ten
The Angel
“Yeah,” I say, echoing Saint’s words as I take in Mercy’s flat hair and oversized men’s shirt. I can’t tell if she’s wearing anything under it. “Where the fuck you been, loca?”
Heath scowls at me. “Really?” he mutters.
“Want to explain yourself?” he grinds out.
“Want to let go of me?” Mercy asks, wincing and tugging at her arm.
“Yeah, man,” says the guy in the truck. “You really shouldn’t be handling her like that.”
That was the wrong thing to say to Saint right now. He puffs up and turns about three shades redder, looking like a bull about to charge. “You want to tell me again how to handle my sister?”
“Okay, let’s all calm down and take a breath,” I say, clamping a hand on Saint’s shoulder before he can jump up in the truck and beat the shit out of Dynamo just because the guy never learns when to shut up. Usually Saint’s the one reining us in, but he has no chill when it comes to Mercy.
“I’ll calm down when Mercy can tell me what the fuck she’s doing riding around with Colt Darling,” Saint thunders.
She flinches, glancing back at the driver.
He shrugs. “Guess now you know my name too, Red.”
“He has a nickname for you?” Saint asks, his voice going deadly quiet.
She’s gone a little green, and I watch her gulp. Even Heath won’t provoke Saint when he’s mad quiet. He stands aside, ready to rumble as always but subdued now, watching.
Mercy opens her mouth to answer, but before she can, a little face pops out from the back seat, where the windows are tinted so we can’t see inside. “Hey, guys,” says my little cousin, pushing up her glasses and offering a cheerful grin. “Don’t worry, your girl was supervised at all times.”
Mercy turns and gives her a look I can’t read, which makes me curious what she was doing to end up with Dynamo and Hemingway. Obviously she was watching the girls fight at the Slaughterpen, maybe sizing up Salem Sincero. But why is she coming home with these two?
“Thanks, Hemi,” I say, then turn to Dynamo. “You better get her home. It’s late, and her dad won’t like her riding around alone with an older guy.”
“Whoa,” Dynamo says, holding up both hands. “She’s a fucking baby. Don’t even go there.”
“Rude,” my cousin protests. “I’m not a baby.”
“He’s right, you are,” I say. “Now go home. It’s past your bedtime. And I’ll be checking your location until I see you made it, so don’t even think about turning it off.”
“Red?” calls Dynamo.
“I’m good,” Mercy says. “You can go.”
“You think that guy is going to protect you?” Saint grits out. “From us?”
I mouth for them to go before closing the door. They can only make it worse by staying, and they must know that, because after a slight hesitation, the truck pulls away from the curb. Saint is still glowering at Mercy, refusing to even glance at anyone else.
“Let’s just go to my room,” she says. “I’m tired. I’ll explain everything there.”
All twelve of us wait for Saint’s verdict, to see if he’ll make her lay it all out in front of the Hellhounds the way he wanted her put on display in the library.
But this time, he must decide that whatever she has to say is more private than her pussy, because he gives a curt nod and turns away, dragging her along by her arm.
She lets out a gasp and trips over the curb, but she quickly rights herself, wrapping an arm around her middle and hanging her head as she follows him toward the dorms.
“Y’all can go,” Heath says to the others. “We’ve got this.”
The other Hellhounds are brothers, but they’re more like fraternity brothers than blood brothers.
Heath and Saint are blood to me, as much my brothers as Seraphim or Xavier.
The other guys dab us up, and then they head back to their parties or beds.
A few grumble, but they don’t really care.
We have each other’s backs on campus. That’s what they’re here for, just like we’d roll out of bed and come join them if one of their sisters was in trouble.
We weren’t sure what situation Mercy had gotten herself into, but from my cousin’s text, it didn’t sound good.
The Hellhounds were ready for a fight, whatever that meant.
Heath and I hurry to catch up with Saint, who’s stalking across campus at a fast clip, still gripping Mercy’s arm like she might slip away again if he lets her go for even a second.
“Is it my imagination, or is Mercy walking a little funny?” I ask my uncle.
“Probably still sore from taking it up the ass,” he says with a feral grin. “It’s only been a few days.”
“Does it usually last that long?”
He scowls at me. “How would I know?”
I shrug. “None of us would care if you did, you know.”
“Who is ‘us’ ?” he demands.
“Me and Saint,” I say. “Our families.”
He snorts. “You think your machismo dad, or Saint’s asshole dad, would agree?”
