Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4) (2 page)

BOOK: Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4)
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Maybe they did need new blood.

 

He sat at the bar with a shot of Jack and studied Titus, who was doing the hangaround thing, carrying drinks around, hefting kegs, basically being a barback while Jerry made drinks. The girls had other obligations than serving drinks tonight.

 

Titus seemed like an okay guy. He looked like a biker—long hair, full beard, inked arms. His ink was crap, some of it obviously prison ink and the rest of it probably done by a friend who’d bought a machine on eBay. But Trick couldn’t shake his sense of suspicion. What was a guy in his early thirties doing looking for a patch? For one thing, the prospecting period was hard time for any man with a shred of self-respect. Did they want a guy who, halfway into his life, was willing to be treated like that kind of shit?

 

Trick himself had come to the club a little late—after his service and while he was in college. But the distance for him had been short between his Army life and the club life. He was practiced at doing grunt work, and those few years in the civilian world had told him everything he needed to know about the ways he wasn’t cut out to live in it. He didn’t understand normal people and the way they saw the world. He’d understood military life. Club life was a lot like it. With more pussy.

 

What was it in Titus that made him an outlaw? A criminal record made a man a criminal. A way of being in the world made a man an outlaw. They were not the same thing.

 

He finished his second shot and then blew out of the Hall and headed to his bike. He’d keep an eye on the hangaround, but not tonight. Tonight he just wanted to go home and be quiet. And think.

 

 

~oOo~

 

 

Unlike most of his brothers, Trick didn’t live in Madrone. He didn’t like its cookie-cutter architecture and its upper-middle-class affect. There were a couple of neighborhoods in the city limits that didn’t fit that perfect mold, but he’d needed some distance.

 

So he had an apartment in a complex on Kendall Drive in San Bernardino. Nothing fancy at all—in fact, a little rundown—but it was quiet enough, and it had a pool and a hot tub, and people left him alone.

 

He pulled into the gated lot and dismounted at his parking space in the communal carport, which held the prehistoric Mazda pickup he’d had since high school. He walked his custom V-Rod to the front of the space and kicked the stand down.

 

Stopping at the bank of mailboxes, he check his slot, then stood there and sorted through, tossing almost everything into the recycle bin nearby. Junk, junk, junk, waste-of-trees, junk. A letter from his
pappoús
in Santorini, the unsteady handwriting showing both his age and his struggles with English.
Pappoús
had never embraced digital culture, and didn’t have a computer of any sort. Trick was better at Greek than
Pappoús
was at English, but the old man liked to “keep all his knives sharpened,” as he said.

 

Trick zipped the letter—the only thing of worth in his mail—into the same interior kutte pocket that held his envelope from the Keep, and he turned to head down the walk toward the stairs that would lead to his second-floor apartment.

 

Standing immediately behind him, so close and so small that he almost ran her down, was a little girl. A pretty little thing, about four years old, with long, caramel-brown hair that curled loosely over her shoulders. She wore shorts and a lacy t-shirt, and she cuddled a sock monkey close to her chest.

 

Assuming she lived close and her mom or dad had simply lost sight of her for a second, he smiled down at her. “Hey, muffin. Is your mom or dad close?”

 

She nodded.

 

“Well, good. You have a good night.” When she didn’t move out of his way, he stepped into the scrubby landscaping. “S’cuse me,” he said, and took a step on his way.

 

“Are you a good people or a bad people?” she asked, and he turned and tilted his head with a smile.

 

“What?”

 

“Miss Chrissy says that people with pictures on their skin are bad people but I need a good people.”

 

Miss Chrissy sounded like a judgmental bitch, but Trick was more interested in the girl’s word ‘need.’ He stepped closer and crouched to her level. “I think I’m a good people. Why do you need that?”

 

“Mami was up high and she fell and now she’s sleeping.”

 

Shit. A low push of adrenaline entered his bloodstream. “Is your daddy home?”

 

She shook her head. “That’s Papi. Papi has a different house. I’m s’poseda push 9-1-1, but Mami has the phone in her pocket and I can’t get it. I need a good people that won’t hurt because Mami is sleeping and won’t wake up. Do you promise you’re a good people?”

