Warlord (Anathema Book 1) (16 page)

I shook my head.
“Then kill me now, because I will never help you.”

Exorcist reached
for his gun. He flipped the safety and aimed. Luke leapt forward.

“For Christ’s
sake!” Luke knocked Ex’s hand away. “Tell her what she needs to do. She’s just
a kid. She doesn’t understand.”

“She
understands,” Ex said. The gun clenched in his hand. “I don’t think she’ll do
it.”

“She will.”

Ex eyed me. “There’s
a lot of money riding on this favor. You get me?”

“And it’ll
work.” Luke nodded. “Better than any other idea.”

“Better than
Sorceress, you mean.” The gun shifted, waved at Luke. He watched the barrel,
but he didn’t flinch. “You’re getting my money from that whore. You hear me?”

Luke’s jaw
tightened. The regal blue of his eyes hardened into a righteous stare.

“Lyn isn’t a whore.”

“She isn’t
paying me either,” Exorcist said. “You get money from Lyn, and little Rose does
her part, and we’ll all be one happy club.”

Luke held Ex’s glare.
I flinched as the cell in Luke’s pocket buzzed. He studied the number and
nodded to Ex.

“It’s a
pre-pay,” he said. “Bet it’s Thorne.”

“Excellent.” Ex
grabbed the phone from Luke, answered the call, and tossed it on the floor
beside me. He aimed the gun. “Give him a
hello
, Rose.”

The gun cocked,
and I screamed as two shots blistered through the cell no more than a foot from
my legs. I sprawled backwards only to collide with the leather pants of my
scarred captor. He sneered and kicked me toward Ex.

“Guessing we
only have a little time now.” He handed the broken bits to Luke. “Sorry about
the phone, but that message was easier than a text. Thumbs don’t work like they
used to.”

I trembled as Ex
circled my blanket. The gun holstered, but it didn’t relieve me. Whatever he
expected was worse than a quick shot through my head and my body tossed at the
doorstep of Pixie.

“Rose, your
father worked with a fellow club called Temple. Their president, Toviel, refuses
to do business with anyone from any charter of Anathema…except for Blade. We
hope to change their mind. As your father’s daughter, the mantle falls to you.”

“I am not my
father,” I said.

“But you two
were close,” Ex sneered. “So very, very close, isn’t that right?”

“You disgust
me.”

“What a man does
in the comfort of his own home or the darkness of his little girl’s room…” Ex
held his arms up. “Doesn’t matter. If I could deliver Temple a pint of your blood
as a show of good faith, I’d do it. But they want the blood inside your body,
and they want the blessing of Daddy to do it.”

“I haven’t
talked to my father since he was arrested.”

“You don’t need
to talk to him. All we need is for Temple to assume Daddy offered his support.”
Ex leaned down, his black eyes as empty and threatening as Hell. “You are going
to take some money to Temple. Then you are going to pick up the merchandise and
deliver it to us.” Ex lowered his voice. “No police. No Anathema. No brothers,
no Thorne, no talking. You do as we say, and we’ll be forever in your debt.”

“How do I know
you won’t kill me?”

Ex smirked.
“Those are the types of questions that get big brothers in trouble. You don’t
guess. You don’t think. You don’t ask. You just
do.
That way no one gets
hurt. You got it?”

I nodded. Ex
snapped his fingers, and Scarred ran to fetch him a chair.

“Then you better
pay attention, Rose,” he said. “You have one chance to get this right, and you
don’t want to see what happens if you piss me off.”

I would fucking
kill Exorcist.

Bloody. Raw. Violent
and brutal and broken by defiled misery and horror.

Hell reserved
two prisons specifically for us. Molten chains to lash our hides. Boiling pitch
under our heads as we slept. Enough hellfire and sulfur to purge away our
humanity and render us demon incarnate while we became the very anathema patched
onto our vests.

Hell waited for
us both.

But Exorcist
stole Rose.

And that meant
he’d die first.

Brew met me in
the hall. Blood poured from his nose, but I figured he looked better than the
son of a bitch who jumped him. He swore and knocked over Rose’s guitar. The
gentle scent of polished wood and sweet apple wafted from the instrument. Brew’s
kick crushed the corner of the case. He quickly knelt and punched out the notch.
It closed with a soft click.

“They’ll fucking
hurt her.” Brew didn’t look at me. He ran a hand through hair that grayed as
the seconds passed. “Jesus Christ.”

I reached for my
gun as a shuffle of footsteps burst through the door.

Gold looked from
Brew to me. “Bud?”

I spat the word.
“Gone.”

“We gotta be too.
Cops are on their way.”

Brew sprinted
through the club. I gritted my teeth and followed. The fucking ache in my head
felt like it cracked my skull open and poured in whatever alcohol they stocked
in the bar. Then lit it on fire. Then fucking stomped it out.

The manager
cowered behind the bar when I approached. I tossed a fistful of hundred dollar
bills in his blurry direction.

“Forget what we
looked like for a couple minutes,” I growled. “Then maybe we won’t come back
and burn this shithole to the ground.”

I slammed a hand
on the bar. The crack echoed in my ears and pissed off everything shaken loose
inside me. I made it outside before keeling over in the bushes. Only my stomach
blitzkrieged its way out of my body. I expected the rest of my guts to follow. I
tossed my gimp ass over my bike.

“You okay?” Gold
shouted over the roar of his engine.

“He hit you hard
enough to rattle my teeth,” Scotch said.

