2. Fergus—The Scots Crew
TWO
FERGUS—THE SCOTS CREW
"If I told ye once, I told ye a thousand times, Fergus—ye have more fun if you dinnae kill 'em all straightaway. Play with yer food some, live a little!"
A floor above me, my half-brother Angus dangled a very distraught, barely alive man from the broken railing of the second story in the asylum foyer.
Blood dripped from his head like water from a sieve, splattering messily on the floor below them, just feet in front of where I stood watching.
I had no taste for the toying Angus enjoyed—I preferred to take out targets with finesse, quickly and efficiently, like a smart man would. Not my brother.
No, not Angus O'Leary.
Angus had a predilection towards torture, thanks to his less-than-civil upbringing.
His father was out the door before he'd dropped outta his mother's cunt, and on to the next conquest. His ma wasn't all there, but she did her best, and good ole Angus was the fine result of a rearing that was more the work of the family livestock than any adult.
I watched with irritation, one brow cocked, as he jangled the man upside down, taunting him as he shook from fear. There was still a bit of light in his eyes, almost like he thought there was a chance he might be gettin' out of this if he was lucky.
I always hated to be the bearer of bad news, but that man was gonna get his hopes dashed one way or the other.
"Hey there, buddy, I hope yer not thinkin' that fucker's gonna let ye go.
He's a wily one, a right cunt, and he'll make ye suffer afore ye bleed to death.
" I pulled the pistol from my side and cleared my throat, careful not to let my brother see the weapon.
He'd protest if he thought I was taking his toys away from him.
But if I was quick enough, it might keep him from gettin' us both in trouble.
"Angus, Lilly'll be right put out if ye stain her new entry rug. The lass just bought it a week ago."
His laugh was less a chuckle and more a feral growl interspersed with grunts, but I knew it for what it was.
A ragged hand dragged across his scraggly, filthy beard, and his face split just enough for me to see the whites of his teeth.
Man had crawled around in the fucking mud to chase down the target, and instead of cleaning like an ordinary man, he decided to start torture instead.
I swore this shite was the only thing that got his cock hard these days. Not that I wanted to know shite all about his cock, but when you live in such close quarters with a man, sleep in the same room on separate bunks, you tend to notice things. Like when he beats his meat, for example.
Again, not that I really had any interest in knowing such a thing about my own brother.
"Ah, come on, Fergus, live a little! He's no' even pissed hemself yet!"
I could hear the familiar, telltale clacking of high heels on the tiled floor, closer than I'd have liked, and shrugged, taking the steps two at a time to reach my brother before the woman who called herself our leader came around the corner and spotted him doing something she'd not approve of.
We were supposed to conduct ourselves with a little bit of discretion and respect our home, and I was sure that killing a man in the foyer wouldn't pass her approval.
But if I could just get him in the still-empty rooms and off him quietly where she wouldn't see, then Angus could play in the blood all he liked, and Lilly St. Clair'd be none the wiser.
The man's shoulder nearly popped out of the socket as I yanked him away from the railing and into a nearby hallway, praying I'd chosen the right one as Angus was dragged with us, his protests half-arsed and probably more for show than anything else.
"Fergus, you shite, lemme go! I'm no' done wi' tha bastard yet."
His poor victim clawed at my arms with broken, jagged nails, drawing blood as he pleaded for his life and attempted to gain his freedom at the same time.
He didn't realize I was granting him mercy, that he'd suffer less under my hand, but he couldn't be faulted for that.
He was, after all, scared shiteless, out of his mind with panic and hope and fear?—
"Come on, Angus, at least get 'im into tha room, fucken Lilly's on 'er way down tha hall?—"
"Yes, Lilly is, indeed, on her way down the hall; thank you, Fergus."
From the end of the hall I'd hoped to disappear us down came a voice from a mouth with a tongue so sharp it could make any man's cock stand at attention with a few well-chosen words or make it shrivel in an instant and beg to crawl back into a man's body with a few others.
She was as bonny as the blue sky, with mahogany hair that bounced in tiny ringlets around her head, a smile that quirked up at the edges, a slight figure, and those legs that seemed to never end.
Her long, slim fingers curled around the handle of a kitchen knife, still bloody from whatever she'd been chopping up when she discovered the disturbance.
I released the man and backed away, watching Angus and her stand off as he clung desperately to his victim, standing his ground.
"So, Angus? What do you have to say for yourself?"
