RAW: THE ULTIMATE MC COLLECTION

by Palomino, Honey

  I moaned, and the man stopped chanting. Or talking. Or whatever it was he was doing.

  Complete silence.

  “Hello? Please, mister, please let me out of here?” I asked, the sound of my own frightened voice freaking me out even more.

  The man didn’t respond, but I could hear him breathing, in and out, in and out, in and out, steady and slow.

  I didn’t say anything else. I was trapped in this cloth sack, in the back of a strange car, going God-knows-where, and I was fucked.

  Was this the kidnapper? God, I fucking hoped not.

  My heart started beating violently, my imagination running wild into the darkest corners of mind. I tried to remain calm, but by the time the car slowed and then turned and then came to a complete stop, I was frantic.

  Sweat poured off my body, and my heart was throbbing in my ears, the blood rushing through my veins like a dam had broken.

  A loud muffled scraping sounded in my ears - a garage door opening. The car moved forward again slowly, and then came to a complete stop before the engine cut off. The garage door closed and a car door opened, and then shut. Another opened, and then I felt hands on me. I kicked and thrashed around, screaming when I felt his fingers clamp under my arms and pull me out of the car. I landed on the ground, my body crumpling onto a cold, hard surface.

  If only I could see, I thought. I could get out of this! I could fight back or escape!

  “Who are you?” I asked. No response. Just the steady, slow breathing of a man towering over my crumpled figure. Hands grabbed me under my arms again, dragging me away from the car.

  I didn’t make it easy. I thrashed around violently, kicking and screaming at the top of my lungs, hitting nothing but air.

  A ball of fear and terror began forming in the pit of my stomach, but I refused to acknowledge it. I wasn’t going to go out like this. I had just begun my life, my career, my relationship with Slade. I wasn’t going to just give all that up.

  I wasn’t going to just let some maniac take all of that away from me.

  He dragged me up a few stairs and then I felt carpet beneath me. He stopped briefly, and then began dragging me again, down an entire flight of stairs this time. When we reached the end, he let go, and my body flopped onto the ground like a rag doll.

  I stopped screaming long enough to listen. Every thing was different down here. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees, and it seemed even darker under the black cloth. I heard a low, constant hissing…and something else. Something human.

  Moaning! Low, quiet moaning.

  “Where am I!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, the words flinging from my mouth before I could even think. “Let me go!”

  More hissing, more moaning, and a far-away dripping sound answered me. I couldn’t even hear him breathing anymore. But I could sense him. He hadn’t left. I felt as if he were still right next to me.

  Panic began rising in my throat, and my breathing became short and gasping.

  “P-p-please, mister, just let me go, I won’t tell anyone, please just let me the fuck out of here!”

  Nothing.

  Fuck! Maybe he had left? Maybe he was just fucking with me. I had no idea, but I had to at least try.

  I began scooting back towards where I thought the stairs were, determined to keep my breathing slow and steady so I didn’t hyperventilate.

  I made it two feet before I ran into his legs. He kicked towards me, kicking into my ribs painfully until I stopped moving. I took a deep breath and waited.

  After a moment, he began dragging me again. I felt another slight bump as he dragged me further and further. The moaning became louder and louder and I realized it was women I was hearing.

  Was it the missing women? Was that Evie I was hearing? Was this really happening to me?

  Tears stung my eyes when the thought of never seeing Slade again ran through my head. I had to fight back. If I could just get out of this fucking sack he had me in!

  I heard footsteps moving away from me, and then a door slam and a heavy thick sound of metal sliding against metal. And then nothing but the moaning that became more frantic with every second.

  “Hello?” I asked. “Who’s there?”

  More moans and the sounds of metal clanging and scraping against concrete filled my ears. I grabbed the cloth surrounding me with both hands and pulled hard, the sound of ripping like music to my ears. I pulled harder, until I could get my hand out, and then pulled as hard as I could, ripping it more until I could get my head out, too.

