”
The old man didn’t answer, he only shrugged. In anger, I stomped to the door and threw it open. As usual, junkies were crawling around in the alley like cats. I bet they were desperate for a fix; Peyton hadn’t been around in a couple of weeks.
One of them must’ve somehow been able to smell that I was carrying money. He crawled over to me, gripping the brick wall with shaking hands. Up close, I smelt his rotten breath and saw that his skin looked doughy and moist. He stuck a crooked finger in my direction and opened his mouth.
“Man, you know where I can get a fix? I’m dying, man,” he pleaded.
I nodded and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. “You’re gonna help me out, and then I’ll help you,” I growled out. He looked nervous but then relieved, and a warm grin spread across his fucked-up face. “Now.”
When I started to walk away, he let himself be dragged by the collar of his shirt. The junkie weighed nothing at all; under his baggy clothes, I saw there was no meat or fat on his frame. He closed his eyes as I pulled him into the bar. When we weren’t outside, I smelt a strong odor of piss wafting off him. Shaking my head in disgust, I dragged him to the bartender.
The old man leaned over the counter and looked at the junkie with scrutinizing eyes. “It’s been a few days, hasn’t it?” he asked in a voice that wasn’t unkind. The man nodded desperately and held out his hands as though the old man bartender was a god. “I bet you’re feeling pretty desperate, aren’t you?” the old man asked in the same soothing voice.
The junkie nodded quickly. “I am,” he said with a ragged breath. “I am. You have no fuckin’ idea, man. Please, please help me.” He turned his gaze back to me. “What the fuck did you bring me here for, man? Am I gonna die, man?”
The old man shook his head. “You’re not in danger,” he said quickly, answering for me. “But you need to help us. If you help us, we might help you. Got it?”
The junkie kept nodding as though in a trance. The bartender turned to me. “This man has some questions about the Iron Angels.”
The junkie fell to his knees. “Man, I can’t, man,” he sobbed. “I can’t fuckin’ talk about them, man, don’t you fuckin’ get that?’
The old man shook his head. “Then we won’t be able to help you,” he said crisply. “Are you sure that’s your final answer?”
With big, pleading eyes the junkie looked from the old man to me and back again. I nodded and growled at him, and finally, he took a deep breath and started to speak.
“I haven’t seen anyone from the gang around in weeks. The Manticore ain’t here no more,” he said with a trembling voice.
“Who’s been giving you a fix, then?” I asked gruffly.
The junkie shuddered and trembled. “I don’t know, man,” he replied, his jaw twitching. “I don’t know. This car rolls up, and some lady comes out and gives us all baggies. I ain’t seen her maybe more than once or twice.”
My eyebrows flew up. “A lady?”
The junkie nodded. “She smells good, man, like she has a good pussy. She’s clean. Always wears sunglasses and a dark suit and a hat.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What the fuck are you talking about, homes? Are you fuckin’ high right now?”
“No, sir,” the junkie replied in a shaking voice. “I ain’t, I promise I ain’t. But it’s a lady.”
In disbelief, I looked at the bartender. “Is this true? Is he lying to me to fuck with me?”
The bartender gave a quick wag of his head. “No,” he said after a moment’s pause. “He’s not lying. There’s a woman affiliated with the Iron Angels.”
“That’s fucking crazy.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Are you sure?”
The junkie nodded.
The bartender turned to me and said, “Yeah, this is the real deal alright.”
I pulled up a barstool and sat down. My head was spinning. I’d always imagined the Iron Angels as a traditional, kind of thuggish gang. They sold heroin, for fuck’s sake. I couldn’t imagine some moneyed woman stepping in on their turf. Maybe she was someone’s old lady, but I couldn’t believe for a second that she’d been around for a long time.
“And you think this woman is the new front-runner of the gang?”
The junkie shrugged. “She’s been around for a long time, man, I just hadn’t seen her ’til now. I thought she was a fuckin’ legend, man.”
I swallowed hard. “Fine,” I said after a moment. “Thanks,” I added.
The junkie held out his hand. “So, you’re going to help me now?”
I sighed and stuffed a wadded up twenty in his pocket. He grinned like a schoolboy and ran out into the alley, presumably to wind up in a dope coma. I shook my head once he’d gone.
“I can’t believe this,” I said slowly. “Where am I supposed to find these people?”
The bartender looked up at the clock on the wall. “She comes around in the early afternoon. Hang out and wait for her car. Then you can follow her back to wherever she’s going. She’s a tough broad, but you could take her. I bet she’ll spill where the boss is.”
