Fallen Hunters-Bacchus

by Monica Owens

  Mars and I both raised our guns, both aiming for the man’s head.

  The woman shrieked and he hustled her off his lap. She hit the floor with a thud and scuttled over to the other three women. They grabbed her and pulled her close, smoothing down her dress and another soothing her tears.

  The man held up his hands. “Hey, hey, boys. What’s the problem here?”

  “You Doc?” Mars asked.

  “Come on, lads—”

  “Any of you ladies know this prick’s name?” I interrupted.

  Soft sobbing met the silence, then one brave soul whispered, “Doc.”

  I vaulted up on the desk, tweaking the shit out of my healing bones, but doing it anyway. I put the muzzle of my gun to Doc’s head. “Looking for Costa.”

  “Cos-Costa?”

  “Yeah. You know him.” I jerked my head toward the girls. “Probably brought some if not all of those ladies here.”

  He wet his lips and his eyes flickered to the girls.

  I shoved with my gun, pushing his head back. The man winced. “Hey, eyes over here, Doc. Tell me what I want to know.”

  “Any of you brought here by Costa?” Mars asked the girls.

  I didn’t hear their answers but I heard some shuffling. Nods or shakes of their heads. And I did hear Mars curse.

  “Fuck. Costa. Next target.”

  “Tell me where he is,” I ordered.

  “I don’t know where he lives—”

  “Where would he be?”

  Doc swallowed nervously. “He-he hangs out over at Nickelby’s.”

  “You know where that is?” Mars asked me.

  “Yeah.”

  “Ladies,” Mars said quietly. He moved toward them and held his coat open to shield them. “One bullet.”

  I pulled the trigger.

  When I got off the desk, Mars was ushering the girls out of the office through a back entryway. He shoved money in their hands as they went. The final one, the one that had been on Doc, threw her arms around him.

  “Yeah, none of that, sugar,” he muttered.

  When the girls were gone, we went through Doc’s desk. Pocketed more money, some Cuban cigars, and nothing else. When we were done, Mars nodded to me. Blood lust was in his eyes, but this time, I didn’t care that I’d put it there.

  “Let’s go get him.”

  I nodded back and we strode right out of Ebby’s. Forever.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nickelby’s was more hidden than Ebby’s. I’d never set foot in the place, but I’d heard the lowest of the low came here. It was a hangout for most of Capone’s men and I didn’t have a hard time believing that Costa would be here. I just didn’t have any idea what Costa might look like.

  Not a problem though. On the walk over to Nickelby’s, I’d glanced at Mars. He was in the zone. Even if he didn’t get a rush out of violence, he was still bound and determined to fuck up anyone who hurt a woman. We weren’t going to die. Not tonight. Not ever. And we were going to put a world of hurt on these fucks.

  At the speakeasy, some bastard gave us shit about not knowing the password. Mars shoved his gun through the small opening in the door. I heard the barrel clink on the bastard’s teeth.

  “That’s our password,” Mars growled.

  I might keep Mars around.

  We went through every room in Nickelby’s and Costa wasn’t there. Ordinarily, I would have worried that the fuckers in the place weren’t giving us accurate information, but after the few guards that were there pissed themselves in fear, I was inclined to believe we’d just missed Costa on his way out.

  Mars roughed up a couple people, I got a few cuties out of there and shoved money in their hands, and we moved on to the next speakeasy.

  And the next. And the next. And the next.

  Near dawn, our bodies tired and our minds cranked way the fuck up, we headed back toward where Mars had left his car. I didn’t want to give up, neither did Mars, but we’d roughed up enough of Capone’s guys tonight to put targets on both our backs. Time to head out of town. Hopefully no one would follow us, and I knew Mars could be tricky when he wanted.

  I heard a scuffling behind us and automatically turned. A bullet zinged by and took my hat off. Mars dove for the side of the alley behind a dumpster and I crouched beside an old car.

  Behind us, in the middle of the alley we’d been walking down, were two men. One I recognized instantly, since he looked just like his brother. The other I assumed was Costa.

