15. STANDOFF
Donovan argued all the way back to the houseboat. It began with pleas to take him with me and ended with him tearfully begging me not to go at all. I chalked up his emotional state to the strain of the past week of relative isolation. It was more palatable than accepting the truth in what he said. That I was risking my life for an unknown. Walking blindly into danger. And he called me a dumbass, for good measure.
Pulling up to the curb outside Lazy Daze, I killed the engine and yanked the keys out of the ignition. It felt oddly nostalgic to come back to the rundown motel like I’d been gone far longer than a few weeks. Mine and Donovan’s old room was a few doors down, left full of our belongings when we’d turned our backs on this place. In fact, the stuff might still be in there. I wasn’t sure if Grimm was keeping the rent up or if he bothered to tell the property manager that we left.
Knowing Grimm, he was in denial, believing our exit was temporary. A childish temper fit. A mood that would pass, after which we would return to the fold more devoted than ever. But I’d be damned before I spent another night in the Bloody Hex’s captivity. Nothing good had ever come from being close to them, and now I wondered why it took me so damn long to cut ties and move.
Given the lack of customers on a random Friday night, I was able to snag a spot directly outside room 145. I didn’t realize till I pulled in that it was Ripley and Maggie’s shared room from when they lived here. The Whalecome! mat had been left behind, testimony to their similarly hasty exit. I stared at the closed door while leaning against the hood of the Porsche a dozen feet away and debating whether I should knock or just let myself in.
They knew I was coming—I’d told them so via Donovan’s text—but I had to wonder how prepared they were. I wasn’t invincible, but I made for a force to be reckoned with when the situation demanded it, and this felt very much like a go in guns blazing moment. Just in case things went pear-shaped, I had an exit plan. Besides my car being nearby, Nash’s get-out-of-jail free potion hung around my neck, tucked out of sight under my shirt.
I decided not to knock.
I sauntered up the sidewalk and thrust out my open palm, rocketing out a wave of power that ripped the door off its hinges. It flew into the darkened room beyond, prompting a shrill cry from inside.
“Surprise,” I said as I stepped across the threshold .
Every room at Lazy Daze was a copy-paste of the same themes: moldy carpet, particle board furniture, and outdated artwork scented by the stink of old cigarettes. I found all that inside, with the addition of the metal door that had been flung into the midst of everything. Beneath it, a body sprawled on the floor with its feet poking out like the Wicked Witch of OZ.
It was too much to hope for only one adversary lying in wait, and the scream I’d heard had been decidedly feminine. I scanned the room again, ending on the closed bathroom door at the back. Were they hiding from me? Already?
As soon as I moved forward, I heard a scuffle from beside the entrance. I didn’t get fully turned before someone tackled me to the ground. A sharp blow struck the back of my skull, scrambling every thought.
I lay on the scrubby carpet, blinking through a starry field of black. Pain corkscrewed through my skull, and I stifled a groan. The weight on my back relented, and I rolled over to face my opponent. Jette Black loomed over me with her distinctive Mohawk and her fists poised for another round.
My head hurt worse than it should have, beset by a lingering ache that made me wonder if she’d dropped an elbow on me. I wasn’t sure what kind of magic she had, but the turbo force of her foot plunging into my gut gave me a good idea.
Breath rushed out, and my stomach tossed, driving bile up my throat. She kicked me again, a kidney shot that made my entire body spasm. I couldn’t catch my breath and couldn’t budge from the fetal position on the floor, consumed by panic and pain when I needed desperately to form a single, constructive thought.
She dropped on top of me, grabbing a wad of my hair and drawing my face up the moment I sucked a stuttering breath. Her fist crashed into my cheek with impossible force, reducing the room to darkness.
Nausea and agony swept over me like lapping waves. I lay curled up with one eye swelling shut and the other refusing to open at all.
The sound of footsteps moving away announced Jette’s departure, followed by rustling and shifting of the thrown door being lifted. She must have believed me unconscious or dead, having turned her back and gone to help her squashed buddy, York.
Clawing my way through the pain determined to bury me, I managed to compose myself enough to reconsider my strategy. Unless Ripley was stashed in the bathroom, he was somewhere else, far from rescue, and I had walked into what was meant to be my execution. If that were the case, it would do no good to kill these two. I needed what they knew. A location, or a confession that I was too late, and Ripley was already dead.
I stayed on the floor, squinting at the scene that unfolded before me. York worked his way to sitting, rubbing his face while Jette tossed the door aside like it was as flimsy as a piece of tissue.
