Still he struggled to get to his back; struggled to bring himself into the fight.
From the corner of my eye, I saw that Danny had reached the leader and was holding the man up by the throat. Deciding I’d let Danny handle that for now, I committed to showing this man just how much he’d messed with the wrong girl.
Unfortunately, the distraction at Danny and the leader had been enough for the other man to get the upper hand on me. He’d finally gotten to his back. I caught a warning cry from him as whatever damage I’d delivered with my elbow was reawakened by the impact with the floor, but it wasn’t enough to keep him from getting a solid hit in.
Suddenly, I was on my back and the other guy was throwing the punches.
I frowned, realizing that I was no longer seeing red from the anger but literally seeing red as one of his punches broke a blood vessel.
Fuck.
I struggled to regain the upper hand and succeeded in only dodging on the blows to my face. If I didn’t think fast, I was going to lose here. I scolded myself at how stupid I’d been, how I should’ve calculated this better. I looked around, wanting to make sure Mia was alright and frowned, not being able to find her.
Fuck! Where was she? Was she alright?
“Still got her pussy-stink right here!” the man taunted, delivering another punch to the side of my face before wagging two of his fingers below my bloodied nose.
I couldn’t breathe through either nostril, but I decided I had no reason not to believe him.
“Still got her pussy-stink,” he repeated, “and, soon as I’m done with you, I’m goin’ back in, and I ain’t gonna stop ‘til I got her stink everywhere!” He cackled, drove his knee straight up into my groin, and then cackled that much harder as I roared in agony. “What more was you expectin,’ Presley? You went and fell for a whore—a goddam whore!—an’ you thought ain’t a man around gonna roll in that pussy stink ever again?”
I growled out, trying to kick the man off and succeeded in getting another punch thrown into my left shoulder as I did. As I fell back, sudden raw terror filled me at the thought that this man was about to kill me.
What happened then?
If I wanted to keep Mia safe, then being dead was the absolute worst position to do it from. No, I couldn’t die right now; couldn’t let myself get beaten this way. Not before Papa Raven. Not before a life I could have with Mia. As I tried once more to get the edge on the man, his body suddenly seized and, a second later, slumped forward on top of me.
I froze, wondering what had happened to make him stop.
Then I felt the blood beginning to course over my palms as I wrestled to push him off of me.
He’d been shot.
Finally getting a decent hold on the dead weight, I shoved him off of me and he fell in a heap at the floor. I glanced over, seeing Mia drop one of the guns I’d slid across the floor earlier. She was whispering something over and over, tears falling down her cheeks, her gaze both frightened and elated. I rushed over to her, wrapping my arms around her.
“Whore no more… whore no more…” she repeated, her eyes gazing up at me, but not truly seeing me.
“Shh, Mia…” I said, running my hand through her hair. “Come back to me, please.”
Slowly, she began to stop repeating the words and started to relax in my arms. After a while of holding her, she finally lifted her arms and wrapped them around my waist. I smiled, moving my face into her hair, squeezing her back.
“You got here in time,” she whispered. “I was so scared.”
“Shh,” I quieted her, holding her tightly. “I promise I’ll never let anything bad happen to you again.”
As she finally relaxed in my arms, I glanced up and saw Danny coming forward, holding the leader by the shoulder. I hated that I had to interrupt this moment for business, didn’t want to leave Mia in the state she was in. I felt her look up and saw that she had returned to me, that she was truly seeing me now. I offered her a warm smile and squeezed her one last time before looking to Danny, not letting Mia go as I did.
“Why’s he still breathing?” I asked.
The man seemed to grow stiff at that and I watched Danny squeeze his arm once more. Danny offered a glance at the leader before turning back to me. I hadn’t just been saying that as a scare tactic, we weren’t being soft when it came to Papa Raven. As much as I hated how much death was going on, it was necessary in stopping Tyler for good. Stopping more deaths from happening.
