Every Wound We Mend

by J. E. Parker

  “I’m sorry!” Anna cried out, aware of the trouble she was in. “I swear I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt—” A second later, when the sound of flesh meeting flesh, along with her pain-driven scream and the telltale click of the call being disconnected, met my ears, any control I still possessed in my waning grip fled.

  And with it, I flew into fight mode.

  Slamming the desk phone down onto the receptacle, I gripped my cell tighter, once more giving James my full attention. “I may be a bit late making it to the station, Guapo,” I said, interrupting the verbal tirade he’d been on for the past minute, but that I couldn’t recall a single word of. “I have some business to handle first.”

  “Carmen, don’t.” Having heard every word I’d spoken, his footsteps pounded the ground as he raced somewhere. “I don’t know what the hell is going on or who was on the other end of that call, but don’t you dare leave. Not until I get there and can help—”

  “I am not waiting.” Such inaction wasn’t an option. “Not when Anna needs me.” A tear slipped free when I spoke her name. “And not when I’m capable of saving her. She’s only fifteen!”

  “Baby,” he replied, his voice raw and guttural thanks to the bomb I’d just dropped in his lap. “I get it, I do, but you can’t put yourself in danger. All I need is five minutes. Just give me five minutes to get there and—”

  “She may not have five minutes!”

  Knowing better than anyone the terror that could be unleashed on a defenseless teenage girl in such a short time, I crossed the room, passing a silent but seething Shelby on the way, and grabbed Maddie’s purse from the coatrack where it hung.

  After digging through the contents, I pulled out her car keys and slipped my finger through one of the silver rings. “I love you, James,” I said, sweat beading along my brow. “I love you with my whole heart, and I know I’m being reckless, but that sick and twisted demon, Voodoo, has Anna at the same trap house where Chiquita, Little One, and I were held captive for so long.”

  My eyes momentarily slid closed before popping back open. Even more red bled into my view as he cursed beneath his breath, the pieces of the puzzle I’d just given him clicking into place. “And I know the hell that inhabits those walls all too well.”

  For years, I had lived it.

  Burned in the tortuous flames.

  And so had Chiquita and Little One.

  I’d be damned if Anna would too.

  “Pixie—”

  “Twice today you’ve told me that the shelter was where I’m supposed to be.” Turning back around, I scanned the office for anything I could use as a weapon. When my eyes landed on the small canister of pepper spray and pocket-sized taser hanging from Maddie’s keyring, I fisted them tightly. “You were right, and the phone call I just answered proves it.”

  My eyes bounced to an irate Shelby, and right then, I knew—I knew—that I wouldn’t be going after Anna alone. No matter how much I tried to convince her to stay behind, where no harm could come to her, she wasn’t going to hear of it.

  Because she was just like me.

  Still, I had to figure out a way to keep her safe because if something happened to her, I’d never forgive myself.

  I doubted Guapo or Chiquita would either.

  “God-fucking-dammit, Carmen!” To say James was pissed as he shouted into the phone was an understatement. A big one. Keys jingled on his end, and his breath came in short, heavy pants. “Where is the trap house?”

  One of the few secrets I had yet to divulge to him sat on the edge of my tongue for a beat before it rolled off. “1632 Peach Street.” My stomach continued to twist as his anger, which I knew would soon multiply, weighed on my mind. My heart too. “I’m sorry for making you mad, but I have to do this.”

  “I’m calling Evan, then Anthony. You wait for me,” he growled in reply, the words he spoke barely coherent. “You do not set foot outside, much less inside that house until I—”

  “I waited to save Chiquita and Little One,” I said, cutting in and confessing one of my biggest regrets aloud. “And because of that, they were hurt. Repeatedly.”

  Part of me would always hate myself for the time I’d wasted immersed in both grief and pain, sometimes too high, others too lost to help them. It was time that had allowed El Diablo, and the army of evil he commanded to bring them to harm over and over.

  “It’s a mistake I won’t be repeating.”

  I gave James no chance to reply.

  Ending the call, I faced Shelby.