  I blinked in the darkness until my eyes adjusted and clamped my hand over my mouth to keep my scream in.

  Sitting in front of me, chained against the wall, were the three missing women, including Evie.

  Tears streamed down my face as I stared in shock.

  “Oh, my god! Evie!” The women weren’t just chained, their mouths were covered with duct tape, and their eyes were filled with fear. Their naked bodies were all covered in dirt and bruises. It was then that I noticed their hair. Or, the lack of it. Their heads had been shaved.

  I looked around the room quickly as I stepped out of the bag he had tied me up in. There was nothing in the room but the three women and the chains and locks that bound them.

  I raced over to Evie and gently removed the tape from her mouth.

  “Diana!” she said, her voice full of fear and relief. “Get us out of here!”

  “I don’t know how!” I whispered through my tears. “Are you okay?”

  “He’s fucking crazy. He’s going to kill us all! He’s insane, Diana, I can’t believe he hasn’t killed us yet. He kept saying he was waiting for the right time! You have to get us the fuck out of here!”

  “Tell me how!” I said, my voice full of desperation. “Where the fuck are we?”

  “I don’t know!” Her eyes were frantic. “His house I guess. He comes down here with those fucking snakes, talking all that bullshit, never making any sense, and then he just leaves us here. There’s got to be a way out!”

  I ran to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked tightly.

  “Fuck!” I ran back to the other women and pulled the tape off of their mouths, too.

  “How the fuck do we get out of here?” I asked. There were no windows, nothing at all to use to break them out of the chains, nothing.

  “We’re fucking dead,” one of the women said. I looked at her, her dark eyes full of dread and doom.

  “Don’t say that! I’ll figure something out,” I replied, completely at a loss. “Maybe someone will save us.”

  “No, they won’t! We’ve been here forever! You’re our only hope, Diana!”

  My heart sank. If I was our only hope, then we didn’t have much hope at all.

  “I’m so glad you’re alive,” I said to Evie, through the tears streaming down my face.

  “I won’t be for long, if we don’t figure something out - and neither will you!” she said. “I’ve been here long enough, there’s no time for tears. Hurry up!”

  I tried to shake it off, to clear my mind, but all I could see was Slade’s eyes in my head, the way he looked at me in the woods when he thought something had happened. Surely, he was beside himself with fear by now.

  Footsteps sounded outside the door, and the lock slid open. I froze, and the door slowly opened as he stepped inside. My eyes traveled up from his feet, to the gun pointing straight at me, to his face. I gasped in surprise.

  “Wyatt!” I whispered, my head clouded in confusion and disbelief.

  “Hello, Diana,” he replied calmly, his eyes filled with so much evil that my blood ran cold.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Snakehandler

  He couldn’t get over Diana’s beauty.

  Too bad she’s such a sinner, he thought. Her, and her stupid sister.

  He chained her up right next to Evie, the gun pointing straight at her head.

  When he was finished, he stood looking down at the four of them with nothing but love in his he
art.

  He would save them.

  He would save all of them.

  As soon as they found it in their own hearts to repent, if only they would believe him when he told them about how powerful they could be together.

  “First you must repent,” he said to Diana, as he removed her shoes, and then began cutting her clothes off. She recoiled in disgust as he touched her, but he didn’t pause.

  “Then, when you believe, you too can dance with the serpents, darling.”

  “Wyatt, what the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked him, tears running down her pretty face. “Let me go right now!”

  “Call me Jasper,” he said, as he ripped a piece of duct tape from the roll and slowly, firmly placed it over her mouth. She moaned and writhed around, but her restraints kept her in place perfectly.

  She is just so pretty, he thought.

  He took the gun and the duct tape and walked out. He left them there alone again, naked, chained up, their mouths taped shut, while he went to get the water.

  When he returned, he avoided their eyes and set to work. They were so dirty. The first thing to do was to clean them.

