by E. A. Copen
“Diabla, this is—”
The bartender cut Sal off. “I didn’t ask you, young man. I asked her. She’s got a mouth and don’t need your hand up her ass to make it work.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle at that, especially after Sal lowered his head and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Judah Black,” I answered with a smile and extended my hand.
Diabla frowned. “She’s holdin’ her hand out to me, ain’t she? Girl…” She leaned in closer and pointed to her eyes. “I’m as blind as Justice and twice as mean. I don’t shake hands.” She took her hand off my drink and slid it to me. “I like you, though. You’ve got good taste in men. Sal’s a good boy.”
“I haven’t been a boy in fifteen years, Diabla,” Sal grumbled.
She ignored him and leaned in to whisper, “And he’s got an ass you could bounce a quarter off. That’s the nice thing about being an old blind lady. You get to touch everything.”
We laughed, and the tension in the air eased. Diabla patted Sal’s forearm and then pointed at him as she waddled away. “You be nice to that girl, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a playful salute. “See?” he said to me once she was at the other end of the bar. “We’re not bad people.”
“That’s why you brought me out here?”
“That, and I’m hoping to get laid.”
I almost spat out my drink. He laughed at me. That was the Sal I was more used to. I didn’t like how distant he got sometimes, especially since coming clean about his involvement with the Kings, but I understood. He had a lot on his plate, and I was only a very small part of his world. I’d play an even smaller part once he found out about Mia. He wouldn’t have time for me, raising a daughter.
Maybe I should just call it off, I thought. I don’t even know if he wants Mia. What else can I do? Just leave her to be Han and Marcus’ pin cushion? That goes against the very reason Reed claimed to have taken her. Maybe he hadn’t intended for Mia to fall into Marcus’ hands.
“I take it since you’re thinking awful hard about it, my chances are pretty slim?” Sal asked, raising an eyebrow.
I shook the thoughts from my head. “No, I was just thinking about Zoe. I was pretty stunned to see her, Sal. I was so sure she was dead.”
“She’s dead to me.” He slid an arm around me and pulled me toward him. “I don’t want to hear any more about her tonight, especially not from you, all right?” He gave me a quick peck on the lips and tried for more, but I pulled away.
“That’s nice in principle, but you can’t just ignore the fact that she’s back, Sal. She’s already tossed me around a padded room.”
“What?” he growled. “You should have said something. I would have gone in there and—”
“That’s the thing, Sal. It’s not your fight.” I sighed, took up the scotch, and downed it before putting the glass back on the bar. “It’s mine. I need to settle it. Me and her, we’ve got a score to settle, one that goes all the way back to Andre LeDuc’s cave.”
Sal frowned at me. “No offense, babe, but I don’t think you can best her in strength and speed, not after what Andre did to her. In a straight-out fight, my money would be on Zoe. She’s got a mean, selfish streak like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I know. I don’t think it will come to that. Not if I can help it.”
“Maybe I can help?”
I smiled at him. There wasn’t much for him to do. I was going to have to sink or swim through this on my own and hopefully come out fine on the other side. The more I sat there and thought about it, the more I realized I shouldn’t have even brought it up. Sal would find out eventually, but I didn’t want him to think he had to protect me, and that was just what he’d do given half the chance. Doing anything else was outside of his nature.
“I think you’ve got enough on your plate.”
I gestured to the window in front of the roadhouse where Chanter doubled over, coughing. In the last few weeks, I’d only seen Chanter once or twice, but he had paled, and he hadn’t been moving around as much. He carried an oxygen tank and tubes around with him wherever he went. The cancer in his body wore him down more each day.
Chanter put a hand out and braced himself against the window and Sal hopped down from the bar stool, headed for the door. When Chanter dropped, Sal broke into a dead run and barreled through the door at top speed. Bran stood from his table and the redhead turned around. Both almost ran me over as I went to the door.