“I took care of him.” Jette indicated me. “Now what?”
I closed both eyes again and stayed as still as possible. Not a difficult task with every pain receptor in my body screaming .
“Is he dead?” York’s voice was a low rumble.
Jette sniffed. “Nah. Just napping.”
Bodies shifted and feet dragged across the floor, moving past where I lay.
“Where’s the other one?” York asked. “His brother?”
“Haven’t seen him,” Jette replied.
“Figures. Thought you could take us by yourself, huh?” York nudged me with his shoe. “Dumb son of a bitch.”
I imagined what I couldn’t see, piecing together subtle sounds with my mental image of the space. It must have been awkward scheming with the doorway wide open, but they didn’t seem concerned.
“What are we supposed to do with him?” Jette asked, bringing the conversation back around. “When he wakes up, he’s gonna be pissed.”
“Unless he doesn’t wake up.”
I tensed.
“You wanna kill him?” Jette asked.
“Sure.”
Quiet filled a long moment.
When Jette spoke again, she sounded reluctant. “That’s not what Jax said.”
York swayed, staying beside me so his leg bumped into my side. “Jax isn’t here, and he isn’t helping us figure out a way to keep a telekinetic whiz kid from grinding our bones to bake his bread. He’s a killer, J.”
“Yeah, well,” Jette muttered, “he takes a punch like a pussy.”
“Typical mental mage,” York said flippantly. “ They’re all a bunch of glass cannons.”
It took all of my limited self-control not to stand up right then and give them both a piece of my mind. But we’d only covered the bare bones of what I needed to know and, as long as they kept talking, I needed to keep listening.
“Buncha what?” Jette asked.
York exhaled, long and loud. “Never mind. Look, as far as I see it, we have to kill him. He’s not as easy to store as the poisonous one.” He poked me with the toe of his boot again, and I fought the impulse to elbow him in the shin. This playing dead shit was for the birds.
“He can’t even be awake, or he’ll bring the fucking building down,” York continued. “Jax can have the brother. I’m sure he’ll come sniffing around soon enough.”
At that, my hands clenched. Suspecting they were gunning for Donovan was far different than hearing it out loud.
“So, who gets him , then?” Jette asked. “Bragging rights and all.”
Finally, York stepped away from me. “One tattoo’s as good as another. Doesn’t matter who it used to belong to.”
“Then you won’t mind me taking this one.”
Jette closed in, bringing a hand that cupped the back of my head. Fingers threaded through my hair, palming my skull like it was a basketball. When they started squeezing, the resulting pressure was something I couldn’t ignore.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I sputtered seconds before the fingertips burrowed into my brain.
I threw out both hands, one for each of the bumbling duo. York was an easy grab, standing aside and probably addled from the door assault. Jette was trickier despite having been caught off-guard. She kept her hold on my head and seemed more than capable of juicing it like a lemon.
A pinch of my thumb and forefinger snapped her wrist, and she stumbled back, yelping like a kicked dog. I stood.
My battered face complained at my rise from the ground. It was hard to keep both of them in my sights with only one working eye, but I had my mental hooks deep in York, placing tethers around his chest and ratcheting down until his breaths came in wheezes.
I pinned Jette to the opposite wall with a lasso of thought that hooked under her jaw, forcing her onto tiptoes while she cradled her broken hand.
“Tricky bastard,” Jette hissed. “I should’ve bashed your fucking face in.”
“Should’ve,” I agreed. “But bad decisions abound. Your whole plan is shit. Killing Hex members? You think Grimm’s gonna be happy you’re mercing his best men?”
“Best men?” Jette sneered. Her drawn-on eyebrows made every expression that much more dramatic. “More like his problem children. We’re cleaning house. Taking out the trash.”
I chuckled darkly, then curled a finger on the hand aimed toward York. The tall man howled in agony that remained a mystery to Jette while I dealt damage beneath the surface. The mohawked woman looked concerned but didn’t question before I explained.
“Your boy here’s got twenty-four ribs. That was one.”
Her bold, black brows drew down. “You sadistic fuck.”
I grinned, flashing my teeth. “Let’s keep it going, shall we? Might get a little boring for me, but he’s gonna have a hell of a time.” I twitched another digit, and York cried out as a bone flexed inside his chest.
“Wait, wait!” Jette rushed to interrupt. “What do you want?”
