After I beat the shit out of Isaac, the Demon Catchers lieutenant, I knew that I had to go home. It was time to get back to the guys and try to start moving on with my life. Vanessa never wanted to see me or talk to me again, and I knew that even though I was hurting, I had a life to take care of. My own.
Kicking Isaac’s ass had been cathartic in a way that I’d never dreamed possible. I grinned as I drove down the main highway, back towards Madison, back towards the Bleeding Prophets. Rudy would be pissed off, I knew. After all, he’d promised me an hour and I’d taken almost two days. But it was worth it. It wasn’t every day that I got my heart broken, and deep down, I knew that I couldn’t keep causing any more damage. If I kept going after these assholes, I’d probably wind up dead. But this way, as I saw it, we were even. They weren’t gonna harass me anymore, they weren’t going to care.
As I wound my way back towards the hideout of the Bleeding Prophets, I felt a strange sense of relief mixed with anxiety flood my body. It was unlike anything I’d felt in a long time. Back when I first started up with the Prophets, when I started pushing pills, it was the kind of thing that made me excited and nervous at once. I’d been so eager to prove myself to Rudy and Colton, so green, so unsure about the future.
I wished I could go back in time and shake myself by the fucking shoulders. This wasn’t anything like the life I’d wanted. Or rather, it had been before I met Vanessa. But even before I’d her met, I’d been so sick of some of the shit that went on. I’d been sick of the girls, sick of the partying. Hell, I didn’t even like taking molly anymore. That shit messed with my head after a few days, and I didn’t feel like dealing with it.
When I pulled into the parking lot of the Bleeding Prophets hideout, I was feeling pretty fucking smug with myself. I was still drunk, and I even whistled a little as I walked across the parking lot, towards the door.
Bruno and Dante jumped out from behind a corner and tackled me to the ground. It hurt. Bruno dove towards my midsection and I felt one of my ribs snap as I landed on the hot asphalt.
Dante walked up slowly and stared down at me, a sick grin on his face. He spat, and I felt the sticky substance land on my face.
“Mitchell, what the fuck did you think you were doing, huh?” Dante shook his head and snapped his fingers. With no warning, Isaac hit me in the face—hard. I blinked and coughed and sputtered as blood began to drip from my nose and mouth. Some of my teeth felt loose, and the pain ricocheting through my body was more intense than anything else I’d ever felt. As I tried to groan and roll to the side, Dante kicked me hard in the ribs. I cried out and saw stars spinning in front of my eyes. The more I tried to curl up and scuttle away, the harder the blows rained down. I began to lose sense of where they were hitting me, or the intervals between each powerful punch. Dante laughed loudly as he slipped something shiny and metallic onto his hand, then began powerfully swinging punches at my head. He missed the first couple of times and I heard his limbs whistle through the air. Panic was rising in my body and I felt like every nerve was vibrating with fear. I have to get out of here, I have to call for help. Where the fuck are the rest of the guys? My eyes were closed and I could barely breathe as I tried to scramble away.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Isaac said. “Not so fuckin’ fast, you fuckin’ lunatic. You show up at our clubhouse, beat the shit out of our lieutenant, and now you come ridin’ back home, proud of what you’ve done?” He shook his head in disgust. The blood was pouring down my throat and mingling with the alcohol in my stomach, suddenly making me feel like I was about to be sicker than ever before.
“Oh, look,” Bruno said in a mocking tone. I shuddered as he stepped closer. My whole body was racked with pain and I didn’t even want to think about how I was going to feel at the end of this. “He’s hurt, Dante!”
“Better fix that,” Dante said drily. He leaned down and extended a hand to me. Blearily, I reached for his hand with my own. Dante yanked me up off the ground and then shoved me hard, sending me spinning. I tripped over my own ankle and fell hard to the ground with a loud cry of pain. Dante followed me, watching my every move. “This is for Isaac,” he explained. He swung his fist back with the dreaded shiny silver object and punched me hard in the jaw.
After that, everything went black.
# # #
When I woke up, I was in a world of pain. Everything around me was white: the ceiling, the floor, the walls. Something was beeping every few seconds and it began to drive me insane before I even realized where I was.