Brew buckled his
helmet and scowled at the old man. “At least you didn’t fucking leave them on
your nightstand.”

“Christ, Brew,” Scotch
said.

“Yeah, Christ.” Brew
stared him down. “That motherfucker has my
sister
. You didn’t even try
to get cracked in the head instead of bending over and letting them take her—”

Scotch pointed a
steady finger in Brew’s face. “That motherfucker has my
goddaughter
.”

“Let’s go.” I
clenched my teeth to keep them from rattling around in my skull. The helmet
tightened over my head. If nothing else, it would keep the blood from pouring
out of my ears. “We get back to Pixie, round up our guys, and we’ll go collect
what’s ours.”

Brew’s eyes
narrowed. “We collect what’s fucking
mine
.”

The rage
poisoning my blood, razoring my teeth, and pummeling my fists blinded me to all
but the territorial urgency in Brew’s voice.

He wanted his sister.

But she wasn’t
his anymore.

She was mine.

Mine to protect.
Mine to manipulate. Mine to let sing in some shitty bar while enemies she
didn’t know plotted to grab her from the spotlight.

She was my
opportunity to rid the filth from my club.

And Exorcist
grabbed her first.

If she was that
valuable to me, I had no fucking idea what he planned for her.

Concussions
didn’t bleed. They didn’t swell, didn’t protrude any bones, and didn’t tattoo
someone’s exposed flesh with cinders from the road. It was a bullshit injury,
and I ignored it. My bike peeled out from the parking lot before the
psychedelic red and blue flashing of three cruisers tucked into the spaces out
front of the bar. I pointed to Gold.

“Check out their
district. Find where they took her.”

Gold saluted and
burst out the opposite direction, lane-splitting the closing distance between a
police car and a confused minivan. I led Brew, Scotch, and the two prospects
away from Exorcist’s territory and back to Pixie. Either the nausea, the frenzy,
or the absolute spine-twisting terror coated my tongue with bile.

A half-hour
passed before we made it to Pixie and into the safety of the warehouse. I knew
enough things Ex would do to a woman in half an hour. Killing her was too
merciful, but that fucking lunatic didn’t understand the concept of mercy anyway.
Ex knew war. He knew what kidnapping the daughter of one of Anathema’s most
respected men and the sister of two standing officers would mean for the
streets of the valley.

Blood.

Bullet casings.

Dead little
sisters.

I burst through
the doors and tossed my phone to Scotch.

“Every-
fucking
-one.”
I busted the chapel’s door open with a kick. “I want every single man we got. Tell
them to bring weapons and to kiss their families goodbye.”

Scotch was already
dialing. Brew shoved past him and ripped open a false electrical box. A crate
lid slammed against the wall. He grabbed the first AK to brush his hand. The
clip snapped into the gun with a bite of hatred. Brew’s sneer darkened with as
much agony as what burst through my head. Except he wasn’t cracked with the
butt of Priest’s gun.

Ex took his
sister, and I had only one question that roared louder than the ringing pain in
my ears.

“Where the
fuck
is Keep?”

The vein in
Brew’s head throbbed. “I have no goddamned idea.”

“Jesus Christ.”

Brew checked his
phone. He dialed, but the call went right to Keep’s voicemail. His profanity
echoed. He threw the phone onto the table.

“He’s going to
lose his fucking mind,” Brew said.

Losing his mind
and his sister were the least of his worries. I wasn’t about to damn Keep, but
the mound of fucking evidence stacking against him was more than enough to
justify tossing him in a windowless room and beating the truth from his junkie
body.

Extra money. Drugs.
Arguing with Brew about Rose’s safety. Somehow Ex knew everything about Anathema
from beyond the bridges. I knew it was one of the Darnells, but I
underestimated how fucking ruthless they were.

That was my own
mistake. Despite Keep’s cheer and Brew’s intelligence, they were still Blade Darnell’s
sons. If they were even half the man of that cruel son of a bitch, I couldn’t
trust either of them.

The thought was
enough to make me sick. One of them sacrificed their sister, and no girl with
those baby-bunny eyes and sweetheart smile would survive surrounded by the
ranks of depravity Ex attracted. Rape was the least of their crimes.

If they even
considered it a crime.

I fucking did.

The pain from
the concussion dulled. It yielded to the consuming vengeance that burned every
last shred of pity, remorse, or loyalty that once existed for my former
brothers.

They already
cracked her guitar. If they so much as tangled a single fucking curl on her
head I wouldn’t find peace until I flayed every one of Exorcist’s men alive.

And his heart
would only stop beating once I squeezed it in my palm.

Scotch shouted
from the front doors. Brew’s frustration slammed a fist in the wall instead of
his brother’s head. Lyn called for help from the entry, and Scotch and Brew
grabbed Keep’s limp arms and dragged him inside.

“For Christ’s
sake, prop him up.” Lyn edged both men out of the way and sat Keep in a chair. She
knelt before him, snapping her fingers. Keep laughed, but his eyes didn’t focus.
He lost his shirt somewhere. Lyn slapped his cheek and Keep flinched a few
seconds later.

She leaned back
on her heels. Keep stared down her corset. He reached for the pale, pushed-up
swell of her tits. She slapped him again. Harder.

“Where was he?”
Brew asked.

“Our VIP room
doing God knows what. Shannon found him passed out. Just lucky he didn’t
swallow his fucking tongue.” Lyn brushed the dirt off the leather clinging to
her thighs. She frowned as she glanced around. “Oh, hell. What happened?”