Chapter Eighteen
Ghost
“Don’t worry,” you assured me. “I have a plan.”
I appeared behind you, my shadow rising from the driver’s seat until the weight of my presence pressed against your back, keeping you close as we plunged deep into the industrial outskirts of Houston. “That is precisely why I worry. You can be… reckless,” I murmured against your ear.
“Reckless? Me?” You let out an offended chuckle. “I used to be, perhaps. When I was young.”
“Do I not make you feel young again, darlin’?” My transmission shuddered beneath us as you shifted into a lower gear. You certainly made me feel young again.
I only faintly remembered rolling off the assembly line with fresh paint, untouched leather and an engine built for more than grocery runs and quiet Sunday drives; I wasn’t awake back then.
It wasn’t until John had loved me that I truly came alive under hands that tenderly polished my paint and changed my oil long before it needed changing.
He had driven me carefully enough that I survived the decades that most other cars did not.
You were not as generous with your affection, but I felt the miles falling off my odometer with every touch of your cautious hands, and I felt a rush of gratitude; together, we were out for blood.
Like a bloodhound following a fresh trail, my intake dragged the night into me.
I tasted exhaust, damp pavement, old rain, and distant smoke.
Silent lots passed on either side of us, fenced businesses crowded with machinery, and warehouses squatting beneath weak security lights.
A pair of junkyards stretched along the road, filled with silent cars whose dead headlights stared through the wire fences.
The sight made something beneath my hood ache.
“That’s the place.”
I glanced to where you were pointing; at the end of a cluttered drive, one garage stood in the dark, mellow light seeping from underneath its shutter. The air around the building was thick with oil, stale fuel, and men.
The building looked like any of the hundreds of other repair shops scattered throughout the city.
Two large rolling doors hid the workshop.
Three customer vehicles waited outside, parked beneath a sign bleached nearly white by the Texas sun.
An ancient sedan sat on blocks near the fence, its hood missing and its interior exposed to the weather.
Just like the club, nothing about the place demanded attention.
That was the point.
“Don’t stop yet,” you warned as I slowed; reluctantly, I circled the block before returning, my radio and my headlights both turned off, not wanting to bring any early attention to ourselves.
My engine’s rumble was impossible to disguise, though, and I hoped that the tinny music I could hear from the warehouse was enough to drown it out as we approached.
It had just started to rain when you pulled me directly in front of the roller door and stopped less than six feet from it. You left my engine running.
“Now what?” I asked, my voice tense and hoarse. Anticipation and fear ran in cold twin blades down my spine, and my fingers drummed nervously against the dash as you studied the building.
I knew you intended to go in alone again, and the thought scared me. You would enter that workshop and dismantle everyone inside–if you were lucky. If no one shot you first.
You didn’t speak straight away, the tension in my cab creeping upward until I was almost ready to turn tail and drive, revenge be damned– and then you gave a small chuckle, squeezing my wheel.
“You know, I spent years building something worth preserving,” you finally said.
“A home. A family. An academy. People who rely upon me.” Your thumb stroked my worn leather.
“In time, I became so frightened of losing it all that I locked myself inside a cage. I kept all the chaotic parts of myself chained up, and convinced myself that only restraint made me worth loving.”
I remained silent, dreading what you might be building up to, afraid that we might both be secretly cowards.
“I took it outside for short walks sometimes, of course,” you continued, smiling without humor. “Leashed and muzzled, never allowed near anything I cared about. No one has seen me as I truly am for years, now. Not even my husband knows how hard I fight to contain my chaos.”
Chaos– Is that what you were guarding so carefully inside you, sealed within your tense posture and stiff upper lip? I sat with you, listening to my engine as I at last understood what you were confiding in me. You weren’t about to turn back; you were inviting me along for the ride.
“Ghost.” Your voice was soft; there was no authority in it, no genuine worry. You didn’t want to stop me; you spoke my name to release me from your control.
My seatbelt bit into your chest, holding you securely against the seat as my rear tires spun, building momentum, rubber laying thickly onto the pavement.
