A Leap in the Dark (Assassins of Youth MC Book 2) (21 page)

“I told him I loved him,” I sobbed, “and he didn’t say it back.”

“That’s Levon for you,” Dingo assured me. “He’s not much for flowery words.”

But how did he know? He’d known Levon as long as I had.

When Levon’s bike went out of sight down Little Wing Street, I nearly lost my shit. Now it was Dingo I clung to like a woman in despair. “Oh, Dingo. What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to get the rest of the club. They’re waiting at The High Dive.”

LEVON

N
o one followed
me. I didn’t want them to. This was my beef with Pratt, and I would’ve shot at anyone trying to follow me.

Well, if I had a gun.

Dingo didn’t frisk me or anything, but I knew Pratt would. I knew he’d throw out any cellphone or other tracking device, toss any switchblade or other obvious weapon.

He knew I was a martial arts expert. I expected him to take advantage of me some other way.

And I was right.

I found the school with an SUV parked out front. He wasn’t even trying to hide. Then again, no cops were looking for Ladell Pratt. Atticus Rosenkohl, the chief of police, went to backyard picnics at Ladell Pratt’s big house. Even showing Rosenkohl the video, if I’d even dreamed of being that moronic, would’ve only resulted in having it confiscated from me. Rosenkohl would probably put a tail on me and find a reason to arrest me.

No, police had never entered my mind, and Pratt knew it. I’d get this bowtie-wearing clown myself. But first I had to secure the release of Deloy Pingree.

I went down an inner hallway, my boots sounding loudly on the cement. The hallways were open to a central courtyard where tattered laundry hung from sprawling trees that hadn’t been pruned in decades. I wondered if some of those clothes had belonged to Dingo before he’d been taken in by Gideon. I almost laughed at some cargo pants that definitely looked like Dingo’s style.

“My lovely. So glad to see you.”

Pratt actually took me by surprise. He came to me, not the other way around. I had to spin around to see him, and instantly berated myself for not being on top of things.

Looking back, I should’ve taken him out then and there. I think I wanted to see Deloy first, though. I wanted to make sure he was still alive before sacrificing myself for him.

“I’m not here to play fucking games, Pratt. Let me see Deloy.”

“But games are the reason we’re here, my dear boy. I like to play games, and I don’t give a rat’s ass if you don’t. How do you like that?”

I closed my eyes with patience. “Just let me see Deloy, Pratt. You’ve done enough to that poor fucking kid. You don’t have a beef with him.”

A cloud came over his round face. “Oh, but I do ‘have a beef,’ as you say, with Pingree. He desecrated my beautiful Kenyon Stout. Without Pingree, Kenyon Stout would’ve risen in the Aaronic Priesthood to become a bishop. Those were our plans for him. But when Deloy’s father found them—
together
, that was taken off the table for sweet Kenyon.”

“‘Desecrated’?” I roared, pointing to the ground, to the spirit prison where I presumed Pratt would soon go. “You wanna talk ‘desecrated’? What did you wind up doing to Kenyon Stout? You prostituted him on the fucking darknet. You fucking
killed
him.”

All trivial joy evaporated from Pratt’s stupid face. “I did no such thing. We used Kenyon for that which he was intended. It was his destiny in life, since he could no longer become a bishop.”

I took five or six long strides toward him, closing the gap between us. I even poked him in his stupid chest. The knowing smile never wavered from his face. “We have proof it was
you
who killed Stout, you motherfucker. If you think you’re gonna pull the same shit with Deloy you’ve got another thing coming.”

“No,” he whispered, almost in a caricature of an evil mastermind’s voice. “It’s
you
who have another thing coming. Turn around.”

I stood up straight. “What?”

He frowned. “Turn around. You want to see Deloy again? Turn around.”

I had no choice, and he whipped off my cut and tossed it somewhere behind me. It had rained earlier that day, and raindrops still dripped from the eaves, from the courtyard trees. From Dingo’s old laundry. Then, predictably, Pratt zip tied my hands together over my tailbone.

“Show me Deloy!” I snarled. “I’m going no further until I see Deloy.”

“In time.” Suddenly Pratt’s round body was plastered to mine, his tongue snaking in my ear. I hated the fact that his wet breath automatically made my nipples stiff—something he could tell when sliding his hands up my chest and tweaking them. He toyed with my nipple ring, and I hated how it stiffened my cock. From this position, I could’ve given him a powerful shin kick, but he just would’ve tased me, or brained me, or killed me. None of which would’ve helped Deloy.

“I need to frisk your delightful body for weapons.”

He felt in all the usual places, but when he took an especially long time examining my crotch lovingly for any knives hidden in my jock, I bellowed, “Deloy! It’s me, Levon! Where are you?”

I thought I heard a muffled cry in the brief moment before Pratt stuck me in the arm with a needle.

The last coherent thought I recall was
Now he’s got both of us. He doesn’t have to let either one of us go.

One voice murmured
down by my crotch. Another voice shrieked about ten feet away.

The quiet voice sighed, “I am God. I have spoken. I shall fulfill. Amen.”

The frantic voice shrieked, “Levon! Wake up! He’s fucking roofied you!”

Deloy!
The sound of my friend’s voice forced me up from a bottomless pit of murky grogginess. It seemed to take half an hour to force my eyes open. It was probably only seconds during which unseen hands roamed my body. I felt I was wearing a shirt, but my cock was definitely out and in the breeze. Even before I opened my eyes, my numbed senses felt a warm mouth nibbling away at my dick.

In between sucks, the voice said strange things. “Thus shall all feel my wrath. For your murder of unborn children. For your Sodom and licentious corrupt way of destroying innocence, virtue, the very spring of life in unborn children—an evil practice.”