“You know what? Fuck them if they don’t,” I say. “I don’t care, okay? And neither does Saint. Or the Master. Or Mercy.”
“Yeah, because she’s so open minded.”
“She’s sheltered,” I say. “Not closed minded. She might surprise you.”
“She did fuck her brother.” He smiles, but it’s half-hearted. Saint’s the only one who ever really believed that.
“I’m just saying,” I say as we reach her dorm. “We’re your family, and we accept you how you are. However that is. Just figured you should know, in case you didn’t.”
“I did,” he says, quietly for once. “Thanks.”
“Cool.”
We follow the others through the back door and up the steps to the third floor, where Mercy lives. Saint hauls her up the entire staircase and only releases her when we reach the door to her room, where someone has scrawled something in runny letters that look a lot like blood.
“What the fuck?” Saint mutters.
Mercy wraps her arm around herself again, but instead of cowering, she turns to us. “I lost my key,” she says evenly. “Who here has one?”
I cast a guilty glance at the others, waiting for someone to fess up. When no one does, she sighs.
“I know one of you has it,” she says. “Do you pass it around every week, or does one person keep it unless someone else needs it?”
“We all have one,” I admit at last, pulling out my keys. “How’d you lose yours?”
“I accidentally left it somewhere.”
When I open the door for her, she goes to step in, but Saint grabs her arm, yanking her back. She lets out a grunt, wincing like he hurt her even though that couldn’t have been painful.
“Stay here,” he growls, planting her next to us before prowling into the room. I step into the doorway so I can have his back if needed but still keep an eye on Heath and Mercy.
“Where’d you leave your key?” Heath asks Mercy.
“What?”
“You said you left your key somewhere. Where?”
“I…” Her gaze flies from one of us to another like a trapped moth.
Saint emerges, satisfied that there’s no danger. “What does that say?” he asks, squinting at her door and trying to decipher the dripping words.
“Shouldn’t you know that?” she asks, giving him a look.
“Why would I?”
“Because you wrote them?” she says, like it’s obvious.
She stomps into her room, and I notice for the first time that she’s not wearing her usual clogs.
Instead, she has a pair of Vans tennis shoes on her feet, and when her shirt moves up her thigh as she takes a step, I can see she’s wearing bike shorts under it, so at least I know she’s not naked under there.
Still, it’s a weird thing to be wearing if you’re not working out, and now that we’re inside where there’s more light, I can see smudges down the outside of her leg that look suspiciously like blood.
I eye her as we all settle in around her room. I take her chair, while Saint makes himself at home on her bed. Heath paces, as usual.
“Okay, we’re in your room now,” Saint says. “Tell us what the fuck you were doing tonight and why the fuck you’re wearing another man’s shirt. Is that Colt’s?”
“I don’t know,” she says, stepping into her closet and pulling the door closed except for a sliver to let light in and her voice out. “I told you, I talked to someone to get information, but I didn’t know his name. That’s him. How do you know him?”
“Everyone knows Colt,” I say. “He’s… A shape shifter of sorts.”
“Everyone?” she asks, stepping out of the closet wearing one of her silky pajama sets, this one pale pink with purple roses on it. She looks from one of us to the next. We all nod.
I know him because he fucks around with my cousin Mav.
Heath knows him from the street races. And Saint knows him from the other side of town, where their rich families schmooze together.
Clearly, Mercy knows nothing about any of this, though, which makes me feel a little better about her showing up in his shirt.
“Look, we told you we would help you find E,” I point out. “Why are you trying to ditch us and go it alone? You still don’t trust us?”
“Is that it?” Heath asks. “You still think it was us, and that we’ll hinder your investigation?”
“No,” she protests. “I don’t think it was you. I trust you. Can you trust me?”
“No,” Saint growls, scowling. “Not when you’re sneaking out. Where were you, Mercy?”
I glance at him. We know where she went.
Saint came clean about putting a tracker in her, and as soon as he showed us where she was, I knew what that meant.
Femme Fight Friday is the only thing that takes place at the Slaughterpen that night.
The only thing we couldn’t figure out is why she was there.
Maybe she was checking out Salem Sincero, seeing what we’re up against, but it doesn’t sit quite right. She’s still hiding something.
“I don’t get why you’re making such a big deal of this,” she says. “I’m fine. I just want to get some sleep, okay?”
“We promised to protect you,” I point out. “You’re making that real fucking hard.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“Didn’t you?” I ask, cocking my head. “I seem to remember you barging into the gym and demanding protection from the Sinners.”
“I don’t remember that at all.”