58. Blade
BLADE
The lady was practically a zombie as we shuttled her through the shadowy autobody shop. Still, Tess tried to coax her with every step. “Come on, just a few more steps. We’re going to take care of you.”
“Dom!” Cyrus shouted, charging past the late-shift mechanics and toward the glass-encased back office.
Clearly, they’d gotten the memo on who we were since our last visit — the Violence bikers who staffed this place would have pounced on any other intruder. But none of them dared try it with us.
Or maybe they just know not to fuck with the terrified woman we’re rushing in.
She was really shaking like a leaf as we marched past the Maseratis and Porsches that filled the shop. She hadn’t said an intelligible word since we stepped into the car, and if Tess wasn’t enough to calm her, I wasn’t sure that any of us would be.
But hopefully Dom knew what to do. After all, damsels-in-distress were much more their thing than ours.
Speak of the devil.
The office door swung open just as we reached the back of the shop, revealing Dom in an untucked, black dress shirt, slicking back her hair. Through the doorway behind her, I could see the Doctor and that pretty little red head of theirs.
“What’s going on?” As her stern gaze flicked from us to the woman, I could see her piecing it together.
One of these things is not like the others…
“Try asking her,” Cyrus pulled the lady forward, but her quivering only got worse as she stood under Dom’s gaze.
“Jesus Christ, you don’t need to be such a savage about it,” the doctor muttered, shouldering her way through the door.
Her gaze softened as it shifted from Cyrus down to the stray we’d picked up.
“Hi, ma’am. My name’s Doctor Callahan, but you can call me Leo.
You look pretty bruised up. Mind telling me what happened? ”
But as Leo held a hand out to shake hers, the woman flinched back, wincing as she crashed back against the wall that was Cyrus.
Tess stepped past Cy, fixing the woman with a soft smile. “Come on, they’re just here to help. You don’t have to talk, but let’s have the doctor take a look, yeah?”
Reluctantly, the woman followed Tess into the office where the redhead was already clearing off a work station for the doctor. Leo followed behind them, keeping a careful distance from the flighty woman.
As they got to work, Cy, Nash, and I were left alone with Dom outside the office. Dom closed the door slightly — probably for privacy, but it didn’t stop the lurch in my stomach. I craned my neck to peer past her, unhappy to have my Trinket out of my sight.
“Who is she?” Dom frowned.
“No clue,” Cy grumbled. “She’s calling herself Jane. We picked her up outside of Velvet Paradise after chasing off the asshole who did this to her.”
“ID on him?” Dom raised a brow.
“Too dark to make much out. He was running for the hills before we got close enough to really see him.”
“She’s not talking either,” Nash pointed past the doorway with her chin. It was kind of eerie, really. Even from outside of the office, I could still hear the murmured prayers under her breath, half-intelligible pleas to god that she was chanting like a fucking mantra.
And the way she was looking at Tess — bug-eyed and panicked. Yet she still listened to her? Maybe it was just that Tess looked less scary than me, but none of this sat right with me.
“Do you think she’s been trained?” Dom glanced back into the office.
“What, like a dog?” I balked, earning a sneer from Dom.
“Like a cult member. Or a scared victim. I don’t know, it just seems too…”
“Practiced.” Cyrus frowned.
When I looked back at the woman, I could see what they meant. The way she looked at Tess, it seemed like she wanted to talk. Were those prayers really meant to comfort her, or just to keep her lips busy so that she didn’t spill?
I had no idea what was going on, but after Rubin’s stint in town, I didn’t like the smell of this. And I certainly didn’t like how close Tess was to its epicenter.
Cyrus must not have either. Cracking her neck, she gave Dom a once over. “You got it from here?”
“Yeah,” Dom nodded. “Callahan will treat the wounds, and we’ll see if we can get any more info out of her before cutting her loose. Thanks for bringing her in.”
“Don’t say we never did anything for you,” Cy waved dismissively over her shoulder as she opened the door to the office. “Let’s go.”
At her command, both Tess and “Jane” startled.
Tess scowled. “We just got here. She needs to see the doctor—”
“Not her. Just you. Up.”
“What?” Jane clawed at Tess’s forearm. It was the first real word she’d spoken since we found her. “You said you’d be here all night, you—”
Tess glared at Cyrus. “Are you serious?”
“Do I look fucking serious?” The edge in her voice should have been enough to scare Tess, but my little Trinket didn’t startle easy.
“Stay here,” she patted the woman’s hand before crossing to the doorway to hiss at Cyrus. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you see that she’s afraid?”
Cyrus crossed her arms. “She’s safe here. But this is out of our jurisdiction. We got her to people who can help her. Now we’ve gotta go.”
“She needs help.”
“And they're going to help her. We’ve done what we can do. But we don’t know her. This isn’t safe.”
“You didn’t know me either when I showed up at the park, and you helped me.”
Something sharp twisted in my chest at that, but Nash just laughed. “You think you could get within a hundred feet of that park and have us not know it was you?”
“You’re not that good of a liar,” Cyrus grumbled.
“And you weren’t spewing off religious chants under your breath, either.” I piped in, glancing back at Jane on the couch.
It wasn’t just a femme thing that drew her to Tess. She wasn’t taking nearly as kindly to the redhead the bikers kept around.
“Violence is better equipped to handle this than we are,” Nash bit her lip, searching Tess’ eyes for reason. “We need to give them space to work.”
If nothing else had, this seemed to reach Tess. She glanced back over her shoulder at Jane, who was watching her with feverish eyes. Finally, Tess nodded. “Alright. Let me say goodbye to her though.”
I wanted to object, but Tess was already on the move, kneeling in front of the panicked woman and letting her dig her fingers into her skin. “I have to get going. But you’re in good hands here. Let the doctor look over you, and answer their questions. They’re friends.”
“No.” Jane gasped, clasping harder onto Tess. “No, no, no—”
But Tess could hardly yelp before Nash and I were at her side, helping to pull the woman off of her.
“It’s going to be okay, it’ll be alright,” Tess tried her best to keep a smile on her face, but I could see the panic setting into her own eyes.
As we ushered her out of the room, Jane jumped up, trying desperately to follow after us. But Dom and Leo were a wall of muscle at the door, giving us the space to slip out without Tess’s fanatic little shadow.
The bikers tried to reason with Jane, but she wasn’t listening to them. She just kept staring past them, shouting her prayers louder and louder at Tess’ retreating form.
We didn’t get a reprieve from the chanting until we were back in the Cadillac with the doors shut. But even as we sped off into the night, I could tell from the quiver of her lip that the outburst was still looping in Tess’ mind.
I reached across the backseat, accidentally startling her as I rested my hand on her knee. I was prepared to pull my hand away, but the shock only lasted a second before Tess was intertwinging her fingers with mine. “What the fuck was that?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head.
“Was it… is she going to be okay?” Tears brimmed at Tess’ glimmering blue eyes, but she quickly blinked them back.
“Yes,” I said, hoping it was the truth. Violence wouldn’t let anything happen to “Jane” while she was under their watch. But whatever was going on with her was clearly much deeper than just an incident in the parking lot.
“We did everything we could for her, Tess.” Nash turned from the front seat, “You got her to safety. That’s all you could do.”
Tess nodded, settling into silence for the rest of the ride. It wasn’t long until we were back inside of Feverpoint’s rickety old gates, settled back into the apartment that had been home as long as I could remember now.
But while being back on our turf should have settled me, I couldn’t shake the tension in my chest. The others seemed to feel it too.
And despite our best attempts to ignore it, I knew there was one question on all of our minds: Who was so terrifying that the woman wasn’t willing to speak a single fucking word?