  “I’ll cover you,” Mars said, clicking bullets into place.

  I rolled out from behind the car. They could shoot me. They could hit me with a car. But I wasn’t going to die. I stood with my arms out to my sides, showing no weapon.

  “Hear you’ve been looking for me,” the big motherfucker called out.

  Costa was probably about six feet and was well groomed. But he was undeniably an ass. The danger coasted off him in waves. A deep scar ripped down his cheek into his neck. His black eyes revealed no soul. This was a man who dealt in women. Sold them to Capone to populate his brothels. Shit like that didn’t fly with me or my fellow Hunters. Shouldn’t fly with anyone, really.

  “You’re hard to find,” I told him. My eyes shifted to the shorter man walking with Costa. “You, I wasn’t looking for you.”

  “Too bad. You got me.”

  Capone’s brother held the gun. He’s the one that shot at me. But I didn’t even want him. I wanted the motherfucker that had plucked Charlotte off the train, ushered her to Capone, and took money for finding her. I wanted to make sure he couldn’t do that to anyone else ever, ever again.

  So fuck that gun. Fuck Capone’s brother. Fuck. Them. All.

  I lunged. Costa and Capone were obviously taken off guard, but I didn’t even care. I hit Costa right in the chest and we went down in a heap. A gunshot whinged past me, but mostly because Capone fell on his fat ass and lost control of his gun. I used my fists to keep Costa in line. He probably figured since he was big, he could take me. He wasn’t betting on superhuman strength.

  I fisted my hand in the collar of his jacket and held him steady. Then I pounded. Fucking hit that ugly mug of his over and over. I saw Capone try to point and shoot at me again, but the look on my face must have been pretty feral when I turned on him and growled. He fumbled the gun and scurried back several feet.

  Costa groaned and I lifted his upper body off the ground. “Hey, fucker.”

  Blood splattered across his forehead, both cheeks were split open, his lips were puffier than a whore’s, and both eyes were swollen shut. But he was conscious, so this was important to say.

  “You hear me?”

  He groaned again and his head lolled.

  “Her name is Charlotte and this is for her. You got me?” I wound up and sunk my fist directly into his nose, letting him go simultaneously. His head cracked against the concrete and I shoved myself to my feet. I shook off the blood on my hands, then looked over to where Capone cowered.

  Mars loosely held a gun on him, but Capone wasn’t about to interfere. His eyes were big and the smell of urine swathed him.

  “This part of your operation shuts down. Now. Today. It’s over.”

  He nodded stupidly.

  “One bullet,” I said to Mars, my breath still coming choppy.

  I didn’t see where Mars shot him, but I enjoyed the screams as we walked out of the alley.

  ****

  We drove all morning. Mars let me sleep since he’d also procured a few pain pills for me. Coming down off that adrenaline made my legs ache and my hands cramp up. So I popped some of those pills, drank a handful of water, and snoozed out of Chicago.

  I woke up when I realized the car was no longer moving. I stretched and took a look around me. Cornfields. Everywhere. Mars leaned against the outside of the car, smoking a cigarette and contemplating the corn.

  I dragged myself out of the car, knees snapping like an old man. I bent backward and side to side and then rounded the car to lean like
Mars was.

  He handed me the pack of smokes and a matchbook.

  I inhaled slowly, dragging the smoke in and holding it. I closed my eyes and let the breeze ruffle over me, the soothing sounds of the corn rustling making me sigh the smoke out into the air.

  “So this is it,” Mars suddenly said.

  My eyes snapped open. “What?”

  “This is where we go our separate ways.” Mars dropped his cigarette and ground it under his shoe. He pushed off the car and walked a few feet away, then turned back.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Did you think I was going to haul your ass all the way to Nebraska?”

  I had actually thought he was going to haul my ass all the way to Nebraska. So I didn’t say anything.

  He got closer. “Jupe asked me to come get you. I sure as fuck didn’t think I’d be sitting around for almost six months watching you convalesce,” he hissed. “I got shit to do and it’s nowhere near Nebraska.”

