I thought back to mama holding my brother… to the only other baby I’d ever known—Isaiah. I thought of what she did when he cried. Opening my lips, I tried to stop my hands from shaking and sang, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star…” Beatrix’s trembling lip stopped, and she watched me sing, no longer crying. I sang more. The more I sang; I saw Isaiah in my arms.
I felt the flames in my blood heat. But Beatrix would be immune to my flames. She was part of me. The flames wouldn’t hurt her. I sang, I fucking sang and sang until her eyes shut. I immediately stopped, pulse racing. But her breathing didn’t stop. Her chest raised up and down and her breathing didn’t stop. I heard a soft cry from the doorway. Maddie… Maddie was standing in a towel, watching us. Her hand was over her mouth and tears ran down her cheeks. But she was smiling. She was smiling her happy smile. Her eyes were back to being bright.
“She’s still breathing,” I said and stared down at Beatrix. Heat exploded in my chest and ran through my veins. But it wasn’t the old flames. It didn’t feel like those flames. They didn’t hurt me. They made me feel warm. They made me feel good. They had never felt like this before.
Maddie came and sat beside me on the bed. She laid her head on my arm. “You sang,” she whispered. “You sang to our daughter.”
“It made her stop crying.”
“I know,” she said, and a sob slipped from her throat.
“I don’t want to put her down,” I said. I liked her in my arms. She was safe in my arms. No one would get her in my arms.
“Then don’t,” Maddie said. “I am perfectly content to sit here with you both all night.” I nodded and kept watching Beatrix breathe. She looked like Maddie. I held a little Maddie in my arms.
“Maddie…” I said. Maddie wrapped her arm around my arm. “I think I love her.” I felt Maddie’s tears on my skin. But I knew she wasn’t sad. These were her happy tears. I recognized them now. “I think I love her,” I said again, holding her closer to my chest.
Maddie kissed my arm, and gently laid her hand on Beatrix’s stomach. “I think you do too, baby,” she whispered, and I knew she was happy about it. “I think you do too.”
Chapter Fifteen
Ash
“Ash, you fuck that slut last night?” I laughed at Bull’s question. I finished changing the oil on the Harley I was working on.
“None of your fucking business.” I winked at Bull.
“Shit, kid,” Tank said opposite me, lifting his head above the Chopper’s saddle he was refitting. “Just watch out for STDs yeah. That whore looked riddled with shit and the last thing you want is your dick falling off in the shower because you were too liquored up to wrap up.”
I laughed again and dried the oil off my hands with the rag I kept beside me. I turned, and my fucking fake smile slipped from my face. My fucking skin itched and I needed a hit. I needed a fucking hit so bad I couldn’t fucking focus.
“Ash!” Zane came through the garage doors. Get your shit together. I turned to Zane and walked toward him, grabbing a can of soda from the fridge. I knocked it back, just trying to stop my head from wandering, from everyone knowing something was wrong. Zane pulled out a chair and sat down. “The cabin’s almost done. AK reckons we’ll be in it by the weekend.”
I nodded. Good. I needed to get out of Flame and Maddie’s place. Beatrix was there now. I couldn’t be bringing my shit into the house around her. I was fucked up. I wasn’t gonna endanger my niece. I’d be better in the cabin with Beau and Zane. “Your aunt good with you moving out?” I asked Zane, hoping I sounded normal.
“She cried, but said it was time.” Zane shrugged, looking just like AK. “Graduated High School early, finally living on my own. Just gotta get patched in, and life will be fucking sweet.”
“Ash! You’re off the clock. Get the fuck outta here!” Tank bellowed across the garage. “And Zane, if you’re gonna keep coming around here this much, I’m gonna put your lazy ass to work.”
“Do it,” he said. “I’ve been working on bikes for years. I know my shit.” It was true. He knew more about bikes than me, but AK made him graduate before letting him do it as a profession. Now that was done, he could do what the fuck he wanted. But I didn’t want my best friend working here. I saw him watching me sometimes, in suspicion. Zane knew me too well. He would know soon enough if I didn’t get my fucking twitching sorted. If I didn’t find something to remove the fucked up thoughts from my screwed-up mind.