I was surprised she cared so much and so quickly. It made me wonder which of the Bloody Hex members would stand up for me in the same situation. That thought came and went with a scoffing snort. I would get no sympathy from those fuckers. If anything, they would join in the torment for the chance to hear me scream.
“For one, I feel a little deceived,” I told Jette. “Thought I was coming to visit my buddy. I think you know him. You have his phone. Instead, I get you jackoffs. So, mostly I wanna know, where’s my poisonous friend?”
Disgust crinkled her face. “As if we’d tell you.”
“Fair, fair.” I nodded. “All right.”
With a dull crunch, another of York’s ribs splintered. He cried out pitifully.
“Stop it!” Jette shrieked. Her face flushed deep red.
“Twenty-two to go.” I stared her down. “Gonna be a long night. ”
I only needed one of them to survive this interrogation. If Jette numbed to the sting of watching her partner in crime suffer, she had bones to break, as well. With my brother’s safety on the line, I was willing to take this as far as it needed to go. And, unlike what happened at the Capitol holding cell earlier, no goody two shoes investigator would stop me.
“Where is Ripley?” I asked.
When I drew my next breath, it gurgled. Blood? Maybe I was more injured than I realized. I coughed, trying to clear the fluid as it seemed to build. It filled my lungs, limiting me to wet, shallow gasps. My concentration wavered, and I knuckled down, channeling focus to my grip on York and Jette. If I lost hold, she might get a second chance to make good on her desire to bash my face in.
My next hacking gag was more productive, but what I spat out wasn’t blood or sputum. It was clear and thin. Water. Fear made me breathe faster, feeling like I was face first in a faucet, unable to draw a dry breath.
Drowning.
Realization struck as I whipped around to where York was secured. His dark skin shimmered with beads of moisture. Fishy, he’d looked to me in Thorngate, with deep blue eyes and the bright idea to waterboard me in the shower. I guessed because he couldn’t make his own water, he used theirs. Here, though, he wasn’t limited.
My concentration shattered as water leaked from my nose and eyes, dripping onto my shirt. Wet splatters pasted my clothes to my skin and defined the shape of the tiny glass marble resting against my sternum .
Jette, abruptly freed, launched herself at me as I stuck my hand down the collar of my shirt. I grabbed the vial, blinking one waterlogged eye and holding my breath while my chest ached from the strain. A frantic yank snapped the leather cord and the marble laid loose in my palm. Jette collided with me as I clapped my hands together.
Glass shattered, more sensation than sound with my ears stopped up, followed by the feeling of falling. I thought it was the woman dragging me to the floor, but I kept going through it, into an empty space that seemed to belong nowhere. Everything went dark, and I flailed in the openness, alternating holding my stomach and my throat and nearly desperate enough to rip a hole and let all the fluid out.
Lights blurred past as I descended from the ceiling of somewhere familiar. I collided with a hard, flat surface, knocking every bone from my heels to my head in a jarring stop.
Muffled voices clamored, and bodies beside me lurched up and back.
Pained and panicked, I grappled for anything tangible. I tried to sit but found the surface narrower than expected, and I tumbled off, falling again for a far shorter stretch of time. In another flailing collapse, I landed in a heap on the anti-slip mats behind the counter of the Bitters’ End.
Rolling onto my stomach, starved for air, my coughs turned into gut-wrenching gags that purged the fluid filling me so completely I could have been floating in it.
Someone crowded in as a smear of color in my peripheral. Hands grazed over me, but I swatted them away, pushing onto all fours and retching.
Gradually, space opened up. Water left in heaves and sputtering hacks, rushing through the holey rubber mats toward the floor drain.
Fingers brushed my face, and this time I had enough presence of mind to recognize the touch. I didn’t move toward the man who knelt beside me, instead shuddering and spitting liquid until my whole body was wrung out.
Finally, I slumped aside, sagging against Nash’s chest to find him shaking as well. His fingers quivered as they raked my hair back, and his other arm looped around my chest in an awkward embrace. I lay there, limp and aching, with my head tucked against his shoulder as I drew precarious breaths.
Down the counter, Pippa burst through the double swinging doors that allowed entrance to the back side of the bar. “What the hell was that?” she exclaimed.
I peeled one eye open to look over at her while she stared at me like I was a soggy sewer rat in Nash’s lap. Her attention went next to the ceiling as though expecting my arrival to have opened a hole to the second level. I checked, too, for good measure.
When neither of us found anything out of place, she voiced the obvious question. “Fitch, why are you wet?”