“Well, he’s got some info on Papa Raven,” Danny said with a shrug. “Says he’ll give it over if we take him with us and keep ‘im safe.”
“And how can we trust him to come through?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
“Ya can’t,” the leader said and shook his head. “But what other option ya got?”
I didn’t like his attitude. But I also didn’t like that he spoke the truth, as well. We hadn’t gotten any intel from the last three locations and this was our last shot. I finally nodded at Danny and glanced over at Mia.
“We’re gonna have to use your car, if that’s okay, Mia,” I said and moved my hand to her shoulder before adding, “I’ll have Danny drive with Candy and we can pick up his bike later on.”
“Oh! Can I hit him if he gets out of line?” Candy asked, her eyes glinting mischievously.
“Are you going to hit him either way?” I asked.
Candy only shrugged, and I caught myself grinning despite everything. After what I’d just seen—after seeing their side do that to Mia—I frankly didn’t care much one way or the other. I was still plenty mad at the guy that Mia had gone and shot, though I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t thankful that she’d done what she had—certain as I was that I’d have been dead a second later if she hadn’t. Still, while the guy in front of us hadn’t been the one with his hand in Mia’s panties, I was certain that he’d done something to deserve it if Candy did hit him.
And as long as he wasn’t dead, why should it matter to me.
As we finished, I took Mia once again in my arms and we made our way back to the bike. I waited a moment as Danny and Candy finished tying the leader, who finally had introduced himself as Bill, to the back seat before getting the keys from Mia.
We agreed to meet back at the shop and see just what kind of information Bill could lend to us to finding Papa Raven finally. With nothing left to do, I turned the ignition and began to drive back to shop. Mia squeezed my waist tighter and I glanced back for a moment, wanting to make sure she was okay.
“You okay?” I asked over the loud roar of the engine.
“I am now, thank you!” she said, raising her own voice.
Her face was still flushed, and she still looked embarrassed, but I was at least relieved to see that the broken, freshly raped expression she’d been wearing earlier was gone. Seeming to sense my thoughts, she bit her lip and looked away.
“It’s not like it was the first time,” she went on.
I frowned at that. “It was, however, the last time,” I assured her.
She smiled weakly and gave a half-nod, half-shrug. “Long as you and I survive longer than the ones trying to hurt us,” she said, “then I don’t care how they manage to hurt us.” She sighed and took me into her arms in a loose hug. “Don’t promise me they won’t hurt us—that’s not a promise that anybody can keep; not yet, anyway—but promise me that they won’t outlive us.”
My breath caught at that, her words hitting me like that of some cryptic fortune teller, and I felt like I was committing to some sort of contract as I said, “I promise.”
“Great,” she said, and the suddenness of her joyful tone had me wondering if I’d suddenly been yanked away by some horrible, surreal dream. “Then everything’s fine.”
I stared at her for a long moment, taken aback by the sheer strength she had to possess to bounce back from something like that. I smiled, glad to hear she was okay, and for the first time since the fight, I finally began to feel the pain from how badly the man had bea
ten me earlier. I’d been so distracted with everyone else, I hadn’t had time to even react to how shitty I’d felt.
Once we got back to the shop, it had been another twenty minutes before Danny and Candy had gotten there with Bill. Apparently, he’d had to make multiple rest stops through the drive. I rolled my eyes as they led him out. They weren’t gentle, and he’d begun to whine and complain about how he was agreeing to help and how he was entitled to some respect. Danny answered with another kick as we led him to one of the empty utility closets and threw him in. I told him we’d be back soon for information and turned away from the room.
There was a sort of bittersweetness to the whole mess.