  With her hobo-style purse already slid over her shoulder, she was busy securing her golden blonde hair into a tight ponytail atop her head.

  “Evan is going to try his damnedest to stop us, you know that, right? Chris too.” Red-hot anger dusted her high cheekbones when she dropped her hands and met my gaze. “Both are going to want to follow protocol and wait for my husband to get—”

  “We don’t have time for that!”

  Hands going to her hips, she dipped her chin in affirmation. “Trust me, sugar, I agree.” Her eyes flicked to the open door. “Which means we’ve gotta move fast before one of them gets a phone call from Pop or figures out what’s going on by themselves and then finds us, putting a barrier between where we stand and the parking lot.”

  I took a step toward the door.

  Then stopped when she kept speaking.

  “Just an FYI, though. I don’t have a gun with me since Tony confiscated mine a few months back after I threatened to shoot one of the assistant managers down at the Kroger.”

  She shrugged.

  “And before you jump my ass like Pop and my husband both did, Hendrix too, let me tell you, the sleazeball had it coming considering that I’d caught him gawking at some random teenage girl’s ass like it was a steak and he was a starving dog intent on taking a bite.”

  My eye twitched at her words.

  If she thought I would jump her culo for such a transgression, she was wrong. If anything, I was close to questioning why she didn’t just shoot him instead of threatening to do so.

  He sounded like a pervert.

  Maybe even a full-blown predator.

  In my opinion, he deserved a bullet.

  I should go down to Kroger and castrate—

  “Not that I give two craps whether or not we’re armed,” Shelby continued, pulling me from my thoughts. “You’ve got those”—she nodded to Maddie’s taser and pepper spray, which were clutched in my hand—“and I’ve got on my shitkickers, plus two hands that I’m more than willing to throw in order to save that girl, so I say let’s roll.”

  I hesitated no further. “Vámonos.”

  My command for us to leave was the last thing I said before I took off running, determined to save Anna from the monster bearing down on her, his blackened soul intent on scarring hers, an action I refused to allow to occur.

  Laws and consequences be damned, it neither mattered what I had to do nor the dangerous and violent actions I may have been forced to take, she would not suffer the same fate as Ashley, Jade, and I had.

  Not on my watch.

  27

  Carmen

  I didn’t allow myself time to think.

  Reacting on pure instinct, I let the primal need to save Anna, an innocent chica who’d been caught in the web of a devil, drive me as I parked Maddie’s 4Runner, which I’d borrowed without permission, but had every intention of returning, in front of the boarded-up structure neighboring the trap house.

  My body was numb, my whirling mind void of any rational thought as I jumped out of the vehicle, barely remembering to remove the keys or shut the door behind me, and raced to the side of the wooden prison with Shelby hot on my heels.

  Halfway to the east side of the dilapidated house, and for only a second, I slowed, scanning the windows facing me, both first and second story, for any sign of movement.

  When I didn’t see any, I ducked my head and closed the remaining distance between where we stood and the decaying cellar door I’d
snuck through in the past when trying to avoid El Diablo.

  Reaching it, I stopped and glanced back over my shoulder at Shelby. Lips thinned in a straight line, her jaw was clenched tight, her cheeks tensed, creating an on-edge expression that brought Guapo to the forefront of my mind.

  He was going to absolutely throttle me.

  Almost eight hours before, when he’d dropped me off for my first day of work, he’d asked me to promise to stay out of trouble. Yet here I was, seconds away from running headfirst into a whole boatload of just that. I tried to rationalize that I’d never agreed to the vow he’d asked me to make, I’d never said the words after all, but guilt still gnawed at my insides all the same.

  This shouldn’t have been happening.

  Now that we’d found each other once more, and Ashley and Jade were safe, I wasn’t supposed to be running headlong into danger, where the grim reaper may very well be waiting, sickle in hand, to carry my soul away.

  This time, though, it couldn’t be helped.

  As dangerous as stepping back into a part of my past, the very one I’d sworn to put behind me may have been, I couldn’t allow another chica to be hurt. Not when I could put a stop to her pain by plucking her from the tormentor holding her captive.

