2. Jackal
TWO
JACKAL
Blood-tinted spittle clung to a human face much better than the movies would have you believe. Blood, by nature, is a sticky thing, and so is spit. So naturally, when you blend the two, you’ll end up with a very sticky, nasty biological mess.
And now, mine was mixing in with what was left of the corpse I’d dragged for a mile and a half behind my bike.
To her credit, Maxine Wellsburn held on for a lot longer than I thought she would.
I didn’t discriminate between the genders when I took on contracts. A bad person was a bad person, no matter what they had between their legs. And they all bled the same when their bodies scraped across the gravel and pavement.
Miss Wellsburn had bled a lot tonight.
Dingo eyed the streak of blood leading to my bike tire with a hint of disgust, hands on his hips like my mother used to do when she was about to yell at one of her kids for simply existing. “Do you always have to be so messy with the bodies, Jackal?”
He knew why I did it. He knew my history and the suffering my sister had been through. He knew I picked up this gruesome habit in her honor. But he’d only recently started questioning me for my choices–especially with the women.
He was, and likely always would be, our little softie of the bunch. But he needed this job as much as any of us. He was supporting three mouths in another town, as well as his own. You can’t afford to walk away from a line of work like this with no trade skills, no background, and no papers.
Not even in Port Wylde.
I shrugged and smiled in that way that always seemed to unnerve normal folk. “She deserved every bit of it, and you know it, Dingo.” My eyes trailed over her thick, misshapen frame, reveling in the mangled mess that had become of her legs. At least, the parts that hadn’t fallen off in the ride. “Don’t go soft on us now, man. I’d hate to have to find a replacement if you lose the stomach for this work.”
His answering growl made my grin widen. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily. Someone has to keep you from killing half the city for looking at you sideways, and Coyote from turning wild again.” Society didn’t exactly look fondly upon feral kids as it was. Adults? That was an even harder sell. And Coyote didn’t have anyone else to turn to or anywhere else to go.
But I’d never leave Coyote. He was mine, and I was his. Blood brothers in the only way that mattered. For as long as we were both alive, he’d always have a roof over his head and food in his belly.
“Okay, ya sap. Let’s toss her on her boss’s front doorstep and get this over with.” I glanced sideways at Coyote, who was already disconnecting the chain I’d wrapped around her throat, blood clinging to the links as I watched with a sense of pride.
It’d been a long time since I’d snagged such a shitty one and bloodied up the back of my bike. The fresh layer of biological paint was a welcome sight to my rage-addled mind. It fueled me, made me feel alive, taking a human life that didn’t deserve to breathe the air around them. But lately, there was an emptiness to the whole thing, one that reminded me I hadn’t taken the meds for my raging emotions for far too long.
I didn’t tell the guys I went off the meds. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them . . . for now. But I had the sneaking suspicion Dingo suspected something. It was hard to live every day and night in close quarters without picking up on some things.
“She’s heavy for only half a woman,” I muttered, slipping my hands beneath her armpits as Dingo walked my bike forward a few steps. Coyote was busy winding the chain back up to stash in his backpack, so I just gritted my teeth and hefted the bitch up the half-flight of stairs to the front door myself.
The instructions had been very clear–set her up against the porch rail, make it so the first thing the bastard saw was the horror-struck last expression of his now-dead wife as he opened the door. I only had so long before rigor mortis set in. Had to be quick. Efficient.
Good at my damn job.
By the time I was done with her, she looked like a fucking piece of art, with her arms wrapped around the pole to her right, her head tipped back, mouth slightly open in a silent scream, her hair matted to the top of her head. Her leg stumps still oozed blood down the steps beside her, and the overall effect was quite macabre. I was proud of the setup, if I did say so myself.
Now, we only had minutes to make our escape in the early morning light before Mr. Wellsburn would wake and begin his morning routine. I didn’t wanna be around when they called the cops. They’d know who did it–the calling card evidence was right there for anyone with eyeballs–but they didn’t have shit on us, and once we were safely tucked back inside the Guild, they’d write the case off and call it a day.
The cops didn’t have much space to complain when we did their jobs for them.
“Would you hurry it up, Jackal? How long does it take to drop a body?”
Dingo stared at me from the base of the stairs, lips pinched, eyes narrowed to irritated slits. I had half a mind to tell him what he needed wasn’t to yell at me–he needed to get laid. But that’d only start another fight, and we didn’t have time to go to war on this dead woman’s lawn.
“Hold your dick, man, I’m coming,” I spat, yanking the handle of my bike from his grip a little more forcefully than was actually necessary. His eyes trailed back up to the woman on the porch, and I watched in real-time as he melted a little and marched himself back up to the porch.
The fucker—the fucker was tugging her skirt down to give her some dignity.
Fuck that. Bitches like her didn’t deserve dignity. They deserved embarrassment, pain, and eternal hellfire .
Dingo was too soft.