On the one hand we had somebody who could help see an end to all this. Granted, he was one of them, and aside from that making him about as trustworthy viper in a rat farm there was the ever-present reminder that he was an annoying, sniveling bastard. Between all the high-pitched groans and pseudo-prayers—to no one god in particular, mind you—and the son-of-a-bitch’s seemingly bottomless bladder and its incessant need to be relieved every—what?—five minutes it was a miracle we’d even gotten him back to the shop. But, yeah, we had him, and that meant we were one step closer to having Papa Raven; one step closer to putting an end to them.
On the other hand, though…
I was just so goddam tired!
We got our prisoner—it still felt strange to think of him as that, but I was too far gone to think of a better one, honestly—in a supply closet. He was tied up, then handcuffed, and then, for good measure, bungeed to just about anything that we thought would hold him. By the time we were satisfied with our efforts, he looked like something out of one of those cheesy old cartoons I used to watch with my dad—just one step away from being slung over Snidely Whiplash’s shoulder and carted off to the train tracks for Dudley Do-Right to rescue (just in time). As we closed the door on him, I caught a “are you fucking serious”-face shot in my direction from him. It was almost enough to make me laugh.
Almost.
“I’m going to get some shut-eye,” I said, not much caring who heard me. So long as it was heard, understood, and nobody tried to stop it from happening.
As it turned out…
“There’s a cot in the back o’ the closet in the office,” Danny offered, not looking surprised or upset by my request. “Thing’s creaky-as-shit—definitely not fer fuckin,’ an’ ye’d be advertisin’ if ya tried to choke the chicken on it—but it’ll do the trick fer a nap.”
I nodded, already starting towards the office. “Then it’ll do the trick just fine.”
My legs carried me—I mean, they must have!—but I had no memory of the in-between. One moment I was announcing my intentions to Danny, and the next I was grunting over the rusted frame of the folding cot. True to my friend’s words, it groaned and squealed an unholy racket; enough so that the half-sleep haze that had crept over me and left me in a waking stupor was chased away.
“Fucker!” I grunted.
The cot, being only a cot, said nothing to this; it only screamed some more—an alien infant struggling against the violent, molesting grip of some uncaring invader.
Holy fuck! Was I ever tired!
“Not… gonna… hurt you,” I heaved out, questioning myself more and more with every new word that slipped out.
Then, when I was just about ready to give up the fight and succumb to napping on the floor, something in the hollow, metallic confines of the cot’s skeletal piping snapped, and it jumped open. I screamed, haunting visions of something out of the Alien movies coming to mind and dropped the savage cot-beast. It clattered, harmless—it still being nothing more than a cot and all—to the floor.
It seemed to look up at me and say, “What? WHAT? I’m just a cot, dude! You need to chill!”
I was only distantly curious as to why my sleep-deprived mind should give a stubborn, asshole of a cot a surfer-esque tone—And why would it call me “dude?” I wondered—and, letting out a relieved sigh, offered it a sincere “Thank you.”
And then immediately wondered why.
“Because you’re tired,” I answered myself aloud, climbing into the canvas and flinching only marginally as the frame creaked under my weight. “Because you’ve been dodging death for days… and you’re tired.”
****
HERE** I’d been here before.
I’d be here again.
On my old bike, a toss-away Honda with a clanking exhaust and worthless shocks, and peaking the needle. It still wasn’t fast enough. Piece of shit was never that fast to begin with, but on the night I needed it to be even halfway decent it was a miracle I got it over fifty.
Not that it matters.
I didn’t get there in time.
And I never would.
Blacktop pavement. Blacktop sky. Even the edges of my vision were going tar-black; tears streaking the only thing that wasn’t black: the flashing blues and reds tailing me.
Cops.
Fuck them.
I might’ve been inching along at a pitiful and painful sixty-three, but they’d still never catch me. Not on that night. And not on any of the times I came back to it.
Sixty-three miles-per-hour…
I told myself I might’ve made it if I’d reached sixty-five, but really I was lying to myself. Best case scenario: I might’ve wound up watching it happen. Still, I told myself—as I’d keep telling myself—that I could’ve done something.