 

He stood and took the little girl’s hand. “I promise. Where’s your mommy?”

 

“In our new house. It’s this way.” She led him down the other walkway, still clutching her stuffed monkey.

 

As they walked, he said, “My name is Trick. What’s yours?”

 

She stopped and looked up at him. “I’m not s’poseda tell to strangers.”

 

He smiled. “Your mommy sounds like she takes good care of you.”

 

“She does but she’s sleeping and she’s not s’poseda be. I don’t like it.”

 

An apartment door was open about halfway down the walk. Trick wasn’t surprised when the girl led him there and walked inside.

 

From the look of things, Trick decided that they had just moved in on this very day. There were stacks of boxes everywhere in the main room, and furniture that was bare and precisely set—interesting, old-fashioned furniture. The apartment had the rich smell of floor wax and fresh paint.

 

“Where’s your mommy, muffin?”

 

The layout of this apartment was exactly like Trick’s, except the reverse: the front door opened into a living room, which stretched to the right. To the left was a tiny eating area. Off of that was the kitchen, most of which was readily visible from the front door. A hallway led off the living room, at about the middle of the apartment. He knew that there would be a bathroom to the right and then two bedrooms, side-by-side and identical, at the end.

 

The girl took his hand and led him to the kitchen. A woman with long, dark hair lay sprawled, unconscious, on the floor, the remnants of a broken chair around her.

 

He picked up the girl and set her aside. “Okay, honey. Okay.” Then he went to the woman and crouched at her side, laying his fingertips on her throat. She was alive, and her pulse was strong. A quick look around the kitchen showed him a plastic caddy full of cleaning supplies, with a white rag hanging over it. He stood and rooted through it. When he found a bottle of ammonia, he splashed some on the rag and then crouched again at the woman’s side.

 

She roused groggily when he waved the ammonia under her nose. When she opened her eyes and found focus, Trick recognized her. She had gorgeous eyes, so dark they seemed entirely pupil. Then he noticed the tiny mole, what he thought women called a beauty mark, above her mouth. “Juliana?”

 

She sang karaoke at The Flight Deck sometimes. Though he didn’t generally pay attention to karaoke, he’d noticed her once when Connor had performed as payment on a bet he’d lost, and now he noticed whenever she was there to sing.

 

She was good—excellent. And he liked her. They’d talked a couple of times, and she had a lively brain. He would’ve pushed for more, but she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in him. He knew how to take no for an answer, and he knew he was an acquired taste. Even now, without the dreads he’d worn for a decade.

 

At her name, she started to full awareness and then pushed him away, sitting up in alarm. “What? Who? Lucie! Where’s Lucie! Who the hell?”

 

“Easy, easy. I’m Trick. From The Deck?”

 

Just then the girl—Lucie—came into the room. “Mami!”

 

“I’m okay, Lulu. I’m okay.” Calming down, Juliana tried to stand, and she didn’t fight when Trick took her arms to help her up.

 

Halfway up, she puked all over him, and her knees gave out. He clutched her close and eased her back to the floor. “You definitely have a concussion. I’m calling 911.”

 

“No, no,” she gasped, fighting to keep her eyes open. “No. I can’t afford it.”

 

“You’re really hurt. I’ll pay.”

 

That brought consciousness back, and she scowled at him. “That’s nuts. No. I just…I need to lie down.”

 

“Okay. You shouldn’t be alone, though. There somebody I can call to stay with you?”

 

Her eyes fluttered shut, and she was out again. As he laid her back gently on the floor, he felt a goose egg on the side of her head. Fuck, this was no little knock on the head. He considered calling an ambulance anyway, but she didn’t want it, and he hated foisting shit like that on people. Crouching on the floor of her tiny kitchen, vomit dripping thickly from his kutte, Trick looked around as if he’d find an answer on the bare walls of this apartment.

 

His eyes met the Lucie’s. Hers were wide with worry. “It’s okay, Lulu. She’s gonna be okay.”

 

“Only Mami and Papi can call me Lulu. You can call me Lucie. Or muffin. I liked that. I like chocolate chip muffins. Mami bakes them sometimes.”