  “Look, I appreciate you putting things on hold for me—”

  “Putting things on hold?” he interrupted. “I walked away from a lot of shit, Bacchus. A lot. To come and collect you. And while what we did last night needed to be done, we should have taken care of it long before we did. So I’m gone. No looking back. And the next time you send a telegram to Jupe to tell him you’re going to need a next of kin to identify your carcass, make sure you tell him that you don’t want me.”

  I met his eyes. “This is about your doubles.”

  “This is about your selfishness. You wanted to nail a pretty girl and got shot up and thrown out a window for it.”

  “Do you really think that that’s what this was about?”

  Mars fumed. I could almost see the steam coming out of his ears like in the cartoons at the pictures. He swung away from me and went to the driver’s door. He opened it and reached inside, grabbing the bag I’d left on the floor. He came out and tossed it at my feet.

  “I get that you wanted to stop them from hustling women,” he said quietly. “And I was more than happy to help with that. But I’m not helping you crawl your way back to this Charlotte and try to live happily ever after.”

  “Maybe I’ve got that in me, Mars.”

  “Maybe none of us got that in us, Bacchus. Hell, you’re the fucking god of wine and I’m the fucking god of war.” He sighed. “We’re shit, Bacchus.”

  I flicked my cigarette to the ground and stepped on it. “Want to tell me where I am?”

  Mars snorted. “Fucking middle of nowhere I’d guess.”

  “Seriously. Give me that much.”

  Mars went to get back in the car, his hand clutched so hard around the door that his knuckles were white. He didn’t look at me. He just…stood there.

  I didn’t know what was going through his head. But I figured I knew what he’d left behind. The same thing I was trying to get back to. His Baby. His Charlotte. And while he didn’t believe he was worthy of any kind of love, he sure as fuck resented me for taking him away from the chance.

  “Still Illinois,” he muttered, then wrenched open the door. The car sputtered, then roared to life.

  I stood there a few minutes after he’d sped away down the dirt covered road. But finally I went and picked up my bag. I hitched it up over my shoulder and started walking.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Most of the money I’d had went to the women Mars and I had found along the way that last night in Chicago. My plan was to get to the next town and buy a car, some rundown piece of shit, and drive down to Nebraska.

  I didn’t have the money for it. I didn’t even have two nickels to rub together for new clothes. I hung out in the town I’d walked to, did some odd jobs, and made some dough. Not enough to buy a car, but at least I got new shoes. Especially if I was going to be walking my way back to Charlotte. My new plan was to keep going, get jobs along the way to feed myself, and soon I’d find myself in Charlotte’s backyard.

  Didn’t work that way.

  First of all, people didn’t trust me for shit. They were more apt to give jobs to people they knew rather than some transient that wandered by. Second, jobs were hard to come by. The stock market crash had started a wave of depression across the whole United States. Even if I could get a day job, all it paid was food and maybe some water.

  I didn’t use the name Arcangelo de Bacchio anymore. Fuck that. I was good old Bacchus now. I didn’t have to pretend to be anyone other than myself. I also didn’t want any of Capone’s cronies to find me.

  Ah, Capone. His empire crumbled once he got sent to prison. His dipshit brother couldn’t hold a candle to the real thing. More gangs sprouted up, and I sure as shit didn’t think they even worried about me anymore.

  I spent the winter at a farm in Iowa. The woman’s husband broke his leg and needed a good farm hand for the season. The guy didn’t make it to Christmas. She was left with six kids and no money, not even to bury him. I couldn’t leave her that winter. I tried to help her plant in the spring, but by then she’d given up. Her plan was to go back East to her family. I could’ve told her there wasn’t much back there, but she wouldn’t listen. She saved her pennies and bought gas for her rusted out Model-T and packed those kids up as soon as the grass started to grow. Didn’t even sell the land. No one wanted it. No one had the money.

  I was off again.

  Deats had let slip where Charlotte called home. I could have combed Nebraska for years if he hadn’t told me, and I kept that info in my brain. First city I came to in Nebraska, I hit up a general store and asked for a map.

