Chapter Two
The body lay on the cold steel table for me to identify. A white sheet covered him, but it had been pulled back to below his chin, but just above the red smile cut from ear to ear.
The face was a ruin. Once so lean and handsome, the thing before me is black and blue and swollen with cuts and bruises. More a haunch of rotten and beaten meat than a man. And the blood, so much blood.
I couldn’t bear to look. He was unrecognisable, yet I knew. I knew this was him. I knew this was David.
I knew this was my brother.
I forced myself not to run as unshed tears burned the corners of my eyes.
Anything can happen. Yea I suppose he was right about that. There were monsters out there, monsters who’d stolen the only person I had left.
I walked without thinking, letting my feet lead me wherever. Anywhere. I didn’t care, I just needed to keep walking. Until…
Until what? They found me? I thought they’d find me in that shithole. They’d found David there, or at least that’s what the police thought. Evidence had been lacking. Witnesses unwilling to come forward.
They didn’t care. No one cared about one dead boy raped and butchered in a gutter.
But I cared.
He was my brother, and I wanted the bastards who did that to him.
But instead, I’d found him. Or rather he’d found me. Lucian.
Just the memory of him made my belly flutter.
There was something off about him, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. He was just too suave, in that old fashioned, debonair, Jane Austen and Mr Darcy sort of way. From the moment he opened his mouth, he had just exuded charm. And that face, all sharp lines and smooth planes, he was a work of art carved from pristine white marble with black pearl eyes glinting out from beneath tumbles of thick jet-black hair just that bit too long it begged for a hand to run through it. He was the very embodiment of dark and dangero-
I froze, a cold cascade sloshing down my spine. What was that?
“Hey babe, you lost?” A man’s voice, deep and guttural called from behind me, close. Very close.
Swallowing, I turned and found myself surrounded.
“A hot little dish like you must be pretty stupid to be walking around this neighbourhood all alone,” the body that came with the voice was immense, a big thuggish brute with a spider’s web tattooed on his bald head. “You a ho looking for work?” The others all gave him space as he stepped forward, like mangy dogs backing from the alpha. “Well, we don’t pay for cunt, ho, ya hear me, we fuck it. Ya hear that boys, we fuck it till it’s broke!”
They all began to snigger and lick their lips at that, and my hand dropped down to my clutch, its familiar weight giving me strength.
The black guy on my left stepped forward, grinning with a set of large pure white teeth. “Where’s your pimp ho? Little bitches shouldn’t wander the streets all alone. Anything could of happened...” He stepped in close, one hand brushing over my shoulders to scoop up my hair. He brought it up to his nose and sniffed, making me shiver with revulsion. “Good thing we found you.”
“Yeah, anything coulda' happened.” The giant grinned as the two to my right closed the gap. “Don’t worry, you’re safe now. This is our neighbourhood.” I’d been snared like a mouse in a trap.
It was them. I knew it. I couldn’t explain how, but I just knew.
“And nothing happens on your streets without your say so.” My voice came out as cool as ice and I had to keep my fist clenched around my clutch to keep from shaking.
“Ya could say that yea.”
“Did you, do it?” I knew this beast killed David, but I needed to hear it. Hear him say it, confess.
“Do wha?”
I saw red. How could he not know? The black guy was tall. Much taller than I. And the way he was trying to cover my back to keep me from running away left him completely open so that when I jammed my elbow back, it hit the one place it would do the most damage.
His grunt caught them all off guard. They’d expected me to run, to plead and beg. Never to attack. So they were too late to stop my hand as it slipped into my clutch.
They all stepped back when I pulled out the Browning Hi-Power Mark I.
It had been my father’s old service pistol. He’d carried it through his national service. I’d found it buried amongst his things whilst I was clearing out their house after their funeral. I’d kept it along with a few other mementoes and forgotten all about it until tonight.
“Two months ago!” I snapped, raising the pistol so the business end pointed straight for the giant’s torso. “A boy was murdered here! Did you, do it?”
“You talking crazy girl!” one of the men shouted, but I didn’t look at him. My eyes were set on the giant. He looked too calm, like he didn’t care, but his eyes. They burned with fury. I had drawn a gun on him and that enraged him. How dare I; this was his neighbourhood, his street, and I had the nerve to pull a piece. Good, let the bastard squirm, he should know what it felt like. He’d made David suffer in the worst possible ways. Well, I would make him pay. For my brother.
“What makes you think we had anything to do with it?” Another voice shouted. The black guy, I guessed. Good, none of his friends were coming to help him, he was alone, and he didn’t like it.
“It happened here in your neighbourhood.”
“Bitch, please! That was talk. Just talk. We had nothing to do with it.”
“Yea, po-po would have been all over us.”
“Bullshit!” I spat it out, all ice and fire. They did it. I knew they did. They murdered my brother!
“Yea, it’s bullshit, sweetheart” the giant growled.
“You killed him?”
“Yea. Little cunt wouldn’t shut his fucking mouth, so I opened his throat. Whatcha gonna do about it? Shoot me?”
“Yeah.”
“Bitch, you ain't got the minerals.” He laughed, a deep grizzled laugh that sent ice straight through my belly. “Go on then, blow me away in cold blood. They’ll stick a mad ho like you in some dyke slam to eat fanny for twenty years. Bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, all the pussy you can eat. They’ll be lining up to get a piece of you. So, go ahead if you’re serious, shoot me, shoot me, shoot-”
I pulled the trigger.
