34. Threx Gasoline
thirty-four
Threx: Gasoline
The funny thing is, you can still go down there and marvel at the remaining shops or the cryptic alleyways pointing nowhere unless you know the way.
But there is a reason we call it the Underworld. And believe me, you never want to end up there.
"Wake up."
I slid my chair along the dank red-brick floors, loving how my body flickered under the shaky light. There was no air down here to fill your head with oxygen. Instead of gasping, you died… slowly… the line of your chest caving in like gills in the summer.
"I said," I scraped the metal until it bled. "Wake. The. Fuck. Up!"
Rinley blinked, clots of blood falling into his eyes when his neck rolled.
"That's a good boy." I patted him on the cheek, meeting his eyes with a smile.
It was quiet when Wolfe stepped up behind me, crossing his arms while he leaned into the shadows, studying his prey. Unlike him, I was not interested in the mindfuck; I only cared about the inevitable crack that told me I had won.
"Threx?" He coughed, squinting to focus.
We did not bother covering our faces because we were far more of a threat in our skin than we were behind a job to this piece of shit. And this was personal. I wanted him to see my face.
"Raymond Michael Barrow." Wolfe flicked his cigarette, removing his club name and stripping him bare. "My father was a fucking asshole that attracted other fucking assholes, which is why I had Thay clear out most of them after he died. And you know what?"
Wolfe clung to the perimeter, his Chuck Taylors pacing the wall in unhurried strides.
"I cannot remember why we did not kill this dumbshit, punk fuck with a loud mouth and small dick." Wolfe paused. "How about you, Threx? Do you recall why we kept this one alive?"
"You mean besides the fact our dicks get hard for killing traitors?"
He rubbed at his crotch, letting out a low groan that probably traveled straight to Daphne's thighs.
"Yeah, besides that."
"He cried," I said, lifting his chin, savoring the tension.
Wolfe had been quiet today, living mostly in his head. The shit about Marianne was carving him out, but Daphne unsettled him more.
"It was dark that night," I started with a yawn. "The lightless kind that Seattle often brings when the neon can't keep up in the storm. We had taken out twenty of your dad's guys, and he was sitting in the middle of their bodies… Sobbing like a little fucking bitch."
Rinley's eyes shot open like a blade to the throat, and it was nice to see him so awake.
"Oh yeah, that's right. We had hearts back then." Wolfe smirked, coming up behind his shoulders. "But there was something else." He drummed his finger on Rinley's head. "Ah, that's right. He didn't respect the dead, so we put him on the cleanup crew."
"Solid leadership move," I praised, placing a water bottle of gasoline at my feet and slumping into the chair, keeping my posture relaxed and unaffected.
Keep looking at me like that, asshole, and I will give you a drink.
"Thanks," Wolfe took my compliment with a smile, leaning hard on Rinley's spine. "This first part is going to be easy, Raymond. I will ask you a couple of questions, and all I need from you is why. Which should be a breeze for a guy who never shuts the fuck up."
Rinley stiffened, the piss-yellow lamp bouncing off his features like a strobe light.
"We know you were working for Marianne and Karsten. Tell me why?"
"Just put me on the fucking wall," he ground out, broken teeth hanging swollen in his mouth.
Did Nathem have some fun without me? Dick.
"Baby," Wolfe whispered into his ear. "Now is not the time to show us your cock unless you want Thay to show you a magic trick. It is really weird, he just hits a guy in the back of the skull, and his fucking eye pops out."
"Ha," I stretched, bored. "It is kind of like magic. I mean, you'd think there would be more blood?"
"You killed my father!" Rinley screamed, but the noise died in his throat.
"Raymond?" Wolfe cocked an eye at him. "You are referring to the father who took my brother's life, right? The fat one, with the mustache and crooked spine."
"You made me scrape his body off the club floor."
"That is what the cleanup crew does, especially those who are sons of traitors. Come to think of it." Wolfe stepped to the side, finally allowing Rinley to look at him. "I don't believe my brother Raife ever had the luxury of a cleanup, did he, Threx?"
"Nah," I shook my head. "It's too hard to pull bodies from the grinder."
"Right." Wolfe looked down before meeting his gaze. "You got anything else to add because your revenge arc is boring me, and trust me, you want me to stay amused."
Rinley inhaled through his nose, the smug fucking prick still thinking he was better than us.
"No?" Wolfe yanked his head back as he stepped forward, sneering down at him before spitting in his face. "Well, then I guess I am going to have to find my fun some other way," he bladed his smile, before driving the tip of his dagger straight into the middle of Rinley's eye.
Rinley screamed, gross and wrong, as blood shot up into Wolfe's teeth.