 

“Okay, muffin. I’m a good people. I’m gonna make sure your mommy’s okay.” He picked up the rag and waved it under Juliana’s nose again. When she roused and focused again, he asked, “Is there somebody I can call for you?”

 

Her eyes got wet, but she blinked any possible tears away. “No. There’s…nobody’s around tonight. I’m okay, though. I’ll be okay.” She put her hands on his shoulders as if she meant to use him as leverage to stand, and then she realized that she’d puked on him. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

 

“Not a concern right now. Look, I know you don’t know me much—or like me much—but I’m not leaving you here alone with your little girl. You’re hurt. If there’s nobody else, then it’s me. Or an ambulance. Pick your poison.”

 

Lucie came around and peered between them. “He’s a good people, Mami.”

 

Looking green around the gills again, Juliana gave her daughter a weak smile. “You think so,
mija
?”

 

Lucie nodded, and Juliana looked up at Trick. He didn’t know why he was going so fucking far out of his way for a woman who’d rejected him, but what he wanted right then was for her to trust him—to trust him, a near-stranger, enough to leave him alone with her four-year-old daughter.

 

He liked that little girl a lot. She was brave and smart, he knew it already.

 

“Okay,” her mother sighed, looking like she was fading again. “Thank you.”

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

Juliana felt a large, rough hand on her face, and then her neck. At first, it simply soothed her. Her head was screaming, and she felt slow and sore. She didn’t even bother to open her eyes; the mere thought of it made her head hurt more.

 

But then she remembered that there wasn’t anybody in the world who should have been touching her with a hand like that, and her eyes flew open anyway, accompanied by an electric charge of panic, which made her head hurt so badly she could almost taste the pain.

 

“What?” she croaked.

 

There was a man sitting on her bed. A strange man. He was blurry and kept trying to become two strange men. He smiled at her—or snarled, it was hard to be sure with all the moving his face was doing—and said, “Still Trick. Just checking on you.”

 

Though her confusion remained, her panic abated somewhat, and she pushed his hand away and tried to sit up. As soon as her head left the pillow, the room spun and her mouth flooded with saliva. She felt carsick, and she dropped back down in defeat.

 

“Damn. I’m worried, Juliana. I think you need the hospital.”

 

Hearing those words, she found a sliver of orientation, and with it came memory. She’d been standing on one of the dining room chairs, scrubbing out the top shelf of the pantry, where earlier, reaching up over her head, she’d found an old husk of a cockroach—by putting her hand directly on it.

 

She’d known when she’d pulled the chair over that it was a stupid risk she was taking—the chairs were cheap, the bases made out of metal tubes shaped a little bit like an ‘S’—but she’d thought she would be okay, since it would only take a minute to scrub out that shelf.

 

The second she’d stood up on it, the chair had collapsed and then broken apart, and she’d fallen and slammed her head on…something. The range, maybe? She didn’t know. The last thing she remembered was the blast of pain.

 

And then a strange man crouching next to her. This strange man.

 

But he wasn’t strange—or at least not a stranger, not completely. He seemed familiar. Trick, he’d said.

 

From The Deck. Right. The biker. Sitting on the side of her bed.

 

Shirtless. Why didn’t he have a shirt on? Why was he in her apartment half-dressed? Holy God.

 

“No hospital. I’m okay. Where’s Lucie? My daughter?” Juliana forced herself back up, shoving her elbows under her for support, and ignoring the green swim of the room around her.

 

“Sleeping. It’s after midnight.”

 

“Sleeping where? I have to put her bed together.”

 

“I did that, and Lucie helped me find her blankets and bedding. She and Mr. Bananas are tucked in with her favorite star sheets. I found her nightlight, too.”

 

Mr. Bananas
. He knew her monkey’s name.

 

“You tucked her in?”

 

He smiled. The room was dim—just the light from the hallway through the open door—but he was sitting in that band of light, and she could see the sincerity of his smile. She relaxed more. Though she was confused yet, she felt safe.

BOOK: Knife & Flesh (The Night Horde SoCal Book 4)
7.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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