  Turns out Ringo, Nebraska is in the middle of fucking nowhere and as far south as you can get. Really, Charlotte? Damn. The storekeeper asked me to leave when he heard me curse so I committed the map to memory and started my hike.

  Shit was bad everywhere. Even if I’d had money I would’ve been out of it in no time. I wanted to help all the people I saw. Fucking kids panhandling outside of the post offices I passed. Grave markers just off the road where entire families were buried. I even saw a couple kids walking their own way. I tried to get them to come with me, but hell, by then I was a grimy bastard and they took off running.

  All the while, I kept thinking of Charlotte.

  Her golden curls. Her trim little body. Her fucking lips. Her fucking pussy. I woke up in the middle of the night with erections that hurt, for fuck’s sake. And every day, it seemed like I was so much farther away from her than any closer. I remembered that last time we’d made love, her body sucking me in, her breasts a full handful. What I wouldn’t give to hold her right then.

  The idea of Charlotte kept me walking.

  Day after day, I walked on. I stopped more than I wanted. Once I stopped because there was a house fire. I helped beat the flames out with the other farmers. Then I stayed to help build the new house. Another time I helped a man fix his wagon that had a busted axle. He offered to give me a job on his farm for a few days. A few days turned into a few weeks and I finally left in the middle of the summer when the sun was just too damn hot and the crops were failing miserably. He and his family understood. As I walked down his long driveway, I heard a clear shot ring out.

  So then I stayed for his funeral.

  By August of 1931, a full year after I’d left Chicago, I was finally converging on Ringo, Nebraska. My heart was beating frantically, thinking about seeing Charlotte again. How would I explain how I was alive? Fuck, how would I explain what took me so long to get here?

  When I found it, Ringo was a dead town. I went straight down the main street, its pavement cracked and storefronts boarded up. Not one car or horse passed me or asked me to get out of the way. There was a combination post office/general store and I went there for information.

  I took my hat off when I went inside. A man was behind the counter reading a newspaper, his glasses slid all the way down his nose. The shelves in the store were nearly bare, just a few canned goods and some flour and sugar.

  He glanced up as I cam
e closer. “We ain’t hiring.”

  “Not looking to get hired on, sir,” I responded. “I’m looking for a friend.”

  He looked me up and down. “You got a friend here in Ringo?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  He sniffed. “Unlikely.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not good enough to be friends with anyone here?”

  “No. Unlikely your friend is still in Ringo.”

  My heart nearly stopped. He was right. I’d come all this way and I might just be here for him to tell me Charlotte was gone. Left because of this horrible depression. Maybe her family had sold the farm. Hell, maybe her daddy and momma had sold out to that banker after all and all of the effort she’d gone to had been for nothing. My panic must have been apparent on my face because the man took pity on me.

  “Son,” he said quietly, “who are you looking for?”

  ****

  I needed courage and the kind I needed came in liquid form. So I found some water, swirled my finger in it, and got roaring drunk behind someone’s barn. The man hadn’t had anything good to say about Charlotte’s family, just that her parents were dead. He called himself a “townsperson,” and Charlotte a “farmperson,” so he didn’t know her well. But he directed me to the cemetery where her parents were buried; her mother’s dirt still fresh.

  Fuck.

  We’d been apart a year. Sure, I’d taken down the hustling of some women in Chicago, but wouldn’t that have happened anyway with Capone gone? Instead, I’d left Charlotte alone to bury her mother and father and take care of her younger brothers and sister.

  I wanted her. Wanted her bad. Wanted to dress her up in silks and satins and lay her on a bed of down and pound the fuck out of her. I wanted to hold her and make sure I was the first person she saw every morning and the last person she saw every night. I wanted Charlotte to smile, even for no reason, as long as I’d been the man to make her smile.

  But here she’d been, all along, dealing with death and crops failing. Maybe Mars was right. I didn’t know shit about farming. I hadn’t thought this through. I thought I’d waltz into Charlotte’s life again and the world would stop on its axis and angels would sing.