Chapter 40
“Okay okay okay, just one more,” I shouted over the music as I clanged my glass into Leo’s, then spun around to tap it with each and every person in the bar.
It was a blur of faces, while the laughter in the air mixed with the terrible twang of some kind of electronic poetry music I’d never heard before.
“You sure you can handle one more, Mishka?” Elio caught me from behind with a hand on each of my shoulders, steadying me on the floor.
“You’ve only had two in the last six hours, and you’re already a mess.
” The shake of his amusement was obvious through his hold on me.
His hands were so damn strong. Everything about him was so ridiculously strong, it wasn’t fair.
“How is it that someone like you, who is such an asshole to everyone all the time, gets to be so strong and so tall and so fast and so fucking perfect, and all I got was five and a half feet and the muscles of a nerdy teenager to work with.” I snaked my way out of his grip, not sure if those were inside thoughts or outside words, but mortified by both.
Then I backed up to make some space from him.
“Fast and tall and strong and perfect, huh?” Breaker threw an arm around the red haired ogre’s shoulders. “I think Vann has a crush on you.”
“What.” My whole body was on fire, and I hoped that was just the booze. “I think you got that wrong. You mean I want to crush him.”
“Didn’t we already try that? I don’t recall it going well for you.
” He ruffled my hair, which was easy for him to do with his ten damn inches on me, and I backed away to duck under his hand, only to stumble and knock into someone behind me.
The sound of a glass shattering was accompanied by the splash of cold liquid, soaking both me and the guy who dropped it.
“S-sorry,” I apologized immediately backing away from a very large, very husky, and very bald man, who was now staring at me with an angry scowl on his face.
“Fucking runt. Do you know what this shirt cost?” He shouted back at me, and I took a nervous step back toward my companions.
“We’ll buy you a new one. Relax.” Breaker stepped in, trying to smooth over the absolute vicious sneer on the guy’s face. Another man at his side turned to face us, and I definitely fucked up.
“If that ugly fucking shirt was expensive, you got ripped off. He did you a favor.” Elio added with a taunting scoff.
“Not helping,” I hissed at him between my teeth.
“Depends on what you’re trying to accomplish,” Elio shot back with a mischievous grin.
“You fucking dick,” the man slurred, and his other buddy turned around.
“He’s got a point. You are a dick,” I whispered, to Elio’s great amusement,
“I’m talking to you, runt.” He moved in on me, sloppier than I even was, butting his chest up against my face in his effort to intimidate.
Elio had the man’s wet shirt in his fist and his back against the wall in an instant. “You’re going to back off or you’re going to need new teeth, too.” He growled in his face, and I couldn’t possibly be drunk enough to be hallucinating that Elio was defending me.
“Fuck you, punk.” He threw a sloppy fist at Elio’s face, and he took it on the chin with a smile, not even caring as his piercings cut into him.
“Mmmhhhmmm, that was all I needed.” Elio grinned widely. “Let the record show that I didn’t draw first blood, but I’m sure as fuck about to draw the rest.”
Elio yanked the man off his feet, then slam a fist into his cheek, flooring him in a single move.
The man’s friend came at me next, swinging for my face, and it was literal instinct that I dodged, and threw an uppercut directly into his sternum.
He grunted like I’d punched the air out of a balloon, then the weight of his whole body came tumbling forward, right on top of me.
Chairs were scattered, a table fell over, and two more guys had drinks launched into their laps.
“Motherfucker—”
“Looks like we have a real celebration now, boys.” Elio cracked his knuckles.
“I knew this was going to be a great idea.” Breaker fucking beamed, and the whole bar erupted into a brawl.
Glass was flying, Metal was clanging. Blood was smeared across the floor.
Breaker executed knock outs with entirely too cheerful of an expression, while Elio tore through the bar with pure joyful malice in his eyes.
I defended myself whenever someone got through either of them, having no issue out-fighting drunk civilians with the training I’d had.
But between all the very capable fighters in the rest of our little group, not very many people got through to me.
It was like I had a whole gang of bodyguards, and I didn’t know when that happened.
