Chapter 1 #3
He’s older than one might expect, mid-fifties with a gray short-boxed beard and sharp eyes so dark they were nearly black.
Wearing only a long sarong, Kahoku stepped forward, carrying an open double-barreled shotgun as he worked to reload it.
In all my years working with him, I have never known him to use a gun before. Collect them, yes, but not use.
Apparently there were many things I was learning of late about my old mentor.
“I know it’s you, hiwa lani.”
I didn’t allow the old nickname to affect me. Clearly, I was no longer his “favorite one” if he could send the Bloody Scorpions to murder me in my sleep, along with my pregnant wahine and my little niece.
Standing, I pulled a dagger from the sheath around my calf.
I hated shoes, hated shirts even more. In battle, I wore no more clothing than my ancestors had.
There have been few exceptions, the most recent being when I battled a sex trafficker in Russia.
That frozen hellscape was colder than a nun’s cunt, and I was forced to wear boots, pants, and a jacket or risk frostbite.
I’d rather jump into a volcano than enter that ice-covered wasteland again.
I let him reload, because even armed, I wanted him to know he never was a match for me.
As I lifted my arm, I felt a tightness in the muscle.
Glancing down, I saw my own blood mixing with the blood of the men I’d killed tonight.
Adrenaline masked the pain but for a small twinge, and it certainly was not enough to stop me.
Kahoku snapped the rifle back into place. “Are we really going to do this?”
“You’ve gone soft, Kahoku,” I responded, not bothering to mask my anger. “Did you really think I would let you live?”
His crinkled eyes narrow. “That cut you now wear means more to you than your own flesh and blood.”
My hand adjusted on my blade as I watched him roll his weight onto his back leg in preparation of firing.
“I am Kānaka Maoli,” born of this land. “No piece of leather will ever change that.” I heard footsteps approaching from behind me but didn’t take my eyes off my target.
“As for my own flesh and blood? There is no one I won’t kill who threatens my wahine and my son. ”
Kahoku’s hand flexed over the handle. “And what if you are the biggest threat of all to them, hiwa lani?”
If he expected me to say that I would take myself out of the equation or I would die before I allowed that to happen, he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did.
My life was dangerous. But I was building an army to protect Lu and our boy, men and women who would sacrifice everything to ensure their safety.
Loyalty. Brotherhood. Family. We might be Hawai‘ian, but we were also Royal Bastards.
And I would rather be a devil standing between my family and the world than an angel too timid to get his hands bloody to protect them.
I flung my blade while he stupidly waited for my reply.
It landed in his shoulder, cutting through bone and tendons and causing him to lose his grip on the shotgun.
Crying out, he grabbed for his shoulder as he went down to one knee in pain.
“Doesn’t matter to you,” I finally answered him as I approached. “You’ll be too dead to care.”
The floor of Tommy’s boat was slick with blood.
The twins, Tangaloa, Tommy, and I did not bother to clean up Kahoku’s home on Kaua?i.
We took the bodies and left behind destruction.
I wanted Kahoku’s people who weren’t there tonight to see the evidence of what happened, what would happen again if they tried to avenge their boss.
The total came to nineteen with Kahoku and the redheaded man Kayl captured earlier in the day.
The dead were stripped them of their worldly possessions and tossed them into the woodchipper.
It was industrial grade and capable of chopping up a full body without the bones jamming the blades.
We stole it from the construction crew who renovated my barn and then secured it to Tommy’s boat to make our own brand of human chum, rather than wasting money on fish guts.
Due to the late hour and how far sound carried on the sea, we had to be careful of the pesky Coast Guard. If our numbers were less, I would feed the living ones through bit by bit, too, but we needed to be quick. Nineteen bodies would take too long.
But I was nothing if not adaptable. Kahoku had a home gym that we raided prior to our departure. The twins were already cutting the necessary ropes we would need. By the time the eleventh body was spread across the ocean top, we’d already attracted a number of carnivorous sea creatures.
The most abundant being sharks.
Like an assembly line, the injured guards were lined up, and also stripped of their clothing and any jewelry.
Most had broken bones or bullet wounds already, and we added several, thick slices while avoiding major arteries.
No sense having them bleed out too quickly.
Barnacle, our prospect, had the unlucky job of lugging all the weight plates to the boat.
Now, he had to lift them onto the edge as one of the twins wrapped one end of the rope to the wounded man’s feet and the other twin threaded the other end through the hole in the weight plate.
I let them tie up the seven guards, dropping the weight plates off the side of the boat into the sea and then watching as they screamed and fought for purchase before inevitably being dragged down to the bottom of the ocean.
Kahoku watched it all in silence, and not just because I had shoved a gag in his mouth. His old eyes took it all in, counting one by one as his men were disposed of, until he was the only one left.
I squatted in front of him. “We didn’t have to become enemies,” I told him, slicing across the meaty parts of his arms, legs, and torso. He barely even flinched. I’d already removed my knife from his shoulder before loading him onto the boat, and it still bled.
Taking the tip of my blade, I etched Lu’s name on his chest. So there would never be a question why he had died when he faced whatever judgement waited in the afterlife. Pleased with my work, I stood.
Barnacle was struggling to drag the final weight onto the edge of the boat. It was the heaviest, and he nearly dropped it before the twins could attach the rope. I’d have made him dive in after it, if he had.
Kahoku didn’t struggle as Tangaloa and Tommy lifted him to his feet. He held my gaze as the twins stripped him of his sarong and then tied the rope to his ankles. He was too calm for my liking, but if he’s already made peace with his demise, who was I to judge?
Once he’s secure, I stepped forward and cut the cloth gag from his mouth.
“But honestly,” I said in an even voice, “I’m kind of glad we did.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m extremely pissed about the way you went about it, but this is a hell of a lot better of a bachelor party than Tangaloa ever could have come up with. ”
My ex-brother-in-law snorted. “You’re such a dick, Aloiki.”
He wasn’t wrong. I gave Kahoku a flippant two-fingered wave and then pushed him off the side of the boat.