Max
I was reminded of storming the castle. Like some knight sent by a king or a queen to rescue the damsel in distress, the princess, the love of my life. Of course, that was little more than a fantastical idea, a little kernel of strange truth buried deep in the back of my mind without any real evidence to back it up.
Every Reaper was here. Our bikes weren’t exactly silent, so we’d had to park a way back and that left a few of my guys in a little bit of a rough shape. Not all of us were at our physical peak. Thunder was taking the short hike to the abandoned house a little rougher than most, his heavy-set frame groaning against the effort, but he didn’t complain. Not even as he huffed and blew out fat breaths.
I’d decided a while ago that I liked Thunder, despite his unattractive appearance and the gut that hung so obviously over his belt. He was several paces back, but I had a couple of other guys right beside me. I’d instructed everyone to follow my lead, which they did unquestioningly, and I led them straight to the old train yard I had first followed Bills to that day I’d been so suspicious of him. We all parked our bikes behind that same billboard as before, the one where I’d hid to spy on Bills.
Of course, Bills wasn’t with us today. I’d made it a point to him that his cover was not to be blown, which meant he couldn’t be in on the raid, no matter how much I wished I could use him today. My first priority was and always would be Lucy, but I understood the importance of putting a stop to what Blade and his hell-raisers were doing, too. If I didn’t want them doing this shit to Lucy, then I didn’t want them doing it to anyone. Not a soul. No one deserved to be treated like this, which meant I needed to stop the person at the top, cut off the head of the snake, if I wanted to permanently put an end to Blade and his operation.
That being said, I wasn’t giving them any more time alone with Lucy than absolutely necessary. Any time was too much time and, now that I’d learned what they’d done to Mary, I was out for blood.
We were nearing the abandoned house. It was a real piece of work. The building was dilapidated, the paint on it fading and coming off in sharp, ugly chips. It had probably been white at one point, but it had faded and molded into some sort of greenish grey that looked to be on the verge of making people sick simply by looking at it. The windows were cracked or shot out entirely, framed in splintering pieces of wood, some broken into large chunks. It wasn’t a huge place, but it was sizable enough. Bigger than the house I shared with Lucy.
I knew she was in the basement, so that was my ultimate goal. The goal of everyone, as things were. I’d finally caved and explained the full extent of the situation. Whether anything had happened at this point or not, they needed to know what was at stake. This was Lucy. And, to their credit, my boys responded in spades. They were up in arms about it, ready to storm the castle immediately. If we got there too late, well, I’d kill any man that gave Lucy grief about it.
Any man.
With my men behind me, I finally gave them the signal to rush the place. We had some backup in the form of Blackbird, Billy, and several of the Vultures, but it was hard to say whether we were outnumbered. Most likely, we still were. Even with the added assistance, it was difficult to say how many Slayers there were and I knew for a fact we didn’t have the full Vulture force. Only the ones most loyal to Billy and who had a soft spot for the Preacher’s only daughter had come.
It was enough, though. I’d have gone in with less if I had had to, so I was grateful for any numbers I could get.
We dove into the house like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. There were bullets flying before I even saw targets, their bodies hitting the floor as my men and those of the Vultures spotted the Slayers and took them down. I was too focused to care about small peanuts anyway. I wanted them dead—all of them—but I had one specific monster in mind that I had to hunt. Blackbird was nearby, just to the left of me. I caught him just out of the corner of my eye, ducking down behind the back of a chair, gun in hand. When a bullet went whizzing by him, he straightened up just slightly so he could reach over the chair, and fired. A man went down. Blackbird—despite his age or maybe because of it—was a damn fine shot.
Nearby, I could hear Billy cry out in a mixture of excitement and anger. He was younger than Blackbird by several years, closer to my age, and it seemed like the thrill of the fight itself was more than enough for him.
Thunder raced into the room and just bowled people over. He wasn’t the greatest shot, but his size worked in his favor. Despite making him a much bigger target, it seemed like no one had hit him yet, but he’d caught a few of them. He slammed into them like a pro wrestler, completely knocking the wind out of them, causing the men to drop hard to the ground, breathless. Others he just beat on, cracking skulls and breaking bones.
I moved forward through the house, counting seconds as I went, knowing that each one I wasted was one that could hurt Lucy. The drive to protect her was so intense that I barely noticed the bullets flying about my head. I didn’t notice as I caught one—just a scratch—across the arm, the searing pain of it just another wake up call. It fueled me, gave me focus, and I kept my eyes open for a door or a set of stairs, anything that might lead me to the basement and Lucy.
