Chapter 16 #2
We hit the first Hellhound crash spot ten minutes later.
A squat, rotting house sagging under the weight of mold, piss, and old cigarette smoke.
The porch slants to one side, and the lights inside flicker like they’re afraid to stay on.
Something feral inside me comes alive as I approach the door.
I don’t bother knocking. The wood gives beneath my boot with a crack so loud it echoes through the frame, sending a picture off the wall and shattering the glass below it.
The first man inside rises from the stained couch, broad-shouldered and inked from neck to wrist. The kind of Hellhound who would look dangerous on any night but this one.
His confidence dissolves the moment our eyes meet.
Whatever false bravado he thought he had slips off him like water, leaving him pale and trembling.
His mouth opens as if to spit a lie or offer some excuse flimsy enough to break beneath my rage, but he never gets the chance to speak.
I’m on him before he breathes.
I don’t recognize myself as my hands grab his shirt and slam him back against the wall.
Everything familiar in me feels distant, muted, drowned under a tide of savage desperation.
It’s as if the part of me that knows restraint has stepped aside and left only the raw, unfiltered instinct to destroy anything that stands between Syvannah and me.
I drag him across the filthy tile and pin him against the dented refrigerator. His skull cracks against the metal, and he starts kicking at the floor in a frantic attempt to break free.
Behind me, Aloiki leans in the doorway, sipping his coffee like we walked into a farmers’ market instead of a hellhole. “Eh, Tiny,” he says, voice smooth and steady. “If you choke him out too fast, he's not gonna talk, Brah.”
I do a double take and shake my head. I have no clue how he has coffee at a time like this or why. But, it’s Aloiki and he does what he does.
The man wheezes, voice splintering. “I… I don’t know anything, please…” His lie is weak. His pulse kicks beneath the skin of his throat.
I press my forearm harder into his throat until his face reddens and his eyes start to roll. Then I ease up just enough for him to drag in a ragged gasp.
“Try again,” I say quietly. The tone alone breaks him.
He spills names. Places. A Hellhound safe house on Yucca. Another stash across from the laundromat. A video store on Fifth. His panic fills the room faster than air.
I let him drop. His body hits the ground like discarded meat.
Aloiki lifts a brow. “Ho, you on one tonight, ah?” he murmurs, but there’s something in his eyes I haven’t seen before. Concern wrapped in fear, wrapped in understanding.
I don’t answer. I can’t.
The second spot is a broken video store on Fifth, the kind of place time gave up on long before the city did.
The windows are covered in sun-faded posters that peel away from the glass like they’re trying to escape the building.
The smell of mildew, sweat, and the copper tang of blood seeped into the carpet hits us the second we step inside.
A lookout jumps to his feet with a gun in hand. The kind of twitchy idiot who thinks adrenaline is the same as skill.
He never gets the chance to aim. The Twins descend before reflex can save him, a blur of mirrored violence.
“Bad move,” one says, twisting the lookout’s wrist until bone snaps with a sharp, wet pop.
“Terrible move,” the other finishes, slamming the man backward into a shelf of ancient DVDs. Plastic cases rain down like brittle hail.
Across the room, another Hellhound tries to crawl toward the back door. I catch him by the ankle and drag him across the filthy carpet, ignoring the pleas that spill from his mouth like vomit.
“Wait… please, wait…” he cries.
“Waiting’s not really my thing tonight,” I say, planting my boot on his spine.
“We… we didn’t take her! Nobody took your girl. We heard she left man, she left on her own…”
The lie is pathetic. And it’s the exact wrong one to tell me. I press harder. The tile beneath him fractures under my weight. His scream scrapes the walls.
He sobs so hard his breath hitches. “I’ll talk, man. I’ll talk… just don’t… don’t…”
I lean in, letting my shadow swallow him whole. “Talk is cheap. Lies are cheaper.”
“I swear… I'm not lying!”
I press harder, making him wheeze and shudder under my foot. “You want to try that again?” I murmur, low and cold.
Fear punches the truth out of him faster than the pressure ever could. “Okay, okay. Shit… please, okay! It wasn’t us, it wasn’t… it was a crew we run drops with! Street crew on Yucca. Snake tattoos, shaved heads, they grabbed her, they had a black van, no plates… oh God, don’t… don’t…”
He barely gets the last word out before he starts praying into the floor. I walk out before the twins finish him.
The night feels heavier with every mile we ride.
The air grows thick with exhaust and desperation, as if the city itself knows something terrible is unfolding beneath its skin.
Every time I slow down enough to think, Syvannah’s face flashes in my mind.
Her uncertainty, her soft confusion when she caught me beating the courier, the way she seemed to be searching for the version of me she trusted.
And every time that image surfaces, the rage inside me claws higher.
By the time we hit the third location, I’m vibrating with it. Word has passed by now that I’m on the hunt, looking for my woman, and they better be fucking terrified.
The building is a two-story warehouse that looks abandoned from the street, but the sounds of low voices and hurried shuffling leaking through the rusted metal tell another story.
I shove the door open with my shoulder. Hinges scream. Harsh fluorescent lights buzz overhead, fighting a losing battle with the shadows. A man looks up from a card table stacked with drugs and cash, and every muscle in his face twists into fear.
He tries to bolt toward a side exit, but he doesn’t make it. I grab him by the back of his cut and slam him into the wall hard enough to rattle dust from the ceiling. The fluorescent lights above us flicker, stuttering over his terrified expression.
“Don’t… don’t. I don’t know anything about no girl, man, please!” The lie hits like gasoline on a flame.
I drag him down the wall until his knees hit concrete. “You try that line again, I’ll tear your jaw off your face.”
Aloiki steps in behind me. His expression is cautious, not afraid of me but afraid of what’s happening to me.
“You on high boil, Tiny,” he murmurs. “You gotta slow before you burn through yourself. Plus, your coffee tastes like shit.”
I press the man harder into the wall. The metal groans. “He’s lying.”
“Maybe,” Aloiki says softly. “But you gotta give him one sec to tell da truth.”
I loosen my grip a fraction. Just enough for the bastard to breathe.
The man’s chest heaves, sweat pouring down his temples. “Okay, okay. Someone took her. There was a van, yeah? Blacked out. We heard it was a pickup job. Something planned.”
Planned. Not random. Not opportunistic. Not accidental.
My vision narrows dangerously. “And where did they take her?” My voice shakes, not with fear, but with something brittle, something close to breaking.
“I… I don’t know… please, please…” His eyes dart desperately, searching for mercy that doesn’t exist here.
A slow shadow moves along the wall behind him.
The Twins.
One circles left. The other circles right. Two wolves are closing in on wounded prey.
“You know what your problem is?” one asks lightly.
“You lie too much,” the other finishes.
Their voices overlap until they become a single, unnerving sound.
“People who lie to him…” one says.
“…don’t last very long.”
“And you’re already half dead, man.”
“Tell him something useful.”
The Hellhound swallows hard enough, I hear it click. “I… I heard something!” he blurts, voice cracking. “Something concrete, like, literally. An old building. A shelter. That’s all, I swear, that’s all.” Aloiki advances, silencing the man for good.
We saunter out of the warehouse, heading toward our bikes parked in the alley, when a Hellhound lunges at me with a blade, but he’s too slow, too sloppy, too desperate.