I thought it over. It was risky, but so far it seemed like the best idea possible. “Fine,” I said after a beat. “I’ll do it. Throw me a beer while I’m waiting.”
The old man looked at me before uncapping a bottle of Coors Light and passing it down the bar to me. “That’s two-fifty,” he said in a slow tone.
Leaning forward, I dashed some of the beer on his face. “Fuck you,” I replied. “You could have helped me earlier, and you didn’t. I’m not paying for shit.”
The old man seemed to accept that, and he puttered away, going into a back room. I sat and thought hard. If I was going to catch this bitch, I had to be sneaky about it. I imagined she probably had some kind of sleek black car with a driver and tinted windows. Something that would really stand out around here.
With the rest of my beer in my hand, I moved to the window. The street was deserted, and I heard the junkies moaning loudly in the alley. It sounded like they were all about to die. I wondered how they got money for a fix whenever no one was around to give them cash. Then I remembered what the bartender had said about all of them helping The Manticore hide bodies.
&nb
sp; A black Mercedes with tinted windows glided past the front window of the bar, and I pressed my face to the glass, forgetting for a moment to be subtle. It was the most gorgeous car I’d ever seen. I imagined propping Lily on the hood and spreading her legs, letting her pussy juice leak down the hood. Between my legs, my cock twitched and stirred and grew into a half state of arousal. Damnit, Torque, pull yourself together, I ordered myself. You know better than this.
Draining my beer, I sprinted out the back exit of the bar and ran to where I’d parked. My car took a few tries to start, and I thought about that rich cunt’s Mercedes with envy. I bet she never waited freezing for her engine to turn over in the cold Detroit winter. Finally, my car sprang to life, and I guided it down the side street.
I saw the reflection of the Mercedes’ headlights on the brick wall. I decided until she’d gone to start following her. It didn’t take long; I was only idling for ten minutes or so before the Mercedes gunned out of the alley. It was an extremely quiet car for something with so much horsepower, and I had a feeling that it could easily outpace my little beater.
The windows were so dark that I couldn’t make out the shape of heads in the back seat. The Mercedes effortlessly weaved through traffic. Following it wasn’t a problem; there were simply no other cars around that looked that fuckin’ good. It wasn’t hard for me to stay three or four cars behind.
The Mercedes stood out like a sore thumb among rust-spotted cars that were at least fifteen years old. We pulled onto a highway and cruised out of Detroit, out of the city limits, and finally through the country. I was just starting to worry about gas when the Mercedes turned off onto a country road, marked with a green sign. Not wanting to follow them down the private gate, I ditched my car in the shrubs and followed on foot.
There was a loud crashing noise as I approached and I darted into the trees.
“Fuck,” I murmured. This was going to be harder than I thought.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I held my breath and snuck around the side of the property, breathing hard. Through a tangle of trees, I saw the black Mercedes parked outside an elegant house. It was built of wooden slats painted white, and there was even a yard with flowers out in front. I felt supremely confused; maybe I’d followed some rich benefactor back to their house.
Three gunshots rang out in the air and quickly dispelled me of that notion. Crouching down behind a tree, I waited and watched as three black guys ran across the front yard and knocked on the front door. It opened a crack—I couldn’t see who was standing inside—and they let themselves in, whooping and hollering. Narrowing my eyes, I slowly made my way up to the side of the house.
There was a lot of noise coming from the backyard, and I reached into my pocket and fingered the handle of my knife. I swallowed nervously and kept going, closer and closer. The smell of chlorine hung in the air, and I heard bubbles and splashing. It was too cold for a pool, and when I got closer, I realiTorque there were some people in a hot tub in the backyard. I watched intently as one of them reached to the side and came back with a mirror and some white lines. Everyone sitting in the hot water laughed, and they passed the tray around, each snorting two lines.
One of them sneeTorque and sent the others into big spasms of laughter. One of them was crying because she was laughing so hard. Figuring this was my chance, I stuffed my hand inside my jacket and pointed my finger out, so it looked like I was carrying a gun. I walked up to the group and stared them in the eye.
“Direct me to the leader,” I said, staring at them with menacing eyes. “Take me to him, now.”
One of the kids in the hot tub narrowed his big eyes at me. “Are you foolin’?” he asked, nudging the gorgeous, topless girl next to him. Her breasts bobbed in the water as she giggled. “Are you a fuckin’ moron?”
