Fallen Hunters-Bacchus

by Monica Owens

  I thought of Charlotte. No doubt she was safe back in Nebraska by now. Mars knew that I was protecting someone. Probably a bunch of someones. He could relate because he had his own someones to protect.

  “You keeping an eye on the boy and the old woman?”

  Mars rolled his eyes. “Yeah. I watched them again today. They’re fine. Why they didn’t get out of town when all this went down, I’ll never know.”

  “Mrs. Dorchester’s son is still shell-shocked from the war. He’s in a group home,” I said softly. “Deats didn’t want to leave her because she sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.”

  Mars folded his arms over his chest. “I see. That all?”

  How much to tell him? “No.”

  “Now it makes sense.” Mars snorted. I could hear the sarcasm and I didn’t appreciate it, but let’s face it, the guy had put his life on hold for me.

  “There’s a few other people.”

  Mars watched me. “Let me guess. A dame is at the heart of this.”

  “Look—”

  “No, you look. I’ve got shit to do, man. I can’t be hiding out here forever. If you’re healed enough, we need to bug out. Tonight. I’d rather not get shot at again.”

  “They shot at you?”

  He snorted. “Let’s just say they’ve got interesting ways of getting your attention.”

  I was silent. Baby was safe, I had to remember that. If none of those beasts had gone after her yet, they wouldn’t now. Watching them, even from a safe house on the outskirts of Chicago wasn’t helping her. And Deats and Mrs. Dorchester were going to be fine, too. There wasn’t much I could do for them anymore. Wasn’t much that Mrs. Dorchester wanted me to do for her.

  I slid to the edge of the bed. My worst wounds had been the broken legs. I can take a beating, but damn, those fuckers hurt. They still did. But I was getting better. Maybe Mars was right.

  “Look,” the infamous god said softly. “You want to go check on the kid and the old woman? We’ll go tonight. But then you’ve got to let go. Move on. What are you so afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid,” I retorted.

  “Could have fooled me, you bastard.” Mars rocketed to his feet and went to the door. “Pack up your shit. Now that I’m made, we can’t stay here.” He clomped out of the room.

  He left me with my thoughts. And shit, I didn’t want to be alone with those.

  ****

  Deats and Mrs. Dorchester lived in a second floor apartment on Chicago’s North Side. Mars and I hit up the place as soon as the sun went down. There were babies crying and people yelling and I nearly lost my mind. I’d never known where Mrs. Dorchester lived until now. If I’d known, I would have gotten her outta here.

  “Shithole,” I muttered, stepping over a drunk.

  “Maybe to you,” Mars shot back.

  I glared at him, but I didn’t say anything else. Mars nodded to a door across the hall and I crossed to it while he hung back.

  Deats answered. His mouth dropped open when he saw me.

  “Hey, shut your mouth, man,” I said with a grin.

  I felt Mars walk up behind me. “Can we come in, kid?”

  Deats still didn’t say anything, and he fell back easy enough. He shut the door and leaned against it while Mars and I faced him in the entryway.

  “You got a job, Deats?”

  His eyes flicked from me to Mars and back. “You-you died—”

  “Yeah, about that.” I took my hat off and ran my hand over my shaved head. “I didn’t really. And you’ll have to keep it quiet.”

  “Um, yeah, yeah, I will.”

  “You got a job, Deats?” I asked again.

  Again that eye flick from me to Mars. “It isn’t easy, Angelo….”

  “I know. You got enough for now?”

  “Yeah. We’re both good.”

  “Kid, you see any of Capone’s men around?” Mars asked.

  Deats swallowed and looked at Mars. “Yeah.”

  “They offering you anything?”

  Now I understood the nervousness. “They approached you, Deats? For info on me?”

  He shook his head. “On Baby.”

  I looked up at the ceiling. “Fuck.”

  “I haven’t told them anything!” Deats said quickly. “They don’t have anything I want anyway.”

  “What about the old lady?” Mars asked.