What was this guy yammering on about? For long moments I thought I was back in the streets of my youth, sitting in some smelly gutter where an older man sucked me for the price of a lunch. Deloy’s voice was my anchor, the guidepost that urged me upward out of the foggy mud.

I remembered about Ladell Pratt the second my eyes opened. Simultaneously, my hips bucked violently, throwing the creeper off me. Deloy was now sitting in a chair, although his poor arms were still lashed to an overhead pulley.

“Levon!” he cried happily. “You’re awake! Now we can take out this whackamole together.”

From the grimy tiles, Pratt said, “Who’s the whackamole? You’re the ones who ran a house of ill repute. I’m clothed in the right mind. I know your whole lives in the secret of thought, desire, intent.” Pratt was drooling. Drool actually dripped off the bottom of his chin and he spoke to my dick, not our faces. “Nothing can stop me from gathering the elect from all nations. New Jerusalem—a holy city of my making!”

Deloy said, “He’s been talking like this all day. I left the commercial shoot to stop him. He told me to come here and he’d give me your business license and delete the videos of us. Instead he roofied me.” Deloy sounded about to say more, but stopped. I saw that his chest and shoulders were red from some kind of beating.

Pratt was struggling to his feet. He was still dressed as though for work, with his stupid bowtie all askew. “I’m your master, that’s why! I am teaching you to love my attentions.”

“Batshit,” Deloy said, exhaustion coloring his voice.

“Slave!” Pratt grabbed something long and fluorescent orange. When he whipped Deloy’s chest with it, sending the poor kid leaping and jumping like a marionette, my drugged brain sent enough adrenaline into my limbs to spur me to leap up.

Only, my ankles were zip tied to the chair. I didn’t expect that, and I fell back down, my ass hitting the elementary school chair with a loud slap. Now both Pratt and Deloy stared at me, openmouthed. With more energy, again I leaped to my feet, this time bringing the entire chair and little desk with me.

I lumbered like a captive elephant with a howdah on its back. Three or four times I almost crashed to my knees, bringing the kid’s desk down on my back.

Pratt must have been too shocked to move. By thrashing like the elephant, I was able to bash Pratt with the attached desk. A satisfied rush surged through me when he fell onto his side, rolling like a seal in the sand. To bash him again, I had to basically fall on top of him, but I was pretty sure I nailed him in the skull with the lid of the desk.

“Don’t bother, Levon!” called Deloy. “He’s got a fucking gun! You’re just wasting your energy!”

From somewhere under the tangle of metal and plywood, Pratt managed to press a gun barrel to my temple.

“
I will teach you to love it
,” he said through gnashed teeth.

I stopped moving.

I didn’t put anything past Pratt. That, and I was laboring under a shot of heavy sedation. I wouldn’t have been able to get off him if he wasn’t pushing and shoving the desk with what was probably all his might.

“Pretend you love it,” advised Deloy pathetically. “I hope he lets us out if we pretend we love it.”

“You will see I’m your master!” trilled Pratt, going to the other side of the room.

I was on the ground facing Deloy, my fucking pants down around my knees. “I’ve got a secret weapon,” I whispered.

Despite the rising bruises on his face, Deloy managed a grim smile. “
You
are a secret weapon, Levon.”

Pratt had some ropes. “Sit up straight!” he commanded, and between us both we managed to get me back to my student’s sitting position. Now he was tying the whole desk to some built-in cabinets behind me. “This is small town America, buddy. You are my star quarterback. It’s a wonderful opportunity for young people here. Outsiders don’t understand our lifestyle, but we don’t care, do we?”

“We don’t care,” Deloy repeated dully.

He kept on. “The important thing is that we’re left alone to do what we feel is right. We live according to our own guidance.”

“Own guidance,” said Deloy.

I struggled to think. When Pratt tied the chair legs, I looked down. With a nauseating shock, I saw I was wearing a football jersey. He’d done something with my wifebeater T-shirt—probably thrown it out in the rain along with my cut—and had put this ratty, spiderwebby old jersey on me. It literally smelled of mold.

I couldn’t take Deloy’s advice, though. I’d always been a rebel—which was partially responsible for fucking up my life to begin with. I’d probably known I shouldn’t have been dating Zelpha Pratt. I should’ve known she was destined to wed an elder. What was I messing around with her for? I let my hormones get the better of me, a mistake I hadn’t made since…until meeting Oaklyn Warrior.

I shouted, “The laws of God take precedence over the laws of men! It’s your twisted human depravity that makes you crave boys who don’t want you.”

Deloy’s eyes were large and round. “Levon! Stop!”

But I didn’t stop. “The laws of God would tell you not to force yourself on another human being!”

Behind me, it seemed that Pratt stopped tying. He lumbered over, breathing heavily, and jammed the gun barrel into the crown of my skull again. “Did you look ‘forced’ in that video I posted? No, you did not, my fine, hunky football player. Every ounce of your being longed to please me with your giant rock python.”

Normally, I would’ve laughed at his euphemism. The guy was a violent sexual deviant, but he felt compelled to use a term like “rock python.” The ironies of life would never cease to amaze me. And I’d met some deviants in my time.

“Think of your wives, Pratt. They’re all fine, honest women. Wouldn’t they want you to admit that you murdered Kenyon Stout?” We had no definite cause of death for that poor boy, although Dust Bunny said there appeared to be a bullet hole in his skull. I faked it. “You shot Kenyon Stout through the head.” That was a bold statement to make, seeing as how I currently had a pistol held to my head.