Sixty-three miles-per-hour…
I knew that because of the pursuing officer who’d tried to make the speeding charges stick. He’d said I was doing sixty-three in a thirty-five. He’d said I’d run stop signs, screamed through red lights, endangered other motorists, and even nearly run down a pedestrian making use of crosswalk. He’d said all this while I watched a mortician’s gurney roll on squeaky wheels from my home; a round, familiar bump swelling upward at the halfway point. I remembered thinking that she always looked better on our bed and under our sheets, but the sight was oddly serene all the same.
Then I caught sight of a few red dimples as they kissed the bleached whiteness of the sheet and began to grow, expanding across the clean cover and staining it. Then I was screaming, shrieking in blind, raw terror, and clamoring to make it to her side even as they were hoisting her into the back of the…
… the back of the…
Christ!
Somebody’d called it a “meat wagon.” They hadn’t known I’d heard, but they’d called it a “meat wagon”…
It took me a long time—too long—to realize I was being held back; held down; held away from going after her.
Then, assuring them I was fine—“I’m good. I’m cool. I’m… I’m cool.”—they let me up again, loosing me onto a world that wasn’t quite level; let me stand up on a ground that wasn’t quite flat. In my mind, I could still see the spreading stain across the plain white sheet of my life, and standing seemed downright impossible.
Then the cop said “sixty-three” again.
He said “sixty-three,” and I punched him.
I heard “sixty-three” echo in my mind, watched the words marry the vision of the spreading stain, and suddenly I knew—fucking KNEW!—that if I could turn that cop’s face into hamburger I might turn the clock back a few minutes and coax that fucking Honda to do sixty-five, maybe even seventy. If I could just beat every last “sixty-three” out of the face that had been assigned to the badge and gun I might never have to see those stains at all.
Then I was being held again. Then I was being beaten.
And—sweet Jesus!—nothing had ever felt so goddam good in all the world!
Then, too soon for anybody’s liking, some cop with an actual brain between his ears tore his buddies off of me, reading them the riot act about the scene we’d all just rolled up to—“Chris’sakes, you assholes! That’s the man’s wife! His wife! And, in case you fucking nitwits can’t see for shit, either, that wasn’t a Thanksgiving dinner she was carrying in her belly, ei
ther! Get the fuck off him before you get the whole force sued!”—and I was alone with nothing but the emptiness.
The emptiness and…
And a voice.
The voice!
Over the din of everything else, I heard my name.
“Hey! HEY! Jace? Jason Presley? That you, you son-of-a-whore?”
None of the cops seemed to notice the random figure standing amidst the chaos until they all heard that last part.
I guess they figured very few people would be throwing around words like “whore” in the middle of a scene like that.
But then, just like that, they were all looking.
I was a bit late to look, and maybe that’s what saved my life.
Suddenly, Mister “Sixty-Three”—likely trying to make up for his fuckup—was coming at me like a bullet.
No…
Not like a bullet. I suppose it was the bullet that was coming at me like a bullet. The bullet was faster. Of course. Cop could’ve been an Olympic runner—could’ve been running sixty-three miles-per-hour—and he still would’ve been too damn slow. But the sight of all that uniformed authority barreling at me gave me a start; nearly knocked me right on my ass without laying a hand on me. And that was how a shot that should have built a lovely little retirement home right in my heart was, instead, forced to settle in the meat of my shoulder a few inches off.
“T-BUILT SENDS HIS CONDOLENCES, PRESLEY,” the shooter had cried out at me as he was dragged away towards a flashing Cruiser. “THE CROWS IS DEAD! LEARN IT, KNOW IT! THE CROWS IS DEAD, PRESLEY, DEAD! THE CROWS… IS… DEAD!”
Turning away from my would-be murderer, I watched the “meat wagon” holding everything I’d known as my life pull out and begin to put distance between us.
“The Crows is dead…”
“The Crows is dead…”
“The Crows is…”
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