  “She doesn’t know where Baby is,” Deats responded. “And I’ve only sent her a couple of letters. One had the article in it. About you dying.” He lowered his head. “They wait for us, though. When we go to see her son—”

  “You’ve got to get out of here,” Mars interrupted.

  “She won’t go.”

  “Maybe you ought to save yourself, son,” Mars retorted. “I’m out. Wait for you outside.” He pushed past us and left the apartment.

  Deats blew out a breath. “He’s scary.”

  “Yeah. Regular asshole.” I put my hands on Deats’s shoulders. “Look, I’m heading to her, okay? Leaving tonight. You do what you’ve got to do, but be careful, all right?”

  Deats nodded, his head hanging down.

  “What is it?”

  “I just— I don’t know—I just wish…”

  He didn’t finish, but I didn’t need him to. “I wish things were different, too, Deats.” I squeezed his shoulders. “Be careful.”

  “Yeah.”

  I left without looking back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mars came out of the shadows when I got to the street. He fell in sync with me as we walked to the car.

  “So who’s Baby?”

  I glanced over at him, but didn’t answer.

  “Ah, the dame all this shit went down for. I see,” he said with a grin.

  “You’re an ass.”

  “Yep.”

  I heard the Tommy gun before I saw the thugs step out from behind the building. Mars and I went down in a heap and got some cars shot up in the process. He and I never went anywhere without being armed, but we sure as shit didn’t have enough firepower to fight off a Tommy.

  When the dust settled, we heard the tap tap tap of the spats coming toward us. They stopped on the other side of the car we were hiding behind.

  “Come on, asshole. Come outta there. We got a beef with you.”

  “Shoulda got out of town,” Mars muttered.

  I glared at him. “So go.”

  “I ain’t leaving you to this.”

  “Come on, asshole!”

  I turned to look at Mars. The guy was nearly my double, except he had hair. Right now he was holding a gun in each hand and his trigger finger was steadier than a rock.

  “How many can you conjure?” I asked.

  He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  Mars was a, well, Mars was a god. He made sure he always had enough firepower behind him even if the firepower was bows and arrows. His very special gift was creating armies. Well, I suppose they weren’t supposed to be armies, but that’s what he’d done. The men he conjured weren’t real, but they were an extension of him and his favorite thing to do was fight.

  “One last time for a dear friend?” I asked.

  “If I wanted to, I’d create an army and wipe all of these motherfuckers out.”

  “So do it.”

  “Hey, asshole! Still talking to you! You’re supposed to be dead.”

  I nodded toward him with my chin. “Come on, Mars.”

  “We want that safe!”

  Mars muttered what had to have been a very naughty curse word. I saw movement behind a car across the street from us. A very nearly identical man to Mars leaned over the hood of a car with his own Tommy gun and started shooting. “What’s in the safe?” Mars asked me.

  “A little money. A cure for syphilis.”

  Mars stared at me, then barked out a laugh. “Holy shit. You’re a fucking genius.”

  I shrugged and saw another Mars double rise from behind a mailbox. Another hid behind a dumpst
er. Still another leaned around a different car.

  “We want the safe!” I heard yelled again.

  “Let’s let these bastards fight it out with the other Marses,” he leaned over to say. “Then let’s go get what’s in the safe.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “Then we leave. Tonight.”

  “Yeah.”

  We duck-walked away from the gunfire. One of Mars’s soldiers got hit, going down in a spectacular show of agony and blood. As his body shimmered out of sight, another Mars took his place. Mars would let this go for as long as he needed to, or until the cops came, whichever was first.

  We got around the corner and Mars pulled me to a stop. “Hey.”

  I turned and got beaned in the eyeball with his fist. I doubled over, grabbing my face. “What the fuck!”

  He pulled me up by the back of my jacket. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  “Did you want to get riddled with bullets and die out on a Chicago street, even if it is temporary?” I hissed, feeling the blood begin to straggle down the side of my face. Mars hit hard.