The hospital. Something bad had happened to me, and now I was in the hospital. I tried to move my arm and a sharp bolt of pain went shooting through my body. I blinked. I was lying in a bed, but I could barely move. When I looked down, I saw that one of my legs was wrapped with gauze.
“You’re awake.”
I glanced up and saw Rudy standing there, right beside my bed. He looked at me and shook his head.
“Yeah.” My voice was a croak—I winced to hear it out loud. “What the hell happened?”
Rudy folded his arms over his chest and shook his head. “You’re a fucking moron, Mitchell,” he said. “I can’t fucking believe you.” He glared at me. “If it wasn’t for this…situation, you’d be out of the fucking club right now.”
I sat up straight and looked at him. “What the hell? What are you talking about?”
Rudy sighed. “Man, you—”
Just then, a nurse bustled in. She was cute, wearing one of those old-school white uniforms that I hadn’t seen a nurse ever wear in real life. As she bustled across the room with a tray full of pills, I glanced up at the ceiling.
Everything in my body hurt. It felt like the worst hangover I’d ever had, times a million. When I closed my eyes, I could feel my head throbbing with each punch that the Demon Catchers had thrown me. Every time I breathed in or out, my chest ached from Dante and Bruno kicking me half to death.
“Mr. Mitchell!” the nurse chirped brightly as she sat down the tray and walked closer. “How are we feeling today?” She glanced at Rudy with some confusion on her pretty face. “And who is this?”
“He’s my lieutenant,” I croaked.
“No talking,” the nurse sang. She handed me a cup of water and at least five different kinds of pills. “Here, take these. Then I’m going to ask you some questions.” She glanced at Rudy nervously. “Is it alright with you if we have a little privacy?”
If I hadn’t already been hurting, that line would have stung. “I don’t give a shit if he stays in the room,” I muttered. The pills that she handed over were huge, and I had to really work the muscles in my throat to get each one of them down. The nurse stared at me and handed me cup after cup.
“I know these are a lot,” she cooed in a way that made me want to slap her. “But you’ll be feeling better soon! Just get lots and lots of rest!”
“So, what’s the damage?” I looked up at her. She’d finally stopped moving in and out of focus, but my head was still killing me and it hurt to keep my eyes open. “What happened to me?”
“Your friend here said you had a bad fall,” the nurse replied in a way that somehow made me think she was lying. “But you’ve broken a rib and cracked some vertebrae in your spine. Your arm is damaged and you’ll need to see an oral surgeon for those teeth. And your nose wasn’t exactly broken, but it’s going to be swollen for a few days.”
When I reached up to touch my face, I felt puffy hamburger meat where my skin should have been. I cringed. I must look like shit, I realized. At this point, I didn’t even wanna look in a mirror.
The nurse strolled around the room, glancing here and there before she finally left. When I was alone with Rudy again, he exhaled loudly and stepped close to the bed.
“Cade, what the fuck were you thinking?” Rudy asked softly. “What the fuck happened?”
“I was angry,” I said. “I’m still fucking angry.” I shook my head. “Vanessa fucking left me.”
Rudy looked uncomfortable. That was unusual. If I hadn’t been bound to the hospital bed, I would have expected him to punch me again. He didn’t like it when I questioned his decisions, and I knew that he was happier Vanessa had left. But when he didn’t answer after a few moments, I began to feel a cold trickle of anxiety crawling down the back of my neck.
“Rudy, what the fuck happened?” I stared at him. “Why aren’t you responding?”
Rudy licked his lips and plopped down hard in a plastic hospital chair. “Vanessa’s gone,” he said. “The Demon Catchers, they took her.”
“What?” I gaped at him. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Rudy sighed. “I should have said something to them,” he said heavily. “I should have told them that she broke up with you.”
I nodded emphatically. “The fuck you should have,” I said harshly.
“Well, they thought you were still together,” Rudy said. “And they kidnapped her. And now they’re demanding that we agree to a trade. Her life for one block of our territory.”
“Jesus Christ, is that even a question?” I stared at him. “Of course we fucking give up the territory! They’re going to fucking kill her!”
Rudy stared right back. “Hold on,” he said, raising his hands in the air. “We can’t make any calls on that right now. Think reasonably, Cade. We Prophets don’t back down to the Catchers, not without a fight.”
At that moment, the last hope inside of me died.