by Zoey Parker
Without warning, horrific images flitted by my mental eye like film in front of a movie projector.
Jorge’s hands seizing my dress and tearing.
The knife in Lobo’s grip, reflecting the moon through the window.
His black eyes, boiling with insatiable anger, looking into mine as he unzipped.
I forced it all away.
“No!” I said out loud. “No. Fuck off! Fuck you!” I slammed fists into my forehead to banish the memories. Panic and fury flowed through my veins in equal measure. My head swam from just how much shit had been done to me and in front of me over the last forty-eight hours. I was on the verge of an irreversible collapse.
As if the bodies and the blood and the hands forcing themselves all over me hadn’t been enough, they’d left me in a cage. A fucking cage. Leashed. Like a junkyard animal, chained and waiting for someone to set me free or end it all. At this point I wasn’t sure which one I wanted.
There wasn’t any hope left in me. It had been stolen from me and bled dry, just like my brother’s men. How could I hope? What was there to hope for? Blaze was probably dead, along with my brother and anyone else who might’ve been expected to make some attempt to save me.
This was my life now. There was no hope.
Until the explosion.
The man who had been snoozing in a chair on the other side of the room from the cage in which I was locked woke up with a fright, scrambling for the gun that lay next to him. He glanced at me, then, sure that I wouldn’t be a problem, ran out of the room to trace the source of the noise.
I could hear feet pounding past on the outside of the wall. Voices were raised, yelling at each other in Spanish replete with curses and barked orders. No one seemed to have any idea what was going on.
I craned my neck, trying to see anything I could through the window. It was hard to tell what was what in the dimly lit compound. Silhouettes sprinted in every direction. They collided with each other, swore, and kept running. I saw men climbing the rooftops, trying to get a better vantage point into the chaos.
Then the shots began.
Bullets started to pierce the night with high, whining voices. I saw the outline of a man, running full sprint, until a flash of silver darted into his chest and he flew backwards, a fountain of blood erupting from his torso.
Everywhere I looked, more Diablos fell gurgling to the ground, grabbing at their throats or what little was left of their faces.
I leaned against the bars of the cage, trying to see more, when all of a sudden a huge bulk slammed into the dirt just outside of the wall—a man falling from the roof. I made eye contact with him and watched him die, blood pooling in his mouth.
Who was doing this? It could have been anyone—another cartel, the Mexican government, a rival MC from Texas or Arizona. That kind of warfare went down all the time.
I wanted desperately for it to be Blaze, but I couldn’t allow myself to hope. If I was wrong—if I just switched hands from this monster’s den into the clutches of another—I would be truly and forever broken. I just couldn’t survive hoping if it meant I risked getting those hopes crushed.
And then there were the memories.
Lobo’s eyes, watching me, unzipping his…
No. I couldn’t. I shook my head and focused outside again.
The battle seemed to be moving away from me, in the direction of the explosion. The raised voices and panicked footsteps grew dimmer. The cry of bullets and the metallic bark of guns discharging their loud began to recede into the distance.
I looked again at the man who had fallen from the rooftop. His body was completely still now, the blood beginning to scab around the gaping hole in his stomach. The weight of his body crashing against the wall had sent fissures tearing through the adobe. I peered closer and saw that one crack had a sharp edge. .
I had an idea. Turning around so that my back faced the impacted wall, I reached my bound hands through the slim gap between the bars of the cage. My shoulders were screaming in pain, but eventually I found the exposed edge of the cracked wall. Maybe, if I was extremely careful, it would be sharp enough to cut my hands free.
I started to work the rope around my wrists back and forth against the rough edge. I could hear the tiny pop of individual threads separating against the friction.
I couldn’t hear much of anything anymore. No explosions, no shouting, no gunshots. I didn’t think I had long, though. Either the attackers would force their way into the Diablos compound, or the Diablos themselves would return. Whichever way things turned out, I didn’t want to be sitting around here waiting for them when they arrived.
My arms and neck were lit up with the strain of the motion. I wouldn’t be able to do this much longer. It had to work. More and more threads split apart, and I could feel the tension of the rope beginning to ease just barely, but it was enough progress to keep me going. I gritted my teeth and fought through the agony.
“C’mon, Olivia,” I said to myself. “You can do it. Just keep going.”
A few voices had begun to pick up again, just at the outer bounds of my hearing, loud but indistinct.
The volume increased. I heard the muffled clanging of metal on skull, and of bodies scrabbling with each other in the dirt.
It was coming back towards me.
“Hurry up,” I whispered under my breath. The adobe was getting duller from rubbing against the rope. The edge I was using to slice through my bounds was teetering on the verge of snapping off. It had begun to rock back and forth with the motion of my wrists, threatening to break off completely. “Hold out, you bitch,” I said to it. “Don’t let me down now.”