Outside, Chanter sat with his back against the wall, shaking his head when Sal offered to take him home in the truck. His eyes were closed, and he was even paler than normal. A big red smear of blood trailed down his chin. Sal sighed, frustrated. “Will you at least keep your appointment with the oncologist tomorrow?”
“Why? What can they tell me—” He paused to fight for a breath. “—that I don’t already know?”
“They can give you something to make it easier to breathe and something for the pain.”
Bran ducked back into the roadhouse and returned with Chanter’s oxygen tank. He held it out to Sal, who took it and tried to fit the mask over Chanter’s face. Chanter wouldn’t have it. He swatted at it. “Goddammit, boy! Get the hell away from me!” When he spoke, he threw some magick into his voice. Compulsion magick.
Since Chanter was Sal’s alpha, that left him no choice but to obey. Sal blinked and dropped the mask before he stepped away and bowed his head.
Bran came forward and shouldered Sal out of the way. “I’ve got him, brother.”
He grabbed Chanter by the back of the head and forced the mask onto his face. Chanter tried to fight him, but there was no strength left in him. I turned my head away and pretended not to notice.
“Now you listen to me, you mean old bastard. You take your oxygen. I will get one of the prospects to take you home, and call Nina to come and look after her old man.”
Chanter said something as Bran turned the wheel on the tank, but it was lost in the noise.
“No more protest. What good are children if they can’t take care of their elders? That’s what’s wrong with this country. The young don’t respect the old, and the old are too stubborn for their own good, yeah?”
Chanter closed his eyes. Color crept back into his ashen face. Bran waved to Sal. “Go, brother. I’ll take him tonight.”
Sal stood and took a step back. “You call me in the morning so I can run him to the doctor’s, you hear me, Bran? And you make sure someone sits with him. If I find out he’s been alone for anything other than a piss—”
“Go, Saloso,” Chanter muttered through the mask, his voice was barely audible over the hiss of the oxygen. “I’m too stubborn to die just yet.”
His words didn’t put Sal at ease. He stayed where he was until I went over and grabbed his arm. “Take me home?”
He looked at me, looked at Chanter, and then back at me, offering a weak smile. “Anything you want, babe.”
The ride into Paint Rock felt different than the ride to the roadhouse. It was slower and emptier, and the darkness was heavier. Pressed against him, I found myself reflecting on the ghosts of my past. In another life, I could have been with Alex, riding through the country roads of West Virginia on a late night on my way home instead of with Sal. Sal could be at home with his wife and a whole gaggle of kids, watching television and drinking beer. We could have been normal people, but then our paths never would have crossed, and I didn’t want to trade that, not for all the normalcy in the world.
Sal pulled up in front of my dark, dead house. The reservation was silent but for the gentle purr of his motorcycle. I stared at the house but didn’t make any move to get off the bike. Sal shut off the engine and reached back to pat my leg. “You want me to walk you up?”
“Yeah.”
I got off the bike, unstrapped the borrowed helmet, and placed it on the handlebars, where I’d often seen him hang it. He climbed off and hung his goggles beside it, and stopped me from stripping off the jacket
he’d let me borrow again. “Don’t take it off.” He pulled the collar up and moved my hair out from under it. “Looks good on you.” Sal leaned in to kiss me.
All night, he’d been sneaking in a kiss where he could to ease the pressure or lighten the mood. This one was different, even if it started out the same. He leaned into me, hard and heavy and smelling of sweat, leather, cigarettes, and whiskey. At Diabla’s, it felt like a performance, a step he felt he needed to take, a silent announcement to everyone watching that I was with him. In the darkness in front of my house, nobody was watching. He tangled his fingers in my hair and tugged it tight at the roots. When I opened my mouth against his, the edges of who I was and what I’d wanted blurred into the desire I felt in him.
In need of breath, and to focus on keeping upright on my shaky legs, I pulled away. I thought about telling him to come inside and making the most of the night, but I was dead-tired. Both of us had an early morning and a lot on our minds. Too much.
