Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
H angman…
I felt better that she was surrounded by the girls as I walked down to the clubhouse. I cast a longing look as I passed by my bike, her chrome gleaming under the high overhead fluorescent lighting here in the garage. I was dying to go for a ride, but business had gotten in the way and making sure Lorelai felt safe had become my top priority.
She was this amazing amalgamation of both compliant and defiant that I found intriguing. She spoke her mind respectfully but also really weighed the pros and cons of her situation carefully. She was measured and controlled, and I liked that about her. I think I liked it even more that she was quiet. Contemplative. Almost to the point of being meditative. She had every reason to be freaking the fuck out over what had and was happening to her but she simply refused. She remained calm, almost placid, and I appreciated that.
I needed calm. That’s why I kept to myself among the dead. I didn’t like who I was when I got worked up. It was almost… I don’t know. I didn’t like it.
“Hey, what’s up homie? How’s it going with the dead girl?” Death asked me as I rounded the corner into the bar room upstairs.
“She was only mostly dead,” I said and Haint nearly had beer come out of his nose as he’d been taking a swallow when I made the crack. He got it. Death only shook his head at me.
“I guess Reaper’s dick in your hand is enough to raise you from the dead,” Corvus said with an almost pained grin on his face.
“I keep saying,” Specter said. “Ain’t you ever cracked a cold one after a long day? Guess our boy’s version is just a little different from the rest of us.”
“Fucking get it out of your systems,” I said and then I fixed Specter with a look, “And don’t you ever crack that one in front of Lorelai again.”
“Dude, what? ” Corvus demanded and looked from me to Specter aghast.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, man?” Haint shook his head in disgust.
“What? I didn’t actually fuckin’ do anything!” Specter’s defense was a thin one at best and the rest of the guys were already subconsciously distancing themselves from him.
“Grim and Reaper here yet?” I asked. Corvus shook his head.
“Not yet, no – Tor’s cooking up some barbecue out there we’re fixing to eat while we talk.”
“Hua,” I said and went to the bar. “Gimme a beer,” I told Spooky who reached into cooler in front of him for one, before deftly twisting off the top and holding it out to me all in one seamless motion. I took it and saluted him with it before taking a drink of the cold, crisp suds. He gave me a silent nod of appreciation and went on about his bartending duties while I slid up onto a corner stool.
“Syn’s already in the chapel if you wanted to connect,” Corvus raised his blond eyebrows at me and I shook my head.
“Naw, let him cool off,” I said and Corvus gave that raucous laugh of his nodding.
“Madisyn’s certainly got his panties in a wad,” he agreed.
“She’s not always wrong,” I said with a smirk.
“Especially not in this case, I hear…”
There it was.
Corvus wasn’t a fucking dumbass. His brown eyes went from sparkling with mirth to glittering with a cold calculation as he searched my face looking for some hidden answer or sign of deception on my part.
He wouldn’t find any. I was just as loyal to this club and the brothers within it as I ever was, and that loyalty wasn’t wavering in the slightest. I just knew for a fact, was trusting my gut, that we could have our cake and eat it, too this time. That the club would be fine and that Lorelai would be fine and that she wouldn’t give us any trouble.
I knew it with a deep and definitive ache in my bones, but there wasn’t any explaining the why of it to Corvus or anyone else. It was purely based on trust. Them trusting me as much as me trusting Lorelai, which I did. She was a genuine soul, couldn’t keep a thing off her face or out of her eyes, and was a sweet girl… if things were different, if I had met her under any other circumstance, I would have pegged her as the sweet submissive sort from a mile away – but this wasn’t a different era, or time. This was now, and I fully admitted our meeting wasn’t under the best circumstances. Not just for Reaper, but for the club as a whole.
She’d seen and heard a lot that she wasn’t meant to, and we couldn’t play fast and loose with that.
The stakes were high, and in this case, we were in the gambler’s seat; and we knew that in the end the house always won… but what we didn’t know was who we were dealing to.
Wasn’t Lorelai; I knew that for sure. She was a pawn in all things – collateral damage, and boy was she damaged.
Her spirit wasn’t broken, but her heart and her mind weren’t exactly firm. She was scared, she was lonely, she was also clearly imprinting on me… but that was the rub. I couldn’t say I wasn’t imprinting on her, too.
It was a pretty fucked-up meet cute. I would say there was nothing cute about it – because there certainly wasn’t… but that was the world we lived in.
There was nothing cute about it. Nothing safe. Nothing sane. It was as real, dangerous, and high stakes as any world any citizen could dream of.