By the time the sound of enforcer sirens were blaring in the distance, all of us had fled the scene, and I was on the back of Elio’s bike, sitting upright, wearing his helmet, and holding onto him, as we all zipped through the streets back toward Astaroth.
Red and blue lights flashed behind us as we blazed down a main road.
“It’s only one. He can’t catch us both if we split up,” Elio shouted to Breaker who was riding beside him.
“Oh, I hope he picks me.” Breaker damn near cackled, and I was seeing this man in a whole new light today. “I haven’t had a good chase in ages.”
They skidded to a near stop as we came upon a fork in the road, with Breaker shooting one direction, and Elio shooting the other.
The enforcer took off after Breaker, giving him his wish, while Elio upped the pace to avoid giving any more the chance to catch up with us.
He leaned hard around a corner, throwing the bike sideways, and the back end chirped as the electronics protested the “high risk” inputs.
Somewhere in my hazy stupor, I justified burying my face in his back and squeezing him tightly, my drunken brain telling me I’d probably die if I didn’t hug him right now.
He was warm, anyway, and Saturn had a chill at night.
This was so confusing.
Elio hated me. I hated him. We weren’t friends by any stretch of the imagination in any world anywhere. So why was he even here? I thought he would make my life hell once I made rank. I’d imagined him sabotaging me, trying to push me out, generally being an asshole.
And instead we were celebrating together? He was protecting me and getting into fights over me?
Well, he probably would have gotten into a fight anyway. I gathered that was his favorite past time. It was the fact that he was the first to step in when he didn’t have to show up at all that was throwing me off the most.
There had to be some reason Breaker and Sebastian liked the guy, and I’d felt clueless until right now, as I got this first glimpse of someone who was curiously loyal and passionate. Maybe I’d finally earned his respect after all.
I shouldn’t understand being prickly and standoffish towards someone who had never given you reason to be—I should say that all people deserved respect and decency from the start, and it was their actions afterwards that should determine whether you lost or gained more.
But I wasn’t that different from him in how I mistrusted people. Vann had pointed out how closed off I was thousands of times. Some of us were just more guarded than others.
It was insane mental gymnastics to say I’d misjudged him, when he’d physically laid a hand on me so many times now, but after spending the last three months at Astaroth, seeing how everyone functioned in this environment, his coping mechanisms seemed as ordinary as any other.
Maybe men just bonded differently. Or maybe this man just bonded differently.
“You okay back there? You’re holding on for dear life,” he called back, his voice slightly obscured by the full face helmet he’d forced me to wear. I barely caught the sound over the air whipping past us, likely in thanks to how quiet the whirr of the hydro-powered light cycle was.
I loosened my squeeze on him, my cheeks flushing at how timid he must think me. “I’ve never been on one of these things before,” I shouted back. “It’s more intense than I expected.”
Elio laughed. “You just went one-on-twenty in a fortress filled with Ghuls, guarded by the one and only Sebastian Takeyama, and this scares you?” He had a point. But… wait a minute.
“How did you know I was the one?” I scrunched my nose. He hadn’t been in my server, had he?
“You only took out nineteen Ghuls.” His eye roll was audible in his tone. “I was the twentieth, watching you through my sniper rifle on the ledge.”
My jaw dropped. He was watching? He was there? Why didn’t he engage me? Why would he just sit idly by as his team lost the mission? He could have made me fail. He could have stopped me from making rank.
And moreover…
“Why didn’t you take me out? Once I’d gotten past Sebastian, you could have easily sniped me and stopped me from completing the mission.”
He shrugged, more pronounced as I was holding him from behind. “Because I’m not in the business of putting a Ghul on the pedestal, not in the virtual world or any other.” He dodged the real question entirely too smoothly. It was a cop out response for sure, but it was also playful and subtly sweet.
I shook my head, disturbed that the word sweet even entered my mind. I didn’t press further as he whipped his bike into a dark alleyway, far removed from the neon lights of downtown Mictlan. Elio came to a sudden stop behind a large dumpster and dismounted.
“We can hide out here until the heat dies down,” he told me, then he approached a door that was blackened by dirt and grease. He gave it a soft rap of his knuckles in a near musical rhythm.