Tossing my cut on over my shirt, I threw my hand up in a wave and left the garage. Zane followed. “Why you wanting out of AK’s so bad?” I asked my best friend.
Zane eyed me weird. That meant one fucking thing. Saffie. My heart started fucking pounding, preparing myself for what he’d say. I saw his eyes drop and I fucking knew. “She’s got that fucking symbol brand, doesn’t she?”
Zane finally fucking met my eyes. He nodded. My body fucking set alight. For a moment I believed I knew what Flame meant, when he talked of flames in his blood. I was his brother, the fucking snakes bit me too. I was a Cade. If Flame had fire in his blood, then so the fuck did I.
“She’s having real fucked up nightmares lately, screaming and needing to be restrained by Phebe again.” Rage, that’s what I felt. Rage so strong it knocked the fucking wind straight out of my lungs. I wanted to go to her, fucking sit outside her cabin so I knew she’d be safe. Then I thought of all the fucking sluts that I’d been with lately. The sluts whose faces all blurred into hers, all fucking blondes. All when I was fucked off my face on coke and Jack. I was no good for Saffie. I wasn’t even worthy to be around her.
“Who are these cunts?” I snapped at Zane, and then fucking punched the wooden fence of the garage beside my bike. I punched a hole straight through the panel. My knuckles were bleeding when I pulled back my hand. I needed a hit. I needed a hit so fucking bad, but I was out. My skin jumped. I just needed to get the fuck away from Zane, from the garage, and get my shit together. “I’m out,” I said, and jumped on my bike.
“I gotta get back to the clubhouse. You coming by later?” Zane asked. I nodded and waited until Zane had ridden the fuck off before I pulled out onto the road. I gunned it down the road, away from the compound… away from Saffie, who I wanted to grab and run the fuck away with, so I could keep her safe. I gritted my teeth against the wind, imagining her in that motherfucking cage, symbol on her hip, and mouth sewn shut. What the fuck had actually happened to her? What the fuck had they done to her in that cult, then the cartel, then motherfucking Klan… and now this group of pricks we couldn’t find out shit about?
I pulled harder on the accelerator until my handlebars shook. Trees rushed past in a blur. I let my mind clear itself of the men I’d killed, of Slash’s face that haunted my motherfucking life, and Saffie tied up in a cage, her eyes dead as some old fucker raped her, and her mouth sewn up so she couldn’t scream.
I was going so fast that the roar I released was stolen by the wind.
It took me ten minutes less to reach the secluded ranch than it normally did. As soon as I parked my bike in the scrap yard, I jumped off the saddle and hammered on the door. Chris answered and immediately raised his eyebrows.
“You’re here sooner than I thought.” He wasn’t talking about minutes or hours; he was talking fucking days. I pushed past him. I was a getting to be fucking unit. I lifted weights every fucking day. Chris was short and skinny. He never got in my way, no matter how much younger I was than him. “Gotta say, when Rudge sent you my way, I thought it’d be once in a fucking blue moon you came by, like that English fucker. You know, for a bit of coke to unwind. Not this never-ending tap. My fucking bank account’s starting to like you, mohawk.” I walked into his shit tip of a kitchen. He lived in a fucking crack den, disguised as a scrap yard, in the middle of nowhere.
Turning, I closed my eyes. “I need something stronger. The shit you’ve been giving me isn’t lasting long enough. It’s too fucking weak.” I snapped my eyes open and narr
owed them on Chris. I stepped toward him. He shuffled back. I could practically smell the fear on him. “You ain’t fucking me over, right? I don’t fucking appreciate you fucking me around with half strength shit.”
“Mohawk,” he said, using the only name he’d ever been given for me. “I haven’t. I swear. You think I’d fuck with any of you Hangmen?”
“Then what the fuck is it? Because they’re back. The fucking dead are back! Slash is back in my room with a fuck off big bullet wound in his head, every night, fucking haunting me every night! The coke took him and the others away. But now he’s back. He’s back all the fucking time, and your coke ain’t doing shit!” I blinked and saw I had Chris up against the wall, his collar in my hands. I let him go and stepped back. “Give me something that’ll take all this shit away.” I thought of all the sluts I’d fucked. And every time I did, all the fucked up images of my poppa and his friends jumped into my head. Memories I needed to forget before they fucking sent me insane!
