Chapter 1
1
Ten Years Later
Rogue
I spent a whole decade trying to find this man. And here he is, trying to make vegetables grow on his sorry little patch of arid desert soil. Ghost isn’t an old man yet, but he sure looks like one. He’s only fifty-five years old but all dried up by the desert heat and bent almost double. Skin and bones, with a gaunt, sunken face that finally makes him look like the monster he is. But I’d still recognize his face anywhere. Because, even after a decade, I can still see it every time I close my eyes.
We arrived hours ago. The sun is a ball of orange with jagged edges setting behind our backs.
I only brought Blade, Alice and Creed with me on this job. The only three that understand my need to do this. The only three that have been with me since the beginning. There’s some justice in what we’re about to do, because the bent and broken man down there in his little vegetable patch ruined a lot of lives in his hay day. Mine included, when he ended Angel’s. But mostly, we’re driven by finally getting revenge for our dead lover and friend.
My club, Rogue Angels MC, is not in the killing for revenge business. Sure, we’re in the Wanted Dead or Alive fulfillment business, but mostly we err on the side of alive . It keeps us honest, keeps our moral compass pointing due north, keeps us from becoming soulless. Because with the sheer number of grievances the members share between us, we’d never stop killing in vengeance if we went down that path.
But this grievance is older than the MC.
This grievance is personal.
From a time when it was just Angel and me, Alice, Creed, Blade and Zane trying to right some of the wrongs of this world. There was no MC yet. Just a group of old friends riding bikes. Isabella was still with us then. She survived Ghost, but not well. And Blade hasn’t smiled much since. None of us have. Maybe after we do this, we will. Probably not.
Zane was already gone by the time Ghost killed Angel. But he’d been by my side as I raced to save her, and he’d be here now, if he could. I know that.
Alice and Creed didn’t come with us when Blade and I rode to save Angel. I’ve forgiven them. But they never forgave themselves.
So much grief. So much pain. So much regret. All thanks to the man down in that vegetable patch, whose skin hangs off his bones like clothes he’d outgrown. He’s outgrown his life.
Ten years ago, he was a serial killer, who had just graduated from murdering prostitutes to preying on Catholic school girls before anyone but us knew he existed. We’d suspected he was finding his victims around our old high school, the Sacred Heart Academy. But we weren’t sure until he snatched our friend, Blade’s girlfriend Isabella.
We wanted to save her so we went after him. But he knew we were coming. He followed Angel into an abandoned movie theatre where she thought he was hiding. She never made it out of that theatre. I found her in a pool of her own blood on the stage, her beautiful face gone. Her life gone.
The cops believed us after that.
But Ghost was gone by then. He slinked into the shadows and never resurfaced again. Until Devil’s Nightmare MC did the impossible and found him in the middle of this desert. I just wish we had found him sooner, because he looks like he’s on his way out naturally.
The Santa Ana winds are picking up. This is where they originate from. And they’re telling me it’s time to go. Time to lay Angel to rest. Finally.
The two gold crucifixes, mine and Angel’s, that I always wear around my neck have been singing my skin all day even though they’re cool to the touch. That’s how I know we’re on the right path here.
“He’s alone, Rogue. No one’s anywhere near,” Blade says softly in his deep bass voice as the last of the sun’s light fades to blue. “Let’s go down and say hello.”
“Let’s,” I say and check that all my knives are where I put them before we came out here—one on my belt, one up my sleeve and another in my right boot. The one on my belt belonged to Angel. It has the Bleeding Heart carved into the handle. And it’s the one I will kill Ghost with.
Twilight has fallen, the sky painted in dark shades of indigo and orange as we walk across the sand to the small wooden shack Ghost calls home. It will burn well. He’s long since gone inside. The day is ending. His life is ending. A decade of regret, sorrow and pain is finally ending.
We spread out as we approach his home. Alice, Creed and Blade will make sure he doesn’t escape through any of the hut’s three small windows. I will walk in through the front door.
Yellow desert sand is swirling around us in the gusting wind, glowing in the day’s last light as we walk. I smell gasoline that’s wafting from the can Blade is carrying. But mostly I smell the fresh core of the Santa Ana wind. It whispers to me as it did on the day I buried Angel. Quieter and calmer now. Because I am about to give her the revenge I vowed I would one day give her.
The gate in the bent and broken fence surrounding the hut creaks as I slide it open.
And then there he is, standing in the doorway, only darkness behind him. And in his eyes as he grins at me, revealing a mouth full of missing teeth.
“You,” he says and chuckles. “I wondered when you’d come. You took your sweet time.”