  James would just have to forgive me.

  For being reckless, for not waiting.

  And for allowing Shelby to come.

  I have to keep her safe. If something—

  A soul-shattering scream, one I somehow knew belonged to Anna, pierced the air, ripping me from my thoughts. Chills shook my spine, and Shelby’s swift intake of breath, along with the feel of her scorching palm pressing against my lower back as she shoved me forward the slightest bit, followed.

  “Ma, go!” Her enraged command was the push I needed to move my culo.

  Allowing the adrenaline rushing through my veins to take over, I put my hands against the right side of the door and pressed forward, knowing that with just a little pressure, the rotten wood would bow, and the lock securing the damp basement from the afternoon sun would pop.

  A second later, it did just that.

  Then we were in.

  When I stepped into the darkness, the smell of mold and mildew, combined with the stench of misery and death, hit me with a knockout-caliber punch, nearly bringing me to my knees.

  Somehow, I stayed upright.

  Tears assailed my eyes, and ugly memories rushed forward. Beads of sweat beaded along my brow and steel-filled spine as I moved into the room, beating back the heartbreaking images that fought to surface.

  My knees wobbled, calves going weak, when I hurriedly passed the table where El Diablo had last battered my tasered body—thanks for that, Clyde; hope you’re burning in Hell, pendejo—and stolen something I’d never freely given until James, before ending the short-lived sobriety Guapo had helped me achieve by injecting me with poison I didn’t want.

  Even so, my steps didn’t falter.

  It would be later, while in the safety of the house I now called home, and while wrapped in my soulmate’s loving arms, that I would allow myself to fall apart and cry, purging the hurt that seeped from my pores as my demons danced, taunting me with each note of their wicked laughter and whispered memories, before mending my broken pieces back together.

  But right now, I had to be strong.

  Unwavering.

  Slipping a finger through one of the silver rings holding Maddie’s keys, I gripped the pepper spray canister tight, the pad of my thumb hovering over the trigger as I, then Shelby, ascended the first set of creaking stairs we needed to climb.

  I didn’t have a plan other than getting inside with no one seeing us, which is why I’d chosen to enter through the basement. Yet I refused to slow or tiptoe as I burst through the door that led to the main level of the house of horrors that my rioting heart demanded I douse in gasoline and set alight.

  To my surprise, the first floor was empty.

  Unlike many years before, when I’d been imprisoned here, no lost souls were milling about, their eyes either consumed with sadness, numbed of all emotion, or filled with malice.

  Briefly, I wondered why.

  But my thoughts abated when another scream, this one more terrified than the first and laced with an undercurrent of pain that hit me right in my constricted chest, rang through the house.

  Wasting no more time, I ran for the stairs that led to the upper floor, Shelby’s strides matching my own.

  Our feet pounded against the broken, dust and grime-covered steps as we took them two at a time, uncaring that the echoing sounds would warn Voodoo and any other puppets that may lurk close by of our approach.

  I will fight every one of them if need be...

  After reaching the top-floor landing, I didn’t hesitate the slightest bit. Crossing the hall in three quick steps, I slammed my entire body into the locked bedroom door that led to Satan’s lair, the fieriest pit of Hell, where my and Jade’s lives had almost been stolen, bursting it wide open.

  Wood splintered; dust flew...

  As for my heart, it screamed in outrage because standing ten feet away, with his side facing me, and with his feet cemented on the exact spot where I’d nearly bled to death after having my switchblade repeatedly thrust into my belly, was Voodoo.

  Tattooed knuckles white from exertion, his right hand was wrapped around a kneeling chica’s delicate throat, her beautiful tear-streaked face red and lips turning purple.

  Right away, I knew she was Anna.

  And once again, I didn’t think.

  I merely reacted.

  Lifting the pepper spray, I charged toward him, just as I’d done Anthony during our first encounter in the swamp. “Let her go!”