Dingo took his time, meandering back across the drive to hop on his bike without a word. I knew he could feel my stare in the back of his skull, but he pretended everything was fine as he signaled us to roll out. We shot off into the dawning light like a trio of ghost riders, minus the flames, of course.
It’d make a statement, lighting ourselves on fire, but not one we could pull off twice and live to tell about.
Night air flew past us as we wove in and out of the minimal traffic, howling and hollering with every red light we ran. Near miss after near miss kept us alive and on the edge of an adrenaline rush. The job, the lifestyle, all of it, was one big jolt to an otherwise boring ass life. And I’d do whatever it took to keep the ball rolling.
Life wasn’t worth living if you didn’t live it on the edge.
Lights blurred as we sped past, the world one big party we moved too fast to see, a continuous line of lights and flashes and sound that was a part of us and yet not, just inches away, a fingertip’s distance. All one had to do to touch it was reach out, but we kept to ourselves. We didn’t need to be a part of it to appreciate it, revel in it. We treated it like a parallel universe, part of ours, but not.
And that would never change.
We weren’t made for normal life. Or, at least, I wasn’t. And to that effect, neither was Coyote. Fucker was barely housebroken.
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing in the long run.
Pulling into the Guild’s underground garage, we ran into none other than Bonnie and Clyde, two of the stupidest idiots in the Guild ranks I’d ever met. Why they still worked here was anyone’s guess. Maybe St. Clair felt bad for them. Lord knew nobody in their right mind in regular society would hire them to even sweep a bathroom floor.
As I threw down the kickstand of my bike, Bonnie stuck her hand into her pocket, leaning against their shit-ass beater with a smile on her face as she thumbed through what looked like fresh twenties.
Musta lifted them off some dead body from their last hit.
Bitch had the nerve to lift her nose in the air as I walked by, like I stunk or something.
If I’d been in a better mood, I mighta let it slide. This time, I was feeling frisky, and my hands itched to beat someone’s face in. And Bonnie might be a bitch, but I wasn’t above making it her face if she looked crossways at me again.
“Don’t even think about it, Jackal,” Dingo muttered as we walked by, a hand on my shoulder to remind me he was willing and able to keep me from doing what was so obviously on my mind.
Too bad I didn’t answer to him.
It wasn’t like she didn’t ask for it.
“Stupid dogs,” she muttered under her breath as I passed within inches of her stupid face. “Stink like trash and act like it, too.” She huffed like our very existence was an insult to her senses. “Woof woof. Fucking mutts.”
I was a lot of things, but a mutt?
Nah.
Bitch, I was pedigree for crying out loud.
I had lineage. Papers .
I was primo stock.
I didn’t think about what I did. It took exactly zero logical thought to pivot on my heel and swing my fist at her, landing it neatly in the cartilage on the side of her nose.
Blood poured.
“You fucking prick!” Blood ran in rivulets over her splayed fingers as she cradled her now-broken nose, staring at me like she couldn’t fathom a man had hit her. “You broke my nose!”
“I’ll break more than that if you open your mouth about me again, you got that?” Dingo was actively tugging me away from her, but I stood my ground, hoping the bitch got the hint.
“What kind of man hits a woman?” Her loser half, Clyde, came around the front of the car with another wad of cash in his hands, this one messy and already handled. Likely, the goon counted it three, maybe four times before he stuffed it in a pocket somewhere on his grimy body.
“Hey, it’s not my fault your bitch opened her mouth.” I held up my hands as Dingo dragged me away by the collar, grinning like a loon at the two idiots we left in our wake. “These hands don’t discriminate. They’re equal opportunity ass-beaters.”
She might not be laughing, but I sure was.
All the way to the fucking wash station inside the old mudroom Lilly customized when she bought the place.
He tossed me forward by my collar, aimed at the big trough with a water hose, a grimace on his face. “Clean yourself up, motherfucker. And keep your mouth shut for a change.”
I wasn’t about to let him tell me what to do, even if he was right. I probably shouldn’t have hit the bitch. And I knew I could have kept on walking. Bonnie just wanted to get a rise out of me. She liked to get a rise out of anyone she could needle to death with her shrew-ass mouth.
And I was easy pickings.
She was lucky I didn’t like the taste of drug-addled asshole, or I woulda taken a chunk out of her skin instead of smashing it in.
I didn’t realize I’d said it out loud until Dingo turned the hose on me with a frustrated sigh.
“You’re an idiot,” he muttered to himself, his eyes like slits zeroed in on me as he soaked me to the bone. “A huge idiot. ”
“And you’re a dick,” I retorted between choking gasps for air. “A tiny one.”
Coyote muttered to himself as he stormed past us both, washing his hands of our antics with an eye roll. He might not be big on words, but damned if the fuckstick didn’t communicate just as well without them.
I tossed a middle finger over my shoulder at him and grinned back at Dingo, earning me another blast of cold water to the face.
Ah, what a lovely trio we made.