We lived where the real-life action took place that they could only live vicariously through movies, books, and television… but not us. We were the real deal, except the consequences were looming if we ever got caught and thus the club’s unspoken motto came into play: don’t get caught. I think we all needed to sit down and brainstorm exactly how we went about keeping our asses out of the light cast by law enforcement and the legal system we lived our lives firmly on the wrong side of.
I thought about all that as Corvus stared a hole through my soul with the expectation that I would speak.
I didn’t know what he expected to come out of my mouth, and I was sorry to disappoint him but…
“She’s a good girl,” I said. “Fuck knows why, but she trusts me. I’ve been building a rapport the last couple of days. It’s something we can leverage.”
He stared me down, doing the math in his head and finally blinked several times and shook it, “I still see way too many ways this could go bad and not enough ways in which we come out on top.”
“With how dire the situation is, I would worry less about coming out on top and more about just breaking even,” I said quietly.
He searched my face and looked grave before nodding carefully.
“Sounds to me like you trust her.”
I shrugged.
“Gotta give a little, to get a little,” I said.
He choked on a laugh and sighed harshly, shaking his head.
“Mads and the girls really fucked this up,” he said.
“Getting to know her. I can’t say I’m upset about it,” I said cautiously.
Corvus scoffed, “Careful you ain’t flyin’ too close to the sun on this one, bro. You know how that worked out in the end.”
I nodded, thinking about the old myth and how Icarus had crashed and burned out of his own arrogance. I worried about that, but then I thought back to how Lorelai had cuddled into my side like I was her shelter from the storm. About how her eyes lingered on me, and how the look in her moonlit eyes was both beseeching and unquestioningly… something .
It was that something that I didn’t have a name for that galvanized me.
I firmly believed that she didn’t give a shit. About Reaper, about being locked away with me, about any of it. She was a lost little lamb and she was looking to me as her shepherd. I felt some type of way about that. A little guilty for her innocence – because I didn’t make for a good shepherd. None of us did. We were a pack of wolves, and we were just about always hungry and looking for our next meal.
Still, where Lorelai was concerned, I stayed my hand. I wasn’t sure if it was her big silver doe eyes looking up to me that did it, or if it was something else… but I had a good feeling about her and I’d learned throughout the years to trust my gut. Still, I didn’t expect my brothers to trust it with me – not with something this monumental.
My thoughts were interrupted by the boys outside calling dinner. We divested our cell phones, took up plates, and loaded up on the fare Torment and some of the other fellas had put together, taking it back on up into the chapel to eat and discuss.
We didn’t always eat and hold church at the same time, but sometimes it called for it. This was one of those times. Making sure everyone was up to speed and working out the problem would take all of us on this one.
I had some added layers of difficulty in that some of my motives probably didn’t quite align with my brothers.’
We would have to see.
I settled into my seat at the big table and set my plate and beer in front of me. The tablets were out, propped and sitting in front of each and every one of us. Connected to the internet, sure, but encrypted to the nines and under the exacting and careful scrutiny of Requiem and his security firm.
Syn was brooding at the head of the table, his dark eyes fixed on the tablet’s screen as Tor set down a plate of food in front of him.
“Eat, you broody bastard,” Tor ordered him but Synister didn’t so much as twitch. He was zoned in on watching the girls, the sound off and every tablet playing the same thing – an image of my small living room from barely two blocks away and the girls sitting around on the couch and in my recliner as Lorelai stepped into the room in a dress that very much suited her shapely figure.
I studied her, and a fierce ache started in my chest. I frowned at the longing. I don’t think I’d ever felt so keenly attuned to another person, never mind in such a short time. It was vaguely concerning, but there were honestly bigger concerns in front of me – such as listening in to my brothers’ thoughts as they sat around munching on their dinner and watching the small screen in front of them.
“This complicates things, doesn’t it?” Death mused aloud.
“Shit was already complicated to begin with,” Shade muttered. “This just puts it over the top.”
Fear grunted in agreement, “Looks like Lainey likes her, never mind Mini-Syn. How the fuck they even find out about her?”
“Loose lips sink ships,” Synister breathed out and he balled one fist inside of the other, resting his elbows on the table and pressing his fists to his own lips as his dark eyes roved the screen.
“What d’you think they’re talking about?” Haint asked.
“One way to find out.” Requiem unmuted his tablet and the girls’ high musical laughter filtered through the room, thin and reedy with just the one tablet playing.
“Do you think they’re watching and listening?” Valory asked and she looked up at the camera.
The rest of the girls followed suit.
“Red means no, green means yes,” Lorelai said and Requiem shot me a look across the table. I shrugged.
