Eden's Joker (Devil’s Nightmare MC Next Generation, Book 7)

Chapter 37

The dark seas that promised escape and peace didn’t hold me long. I wake up from being jostled about, my head banging against something leathery and hard, making my headache worse. Something is also sticking into my stomach, something hard as bone. Someone is breathing hard around me. Wheezing. Several someones. And the only light I see are the yellow beams of flashlights illuminating the harsh desert ground and prickly shrubs that grow there.

My mind clears and I realize I’m being carried. Slung over a shoulder like I’m a piece of meat. By the men who stopped me from escaping. Carried who knows where. I doubt it’s back to the small library in the house. I doubt it’s anywhere I want to go.

I twist and push off the guy carrying me. He wasn’t expecting it, and he wasn’t holding me very tightly because I managed to break free. Only to land on another sharp rock. But at least this one only hits my thigh and not my head again.

“You slimy bitch,” the guy who was carrying me yells.

The flashlight is now pointing straight into my eyes, searing my brain, intensifying my headache. And making it impossible to know where I am.

“I should kill you right here,” he says as he comes towards me. “And I think I will.”

“Fuck, Brick, don’t be crazy,” another guy says. “We need her alive.”

“Shut up, you coward,” Brick says. “What we need is to get what was promised. And I’m gonna start taking my cut right now. I need some rest anyway.”

He pulls on the end of his belt and unbuckles it. My heart is racing a million miles a second and every beat is like a hammer strike to the head.

I scramble back on the desert ground, my hand getting cut up by the rocks and thorny shrubs. But I hardly feel any of that. I’m sure it’ll be a lot worse once this guy reaches me. I have to get away. But I can’t.

The other two guys seem to like where this is going, since they’re all coming towards me. I can’t even stand up, can barely crawl. I’m actually wishing to find a rattlesnake with my hands, so I could fling it at them. But snakes are smart. They hide from people.

Brick reaches me, his pants are undone, his cock in his hand.

“Don’t come any closer,” I warn him, my nails bending and snapping as I dig around for a rock I can use as a weapon. None of them are coming loose. “I’ll fight you.”

That makes them laugh.

“I’ll like that,” Brick assures me.

He’s towering over me now. The shadows cast by the flashlight he’s still pointing at me are twisting his face into a grotesque mask and I’m sure he’s telling me the truth. He will like this. Very much.

“But you won’t like it from me, Brick,” Tyler says out of the darkness, using that same commanding voice he chased them away with the first time. “Step away from her, Brick.”

It’s like the darkness itself is speaking in his voice. I’m sure I’m just imagining it. The way The Little Match Girl imagined seeing her grandmother in the flames of her match as she slowly died in the cold. Death isn’t even something I can look forward to. Not until after a lot of pain first.

“Why don’t you make me?” Brick says, flashing his light all around.

The light’s blissfully no longer in my eyes. And even more blissfully, it shows me Tyler and his friend Scorpio. I wasn’t just imagining it. I’m saved.

“We’ve waited long enough, Joker,” one of the other guys says. “And now you’ve once again led a bunch of us into death and for what? When we have her right here? For what?”

“I won’t explain myself to you,” Joker says. “Not here. She’s mine. You will back off.”

“She’s all of ours,” Brick protests.

Tyler’s eyes find mine. “No, she’s just mine.”

It’s like a ray of sunshine pierced the darkness as he said that, giving me the surge of energy I needed to stand up.

I don’t get to use it though. Because Brick shoves his cock back into his pants and pulls out his gun, pointing it at my temple.

“She’s our revenge,” he says. “And I’m gonna take it now.”

I feel the gun move as he starts to squeeze the trigger.

But he never completes the action. Tyler rushes him—I’ve never seen anyone move that fast—and knocks him and the gun away from me.

They fight on the ground, the other two join in, Scorpio does too. And for a while all I hear are grunts and fists hitting flesh. They’ve rolled out of the light and into the darkness.

I reach one of the discarded flashlights just as a shot rings out behind me.

The fighting has stopped. There’s just heavy breathing behind me now. And the groans of someone who can no longer breathe right.

I’m afraid to turn and shine the light on the scene. Afraid I’ll see Tyler mortally wounded. But I do it.

And actually laugh in relief when I see it’s Brick that’s clutching a bloody arm across his stomach and Joker holding a gun to his head.

“Did you get that shit out of your system now, Brick?” he asks.

“I need a fucking doctor, Joker,” Brick whines.

His two friends are looking on like they’d rather be anywhere but here. Scorpio has his gun pointed at them.

“And you’ll get one,” Joker says. “But first we gotta walk back.”

Brick groans and breathes through his teeth, but manages to stand on his own.

“How am I gonna walk all the way back?” he complains.

“Trip, Sonny, help him,” Tyler commands the other two. “And don’t try anything funny. Else there’ll be no need to carry any of you anywhere. You’ll all just rot right here.”

They seem to believe him and don’t say anything, just obediently pick up their buddy, who has also stopped complaining. Who wouldn’t believe his threats when he delivers them in that darkness-laced voice? His eyes seem to be full of that same darkness as he lets them start walking, followed by Scorpio.

Then he finally comes to me. There’s concern in his eyes as he examines the bump or cut or whatever is there on my forehead that’s causing flashes of light in addition to the hammer bangs of pain in my head now.

“Can you walk?” he asks. Gently.

“I’ll try,” I say, but then wobble terribly as I take a step.

He wraps his arm around my waist and lets me lean on him.

“I told you not to leave the house,” he says.

“I guess I’m no good at being a prisoner,” I say.

I’m not about to apologize for running, even though I am kind of sorry I did.

“No, you’re really not,” he says as we start walking. “Why can’t you just be a good little captive?”

“You wouldn’t like me like that,” I say and lean on him more. Moving one foot in front of the other is taking most of my concentration and my strength. But somehow, as I lean on him, I feel him giving me some of his.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t,” he says after a very long pause.

His voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away. And like he’s not actually talking to me. So I don’t say anything, just lean on him a little more. I can see his home in the distance. And I can’t wait to be inside it. Even if it is my prison.