Your eyes widened as a grin spread wide across your face, wicked and chaotic. “You really were made for me, you dramatic asshole,” you smirked, fingers coiled around my handbrake, waiting for my signal.
“Hold on tight,” I ordered, and you released the brake.
◆◆◆
The roller door folded around my hood with a shriek of tearing metal. Bolts ripped from concrete, and corrugated panels buckled inward as I plowed through the entrance and into the workshop.
One of the men had been standing directly behind the door; he vanished beneath my front end, crushed under the metal sheet and my weight. I felt the wet, muffled crack of his corpse travel through my suspension, his screams cut short.
I paused among the wreckage. Silence swallowed the garage.
Five men stared at us from the dust-filled workshop: one still held a beer halfway to his mouth, another stood beside the naked frame of a stolen sedan, a blowtorch hanging limply in his hand.
Two more had barely missed being hit by the door, standing at the end of the garage.
The largest was seated behind a desk on a raised platform at the rear.
None of them moved, too stunned to understand what the hell had just happened, but that spell would only last so long.
“Keep the engine going,” you ordered, reaching down to trace the outline of a dagger in your boot, freeing the narrow blade into your palm.
I released my seatbelt, and you were out of my door before the last piece of the roller shutter struck the ground.
You snatched your cane from the passenger seat and planted one gloved hand on my hood, vaulting cleanly over it, your coat sweeping behind you like a splash of fresh blood.
The man on the platform surged to his feet. “Who the fuck are you?” He howled as he grabbed the edge of the desk, trying to hide how badly his hands were shaking. “You’re a dead man! You hear me?”
As he bellowed, one of the men finally recovered enough sense to lunge for the pneumatic shears on the nearby bench.
He never reached them; you crossed the distance before he had taken his second step.
The steel tip of your cane struck the side of his knee with enough force to fold the joint sideways; he screamed as he dropped, and stopped as you caught him by the collar and drove your dagger into the soft hollow beneath his jaw, the blade disappearing almost to the hilt.
You held the dying man upright, forcing the other men to watch his hands claw uselessly at your wrist. Then you withdrew the dagger, letting him collapse as you wiped the blade across your sleeve.
The spell broke with cries of fury.
A tire iron swung toward your head; you leaned aside, and it missed by less than an inch, swishing past your cheek and smashing into the toolbox behind you.
Before your attacker could recover, the hooked handle of your cane trapped his wrist. You twisted, bone snapped, and the tire iron fell from his hand.
You caught the tire iron before it struck the floor with a maniac’s grin, turning it back on your assailant.
The first blow broke his nose; the second drove him backward into the hydraulic lift.
The third was delivered low and hard into his rib; he folded over the tire iron, wheezing, and you released the tool to seize the back of his neck.
“You helped them rip out his ignition?” You asked the stunned man as he gasped and flailed.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”
You drove his face into the steel column of the lift, and his teeth scattered across the concrete. Something warm and vicious spread through every line of my body at the sight.
You slid the dagger between the man’s ribs with calm precision. He jerked once. You adjusted the angle, then withdrew it, allowing him to sink against the lift. It felt like it was playing out in slow motion, but it had taken only seconds.
The other men were too busy looking for weapons to pay attention to me. I formed on my hood, watching you as you wiped your dagger on your coat and picked out your next target.
Red suited you.
The man with the blowtorch bellowed at you as he charged, the flame burning deadly blue as it was thrust into your face, and you laughed as the heat of it barely warmed you. Your dagger flicked out again, and the man fell with a puzzled expression on his dead face.
The two remaining men scattered at the sight, finally realizing they were dealing with something deeply inhuman. One ran for the rear office, and you allowed him to reach the door; he almost made it inside before your dagger struck the wall beside his face, an inch from his nose.
He stumbled to a stop, and your cane drove into his stomach, folding him forward. You caught the back of his neck before he could fall and guided him lazily, face first, onto the metal workbench. His cheek struck steel,
Once.
Twice.
On the third impact, he fell onto the floor, crawling pathetically toward the pit beneath the car lift. “Get the fuck away from me!” He howled as you reached for him. “Boss! Help me!”