“Mohawk, calm the fuck down,” Chris said. Rudge hadn’t given him my real name. Chris didn’t know fuck all about me. “Night terrors? That what you want gone?” Night terrors? I didn’t know what the fuck they were. I wasn’t a shrink. I just knew I wanted everything that was fucked up and swirling twenty-four-seven in my head to go. I just wanted my head to be calm. I was sick and tired of feeling shit. I wanted to be numb. Fucking blissfully numb.
Chris walked to his stash cupboard and brought out some packets. He came back over. “I got what you need. The coke ain’t doing fuck all for you anymore. You need something stronger. Lucky for you, I got strong shit.”
Chris pulled at my arm and rolled up the sleeve of my shirt. I yanked my arm back. “Not my fucking arm,” I hissed, knowing what he was about to do, though not caring one bit that it had come to this. Chris nodded. He reached forward and started unbuckling the belt to my jeans. My hand automatically choked his throat in fucking seconds. “You better give me a real good reason why I shouldn’t snap your motherfucking neck in two.”
Chris clawed at my hand. I slackened it enough so he could speak. “Your groin,” he choked out, his voice emerging as a whisper through his narrow windpipe. “If you don’t want track marks on your arm where people can see, you can inject it in your groin.”
I narrowed my eyes on the fucker but let go of his neck and started undoing my belt. I pulled my gun out of my cut and aimed it at his head. “Just in case this is all a twisted plan to suck my dick or some shit.” Chris didn’t move. I pulled down my jeans to my thighs and held out my hand. He gave me an elastic tourniquet.
“Wrap it around your thigh.” I did as he said. “You have to be real careful not to hit the artery.” My jaw clenched as Chris pointed to where the vein was. I looked down and saw the blue trace under my skin. I put the long tourniquet in my mouth and held out my hand. Chris burned the drug in the foil until it was liquid. He put it in the needle and passed it to me. I paused, glaring at the needle. “You saw me take it from the packet. It’s clean.”
“I find out it isn’t…” I warned.
“It is. I swear.” I lined up the needle with my vein. “Inject it in the direction of your heart.” I did as he said and fucking waited. I withdrew the needle from my groin and pulled up my jeans. I waited for something to happen. Chris stared at me, pure fucking fear in his eyes. And then I started to feel it. Like lava thickening in my veins, I started to feel it. And it fucking eradicated everything in its path. Inch by inch of flesh became covered in the lava and it destroyed the memory of my mama hanging in the tree, Poppa crawling into the cellar with me, toys in his fucking hands.
I closed my eyes as all of West Virginia was wiped from my mind. Next it came for Slash. It took him away, the dead I’d killed faded too. But I held on to Saffie. I fucking fought against the lava to hold onto Saffie. To try and persuade the lava to take the memory of the sluts and leave her, I wanted her face to stay… but as soon as I saw her in the cage, I let down the fight and it eventually took everything. It took everything away, consumed the pain and left me with nothing. Left me with calmness, and the sweet fucking feeling of perfect nothingness.
I opened my eyes and looked at Chris. “That,” I said and pointed at him. “That’s what I fucking need.” I tapped my head that was filled with nothing but emptiness. “This is what I need.”
He smiled and moved to his stash. I watched him like he was moving in slow motion. I felt like I wanted to sleep. I hadn’t slept in so fucking long. Chris gave me a brown bag. I reached into my cut and pulled out cash. I shoved it in his hands. “Don’t tell anyone about this. Don’t tell Rudge. If you do, I’ll fucking cut out your tongue.”
“I won’t,” he swore, and I turned for the door.
“I’ll be back,” I said and walked outside. As soon as the sun hit my face, I stopped. Tipping my head back, I smiled. My face felt strange as I smiled. I had the fucking sun on my face it felt perfect.