I was more than halfway through the rope, but I could hear bullets crashing into adobe walls. It was only a few buildings over now. The fight had started to flow back in this direction.
I was scraping the rope as fast as I could while guttural Spanish cries entered the fray. I still had no idea who they were fighting. Whoever it was, they were clearly packing some serious weaponry. The projectiles spraying indiscriminately against buildings and men had the sizzle and screech of high-grade ammunition.
I gulped and kept going. There couldn’t possibly be much of the rope left, but I was on the last vestiges of effort I had. It felt like my shoulders were about to explode. Back and forth, back and forth, I sawed. Just a little bit more…
Fuck.
The adobe crumbled.
I wanted to cry. I let my arms drop, trying not to scream in frustration. There was no edge left, nothing I could use to finish cutting through the cords around my wrists.
So this is where I would die. Caged, leashed, with my hands tied behind my back. Not even able to fight off anyone who decided to enter, whether it was Lobo, another Diablo, or whoever else might venture through the door.
I yanked my wrists apart as hard as I could, desperate to convince the rope to give way, but it was no use. There was too much thread left, binding me to this sick, sick fate.
The battle raged closer. Let it, I thought. Just let a stray bullet find its way through. Take me out, end it already.
I resigned myself to never seeing Blaze again. The thought sent melancholy reverberating through me. All I wanted was one more kiss, one more touch, one more taste of him.
It wasn’t fair how the world had insisted on prying us apart. I’d been so close to finally being happy for once. I’d been so close to letting go of the mother who abandoned me, the father who was closer to a statue than a parent. I’d almost been free of it all. I’d almost found someone I wanted to belong to.
But no. Life intervened. I’d swung just close enough to happiness—close enough to hold it and be held by it—and now I was swinging as far as it was possible to swing in the other direction. Now I would die in a cage, or be taken away to be used like a rag doll by some other twisted fuck.
The gunfire was loud. I heard the ratatat of automatic rifles conversing, hunting, looking for prey. I heard them finding it, heard the dying breaths o
f my captors. Every now and then, a grenade joined the dialogue, booming its rhetoric into building walls and human flesh.
I didn’t even bother to look. Let it come.
Boom roared another explosion.
Cra-cra-crack coughed guns.
Let them come.
A man dashed into my room through the curtains that hung over the doorway. I could tell he was a Diablo from the all-black outfit he wore, but he had a ski mask tugged down, hiding his face. His head swiveled, checking all corners of the sparse room before settling on me.
Even below the mask, I knew that he was grinning.
He strode towards me, setting his pistol down in a chair off to the side. As he approached the cage, he slowed down to consider me.
“Una oportunidad,” he said, rubbing his hands together like a fat man before a feast. “No more interruptions this time.”
I knew that voice.
The man pulled off the mask, and I saw who it was: Jorge. The wound gaped on his cheekbone.
Stepping in front of the cage, he worked the lock mechanism until it sprang free and the door creaked open. I breathed slowly in and out, trying to calm my nerves and bide my time until I could escape.
I pretended to struggle as he reached in and unlatched the leash, tugging me out by my ankles. He laughed as he dragged me out of the cage and onto the slick tile floor. With one hand, he pulled me up and pushed my back against a corner of the wall.
His hair stood up in sweaty slicks. “They thought they would rescue you,” he said as he licked my neck. What is it with all these fucks licking me? Even if I made it out of here, it would take years’ worth of showers before I felt clean again.
But what had he said? Rescue me? My heart swelled. It was Blaze, it had to be. He was coming for me. If I could make it, he would find a way to save me from this hell.
His hands crept up my sides. He was savoring this, like he had all the time in the world.
I kept up my faux fight, bucking my body against his. It wasn’t enough to fight him off by any means, but the writhing was enough distraction to hide that I was frantically rubbing the frayed rope against the edge of the wall.
I could feel it slacking, beginning to disintegrate, as he reached a hand for my thigh and started to pull my dress up roughly above my panties. With the easy flick of a knife, he sliced them off of me, throwing the crumpled fabric off to the side and baring me to his nearing touch. His other hand fumbled with his belt, trying to free his member from his pants.
It all happened at once. The rope popped, I drove a bony knee up hard into his crotch, and shoved a thumb in each of his eye sockets.
Jorge dropped like a rock, screeching and holding his pulpy balls between his hands. He rolled back and forth across the floor as he moaned in pain. I yanked the leash off of my neck, tied it around his, and latched him to the bars of the cage. Then, just for good measure, I wound up and delivered another fierce kick to his testicles.
He blacked out immediately, the pain too much for his body to handle. Adrenaline tore through my body, lifting me up and sending new life surging into my muscles.
“Fuck you, you scum bag piece of shit,” I told him. I spat on his face as I stepped over his dead body to grab the gun he had set down when he entered.