  Soapy water sloshed out of the bucket as he carried it over to them. He sat down at Diana’s now naked feet, put the gun down on the floor, and pulled a sponge out of the water, ringing it out.

  He would wash her first, not because she wasn’t dirty like the other three who had been in the basement for a while, but because she was the dirtiest.

  He had seen what she had done with that biker, in her condo, and in the forest. She was filthy with the sins of lust.

  “I’m very sorry about the owl,” he said, looking at up at her sincerely. Her eyes were wide and full of terror. Poor thing. “I didn’t mean to hurt him. I hope he’s okay?”

  “I know, I know. You don’t understand. Of course you don’t. Why would you?” He pulled her foot towards him, and she kicked him away. He picked up the gun he had laid down, pointed it at her, and grabbed her foot again.

  She grew still and he put the gun down again. He began washing her foot with the sponge as he started talking to her. If he could explain to her, get her to understand, then everything would be okay.

  “I’ll try to explain. You see Diana, the signs will follow those who believe. If you believe, with all your soul, you will be shown the way. But to believe, you must follow. Every word. Every word of the scripture is to be taken literally. The biggest proof is in Mark 16: 17 and 18. Do you know what it says, Diana?”

  She didn’t move.

  “Probably not, but that’s okay. The King James version of the Bible says in Mark 16:17, ‘And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues.”

  “In Mark 16:18, it says, ‘They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.”

  “Do you know what that means, Diana?”

  “No?” he said, pointing to Evie. “She didn’t either.”

  “That’s okay. That’s why you are so blessed to have me, to have me in your life. We were meant to be, don’t you see, Diana? See, I’m not Wyatt Williams. Well, I am, but I’m also Jasper Coots, Jr. My father, Jasper Coots, Sr., taught me everything I know about the good book. He was amazing, Diana,” he said, pausing from washing her feet momentarily as he looked up at a memory formed long ago. He shook his head and smiled, and then picked her foot up again. “I wish you could have met him!”

  “Anyway, my father died. In the noblest way possible. With dignity and grace, doing what he loved.” He put her foot down, picked up the other one, and began washing it. “But my mother…well, she wasn’t so amazing. She was strict. And the worst of all? She didn’t believe, Diana. And because she didn’t believe, God showed her no signs at all. After my father died, she tried to force me down another path. But my father had already instilled everything I needed to know, to believe, deep in my heart.”

  His eyes darkened, the smile fading from his lips. He shook away the memory.

  “She died,” he said simply.

  “But here I am. Alive. A believer! And now, I’m going to save all of you. I’ve been watching you, all four of you. Well, I’ve only been watching Evie since you introduced her to me, but she was the worst of all of you! Working at that titty bar! That place just drips with sin. But now you’ve outdone her, haven’t you, Diana? Taking up with that scoundrel, that disgusting dirty rat of a gangster you’ve been fucking! How could you, Diana?”

  He shook his head, his eyes full of disappointment.

  He finished washing her feet, holding them up to admire his work.

  “Oh, yes, that will do just fine,” he muttered to himself.

  He grew quiet then, the room filled with only the sound of the slushing water and the heavy breathing of the women as he washed all of their feet.

  When he was done, he stood and looked over them again.

  “Very good. That’s a good start,” he said. He picked up the gun and the bucket, and turned and walked out the door, locking it behind him.

  When he returned an hour later, he had a different bucket, the gun, and a wire clothes hanger that had been opened up and bent into a hook at the end.

  He set the bucket down in front of Diana, and the other women starting squirming and moaning violently. Diana looked over at them, the fear in their eyes shooting right into her gut.

  “Oh, ladies, come on, now. If you were believers, you wouldn’t be so afraid,” Wyatt said, shaking his head, and putting the gun down on the floor. He reached down and opened the bucket, and the sound of hissing and rattling filled the air. He put the wire into the bucket, poking and prodding at the slithering serpent. He used the hook to pull it out, and it stood straight up as he raised it from the bucket.