I climbed on my bike and rode home. I drove slowly, breathing in the wind as it washed over my face. I rode and rode until the day turned to night. The moon was out, bats flying in the sky above me. When I reached the compound, I drove straight to the cabins. No one was out in the clearing. I got off my bike and walked to the back of Flame and Maddie’s cabin. I sat on the chair that looked out onto the woods. I concentrated on the trees. I waited for them to come. I waited for the faces of the men I’d killed, to come and haunt me. I waited for Slash to come, and blame me for his death, for not taking the bullet I was meant to… but they never came. The fuckers never came.
Tipping my head back, I lit a smoke and closed my eyes. I leaned my head against the cabin wall and exhaled. I would take this shit until the night terrors, as Chris called them, went away for good. No one would have to fucking know. I’d take it until everything was fucking better, until I didn’t need it anymore.
I laughed, thinking how fucking tragic my life had become. How, in reality, shit it had always been. What the fuck had I done to deserve it all? I opened my eyes and stared at the bright mass of stars above me. Out here at the compound, the stars looked more like a blanket in the sky, there were that many. I wondered if there was a God. And if there was, then why the fuck was he punishing me. Always punishing me. How fucking far down did he want to push me? How much more could I take before I just fucking broke, before there was nothing left of me to survive? What was the fucking point of life if it was like this? What was the motherfucking point?
The ash from my smoke fell onto my hand and burned my skin. I tossed the butt to the ground. As I lifted my head, my heart fucking stopped seeing who was sitting in front of me. Sapphira… my fucking Saffie…
No. She wasn’t mine. She would never be fucking mine. I wouldn’t ever sink her down into the cesspit where I lived. Christ, she was perfect. I wasn’t sure there was another bitch on the damn planet that looked like her, that had my fucking lungs seizing like she did. Her cheeks burst with redness. Even in my numb state, the effect of that had my heart fucking ripping in two. She bent her legs, her long pink dress covering them as she balanced her feet on the edge of her chair.
“Saff,” I rasped, and lit up another smoke. Her eyes watched me, studied my every fucking move with those fucking big brown eyes. Her blond hair was a curtain around her small body. Seeing her was like the sun coming out. I hadn’t laid eyes on her in months. She’d remained hidden away in the cabin. Ever since that night when I came out of the woods… the night I’d fucked my first slut. I remembered her face, her fucking betrayed eyes, as she quickly put two and two together, and realized what I’d done. But then the drugs took it away as quickly as it came to my mind. “You doing good?” I asked her, when she stayed quiet.
Saffie’s skin was smooth and perfect. I wondered where the symbol brand was. My blood spiked in temperature when I thought of it, but then the thought quickly got washed away by the numbness. Nothing had ever felt better. Saffie’s head tipped to the side as she studied me. I s
mirked at the cute as fuck look on her face and her lips as they pouted. Fuck. There wasn’t anyone like her.
I remembered Flame calling Maddie his angel in the woods. Saffie was mine. I was a shade lost in Hades, no coins on my eyes, drowning in the river Styx. She was the soul that watched over me. The fucking angel who watched over me, the demon selling his soul, bartering with the devil for his one-way ticket to hell.
“You look troubled,” she said finally. Her voice was like the ringing of a bell—a church bell, calling its people to worship. I smiled at Saffie but she didn’t smile back.
“I’m good.” Saffie lifted her head.
Her dark eyes narrowed. “I can see through your deception,” she said. My jaw ticked. I needed people to believe I was okay. I didn’t want them to know of all the fucked up things going in my head.
“Yeah?” I said. “How? You never come out of your fucking house.” My words tasted like acid as I launched them from my mouth. Saffie’s eyes widened. It was a fucking bullet to the heart when I saw her head flinch at my cheap shot. Yet she refocused and straightened her shoulders.
“I see you,” was all she said. Three simple words that may as well have been a battering ram to the fortified door the drugs had built around my heart. In one easy hit, she had obliterated the wood and smashed through.
“You see nothing,” I hissed. But even as I focused on her protected gaze, I could see that she could. Like she was holding a giant magnifying glass into my fucking blackened soul. Saffie didn’t move a muscle as my words washed over her. But her gaze never moved from my chest, lodged into my heart… I see you… I see you…
I didn’t want her to see me. I didn’t want her, especially her, to see the fucking mess I’d become.