Rocco

 

“Is it time for war?” Beast says.

 

I stand up from my desk, two pistols in holsters under my armpits, a gun on my ankle, and a shotgun laid against the wall to my left. “Have you found him?” I ask.

 

“A mansion outside town. A safehouse. Looks like there’s a few of them staying there, Boss. But not many. Five or six, from what our reports can tell us. If we go now, we’ll catch them with their pants down.”

 

“And Gerald’s there. The fuckin’ leader is there?”

 

“He’s there,” Beast says.

 

“Then let’s get to it.” I pick up the shotgun and head for the door, Beast at my shoulder.

 

This needs to end now, I reflect as I climb onto my bike. It needs to end not just so I can avenge Shotgun’s death, but so that I can be with Simone too. I need her. I can’t be with her because of these asshole Demons, but once they’re dead that will change. We can be together. I’m not sure what that’ll look like, but I know I want to find out. Avoiding her calls just in case I get tempted to go back to her is getting damn hard, especially since I’ve been told she’s seeing some fancy-pants type.

 

We ride out to the mansion, twenty-five of us in a convoy ready for blood. The mansion is in the middle of a dusty patch of desert surrounded by a tall metal gate. We slow down as we approach, bringing our bikes to a quiet purr, and leave them about a quarter-mile away from the gates. Jerry and Beast and Jakub and Poker Face and all the others gather around me.

 

“We go in quick,” I tell them. “Beast and his boys have cut a hole in the gate on the south side, so that’s where we hit them. Be brutal, lads, be as brutal as they’ve been with us. Remember the dead.”

 

The men respond in a chorus, “Boss.”

 

“Remember, we need to kill their fuckin’ leader. Without this Gerald Hightower bastard orchestrating them, they’re fucked.”

 

“Boss.”

 

“Let’s get to it.”

 

I lead the men toward the south side of the gate, hefting my shotgun and making myself numb to the violence I’m about to be a part of. I remember the first time I went on a raid like this, when I was so scared I could barely think, so scared I didn’t understand what the hell I was doing with a gun in my hand. I kept wondering if I would wake up at the orphanage and all of this would turn out to be the dream of a lost and scared fourteen-year-old kid. But once you’ve fired one bullet, firing the second gets easier, and by the thousandth, you don’t remember how hard it once was to pull the trigger. But there’s added pressure on this job. I have Simone to think about.

 

Goddamn, but I need to be with her again.

 

Beast and his men have sawed a gap in the gate near some bushes, just big enough for us to squeeze through. I crawl through first on my elbows and knees, army-style, and Beast follows close behind. Pushing branches out of my face, I creep into the backyard of the mansion, shotgun raised in front of me, ready to fire. The yard is empty. I make it all the way to the back door before seeing anybody. And when I see him, my blood turns to ice. It’s the man himself, Gerald Hightower. I’ve seen him in blurry photographs but never in person.

 

After hounding us for months and making our lives hell, I expect somebody more mean-looking. But if it wasn’t for his reputation, he’d look like any other normal guy. He’s average height with a plain face except for a mole on the left side of his chin, wearing a bathrobe and slippers. He’s bald on top with a gray strip around the side of his head. I’m guessing he’s fifty, maybe a little older. We meet eyes for a second, and then he drops his mug of hot chocolate and dives for the hallway. I fire my shotgun, shattering the glass of the back door, and then the mansion turns into a warzone.

 

“They’re here!” Gerald roars. “Men! Men!”

 

Demons start firing from second-floor windows. Gerald scrambles into the hallway. I kick through the back door, running across the kitchen. When I reach the hallway a Demon springs out on me, a short man with a twisted broken nose wielding a pistol. I pump the shotgun into his chest, sending him flying into the wall where he slumps, his chest smoking and bleeding. I run through the house, checking the corners, searching for Gerald. I’m at the end of the hallway near an old-looking library when I hear somebody muttering and metal cranking.

 

I barge through into the library, surprised to find it much bigger than it seemed from the outside. I follow the voice and the sound of machinery down a narrow book-lined hallway until arriving in a small interior room, bare except for a desk which has been pushed aside to reveal a cellar entrance. A secret fucking passage!

 

I take out my walkie-talkie. “Beast, there’s a secret passage in the—”

 

Something hot and sharp punches me in the side. I stumble, almost fall, and then swing around wildly. My fist catches Gerald in the face. I feel blood seeping through my T-shirt, into my leather, dripping down my hip. I punch Gerald again, again, ignoring the tearing feeling where he’s stabbed me. His knife drips with blood. I stamp on his wrist, making him drop the knife, and then bring the barrel of the shotgun to his head.

 

My finger’s on the trigger when he grabs the barrel with his free hand and pushes it aside. I fire, blowing a hole in the floorboards and revealing a section of the hidden passageway below. He’s stronger than he looks. I reckon if I wasn’t pissing blood out of the side of my belly I could take him, but when he brings his fist down on the wound, I see red and all I can do is fire blindly. I fall back, firing, and then when the shotgun starts to click on empty take out my pistol. The pain starts to fade and my vision clears, but by then it’s too late.

 

Gerald is gone and I’m lying flat on my back staring up at the ceiling, gun cradled to my chest just in case a Demon comes in looking to finish the job. But when someone crashes through the door it isn’t a Demon. It’s Beast, with Poker Face at his shoulder. “Boss!” He kneels down next to me, looking at my wounds. “Fuck, fuck. Get some bandages. Anything to stop the bleeding! We need to get him to the hospital!”

 

“The tunnel,” I whisper, as the world turns dark, my eyelids feeling far too heavy to hold open. “Gerald . . . the tunnel . . . send some men . . .”

 

My eyes close and the world turns to complete blackness, but not before I see Simone reaching out to me. She grasps with her fingertips, trying to stroke my beard, trying to wrap her arms around my shoulders. “You left it too long,” she whispers, her voice sounding oddly like the growling of a car’s engine. “And now you’re dead.”

 

She fades into the dark.