  “We get your safe. We get the fuck out of town. Got it?” He leaned into my face. “Then I’m done with you.”

  He was raging. I could tell that this was no ordinary anger. There was a rumor among the fallen angels that Mars seemed to get a high off violence. No “seemed” about it. His eyes were dilated and his breath came choppy. The fucker was in heaven.

  Part of me felt bad for making him bust out his doubles.

  But then I thought of Baby and I didn’t feel bad at all.

  ****

  The building I’d put so much blood, sweat and tears into was now a heap of rubble. I’d also accidentally burned down the building next to mine, but it had been abandoned. Trees in the alleyway were scorched. Shells of cars still sat by a garage that hadn’t escaped the flames.

  Mars slowed his gait when he saw the destruction. “Fuck, you did this?”

  “Fire demon taught me how.”

  “Well, hell,” Mars muttered.

  He followed me as I climbed over bricks and broken beams. The entrance to the basement was fully covered and we pulled debris away for almost an hour.

  In that time, full dark had fallen. Mars didn’t say much while we dug, but I could tell he wasn’t happy. Not with me, not with the situation. But he still dug, still got his hands dirty. He didn’t share his flashlight, though.

  Finally, I saw the doorknob. “Here, Mars. We get in here.”

  It took about fifteen minutes more for us to get enough shit out of the way. I busted the lock and pushed inside.

  My eyes were slow in adjusting, but eventually I got myself down the stairs. Mars opted to stay up top to watch out for more of Capone’s friends. There was no electricity in the building, but I dug in my pockets for a matchbook. I knew there was a flashlight somewhere around here, maybe in my desk, just had to find it.

  After cracking my knee on the damn desk, but finally yanking open the middle drawer, I found the flashlight and snuffed out my fifth match. The safe was in the corner and I kicked some plaster from the ceiling out of my way to get to it. I didn’t bother with the combination. I spit on the wheel and the metal corroded. I waited a few seconds, then pulled apart whatever was left. The heavy door swung open toward me and I shone the flashlight inside.

  The false back was easily kicked out. No reason to use finesse when no one was around. All the guys knew money was kept in the safe. And I’d kept the majority of it up front, easy to access and easy to split up. But I’d put aside just a little for me. In case I made it out of Capone’s clutches alive.

  I shoved the money in my pockets then grabbed the vial that had rolled to the back. If Capone would have taken the safe, he would’ve been able to save himself the ravages of syphilis. Now, he had to deal with it. I held the smooth vial in my hand, the red liquid inside beginning to boil with my anger.

  Fuck him. He’d shot me, thrown me out of a window, left Baby to the wolves. Fuck. Him. I tossed the vial to the side and heard the tinkling of glass in the corner. The antidote was inside me. And he was never getting it.

  ****

  Mars sat on the loading dock, swinging his feet, staring off toward the alley, when I made my way upstairs. I made enough noise to wake the dead, but he never turned toward me. He continued looking off in the distance.

  “Mars?” I asked.

  He gestured toward the alley. “Want to tell me who handsome is?”

  I looked to my left and my blood ran cold. The fucker that had bought Charlotte the night we found her was leaning against a shell of a car. He had two ugly bastards with him. Not that he was a prize.

  He saw us. We saw him. But as I picked my way through debris toward Mars, the standoff continued. I hoisted myself up to sit next to Mars. “Sure. He’s a loser fuck who tried to rape my girl.”

  “I bought her fair and square,” Big Ugly shot back.

  Mars made a noise deep in his throat. He didn’t like that idea.

  “She wasn’t yours to buy,” I responded.

  “I paid for her!”

  “No one pays for another human being,” I answered.

  “You little shit….” One of the other men put a hand on Big Ugly’s arm to hold him back. “Where is she?” He yelled when he finally calmed down.

  I pulled my cigarettes out and put one in my mouth. “Not your concern.”

  “Doc said she was mine.”

  “Doc had no right to sell her, whoever the fuck he is,” I said, cupping my hands around the flame I’d ignited. I lit my cigarette and shook out the match.

