Oh no. Oh shit. These guys are not good, they’re going to hurt me.
“Stay right there,” the man ordered. He gripped both of my arms and held me against his bulky, muscular body. I could feel that the flesh of his palms was scarred and calloused. Cade’s hands had always been kind of soft, but this man was grizzled and older.
“No!” I yelped. I tried to break free of his grip but he shook me firmly. The man who’d stared at me walked closer.
“Bruno, she’s a little spitfire,” he said, spitting on the ground and letting his eyes travel down my body. “I think she needs a little refreshment for the big trip home!” Both men threw their heads back in laughter as I struggled in vain against Bruno’s firm grip.
“Yeah, Dante,” Bruno said in a low voice. “She’s a pretty little thing. You be gentle with her!” They laughed again and I started to feel like I’d be sick. Before I could move, Bruno reached into his back pocket and pulled out a damp rag. He came towards me and pressed it against my nose and mouth. Instantly, my mouth was filled with the taste of noxious chemicals. I tried to cry out, to call for help, to scream for Calvin, but when I opened my lips, I began to feel faint and lighthearted. When I realized they’d drugged the material, a streak of fear flashed through my body. It was coupled with something else, though, something warmer that made me feel safer, calmer somehow. I closed my eyes and began to drift off.
When I woke up, I let out a shriek of fright. I was in a dark room, and there was a massive pain in my head and my back. As I tried to move, I pitched forward. My arms weren’t working and it took me a few seconds to realize that they were tied tightly behind my back. The blood had been cut off and both of my hands felt swollen and numb and painful. I groaned as I tried curling my fingers into fists.
There was a dry laugh and I looked up to see a beaten-up older man seated in a chair to my left. He raised his eyebrows at me and snickered. “Feelin’ a little tied up, girly-girl?”
I swallowed hard. “Who the fuck are you?” The sound of my voice made me cringe—it was high and squeaky, like a little girl’s. “Are you a friend of Calvin’s?”
“Who the fuck is Calvin?” The man squinted at me. “Bitch, no. I’m a fucking Demon Catcher.” He pointed to a patch on his leather vest, which I couldn’t read in the dim light of the room. “You remember anything, sweetheart? Like getting picked up by my guys in the parking lot?” The man coughed and spat wetly on the floor. There was a faint scent of iron in the room, and I realized that he’d just coughed up some blood.
When I closed my eyes, it all came rushing back. I’d been grabbed in the parking lot after I told Calvin that I was going to get some air. My eyes teared up and I sniffled in fright. The Demon Catchers had kidnapped me. And I had no idea why, or what they wanted from me.
“Honey, you remember yet?” Without waiting for me to answer, the man burst out laughing. “You were havin’ a little fun with Dante and Bruno, my men. They said you were a little spitfire, had to chloroform you!”
I closed my eyes and let out a sigh. So that’s what had been on that rag. I felt stupid for not recognizing it more quickly—I’d studied the effects of chloroform last year, in biochem.
“Right,” I said softly. “What are you gonna do with me?”
The man glanced at me and even in the dim light of the room, I shrank back from his gaze. His expression was crude and he let his eyes travel down my body, staring at my breasts and exposed legs. “Well, I could fuck you right now,” the man said. Chills ran down my spine at the thought of his old, grizzled and broken body on top of me. “But I don’t have the energy right now, girly.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’ll call some of my younger guys in here and let them run a train on you. That sound good enough?” He laughed again, seeming oblivious to my intense discomfort.
“What do you want with me?” I glanced into his eyes and tried not to look away. “I’m just Vanessa. I’m a college student,” I added.
The man shook his head. “I don’t give a good goddamn about what your name is, sugar,” he said. “All I know is that your boyfriend, Cade Mitchell, is a real fuck-up.” He glanced down at his body. “He fucked me up pretty good. And here in this world, the real world, we have a little thing called revenge.”
I swallowed hard. “So what are you gonna do with me?”
The man shook his head. “Look, bitch, it’s gonna be better for you if you can learn to keep your yap shut. You got that?”
I bit my lip. “Can you please shift the way my hands are tied? They’re cutting off my circulation.” I shifted forward and rolled my hips so I could lift my arms a fraction of an inch in the back. “Please?”
The man laughed. “Short fuckin’ chance of that, sweetheart.” He shook his head and whistled. “I was born at night, but not last night.”
My heart sank and I leaned back against the wall. What the hell did these guys want with me? They obviously thought I was connected to Cade, but maybe they’d let me go if I told them that we’d broken up. I decided that as soon as they’d let me go, I’d have to call Cade and tell him about what had happened. I didn’t want anything happening to him next. After all, this was scary enough without anything weirder going on.