“I didn’t say anything about that,” I said. “You did.”
“Eavesdropping little vixen,” Torment said it like he was either proud or impressed. That was Tor, though. He lived for when the people around him were fit to be tied and a lot of the guys were absolutely that.
“Like I said,” Synister said, clearing his throat.
“Might as well give ‘em something to look at,” I heard Madisyn say and looked down to see her lift her shirt and her bra, her tits falling out as she shook them back and forth at the camera. The girls howled with laughter and Synister scowled.
He hit the button on the screen unmuting the microphone on his tablet and in a stern tone said, “Put my tits away, Madisyn. I’ll be dealing with you later.”
Lorelai looked like she blanched and swallowed hard. She didn’t say anything but Valory did.
“I hope he’s not being an asshole to you,” she said.
“Always,” Madisyn said rolling her eyes, “but I like it.”
Lainey thought that shit was funny, but Valory just scowled.
“He better pull his head out of his ass,” she said and Synister looked amused.
“Or what?” he asked.
“Or I’ll sit my fat ass on your head and suffocate you!” Valory called out and both Madisyn and Lainey started howling. Lorelai looked amused, but only barely. She had a healthy fear of Synister. That was good – Madisyn, I think, was becoming a little too complacent. A lot of the guys were looking to Syn who had just the barest of evil little smirks on his lips.
“Hate to be you when you get home, sweetie,” Tor called out and for the first time that afternoon, Mads looked just a little bit nervous.
“We’ll talk when you get home,” Synister declared and turned off the intercom or whatever you called it.
I heard and watch Mads heave a sigh as Requiem switched off the sound.
“Note to self,” Specter declared. “Watch what the fuck you say around those bitches.”
“Call my girl that again and we’ll take it outside,” Fear said casually.
Specter gave him the finger.
“Knock it the fuck off!” Syn barked. “Now isn’t the time for jokes or to be at each other’s throats over petty fucking drama! We have a very real, very serious problem sitting in Hangman’s living room and absolutely zero fucking solutions as to how to go about things.”
“Relax,” Grim said and he took a cleansing breath.
“Killing a victim is a little beneath us,” Reaper said and his gaze was fixed on the tablet in front of him.
“Victimizing a victim twice is more than a little beneath us, too,” Fear said and Reaper lifted one shoulder in a nonchalant shrug.
“I thought she was dead,” he said dismissively, as if somehow that made things better and not worse.
“Jesus Fucking Christ, you’re weird as shit,” Torment muttered, but then shrank a bit under Reaper’s unwavering stare from behind his ever-present colored lenses.
Something about the TBI he sustained in Iraq. Made him get migraines and made him sensitive to light to the point the lenses were just about an everyday everywhere, no matter what kind of weather was going on type of thing.
“What, you never cracked a cold one after a long day at work?” Specter asked.
“Shut it,” I said sharply. “The joke is old and played out already.”
Multiple looks came my direction. I sniffed and cleared my throat.
“She’s not going to be a problem,” I said, and started to sweat just a little under their silent scrutiny.
“You can’t be sure about that—” Grim started, but I cut him off.
“Well, I am,” I said. I shook my head. “She’s not interested in any of us or what we’re up to. She’s just scared, and alone, and can’t remember shit, and wants to know what happened, but she’s cool. Pretty quiet and chill, actually. She wants to go home at some point, but right now she’s got a memory like Swiss cheese with so many fuckin’ holes in it she doesn’t even feel like home would be home for her.”
“I’m afraid, at this point, she’s going to be our only hint or lead into how she wound up in the mortuary in the first place,” Synister aid and he didn’t sound happy about it.
“That’s not great news,” Corvus said and he leaned back in his board room chair and took a drink from the bottle of Blue Moon he had in his hand.
“I have a rapport with her,” I said. “She’s telling me pretty much anything and everything that’s coming to her. She hasn’t said anything about the night she disappeared yet. Seems her childhood shit and whatnot are coming back first.”
“Childhood shit like what?” Synister demanded.
“Random shit, like her name and that she likes Jane Austen, and that her granddad used to call her Sweetpea.”
“What else?” Corvus asked.
I shook my head, “It comes at random. I think you give it enough time she’ll remember how she got to us.”
“Why you sound so sure?” I think it was Grim that asked, but my vision was focused on the small screen in front of me as Lorelai drifted back into the frame in yet more fresh clothes that suited her. Jeans and some kind of flowy blouse thing this time.
“The nightmares,” I said and I couldn’t keep the unhappiness out of my voice if I tried. “She’s fighting someone or several someone’s desperately in them. I think the memory is there, just below the surface and it’s only a matter of time before something breaks it.”