  The man growled. Literally growled. Mars swore under his breath, then he looked over at me. “One bullet, man.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yeah. Then we’ve got to go.”

  “Shit. He deserves more than that.”

  “Yep. But time’s a’ wasting,” Mars said with a shrug.

  Lots of Hunters have tricks. But we all could join a fucking Wild West show with the tricks we’ve got with guns. That’s what you get for knowing some of the quickest draws in the West.

  I put my matchbook back in my pocket and didn’t even draw my gun. I pointed it through the fabric and fired.

  Big Ugly went down clutching his chest. The two guys next to him tried to catch him, but he toppled over too quickly.

  Mars leaned over and took the cigarette out of my hand. “Nice shooting.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Think we could find this Doc guy?”

  I glanced at him. “Thought you wanted to leave tonight?”

  “We still will.” He took a long drag then handed the cigarette back. “We’ve got to clean house a little first.”

  ****

  We started at Ebby’s. Since Capone had been taken into custody, his brother was running the show. I didn’t think we’d get lucky enough to find him, but maybe a few of the underlings would be around. Ebby’s maintained its hotspot status even with Capone gone and his empire crumbling.

  This place wasn’t the same as before. Not with the stock market crash and now the nation’s descent into a depression the likes of which America had never seen. Ebby’s and its way of life was on the way out, judging by the stink of desperation in the air.

  Mars stood next to me as we surveyed the room. “Which one’s Doc?”

  I shrugged. “Never saw him. Just heard the big guy talk about him.”

  “Weren’t these guys your competition?” Mars demanded.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So you didn’t get to know who they were?”

  “Hey, I’m a lover not a fighter, remember?” I waved my hand at him. “I used this to get ahead, not violence.”

  “So you jacked off.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “That’s not what I meant—”

  “Come on. Let’s find this bastard.” Mars pushed through the crowd toward the bar and I followed behind. I may not have been a soldier, but I was smart enough to fight with the tools
I had. Mars knew that. He was being an ass. Like always.

  There was a long line of sad sacks at the bar, drinking their troubles away. We jockeyed for position at the bar and I whistled to call one of the two bartenders over.

  He wasn’t much older than Deats. I wanted to pull all my money out and give it to him to get the fuck out of here. But you can’t save everyone. When the guy came coasting down the bar to us, I saw his well-made jacket and shirt, the cuff links, even the chain around his neck. This guy was past saving.

  He smiled up at us. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah,” I pulled out a twenty and placed it on the bar. “Drink for all my friends at the bar here.”

  He grinned now. “Yes, sir.”

  When he went to grab the money, my hand shot out and caught his wrist. “And tell us where Doc might be.”

  Now the grin faded. His eyes shifted furtively between the two of us. I squeezed a little and the guy winced.

  “Come on, man,” Mars said as he leaned down to be eye level. “There might be more money where that came from.”

  The guy licked his lips and I exerted a little more pressure. Mars dug in his pocket and peeled off a fifty. He held it up with two fingers.

  “Doc. He sells women.”

  I saw the exact moment in the kid’s eyes the second he decided. I let him go and he snapped up the twenty. “Drinks all around,” he murmured. He eyed the fifty.

  Mars shook it gently. “Doc.”

  The kid reached out and grabbed it, shoving the fifty down into a pocket. He nodded toward the back hallway where I’d first followed Charlotte. “Office.”

  Mars pointed and the kid nodded again.

  “Thanks,” I muttered. I shoved Mars away from the bar and led the way. I knew this walk. First, I’d watched Charlotte get dragged this way. Then, I’d pursued with Mick. There were only two doors and I knew what was behind them both. So I didn’t pause when I got to the office door and my foot smashed into the thin wood.

  There was a feminine squeal and a male bellow. Mars and I shoved inside and slammed the broken door behind us. Three women were huddled on the floor hugging each other. A fourth was riding a man behind his desk. The man didn’t look too happy at seeing us.