“But I’m here now,” I tell him.
There’s always this strange cold that hangs around the most depraved killers and it’s hanging thick around Ghost. The desert heat rising from the ground can’t touch it. But fire and blood can.
“Well, you’ve come to kill an old, infirm man,” he says and steps outside, spreading his arms wide. “Hope it was worth the wait.”
“Not gonna lie,” I say and grin at him as I take out Angel’s knife. “I wish I’d gotten here sooner too. But this will do.”
The smell of gasoline grows stronger as Blade begins dousing the hut with it.
“Go ahead,” he says walking towards me, arms still spread wide. “Get your revenge for that pretty, bright-eyed girl of yours. End my life for hers. You’re not ending much.”
I already came to terms with that watching him all day. Perhaps living this sorry, sad, lonely existence in the desert heat, surrounded by sand and brittle rock, while he hid here, already took care of some of the revenge he’s owed. But I gave up that hope hours ago. He wanted to be here. He likes it here. Alone. Probably spends his days reminiscing on the good old days when he still had the strength to kill innocent young girls.
For years, I fantasized about all the ways I will kill this man when I found him. From gouging out his eyes and cutting off all that I could before sitting back and watching him bleed to death.
But that made sense to the me I used to be. The me who burned for revenge. All that fire has long since turned to sticky, black ash in my chest and in my blood. It has grown cold. Almost as cold as the air around him.
He’s a beast.
His own kind will take care of him better than I ever could.
I’ve long since stopped trying to get answers from killers like him. They have none. What they do only makes sense to them. It will never make sense to anyone else.
We’re done talking.
I stride towards him, stun him with a fist to the nose, hearing his satisfying yelp of pain as the bone crunches under my knuckles.
His knees crunch louder as I break those too.
His screams rent the air then.
Why is it that the most merciless killers are usually the biggest whiniest weaklings?
I’ve stopped asking that question too.
But I’m glad he’s in pain and I’m glad he’s shaking and yelping as I drag him away from the house and through the gate. I lay him against the first sun-scorched boulder I come to. Here he is far enough away that the flames his home is about to go up in won’t reach him.
I changed my plans for his death. Fire is too good for him. Too cleansing.
“She screamed your name in the end, when all hope was lost,” he stammers, blood leaking from his nose and spraying as he speaks. “Did you know that?”
His eyes are still mean and cold. Old age, loneliness and infirmity hadn’t changed that.
“I didn’t hear her then, but I hear her screams almost every night,” I tell him. “I’ll never forgive myself for letting her go after you alone.”
A part of me still wants to cut him up into little pieces and watch them all burn.
But a weight seems to be lifting off my shoulders with each second that passes now that I’m finally taking Angel’s revenge. A weight that’s been driving me into the ground for the last ten years. The wind’s picking it up. The same wind I promised my revenge to all those years ago.
Or maybe it’s Angel, finally able to take it with her to Heaven.
I take her knife in my hand and feel her touch against my palm. Soft, warm and so real it makes my breath catch in my throat.
I feel as though we’re guiding the knife together as I slash open his belly. Not deep enough to kill. Just deep enough to bleed and call closer the beasts that are his kin. The beasts that will come with the night to feed on him.
I take a few steps back.
“What the hell are you doing?” he croaks at me. “Kill me. Get it over with.”
“You have some time yet, before the coyotes come and rip you to shreds,” I tell him. “And once they’re done, you’ll have the eternal fires of hell to warm you.”
“No,” he whines. “Kill me. Kill me like I killed that Angel of yours. I took her beautiful ocean blue eyes, you know. I took them with me. I still have them in the hut.”
I figured he might. He liked to take trophies.
The words are meant to get my blood boiling so I’ll kill him, but they just bounce off me.
Because Angel is with me now, holding my hand, whole and just as beautiful as the day I fell in love with her, her dark golden hair swaying in the hot wind, her beautiful sky-blue eyes sparkling.
She’s with me as I light the hut on fire. Stands with us as we watch it burn. Ghost is shrieking, begging for death, but I hardly hear him.
The house collapses into itself sending a shower of bright orange sparks into the night. Goodbye, the winds seem to be whispering now.
“Goodbye,” I say as I throw the lock of her hair into the fire.
The weight of guilt, regret and pain I’ve been carrying for ten years is gone. And Angel is no longer holding my hand.
I used to think I’d walk into the flames and be with her.
But that’s not what Angel wants. She wants me to keep on doing what I’ve been doing.
Since her death, I’ve devoted my life to making sure psychos like the shrieking mess behind me get their due.
And the job’s not done.