I had expected a bang, for the Browning to kick back as they did in the movies. But all that came out was a click. A dull metallic click no louder than a whisper, but at that moment it bellowed like a clap of thunder.
Ice rushed through my veins. My eyes dropped to the pistol, then back up to the giant and I tried again. And again.
Nothing.
He smiled, a cruel twisted thing, like barbed wire wound into knots across his face. “Works better with the safety off.”
He grabbed the Browning, his immense paw encompassing the barrel, and wrenched it out of my hand.
I didn’t have time to scream. One moment I’d been standing there, the next I’d been pressed up against a wall, hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs, with one of them driving his arms against my neck while the others pawed at my clothes.
Panic and bile leapt into my throat. Gasping, fighting for breath, I tried to push the arm away, but the giant thwarted my efforts and pinned my arms above my head. He applied just enough pressure for my joints to scream in protest, and for a single heart-stopping moment, I thought he might break both my arms.
No, this can’t be happening. Hot angry tears burned my eyes, yet I fought the pain that seared up my arms and lashed out. My knee hit something soft, and one of them grunted and cursed for his balls. I would have laughed, but I was too swamped with the instinctive need to flee, to escape, to make that desperate break for it.
The fight left me however when a titanic force slammed into my stomach. I went limp, the pain enough that I would have doubled over, but the restraining arm held me where I was.
“Hold still you little bitch.” A voice hissed. “The more you resist, the worse this gets for you.”
A roll of duct tape appeared, and a hand wound the binding round and round my wrists, to the point all circulation was cut off and my fingers began to tingle.
The giant stepped in to dominate my view, my father’s Browning raised and pointed at my face. “Go on, look. Look down the barrel, you see the bullet?”
I could. The muzzle was black, much too dark to see down. But I could see the bullet well enough all the same.
“Answer me, can you see it?”
“Yes.” And so much more.
I could smell the gun pounder, filling my nostrils in thick grey clouds, acrid and pungent against the night air. I heard the bang of the shot, saw my head snap back, my face a ruin. And red, so much red. Red smoke, red pulp and bone, a red cloud, and red blood everywhere.
“Good now open wide. I want you to suck it. Come on, suck it.”
A part of me tried to be brave, screamed for me to tell them to go to hell and then shut my mouth tight. But the fear pulsed through me, making me shake, and hot tears rolled down my cheeks as, bit by bit, my mouth opened.
“Yeah, good girl. Your brother was an obedient bitch too. I fucked him bloody then handed him round to the rest of the boys, and when they were done, I cut his throat. If he hadn’t been such a good little whore, I’d have cut his dick off and fed it to him. And if you try to run, I’ll cut your tits off and-”
A deep growl rumbled through the night.
“What the fuck?” The giant lurched back and through the tears, I saw a dog coming towards us. A very big dog. All black and shaggy, like a Game of Thrones Direwolf, only not quite so cute and cuddly.
And I was almost positive it was looking at me. Then, it dipped its head, ears pricked, and fur raised, and growled another warning. It reverberated off the brick walls and shivered through flesh and bone.
“What’s that?” one man asked, fear evident in his voice as he sized up the canine.
“Just a mutt,” the giant shrugged, surveying the dog warily before turning his icy glare back to me. I shrunk under his gaze. “What, you’d pass up this fine piece of ass just because a mangy stray barks at ya a little.”
“Well, that’s a pretty big fucking stray, mate. Jesus, look at those teeth…”
The dog snapped a warning and the black guy turned and ran, tripping and stumbling over his own feet as he went.
“All right, that thing is starting to piss me off,” Web turned to the two remaining men. “Del! Jake! Skin the fucker.”
They both looked at each other, sharing a look like they were about to piss themselves there and then. Then they nodded and turned to the dog. I saw a flash of silver as they pulled flick knives from the depths of their coats.
I couldn’t look, couldn’t watch them butcher the poor creature. I could hear the dog growling and the men’s footsteps echoing, then silence. No howls or moans of agony from the dog as it was murdered. No grunts and growls from the men as they got off on killing my canine defender. Just an eerie quiet.
The silence cut deeper than their knives ever could. And it was almost a relief when the two thuds, the unmistakable sound of bodies hitting the ground-
Wait, two thuds?
I opened my eyes and could only stare at Del and Jake’s dismembered bodies lying on the ground, pools of blood spreading out around them. But there was no dog.
Lucian stood over them, his pitiless eyes fixed on the giant.
And I don’t know if I should laugh or scream.
“What the fuck?” The big man stuttered, his voice warbling in terror as he moved away from me, releasing his grip on my wrists. Visibly shaking, he turned my father’s Browning on Lucian. “Bastard!”
My screams mingled with the crack of the shots as bloody mists burst from Lucian’s back. The first should have killed him. It went clean through his heart. The second and third took him in the gut. Yet Lucian remained standing, taking each hit without so much as a grunt. Shot after shot, bullet by bullet.
“Jesus Christ, what the hell are you?” Eyes bright with panic, the giant stepped forward and cupped the pistol in both hands, raising it up for a finishing shot like they did in the movies.
It happened almost too quickly for the eye to see. One moment Lucian had been standing there, dark and pale and devastatingly intense and handsome. Out of reach and without a hope of dodging the shot. Then the Browning was arcing through the air, along with one of the hands that grasped it.
And Lucian stood over the giant.