"You better not have a fucking disease." He wiped it messily, leaving streaks of horror on his cheek.
"Because that is what you are," Wolfe spat again, keeping the knife lodged.
"Threx, why don't you tell him a story?" he said, taking his belt and running it through the slits of Rinley's mouth to muffle the sounds of his pain.
"You mean the tale that starts with once upon a time?" I grabbed him by the knees until his legs locked into mine.
"That's the one." Wolfe yanked to keep him lucid; the shock in his body was already pulling him under. But he didn't get the luxury of falling asleep. This motherfucker was going to feel everything.
"Once upon a time, against a dirty wall, there was an asshole who stuck his dick in my wife!" I lifted his chin, watching Wolfe's dagger wobble. "What, did you really think I didn't know you fucked her, and then left her to bleed all over herself?"
Rinley mumbled something from behind the leather.
"I didn't quite catch that?"
I took a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it, taking a drag when Wolfe dropped the belt just enough for him to scream, "And I'll do it again, you piece of shit!"
Oh buddy.
I lunged forward, grabbed the hilt of the dagger in Rinley's eye, and used it to control where he looked. Yanking. It. Every. Which. Way.
"Maybe we should let him go, Wolfe? Let him run?"
Wolfe squinted at me in the dark.
"That way I can hunt him down and fuck him against the fucking wall? I bet I can make you bleed pretty, too!"
Rinley stilled when I grabbed his mouth and squeezed until his teeth bled through his lips.
"But that is not all you did, hmm? You see, Raymond, I've let you live twice. When you sobbed for daddy, then after you fucked my bride. Three times, if you count the night after the naked party. And the thing is, I am not that fucking nice!"
"He's really not," Wolfe added.
"But how do you repay me? You threaten her and conspire with our enemies to have her eliminated."
"It was Lyla!" he ground out, as if that would save him.
"You knew what you were doing." I twisted the knife just a little to the left.
"Daphne is going to get us all fucking killed!" he growled in pain, bleeding all over me.
"Nah, babe." I let my cigarette hang from my lips. "You did that all by yourself."
"No." He pushed against the ropes, his chest straining at the seams. "You will see!"
"I did not quite hear you. Maybe you should take a drink!" I moved for the gasoline and poured it down his throat, watching it sputter out of his mouth in a violent gag.
"You seem to have forgotten that Daphne isn't a killer.
We are." I took a drag, blowing the smoke in his face.
"We are the threat. We make the choices.
And we do bad things. And she?" I smiled, thinking about the way her hair swept over her shoulder in the moonlight.
"She loves us anyway. You are the bad guy, Raymond.
Not Daphne. And if we all die, it is because we're evil men. "
Rinley blinked through his one good eye.
"It is really a shame you treated Molly like shit, because now you will die in the Underworld with no one to love you… anyway. How about one last drag for the road?" Rinley's expression tightened, the fear in his single eye nearly bursting into flames.
Ironic.
I pressed the cigarette between his lips and forced him to suck. Loving that little exhale when nothing happened.
Wolfe stepped back, stalking to the door when I retrieved it from Rinley's mouth, staring at him one final time. He didn't get to hurt Daphne anymore.
Then, without feeling, I turned the cigarette around and put it out on his tongue, watching the red consume his body from the inside like the fucking Fourth of July.
"Let's go!" Wolfe beckoned. "We do not watch traitors die."
He was right. We didn't. Rinley would fade away in the Under like all the creatures before him, a rat, a no one, nothing.
I nodded in compliance, dipping into the dusty stagnation of a world with no breath.
"Are you okay?" I asked Wolfe when we got to the ladder.
"Yeah. I just remembered my favorite knife is in Rinley's face," he said with a hollow joke, but I could tell he was lying as he climbed into the city. This exit dumped us in an alley behind some ribbon store run by an older woman who could probably kick my ass.
Buzz. Buzz.
It was Daphne.
I went to pick it up, but his hand shot out.
"Threx," Wolfe tucked a rogue strand of hair away from his face, nearly falling to his knees. His body language was jumbled, slinking to one side, and I could tell it had nothing to do with Rinley.
"Fuck," he began to gag, splattering the wall with the stench of bile and this morning's coffee.
"What the hell is going on with you?" I asked, pulling a flask of whiskey from my pocket and forcing it to his lips: a little trick to burn the nausea away.
Daphne called again, this time feeling more urgent than before.
"Threx, I am about to make our girl cry and, um," a strange bit of water filled the rims of his eyes. "I don't know how to fucking do it."
Make Daphne cry.
The sentence spun in my head over and over until finally it stopped.
Wolfe had come up with a plan, and I don't think it's one he expected.
I tilted my head but didn't utter a word. Just handed him the phone and let him answer.