“Hey,” I said softly. “You know that Cade and I broke up, right? His lieutenant, Rudy, told him that he couldn’t stay with me and stay in the Bleeding Prophets. So I dumped him.” I tried to act as nonchalant as I possibly could. “So you know, you really don’t have much business with Cade anymore.”
The man stared at me. “You fuckin’ kidding me?”
Yes! He bought it! “Uh, no,” I said. “Come on, I’m just a college girl.” I tried to sit up straighter, although the pain in my back was intense. “I’m pre-med. I don’t have time to date some biker.” I rolled my eyes and swallowed hard. I’d never been a good liar, but then again, I’d never had to lie like my life depended on it either. “Really,” I added. “I always thought Cade was kind of a fuck-up. Definitely not the kind of guy that I could end up with.”
The man stared at me. “Well, it’s good that you realized that now.” I frowned at the hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Because I fuckin’ killed him.” He grinned at me and my stomach plummeted. “I fuckin’ killed him real dead, girly. He ain’t around anymore.”
“What?” Tears came to my eyes and I looked towards the ceiling of the room willing them away. “What did you just say?”
The man laughed. “I said I killed him.” He shook his head and stood up. I noticed that he was limping, and cradling his arm like it was broken. As he stepped closer, I saw that the shadows on his face were actually dark bruises, and that he had dark circles underneath each eye. “I killed him.” The man raised his eyebrows at me and chuckled. “Fuckin’ good thing, too. That asshole was trying to push pills in my goddamn territory!”
For a horrible and brief moment, I thought I was going to be sick. The bile rose up in my throat and I gagged, coughing and tilting my head back so I wouldn’t choke. Cade was selling pills in Catchers territory. That’s why Rudy told him to break up with me. Because he was so freakin’ distracted over me that he sold pills to some Catcher clients! This is all my fault! The tears that had welled up in my eyes began to brim over and drip down my cheeks. I sniffled and coughed as my nose filled with hot liquid snot. It dribbled out of my nostrils and over my lips. The taste was salty and bitter and as I realized that Cade wouldn’t ever be able to wipe my tears away again, I cried all the harder. My hands were useless behind me and I felt so vulnerable, so scared that I was bawling like a baby in front of this murderer, this asshole, this dangerous man who’d hurt the only person I’d ever truly loved.
“So I guess you feel a little bad about that breakup now, don’tcha?” The man laughed at his own joke, throwing his head back and exposing a mouth of gnarly teeth. “I guess you don’t really care too much about what kind of man Cade Mitchell was after all!”
“Why did you kill him?” My words were broken and jagged and I shuddered as a new wave of hot tears leaked down my cheeks. “Why? Why did it have to be him?”
“Because he’s a fucking punk, that’s why,” the man said heavily. He leaned forward and grimaced in pain; I could tell that his arm was really bothering him. “He fucking came after me and attacked me for no goddamn reason!” He waved his arm in the air and let out a sharp, mangled cry of pain. “He fuckin’ broke my goddamn arm!”
I frowned. “But why…why would Cade do that?”
The man stared at me. “You are a real dumb bunny for a college kid, you know that?” He whistled. “Shoot, honey. He was probably real mad about that breakup.” He raised his eyebrows at me and shook his head. “So really, if you hadn’t dumped him, we probably never woulda killed him!”
Shock pulsed through my body and I gasped. For a brief moment, I couldn’t even breathe. My lungs felt like they were filled with lead instead of air and I began to cough and gag and heave towards the floor as thought I were going to be sick for real. The bile that had risen up before came back and spewed out of my mouth, hot and bitter and stinging my teeth and tongue. I tasted stale alcohol and stomach acid, all mingled together in a horrible cocktail of betrayal. This was my fault. I’ve as much as killed him myself. If I hadn’t been so stupid, so pigheaded, why did I have to do that? I felt wracked with guilt and pain as I thought about the heartbreak I’d caused Cade. If I hadn’t hurt him like this, if I hadn’t broken off the engagement, we’d be fine. Sure, Rudy would be pissed, but Cade would be alive, and that was what really mattered.
I gagged and spat the last of the vomit out of my mouth. It landed on the floor in a stinking pile. The smell was almost enough to make me throw up again, but the man looked circumspect, like he was used to the noxious smell.
“A little hard for you to stomach, honey?” He laughed again, louder this time, and a hatred like nothing I’d ever felt before went shooting through my veins like the world’s most powerful heroin.