In the end, I gave him back his jacket and sent him home, standing out on the dark porch, watching him ride across the small patch of dirt that separated my house from his. He seemed disappointed but agreed. Both of us had an early morning.
I was smiling, still living in the afterglow of the moment as I came through the door and tripped on the remains of one of my kitchen chairs. I tumbled forward and kept my head from hitting the floor by landing on my palms in a puddle of milk. The fridge was open, the contents spread all over the floor and counters. Every drawer had been pulled out of the cabinets and overturned in a pile.
“Holy hell,” I whispered and then grunted as I pulled myself back up. Someone had ransacked my place.
Chapter Five
I walked around the house in a daze, righting what I could and picking up the pieces of my life, tossed around and broken as if it were nothing.
I made it as far as the living room before the severity of the event hit me. Strangers had been in my home, destroyed everything I owned, and I didn’t even know why. They had touched my things, broken pictures on the wall, torn open my sofa and my chair, pulled out my picture albums, and scattered the photos in the spilled juice and milk on the floor. What would they have done to Hunter or me if we’d been home? What would they do if they came back?
I sank down among the ripped foam and torn bits of upholstery and the shattered glass of my television, gripping my hair, tightness growing in my throat and chest. Tears fell despite my best efforts to keep them at bay. I wiped them away and sucked in a deep breath. It’s only stuff, Judah. Everything you lost is replaceable. But you need help cleaning up this mess before Hunter shows up in the morning.
In the kitchen, I stepped over a shattered pickle jar to stand at the window. Sal’s living room light was on, but the end of the house where he slept was dark. If I called, I might wake him, and I didn’t want that, not knowing he had to be somewhere in the morning. But who else was I going to call? He was the only one who lived close. I swallowed the tightness still in my throat and dialed him.
He didn’t pick up until the fourth ring. “Change your mind?” he purred into the phone. Good. He hadn’t been to sleep yet.
I opened my mouth to respond but paused when I saw the glint of something metal in the milk. Broken glass crunched beneath my shoes on my way over to inspect the floor. There, lying among ruined pictures and spoiled food, was Alex’s wedding band. My heart turned to a ball of ice in my chest.
“Judah?” His tone changed, suddenly more alert. “What’s wrong?”
I fought the panic creeping up my throat and blurted, “Someone was in my house while I was gone. They wrecked the place. They destroyed everything.”
A light came on in the back of his house. “Stay where you are. Did you call anyone else?”
I shook my head, then remembered I was on the phone and he couldn’t see. “No.”
“I’m coming over. Don’t touch anything.”
He came out of his trailer half-dressed, hair down, and stalked angrily across the yard. I navigated through the mess to let him in. Once I opened the door, he surveyed the scene and cursed. “Jesus. Did they take anything?”
“I don’t think so. They just tore everything up, Sal. Broke the TV, cut up the sofa and chairs, dumped the fridge…” My voice trailed off and I touched my forehead. God, I hadn’t even been back to Hunter’s room to see if his things were okay. “I should call Tindall. He’d want to know.”
“No.” Sal lifted his head, sniffing the air. Even in human form, werewolves had enhanced senses. I couldn’t smell anything over the fridge’s guts spoiling on the floor, but maybe he’d caught something I hadn’t. He wrinkled his nose. “Stay here.”
Sal pushed past me and stepped over the mess, going down the hall. I heard doors open and close as he searched the place and wondered if I should be doing something. I picked up the trash bag I’d been carrying around and started shoving things into it.
“Judah,” Sal called down the hall. “You should see this.”
I dropped the bag and carefully picked through the wrecked hallway. They hadn’t just torn everything out of the hall closet and thrown it around, but they’d also brought a sledgehammer and knocked holes in the wall. I touched my fingers to one of the holes as I walked by, and bits of drywall crumbled into the puddle on the floor.
