The Devil’s Viking (The Road Devils MC #3)

Chapter Twenty

Utah

The Garden of Divine Light

The next day

Michael pulled up to the front gate of the Garden, nodded at Guardians Adam and Nathaniel. They opened the gate, then came out to meet him.

OK, here we go… show time. Look devastated .

“Guardian Michael,” Nathaniel said, poking his head in the window. “Welcome home. You’ve been very much missed.”

“Thank you.” Michael put on a sombre voice, hoping hard that they’d ask him the most important question so he could get this ball rolling. Sure enough:

“Where’s Right-Guardian Zachariah?” Adam inquired. “Is he in the back with Servant Iris?”

Michael flashed back to where he left Right-Guardian Zachariah, somewhere in the Rockies back in Colorado. It had been nothing but a pleasure to shoot him in his mouth, blowing out those fucking teeth that he sucked on incessantly. Shoving him off a precipice into the ravine below had been equally wonderful: the body had made a wetly satisfying sound when it hit the stone.

Almost as thrilling had been coming back to the van and informing that harlot Iris that she had killed Right-Guardian Zachariah when she’d tried to escape. Sadly, his body couldn’t be brought back to Gideon because she’d shot him into a mountain ravine, never to be retrieved or seen again, or buried with honour at the Garden. The look on her bruised face had been exquisite: dumb shock followed by dawning understanding, then panic. Just beautiful.

“Right-Guardian Zachariah is –” Michael gulped, pretending to dash tears from his eyes. “He’s dead.”

“What?” Nathaniel gasped. “How? What happened?”

“He didn’t lock the van door when he put that bitch back there,” Michael said, loving blaming Zachariah for the whole mess. “She tried to escape out in the mountains and we chased her. She hid behind a tree, surprised the Right-Guardian, got his gun, and shot him. He fell over a cliff… he’s gone. He’s just –” He stifled a sob. “He’s just gone .”

So, so tragic .

“I tackled her and knocked her out, got her back in the van,” Michael continued. “She’s back there – but she’s alone. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t bring the Right-Guardian home to the Garden.”

“Oh, no,” Adam said in dismay. “What will we do without him?”

“Right-Guardian Zachariah was our light,” Nathaniel agreed. “How will we walk through the darkness?"

“Master Gideon will show us the way,” Michael lectured him piously. “He is our leader and our guide, so as long as we have him, we will be safe. We will have purpose, we will have a light to follow. We will do his will, and we will thrive.”

“Well said, Guardian Michael.”

At the Master’s voice, the men all whirled around, then snapped to attention.

“Such devotion and faith in your Master is commendable,” Master Gideon told them. “It’s heartening to see that Guardian Michael never wavers in his belief.”

Michael lowered his head and bowed but inside, he was dancing a jig. Not only had he eliminated his biggest foe, but he’d also made Guardians Adam and Nathaniel look petty and lacking in faith. This was indeed a marvellous day.

“Guardian Michael,” the Master said now. “Bring Iris down to the basement.”

“Yes, Master.”

He started to walk to the back of the van, delighted at how everything was going. The best part of all this was that even if that whore insisted that he’d been the one to kill Zachariah, nobody would believe her. Who would take the word of a runaway servant over a solemn, dedicated disciple?

Suddenly Master Gideon turned and said, “Guardian Michael?”

“Yes, Master?”

“Where are the Right-Guardian golden wings? Did Zachariah have them on when he fell?”

“No, Master. Neither of us were wearing our uniform in Colorado, so his wings are in his suitcase.”

“Excellent. Make sure that you put them on before coming down the basement, will you?”

Michael’s breath stopped. “I – yes – yes, Master. Thank you, Master.”

“You are welcome… Right-Guardian Michael.”

**

Elle came to slowly. The first thing she felt was sickening pain in her head; the second was extreme cold. Even as those things really sank in, something else swam to the top of her consciousness:

Damp. Rotten. Mould.