  The cabrón snapped his head in my direction, crashing his disbelieving gaze into my enraged one. His beady eyes then bulged, and his mouth gaped as he took me in, his brain working overtime to process just who he was looking at—a woman he’d long thought to be dead and turned into a ghost.

  Luckily for me, and not so much for him, I wasn’t the apparition he’d thought. Likewise, I was very much alive and about to give him the fight of his lifetime.

  No longer a junkie whose body was weak thanks to an addiction I’d never wanted but had been forced to acquire, I was now healthy, and despite the lasting damage done to my body, I was strong.

  Time to show him how mighty I am...

  With my lips curving into a sinister smile, I reached him in two seconds flat and pressed down on the trigger of the pink canister, releasing a pressurized stream of chemicals straight into the demon’s face.

  Swiping left to right across his still-open eyes, then down over his nose and parted lips, I doused his most vulnerable features, ensuring that not only would he be blinded but that he’d lose the ability to breathe as well.

  Determined to free Anna from his hold, I wrapped my other hand around his wrist—if he doesn’t release her throat, I’ll shoot him with the taser—and once more screamed, “Let her go!”

  Voodoo bellowed as the spray’s sting set in, the blinding burn multiplying with each tick of the clock that passed, the sound a mixture of both agony and rage.

  Nearly tripping over his own feet, he stumbled to the side, then back, dropping his hand from Anna’s throat and ripping himself free from my vice-like grip.

  Anna fell to her side, avoiding the cloud of spray that lingered, her dainty bare shoulder hitting the bloodstained hardwood with a thud as she clawed at her neck, fighting to suck in the air her starving lungs demanded of her.

  “You stupid—” Voodoo coughed, then choked before dropping to his knees, spit dripping from his mouth as tears slid down his red-flamed, swelling cheeks “—bitch!” I almost rolled my eyes. It wasn’t the first time a cold-hearted puppet had called me such an unoriginal name. I doubted it would be the last either. “You’re supposed—” more coughing, more choking “—to be d-dead!”

  If I hadn’t been so pissed, I would have laughed. Alas, I did not. Inst
ead, I stepped over a gasping Anna, placing my body between hers and his, which now faced me, uncaring if remnants of the spray burned my skin.

  I’d be damned if he touched her again.

  “Si, I am, but guess what, Voodoo?” I released the pepper spray and took hold of Maddie’s taser, thumb pad finding the textured trigger. “Turns out, I’m still breathing.” If possible, my malicious smile grew, putting my teeth on display. “But with any luck, you won’t be for much longer.”

  I should matar him.

  Right here, right now.

  I heard Shelby kneel behind me, her knees tapping the floor as she did so, and whisper something to Anna as she pulled her heaving frame into her protective arms and stood once more, dragging her to her feet.

  “Ma,” she started. “We’ve gotta—”

  “H-help me p-please,” Anna stuttered between pants for breath, her accent, one I still couldn’t place, becoming thicker as the words she’d brokenly spoken triggered a suppressed memory my mind had long since buried in an effort to heal. “Help me, or he’ll... h-hurt me a-again.”

  To my horror, before I could stop them, images of a battered fifteen-year-old Jade flashed in the forefront of my mind, striking me like a pickaxe to the heart. My arm dropped to my side as agony took hold, transporting me back to a moment I once more wanted to forget.

  “Mama C,” Jade had mouthed from the place where she’d been slumped on the floor where I now stood, her throat ringed crimson with angry welts and her thighs streaked with her own blood as a sweaty and shirtless Voodoo loomed over her, zipping his jeans, his acne-covered back turned to me.

  Body shaking, she had held my infuriated gaze through the pain and terror that gripped her, her busted bottom lip trembling, tears trickling down her bruised cheeks.

  “Help me,” she’d silently begged, her desperate plea nearly the same as Anna’s had just been. “Don’t let him hurt me again.”

  Shame and regret washed through me.

  Back then, I hadn’t been able to help Jade. Though I’d tried by attempting to stab Voodoo with the blade I’d pulled from my fur coat, I’d been too weak, too high, to inflict the damage I’d meant to.