  He held it by one hand, raising it in the air, a live, rattling salute to his Lord and Savior. Wyatt began moving around the room with the snake, his body performing a jerky dance that was half hopping, half skipping.

  And then he began speaking in tongues, the sounds falling from his lips in ecstasy as the snake danced in the air with him, moving towards him, and then away again as if they were engaged in some strange waltz of danger.

  He moved towards Diana and the other women, the snake standing erect in front of him, growing seemingly more agitated as the dance wore on. He knelt in front of Diana’s feet, bringing the snake within centimeters of her toes, and then pulling it back again. Over and over, inching up her body slowly, bringing the snake closer and closer to her face until she was shaking in fear and begging him to stop with her eyes.

  A slow, evil smile spread across his face.

  “Now do you believe?” he asked.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Slade

  I felt like a fool riding bitch on the back of Riot’s bike, but I didn’t really give a fuck. I was in my room trying to cut the cast off of my stupid fucking arm when Riot found me, insisting I stop.

  “There’s no time for that! Grace got Wyatt’s address. He lives in the West Hills of Portland. Just get on the back of my bike, and let’s fucking go, dude.”

  I couldn’t argue. I would have ridden bitch on the back of a fucking pony to get to Diana.

  I grabbed my gun, put it in the pocket of my cut, and slid my knife into my boot. When we walked outside, I was filled with hope, and pride, to see every one of the Gods of Chaos - Ryder, Doc, Zander and Thorn - getting on their bikes.

  “We’ll get her, Slade, don’t worry about her, brother,” Doc said, before he put on his helmet and started his bike up with a thunderous roar.

  The five miles to the road seemed to take forever, and I pushed away the frustration of not being on my own bike, to not be able to get there as fast as I wanted, to not be in control. I had no choice but to rely on my brothers now.

  When we pulled up in front of the house Grace had given us the address to an hour later, it seemed like an ete
rnity had passed. Since I wasn’t driving, I didn’t have the luxury of having to concentrate on the road, and instead, every fucking awful thing that could be happening to Diana ran through my head. It was torture.

  By the time I jumped off the back of Riot’s bike, pure adrenaline and fear were pumping through my veins.

  “Keep your head, Slade,” Ryder warned, as we all walked up to the door together.

  “How do you wanna handle this, boss?” Doc asked Ryder.

  “Handle this? Are you fucking kidding? I’m going to rip this fucker’s head off, that’s how we’re going to fucking handle it!”

  “Slade! Look, dude, if you don’t calm down, you’re gonna fuck up, and if you want to see Diana alive again, you’d better keep your shit together, you understand?” Ryder seethed. “I’m pissed, too, okay? I want to fucking kill this guy just as much as you do, but we gotta save Diana first.”

  “Yeah, man…yeah,” I said, the thought of Diana in there hurt…or worse…ripped right through my heart.

  “Let’s just knock. We don’t know what the fuck we’re dealing with. We don’t even know if the girls are in there,” Riot said.

  I knocked, my hand shaking. I listened at the door, hearing nothing at all.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “Wait,” Ryder warned.

  I knocked again, louder this time. Still nothing. I tried the door, but it was locked.

  “I’m going around back,” I said.

  “Thorn, go with him,” Ryder whispered.

  We walked around the back of the house, and opened the gate into the back yard. There was a big wooden deck that led to the back door of the house. I tried the door, and to my surprise, it opened. I pulled out my gun, nodded to Thorn who did the same thing, and we went in.

  The back door opened to the empty kitchen. We walked through the house slowly, but didn’t see anyone at all. I motioned for Thorn to go open the front door, and the rest of the Gods filed in with their guns drawn. We searched the entire first floor, and came up empty.

  When we got to the stairs that led to the second floor, I went up first. I listened at the top of the stairs, but it was quiet. I motioned for the Gods and they followed me up. The stairs opened up to a small hallway that led to three doors, two of which were closed.