Fuck him. Fuck this. I wasn’t dying here. I was going to survive, I was going to make it back home and I was going to see Blaze again. Fuck the world that kept trying to stop me—I was an Inked Angel’s wife, and I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
Right then, of course, was when I felt a gun press against the back of my head.
“Princesa,” hissed a voice that I had hoped never to hear again. The eerie stickiness of his ever-present gloves wrapped around my throat. His face was pressed against my ear while he held a gun against my temple. The metal was cold, but the tendrils that wrapped themselves around my heart at his touch were even colder.
Lobo.
“I cannot let you leave, mi flor,” he said to me. “I have gone through too much to bring you here.” He spun me away from the door that led outside and towards the hallway that went further into the main building. “Walk,” he commanded, prodding the gun against my spine. “I want to show you something.”
He guided me down the hallway, towards where a long, thick rug ran over the tile. “Pick it up,” he said, pointing at it. I bent over and tugged the carpet to one side. I felt my dress ride up as I did, and knew that Lobo was staring at the exposed curve of my ass. My throat was dry. What kind of dungeon was he taking me to? And what would happen there?
Under the rug was a trapdoor, designed to blend into the pattern of the tile. I looked up at Lobo. “Open it,” he said. I grabbed the cord and yanked. A section of the floor moved up on silent, greased hinges. Below, darkness yawned.
“Climb,” he ordered. I had no choice. I turned and began to climb down the ladder.
The air below was cold and carried a faint chemical undertone. I sniffed, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I could hear Lobo leap to the ground behind me. A dozen feet overhead, the rectangle of light we had crawled from clanged shut, blocking out all the sounds of gunfire and dying men.
Our breathing was loud in the dark. I squeezed my hands into fists and stood still, trying not to move. Hoping that this wasn’t the end.
“Would you like to see my candy?” Lobo asked, his voice soft among the shadows.
Candy? What the hell was he talking about? I barely had time to wonder before I heard him flick a switch and rows of lights roared into life.
I let out a gasp. The underground room was massive, stretching several hundred yards from the end where we were standing to the distant wall. Filling every inch of space in between were countless vats and test tubes, bubbling with strange concoctions. I saw lab tables that ran unbroken from end to end. Each of them bore identical containers filled with a bubblegum pink crystalline substance that shimmered in the fluorescent lights overhead.
Lobo lowered his gun, unconcerned that I would be able to overpower him. He gestured for me to follow him to one of the tables. We walked down a few steps and into the midst of the factory. Approaching a desk, he reached into the bin and picked up a shard of the pink glass. He held it up to the light so I could see, showing me the beams refracting through.
“It will change everything,” he said. There was a bizarre pride in his voice, and I knew that this was the drug that Luke had been talking about, the one that Lobo planned on bringing across the border and using to flood cities everywhere.
Lobo gazed into the container and ran his hands through it, letting pieces of the drug fall between his fingers. He was a proud parent, a kid in the sandbox dying to show the world his creation. He was also too distracted to hear the muted thumps above us.
The fight was right upstairs.
My heart was hammering in my throat, but I couldn’t let him know. If I stalled long enough, maybe Blaze would somehow find me down here. If not, I didn’t know what would happen.
Lobo turned to look at me. His black eyes caught the banks of buzzing light overhead. He licked his lips.
Hurry, Blaze, I thought to myself. Hurry.
Chapter 12: Fire Meets Fire
Blaze
I took off sprinting towards the compound as the explosion shattered the serenity of the night. Tongues of fire licked at the air, throwing off heat in waves, as the crunch of burning adobe settled in with a sigh.
I tried to control my breathing as I crossed the five hundred yards between my hiding place and a little raised bunker that lay to the east of the Diablos lair. It was just a small bump in the field that hugged this side of the complex, but it was enough cover for me to lay up and take out the snipers patrolling in this direction.
I just hoped that the explosion had been enough distraction for me to make it there. I was all alone over here; the rest of the Angels were pouring in from the west and north to draw the bulk of the Diablos’ attention. If the sentries posted on this side were still loo
king to the east, I would be an easy target for them as I crossed over the wide-open field. My breath was huffing as I ran. The air was sticky warm. It felt like it was caking the inside of my lungs.
Reaching the bunker, I dove behind it. Safety. The diversion had worked.
I lay down on the sparse grass and touched a finger to my neck. My pulse was pounding like a drum. I had to calm down so I could get off a steady shot. Breathe, I told myself. Calm. Focus.
I thought about why I was here: Olivia. I pictured her giggling, saw every line in her face that crinkled up when she laughed. I pictured the veil sliding over her hair as she stood before me in that white dress that bared her delicate shoulders. I imagined a bump growing in her stomach and a life laid out like a sidewalk from here to infinity.