As soon as I passed Hunter’s room on the way to mine, I put a hand over my nose and mouth. The stink of human waste hung in the air in a toxic cloud that only got stronger the farther I went. It became overpowering when I slid into my bedroom next to Sal. I had to fight not to retch. They’d ripped up the bed and pulled the springs out. The lamp was broken, and my laptop was in two pieces at his feet. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Attracting flies on the wall were two words scrawled in blood and feces:
DOG FUCKER.
I took it in, the smell stinging my eyes and my nose through my fingers. My stomach lurched, and I rushed out of the room and threw open the bathroom door, finally discovering the source of the river in my house. The bathtub was running. Bloody water cascaded over the side and onto the tile. The decapitated body of a dog lay floating in the water. I stopped in the doorway and emptied my stomach contents on the floor. Sal helped pull my hair out of my face to minimize the damage I did to myself, but I didn’t walk away clean.
Shaking, my head reeling, and with spots in my vision, I stood and used my wrist to wipe the tears from my eyes. “I need out of here.”
“I got you.” Sal tried to pull me back toward the hallway.
It was too much. I pushed him away and stumbled down the hall, through the kitchen, and out the front door. I collapsed to my knees in the yard, fighting for breath and pushing tears out of my eyes. How could I have been so stupid? I should have seen it. After the election almost turned bloody, it was only a matter of time before someone hit back. I had thought it would come in the form of a political mess, maybe a more difficult time at work. After all, everything I’d done to help the supernaturals and Tindall, I’d done it in my capacity as a BSI agent. That they would strike at me on such a low level as to destroy my home had never even registered in the realm of possibilities. I hadn’t felt this violated since Andre LeDuc sent me a tongue in a box.
I looked down at my fingertips buried in the dirt as the familiar buzz of magick spread down my arm and into my hand. When I pulled my hand up, a tiny black flame danced on the end of each fingertip.
Footsteps crunched through the dirt. “Judah?” Sal stood behind me. “You okay?”
I looked at my fingers again. The black flames, along with the familiar buzz of magick, were gone. “I could use another drink,” I said, raking my fingers through my hair.
I sat at Sal’s kitchen table, clutching a steaming cup of coffee sweetened with amaretto. My hair was wet from the quick trip to Sal’s shower, and even though I’d brushed my teeth twice with a borrowed toothbrush, my tongue still tasted like bile.
Sal paced in the small space that served as his kitchen with
a cell phone to his ear. “I couldn’t smell anything through that. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why they did it.” Pause. “I don’t know, but when I find them, I’m going to make them eat some.” A longer pause. “Fuck that. This isn’t club business. It’s my business. My town. My—” He looked up and saw me staring at him and decided to change what he was going to say. “This isn’t some stranger, Val. This is Judah. If they hit her, who the fuck do you think is next? It’s our fault this happened to her.” Another, longer pause. “You be here tomorrow morning, Val. And not a word of this to Chanter, you hear? He doesn’t need it. I’ll call you back.”
He hung up and paced back over. “You feeling any better?”
I took a big gulp of the coffee. “Still trying to process everything. What’s Valentino think?”
“He had a few choice words for whoever was behind it but not much else.”
I put the coffee down. “Sounds like him.”
Sal slid into the chair across from me. “He, Shauna, Daphne, and Ed are going to come out to help clean up tomorrow.”
“And what about the police?”
“I’ve got it handled. You keep them out of it.”
I pushed myself up, my arms and legs feeling weaker and somehow further away than normal. My vision spun, and when it came back, the lighting in the room felt off. Blood pounded through my ears, and my chest felt heavy. “It needs to be reported.”
“I said I’ve got it handled.” Sal rose and put a hand on my shoulder. That was all it took to push me back down into the chair.
Dammit. Why was I so weak? My stomach growled. And why was I so hungry?
“Any idea who might have done this?” he asked. “Is it because of what you’re doing for Marcus?”