“Think it’ll break her? ” Torment asked and he honestly sounded a little too excited at the prospect. He did love to watch someone suffering.
I shook my head, “She’s quiet, but she’s resilient,” I said.
“You got a thing for her?” Haint asked and sounded a little surprised.
Synister snorted. “Don’t even try to hide it at this point, bro. I saw enough this morning – and don’t think I don’t see your play in involving Madisyn and her friend. I see everything.”
“Wasn’t trying to hide anything,” I said with a shrug, still captivated by Lorelai turning this way and that for the girls, smoothing her hands over the well fitted jeans over her hips. “I don’t think she’s a problem. I think if anything she’ll be her own solution if you give her enough time and breathing room and stop threatening her with locking her ass up in the vault.”
Somebody along the table tried to cover their incredulous laugh with a cough and failed miserably at it. Synister took the time to stop glaring at me to glare at them instead.
“So, what do you propose we do then, since you seem to have the all-seeing-eye,” Corvus asked, but he didn’t sound sarcastic in the slightest. Just curious.
“Keep playing it my way,” I said. “Give her the room to breathe a little. See what comes back. Work with her. She’s a lot more pliable and responds best to patience and gentle.”
“Fine,” Synister grumbled. “You’re the corpse bride whisperer or whatever – but something has to give sooner rather than later.”
“You can’t force this,” Reaper said quietly and I glanced at him. He was looking up the table at Synister. “The human mind is a delicate thing – hers is trying to protect itself by forgetting. In order to remember she needs to feel safe enough to do so. Hangman is doing everything right.”
I blinked and all of us were a little taken aback.
“That was a whole-ass goddamn monologue,” Specter said. “You feeling okay?”
Reaper was looking directly at me when he said simply, “I thought she was dead,” and gave another inconsequential shrug. I made eye contact with Grim who seemed to understand Reaper’s weird silent sublanguage better than any of us and he gave me a slight nod back in encouragement.
It clicked.
Reaper wasn’t sorry about what he’d been doing but he was somehow sorry about how it affected all concerned. I guess this was his version of apologizing or making shit right… it was the best I could come up with in the moment but it was also the best I would get without Grim spelling it out for me; but if Grim was giving me the nod, then I would go with it.
“She’s not dead,” I said with a sigh. “But she’s okay. I think waking up with your dick in her hand is honestly the least of her concerns right now with this whole thing.”
“So, you’re saying we should be the big damn hero this time?” Death asked from down the table.
“What’s got you more fucked up?” I asked with a shrug of my own, “The fact she’s alive or the fact somebody out there was trying to use us as their fuckin’ errand boys no questions asked?”
“The later has me pissed off six ways to fucking Sunday,” Synister declared. “I want to know who in their right mind thinks they’re the top of the food chain in this city, because they need a lesson in hierarchy. No one tops the Wraiths. No one disrespects the Wraiths. That’s not how this works.”
“We’re nobody’s fuckin’ errand boys,” Corvus chimed in.
“So, it’s settled,” I said. “She’s not the priority. Finding out who thinks they can use us as their dirty cum rag is.”
Nods went around the table, and Synister said to me, “Don’t think you’re off the fuckin’ hook – you’re responsible for her. She dimes us out?—”
“I already told you I’d take the fall. Still stands. I don’t think she’d dime us out or dick us over.”
“You better be fuckin’ right,” Corvus said pointing at me. “You’re not, and it’s no one but your ass on the line.”
I nodded.
“I told Syn as much that first night and I fuckin’ stand by it,” I said.
“Fine, drop it, we don’t have the time to talk ourselves in a fuckin’ circle. The clock is ticking. She’s either going to have to go back to her life sooner rather than later or she’s going to become an even bigger pain in our ass than she already is.” Fear had been the one to speak and he wasn’t wrong.
I had been thinking about that, too. As much as I would love to give her all the time in the world to just hang and rest quietly in my home people were looking for her. She was on the news. Her disappearance was a big fuckin’ deal, and the clock was ticking.
“I’ve already thought of that,” Synister said making eye contact with me and I nodded.
“Let me know what you’ve got later, let’s get on to the next problem before we’re stuck here all damn night.”
Regardless on if Lorelai was the topic of conversation or not, it was shaping up to be a long one anyway. There was a lot of ground to cover to bring all of us up to speed on whatever investigation there’d been about just how Lorelai had found herself on Reaper’s table.
Someone had pissed in our pond, though, and made a big splash. Now to find them and potentially drown them in the turbulent waters. We liked our pond as smooth as glass.