“I’m not fucking around,” I replied in a deep voice. “I’ll fucking kill you all and string you up in the driveway if you don’t pay attention to me.”
One of the girls shrieked in fright and ducked under the water. The kid who had spoken to me rolled his eyes. “Fine. Come with me, asshole. And you better not fuckin’ touch my girls.”
“They’ll be safe as long as you don’t fuck me,” I spat out.
The kid nodded and appraised me. When he was out of the water, I saw that he was about a head shorter than I was. I kept my hand in my jacket and snarled at all the kids as we walked past. Some of them cowered, but one of the other girls gave me a saucy look and licked her lower lip.
I rolled my eyes and followed close behind the kid. He led me up the back porch stairs and into a sleek modern kitchen. Everything was chrome and black, and I mentally tried to calculate the cost of all the fancy shit in there. It was mind-boggling. After we exited the kitchen, the kid took me to a door in the hallway.
“This is the basement,” he said. “You can go down there. I’ll let Boss know you’re waiting.”
Narrowing my eyes, I started to say, “Hey, this wasn’t the plan!” when the kid reached forward and pushed me with both hands on my chest. I fell back, down the stairs. The kid laughed hysterically as I bounced down, wincing in pain with each fall. When I landed in a heap at the bottom of the concrete, he looked down at me and smirked.
“You might be waitin’ for a long fuckin’ time,” he told me with a grin. “Boss likes to keep people on their toes.”
“Hey, fuck you,” I yelled, getting to my feet. I felt like I’d twisted an ankle during the fall, but everything else seemed to be in proper working order. “Fuckin’ wait! Don’t leave me here!”
The kid laughed and then slammed the door. I heard a lock sliding into place and the light patter of retreating footfall.
“Fuck!” I screamed, looking at my surroundings. At first, everything was too dark to see. When my eyes started to slowly adjust, I saw that I was surrounded by broken equipment. There were stereos that had obviously been ripped out of car dashboards and rendered useless, along with some other kinds of machinery that I couldn’t even recognize. Some of the things were identical to what was inside Peyton’s shitty hideaway, and with a sinking feeling, I realiTorque that he and ‘Boss’ must have been more interwoven than ever.
Footsteps above me walked over the floor, and I shouted, but no one came to my rescue. I figured that I might be able to break down the door, but I wouldn’t be able to do it without attracting a ton of attention.
“Fuck,” I said again, softer this time. I didn’t want to kill my phone battery by using the light; the phone was the only thing I had that might save my life. Bitterly, I remembered telling Lily that she was no longer in danger. Now I realiTorque she was probably in more danger than ever.
Finally, I spotted a rusty crowbar in one corner of the basement. Gripping it in both hands, I walked up the stairs. When I was sure that there was no one on the other side of the door, I began hacking away at the metal hinges. Luckily, the door was old. It only took about two whacks on each one before they crumpled and fell to the floor.
I was making a ton of noise, but I hadn’t heard footsteps the whole time I was working. With a deep breath, I pulled at the door until it came loose from its frame. The weight was more than I’d expected, and my muscles strained with the effort of carrying it down the stairs without making any noise. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I took a deep breath and climbed back up. When I poked my head into the doorframe, I half expected to be shot. But there was no sound, no voice crying out and giving me away, nothing.
Satisfied, I paced quietly through the room. There was a big dining room to my right-hand side with guns on the table. In disbelief, I grabbed a semi-automatic and made sure there was a clip loaded inside. I didn’t want to fire it to test, so I stuck it in the back waistband of my jeans and sent a silent prayer upwards.
I’ll show you, you little brat, I thought with a nasty grin as I paced through the kitchen. There was a window directly overlooking the backyard. When I listened, I heard splashing and giggling. I rolled my eyes. Sure, they were just k
ids. But I was just a kid once; maybe if someone had taught me a lesson, my life would be a completely different story.
Taking aim, I shot through the window, right above the hot tub. The kids screamed and screamed, and it wasn’t more than a few seconds before I heard the thundering footsteps of them all running into the house. The kid who had shoved me in the basement was at the head of the bunch, and he eyed me with hatred.
“How the fuck did you get outta there?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he looked around the room with his mouth gaping. When he spotted the open basement door, he scratched his head. “Are you some kinda superhero?”
I shook my head. “More like supervillain,” I replied, my tone cold. “Haven’t you learned a thing or two by now? If you’d have fucked with the wrong person, that shot would have been in your chest instead of the trees.”