That smell… I know that smell .

Oh, no. Oh, please no .

But it was no good: before she’d even opened her eyes, she recognized the freezing cement floor under her naked body, the steady drip drip of the pipes over her head, the piercing cold air.

She was back in the basement.

She cracked open her eyes, then immediately wished that she hadn’t, because there in front of her – naked and in a cage – was Guardian Jonah. Blood ran from the gash across his throat, down his chin and chest, and onto the floor in front of him in a red-black puddle. There was no way to tell how long he’d been dead, but the fact that he was dead was indisputable.

Elle stared at him for a few seconds, realized that she didn’t care that this man was dead, didn’t care about it in the slightest. Jonah had been an abusive piece of shit, a bully and a coward, and if this was how he’d reached the end of his life, she was OK with it.

It occurred to her that it was most probably going to be how she reached the end of her life too – but she wasn’t OK with that. Not in the slightest. Regrets began to wash over her, along with the fervent and hopeless wish that she’d never snuck out of Satan’s Bar alone. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have walked straight into the trap set by those assholes Michael and Zachariah?

Zachariah … something about him was tugging at the corners of her mind, and she blinked hard, trying to clear her thoughts. She frowned. What was it about him? Something –

“Well, good evening, Servant Iris.”

She gasped and sat up, her head shrieking in protest at the sudden movement. There was Guardian Michael, but something was different about him. He looked even more smug and pompous than usual, if that was possible, and her stomach turned over at his expression. He looked like he’d won something, something big like the lottery… but money meant nothing here at the Garden, not to anyone except Gideon. So why was he so triumphant?

He stepped forward into the light cast by the one exposed bulb in the room, and she saw the flash of gold on his chest, above his heart. That was when it came roaring back to her all at once, on a wave of horror and terror: Zachariah was dead, dead at Michael’s hand… and if the angel wings were any indication of the story that Gideon had heard, Michael had successfully pinned the murder on her. He’d said that he would, and sure enough, when it came to his own advancement and her destruction, he was a man of his fucking word.

“Yeeees,” he crooned. “That’s right. I’m Right-Guardian now, because I brought you back to Master. You should know, Iris, that he’s very, very angry at you. I can imagine that your next few days will be really awful, but you deserve it, don’t you?”

“ Fuck you,” she rasped, her throat sore and dry. “Fuck you and your cheap little bullshit pin. You’re pathetic… a grown man kissing Gideon’s ass just because you’re too weak to stand up for yourself and make your own way in life. You aren’t even a man. You’re a piece of shit.”

“I would be very careful how you speak to your Right-Guardian, Servant Iris,” he snarled. “You seem to have developed quite an attitude in your time away, quite a filthy little whore mouth, probably from sucking too much biker cock. I suggest you mind your manners, because you won’t like what I can do to you, at least until Master Gideon arrives. Then the fun will really begin.”

“Do your worst, dickface,” she snapped, struggling to her feet. She stood straight, unapologetic and unashamed of her nudity, lifted her chin to face him head-on. “Go on. You know that you want to. You’re thrilled to be able to beat on a defenceless woman, like the bully that you are. Come and give it your best shot, you prick.”

Enraged now, he stepped forward – and then suddenly he fell in a heap on the floor.

Elle blinked at his immobile body, at the blood that had appeared behind his ear, then looked up at the gorgeous blonde woman standing there; she’d hit Michael from behind with a two-by-four and she looked pretty damn pleased about it.

“What the hell?” Elle stammered. “You’re the cop – but you – you work with Gideon –”

“I quit.” The woman gave her a quick grin, threw her a men’s work shirt. “Put that on. Can you walk?”

“Yes.” She thrust her arms into the shirt sleeves and with icy fingers, started doing up the blasted buttons. “I can also hit a few assholes over the head, if required.”

“Good. I’m Briley, by the way.”

“Elle.”

Briley shot her a surprised look, then smiled. “That’s much better than Iris, huh?”