Bullets were flying, cries of pain and anger alike mixed into the air like a spark to hydrogen, the whole place exploding with them. I fired again and again, not even seeing the faces of men as they went down, not caring who they were or whether they were deeply involved. They were Slayers; they knew what sort of monsters they were.
I spotted Blade. His mottled face was pulled taut with fear as his eyes frantically searched through the army I had brought with me. He must have realized something quickly, because he caught my gaze for just a moment, before turning and making a run for it. I saw the stairs to the left and the room Blade dove into on my right. I had to make a choice.
It was made before I even bothered to consider it, my feelings on the matter consistent and all-consuming. I was halfway to the stairs leading to what I hoped was the basement and Lucy inside, when another man—one of mine—came back up them, stopping me before I could even step down. He shook his head, and I blanched. Were we too late? Was it more than just rape they were doing here?
Had I lost Lucy forever?
Before my thoughts could drown me in depression, the man spoke. “She’s not there!” he yelled amidst the noisy battle. “The cage down there, it was open! She’s gotta be somewhere else!”
I clenched my jaw together tightly and turned back towards the room where Blade had hidden himself. It was reassuring to know he hadn’t found her dead, but it did nothing to ease my other thoughts and worries. I’d have to get more information, and I knew the best place to get it was from the horse’s mouth.
The door was locked, so I pounded on it, yelling at him to let me in. “Open the fucking door, Blade, you coward!”
At first, he wouldn’t respond. He must have known how things were stacked against him and how angry I was, how ready to kill him I was. Then, a muffled, terrified voice filtered through the door. “I’m not coming out! You assholes clear out, because I’ve got a bomb and I’ll set it off if I catch even a single fucking Reaper left in this shithole!”
I sincerely doubted he had a bomb. Blade had already proved himself a coward. He didn’t have the balls to set the whole place up, not with himself still in the building.
I was about to bang on the door again, when one of the Vultures came up to me. I saw that Thunder was in tow and he had something cradled gently in his arms. A person. A woman.
Lucy.
Her hair hung down across one of Thunder’s beefy arms and her legs were long and bare, slung over the other. She was dressed in—well, I guessed I should have just been grateful she was dressed at all, but I knew damn good and well that she hadn’t left the house in that. She’d been put into it and it made my blood boil.
They’d pay. I was beginning to think they knew it, too.
I was a little concerned that Lucy was unconscious. She made little sounds now and again, so I knew she was alive at the very least, but that was all I could tell. She didn’t look like she was bruised or beat up, but I also knew there were places that might be bruised that I couldn’t see just then.
The thought made my stomach roil and it took everything I had not to retch right there in the middle of the house. I kept it together. This wasn’t over yet. Not until I had Blade.
“We got her, boss,” the Vultures man told me with a nod of his head. “What you want us to do with the rest?”
He indicated a group of men who were being herded together. Some looked like they were wounded. Some just looked scared. They were all Slayers. I let my gaze slip across each one of them, cold and calculating. Then I spoke to the room as a whole, “At your discretion boys. Just remember who they are and what they’ve done.” My eyes drifted to Lucy and I hoped we had somehow gotten here in time.
Thunder looked just short of terrified, his eyes wide, his lingering bruises making him look like some kind of caricature. “I think…I think she’s okay,” he managed to get out, looking to Lucy then to me and back again, over and over.
I nodded tersely, unable to say much. When I finally got the words out, they were short and to the point. “Get her out of here. She’s your responsibility, Thunder.”
He swelled up to his full height—much taller than he seemed with all his extra blubber—and gave me a stern, serious nod. He wouldn’t let me down. He left just as the last of the Slayers were being hauled out. They were lined up against the wall and I could guess what my men were going to do. I wouldn’t stop them any more than I would give them the go-ahead. I wouldn’t make murderers of them; that was a personal choice for each man to make.
Focusing my attention on the door in front of me, I knocked again, motioning behind me for everyone to give me just one moment of silence.
“Open up, Blade,” I told him in a tone that was calmer than I felt. “I just want to talk.”
“Yeah fucking right!” he answered.
I sighed. Kneeling, I put my guns down on the floor where he could see them beneath the crack under the door. “I’m unarmed. My guns are here on the floor; check for yourself.”
There was a moment, shuffling, then finally I thought I heard a sigh of defeat. The door unlocked. I stepped inside and closed the door mostly behind me. Blade looked increasingly nervous, but I could see defeat written across his features. He already knew he’d lost. I took a seat on one side of the desk that took up half the room and he sat on the other side.
After a moment, the house filled with the sounds of a dozen gunshots at once. It echoed for a moment. Blade flinched. Then it was over and I didn’t have to tell him all his men were dead.
He knew.