He at least had the common sense to look contrite, casting his eyes down at the floor even as he tightened his grip on the man's arm and wrung a whimper from him. "Aw, come on, Lilly, we were only tryin ta' have a little fun. Ye know I like when they squeal like a pig and beg fer their lives."
Her stunning, cold eyes rolled damn near into the back of her head as she stepped closer to them, that cunning, dangerous smile on her lips, hand still clutching the blade.
"Yes, unfortunately, I do know how you enjoy your depravities and messes, Angus O'Leary.
And you'll not be doing it in my clean hallways.
And certainly not on my new entryway rug, thank you.
If you want to make messes, make them outside of the asylum. Not in them."
Angus looked adequately chastised, but the man shaking in his grasp was still watching Lilly as if she were his own personal guardian angel, come to save him from his distress.
He had no idea she was much closer to the devil than an angel.
Judas Iscariot himself could not have fallen as far as she had if he'd sold out Jesus Christ thrice over for naught but a bag of air.
Lilly St. Clair was a fucking monster in her own right, and none tangled with her willingly if they could avoid it.
She had a mean left hook, a sinner's grin, and a thirst for blood beneath the countenance of an innocent schoolmarm.
If you mistook her for someone harmless, you only got the chance to do it once, and there wouldn't likely be any more breathing for you after she finished, either.
If I had a body count big enough to fill the asylum's pool, she could have filled a German mass grave in her time as a murderess. She was death personified, and you didn't tangle with her unless you had a wish for death yourself.
She gestured to the man Angus was holding prisoner, beckoning him toward her. "Angus, let him go."
Angus grumbled but released the man, all but shoving him toward the mistress of the house. The poor sod fell to his knees and grunted at the impact, daring to stare up at his avenging angel with a tentative smile of hope.
"Now," she began, circling the man slowly, "why are you here tonight?"
He prostrated himself at her feet, crying like a fucking child. Tears mingled with his snot and blood to form a nice little puddle on his chin, which then dripped to the floor before him. "Miss, oh miss, you have to help me?—"
Lilly shoved a single foot straight into his face, the pointed tip of her patent leather shoe lodging itself into his eye socket and earning her a scream.
She reached down as he clawed helplessly at his ruined eye, shoving him backward to pull herself free.
That damned shoe looked none the worse for wear, and the blood just ran straight off it, as if it knew as well as I to steer very clear of Lilly's bad side.
Even the gore she ripped from the man's body was afraid of her.
Wise. Even the dead feared the lady of the asylum—the leader of our guild.
Satan herself.
"I'll ask you again, sir, and I'll thank you not to lie to me this time. What," she snarled, her foot landing atop one of his hands, digging the heel into his outstretched palm like a nail on the cross, "are you doing here tonight?"
"I-I-I'm here against my will—they forced me?—"
Angus watched with a wicked grin as someone else tormented his prisoner for him, licking his lips and palming his cock most obviously as she leered at the man.
She'd given us the job, after all, she knew damn well what this scum was doing here.
But the question wasn't for him, not really.
It was for Angus and, by extension, as one of his partners in crime, me.
Still, the man on the floor whimpered, thinking the right words could save him. Snot and tears fell before him as he cried out at the pain, blood flowing around Lilly's heel and onto the floor as she chuckled to herself, a frightening sound if I'd ever heard one.
You ever heard a panther laugh as it digs into its' dinner? I imagined it'd be something like her laugh, if you had. Scared the bollocks off me, made my cock want to fall off, it did. Angus seemed to be into it—too bad she wasn't into the messy ones.
Nah, she had a bar, and it wasn't anywhere as low as my brother.
"Last chance, good man. What brings you to the hands of these depraved murderers tonight?"
He quivered under her gaze but stopped sniveling—a miracle, that. "For-for-for what I did to my wife."
Lilly's smile widened, eating up her whole face like a disease.
"Good boy. You're right; it was because of what you did to your wife.
" She stopped in front of him and tapped the blood-soaked tip of her foot, beating a staccato rhythm on the floor before her.
"She wasn't the one to put out the hit for hire, but she has friends in high places.
And those friends decided you deserved to die.
" She tipped that head of hers to the side, and her brown curls bobbed like a curtain around her head and shoulders. "And here we are."
A noise off in the distance drew her attention away for a moment, and the man took that moment to try and flee backward—a most unwise decision, as it turned out, because that put him right in my path—and right back into our murderous arms.
"Well, buddy, looks like yer stuck wi' me," Angus jeered, dragging the crying, pleading, pathetic excuse of a man back down the hall and into a room we used for his 'playthings'.
Hey, we might be killers, but even we had standards.