“You know it.” She finished buttoning the shirt, wished hard for some shoes, or at least socks; her feet were like blocks of ice. “So do you have a plan?”

“Yeah. This was part one of three.”

“What’s part two?”

“Do you know a woman with brown hair?” Briley asked. “Green eyes, like really light green?”

“Erm.” Elle stared at her, surprised at the bizarre conversational detour. “You mean Violet?”

“I don’t know. How many brunettes with green eyes are here as servants?”

“Uhhhh. Just one. Violet.”

“So yes, then. Violet. Part two is we go find her.”

“We – what? Why?”

“Because,” Briley announced, turning to the stairs. “I think she wants to leave too.”

“How do you know –” Elle began, hurrying after Briley. “Hey –”

“Listen. There’s no time to explain, OK?” She bent over and pulled a gun from an ankle-strap holder thing. “You need to trust me and follow me. Once we’re out of this hellhole, there will be time to explain. Alright? Can we just save question time for when we’re safe?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course you’re right.”

“OK, good. So let’s go.”

Up the stairs they tiptoed, Elle watching Briley’s feet and trying hard to understand just what the hell was going on here. How had this woman managed to get to the basement unnoticed? How did she get a gun past the Guardians? Speaking of which, where were all the Guardians? Where was Gideon? How had she managed all of this on her own?

Once they exited the basement and emerged into the hallway, Elle understood a bit better: she saw two sets of boots sticking out of the wardrobe, not moving.

“Are they dead?” she whispered as they crept past. “You killed them?”

“Dunno,” Briley whispered back. “I hit them pretty hard, so maybe. If the blood is any indication, I definitely bashed their heads in.”

“Good.”

Briley shot her another grin over her shoulder. “Where would Violet be at this time of night?”

“What time is it?”

“Just past nine o’clock. Most of the Guardians are off-duty, I know, and I took care of these two doing their perimeter walks. I figure we have less than ten minutes before the guys at the gate notice something is up.”

“So Violet will be… ummmm… she irons upstairs every night until bedtime at ten.”

“Lead the way.”

Slowly, quietly, the women crept up the stairs to the laundry room. Elle knew where every single woman should be at this time: Gideon was nothing if not a methodical son-of-a-bitch, which was now working against him. She knew exactly which parts of the building to avoid, which stairs to pass by, which rooms would be occupied and which would be standing empty.

The laundry room door was open. Elle looked in, saw Violet bent over the ironing board, working on a Guardian uniform.

“Violet,” Elle said quietly, trying not to startle her. “Hi.”

Violet gasped and jumped anyway; the iron hissed as she pressed it down hard into the material. She squinted over at Elle. “Iris? Are you here or am I seeing things?”

Elle looked at Violet and her heart dropped right down to her stomach: she was standing there, the iron held aloft and steaming, her pupils huge. If Violet was heavily drugged, they were going to have a hell of a time getting through to her and making her understand what was going on, let alone getting her out of the compound quickly and quietly.

Then Briley appeared beside Elle, and Violet’s vague gaze sharpened, focused. It was like watching a cloudy sky clear completely and the sun come out. She stared at Briley for several seconds, then her face broke into a huge smile.

“You came back,” Violet said to Briley. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m here,” Briley said. “It took me a while, I know, and I’m sorry. But I’m here now.”

“We’re leaving?” Violet asked, a catch in her voice. “Right now and forever?”

“You’re goddamn right.” Elle extended her hand and Violet came over to her, grasped it hard. “Let’s move our asses.”

“Part two of the plan done and dusted,” Briley said to her in a low voice as they crept down the stairs, turned towards the same door where Elle had made her escape just a few weeks earlier. “Now we’re on to part three.”

“Which is what?” Elle whispered back. She put on a thick pair of socks, then clutched Violet’s hand again.

Briley pulled out a flashlight and opened the door. She waved the light around a bit, then smiled as someone flicked a light on and off over near the woods. “This part is not on us.”