Chapter 59
FIFTY-NINE
SILAS
FIVE YEARS AGO
“Are you fucking sure it’s them?” Phoenix hissed it beneath his breath where their bikes were hidden behind a giant spruce.
The sweeping darkness and heavy fog camouflaged the menacing metal, the powerful motors silenced two hours ago.
The two of them were concealed in the pitch under the cover of night.
Waiting to ambush the motherfuckers that Silas had been hunting for years.
“Every bit of info Trent provided confirms that it is.”
They were the only smugglers in the area of Crimson Creek during the time that his mother had been slaughtered, though their home base was there in San Jose.
A place he’d never visited before and a place he never intended on stepping foot in again.
Plus, he could feel it wafting back.
That same vile energy he’d felt every night as a teenager when he’d stupidly embarked on his runs.
“Five max?” Phoenix growled on a hush, grimness radiating from his being as he inclined his head toward Silas.
“It seems so.”
Though Silas knew this monster, Kent Ellison, was trying to make his play.
Expand and take over territory belonging to other dealers.
Silas needed to crush him before that happened.
Before he was too powerful and Silas wouldn’t be able to touch him.
Phoenix was the only one of the Owls bloodthirsty enough, or maybe just reckless enough, to take this on. That and the fact that Silas could trust him. He knew Phoenix wasn’t pussy enough to rat on Trent if things went south and it was discovered Silas was the one who’d taken Kent out.
Silas couldn’t ask Trevan because he would try to stop him.
Phoenix was down for this endeavor, even if they were throwing a fucking grenade into their lives.
Their lives were fucked, anyway.
What did it matter?
Only this.
This one fucking thing Silas had to see through.
Movement stirred in the stagnant air on the other side of the rock wall that surrounded the mansion.
Right smack in the middle of an upscale neighborhood.
Silas struggled to find oxygen, and thick, viscid blood thumped through his long-cold veins, this one need the burn that kept him moving.
“This is it,” he rumbled low.
“Yeah,” Phoenix agreed. A thunderclap of violence charged from his giant body, and his fisted hands tightened on his handlebars.
Through the foliage, they watched as the ornate gate swung open across the street and headlights came into view.
A second later, a black SUV rolled out.
Silas knew from his surveillance there was an armed guard on the other side of that gate.
He and Phoenix waited until the gate fully closed and the taillights nearly disappeared in the haze as it traveled down the street before they kicked over their motorcycles, their headlights cut as they picked up the SUV’s trail.
It’d be a whole lot easier to hit this bastard when he was outside his fortress rather than trying to get to him on the other side.
Silas’s mouth watered as they thundered down the streets. His heart running a manic beat as they tracked the beasts through the city.
Using their senses to guide them, shrouding themselves in every darkened swath.
They took a maze of rights and lefts, a short stretch of freeway before they were exiting and were dumped in a more run-down part of town.
They stayed far enough back that they were never noticed.
Phoenix’s stalking skills were more than stellar.
A fucking ghost that emerged behind someone who had no clue they were about to find out if the afterlife existed.
Hell ready to swallow them.
The SUV finally made a left into a neighborhood, and they stayed far back, cutting glances at each other.
A warning that this was it.
But they had to be cautious. Not charge when they were itching to do it. Because they had no idea what circumstances they were going to find themselves in.
They waited close to a minute before they took the left into the same neighborhood and hid their motorcycles behind the first hedge they could find.
They killed the engines.
Overwhelming silence swamped the cold, misty air, and only the trill of bugs and a dog barking somewhere in the distance filled their ears.
They crouched low, motorcycle boots quietly thudding as they stuck to the shadows as they moved up the road.
A road that branched off in every direction.
Two inlets running left and right and another straight ahead.
Phoenix lifted his face, a wolf trying to pick up the scent.
“Left,” he finally grunted. No question, he was following his warped, gnarled gut.
They dipped across the road, quick to disappear into the shadows.
Creeping behind houses and cars and trees.
Searching.
Hunting.
The two guns tucked into Silas’s jeans loaded with liberation.
The street seemed to go on forever in a blurry expanse before it curved to the right, running straight back up the neighborhood.
Ducked low, they hurried up the road through the whisking fog.
Listening.
Feeling.
Watching.
“You sure this was the right way?” Silas grunted on a breath.
“They’re here somewhere,” Phoenix snarled.
They moved up and down the streets where they branched out.
Silas could feel distress and despondency bleeding out from the homes just as his hope started to dwindle.
“Where the fuck are they?” he wheezed.
It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. He was supposed to finally have them.
Vengeance at hand.
“They’re close. But even if we don’t catch up to them tonight, we’ll get them soon,” Phoenix rumbled.
But Silas couldn’t rest in that.
He prowled through the neighborhood.
A pillager with a single thirst.
One crown he wanted to wear.
Until they finally moved up the very last street on the farthest right side of the neighborhood.
There was a house on the east side of the road.
Surrounded by milky filament.
The yard was overgrown, and the paint on the eaves was peeling from neglect.
A ratty, dinged-up sedan sat at the curb.
The SUV was nowhere to be found.
But there was no mistaking it. No question that the fuckers were behind that door.
His jaw spasmed as his teeth snapped, and he inhaled an unsteady breath as he and Phoenix slowed, hiding themselves behind a row of bushes on the opposite side of the road.
“They’re here,” Silas muttered, the words clanking out of him like broken bits of steel. “I can feel it.”
Phoenix looked in every direction, a frown carved across his prominent brow. “Yeah, air is fucking rancid.”
It was more than that.
In it was fear.
Horror.
A terror unlike anything Silas had ever encountered, and he’d been witness and partner to a thousand wicked deeds.
And this was the last deed he needed to commit to fulfill his oath of vengeance, and he honestly hoped he would die completing it.
He was ready to put an end to the maliciousness. To the wickedness that reigned in his heart.
Kent Ellison had no clue he was coming for him. He likely didn’t even know his name. Or if he had once upon a time, there was little chance he’d remember it.
Silas and his mother were inconsequential.
It didn’t matter.
He just wanted blood, then he’d call it done.
“Go around the left side of the house, find a window you can get through. I’ll go in on the right.” Silas’s instruction curled through the crawling night. “Be fucking careful.”
“You, too, brother. It’s time.” He could feel the intensity of Phoenix’s stare burning into his cheek.
Silas gave him a clipped nod, and they broke apart, both stealing across the deserted road.
A thick fog covered them, the night deepened by the gloom.
The closer he got, the more he felt it.
Agony.
Agony.
Ignoring it, he gripped onto his purpose.
It wasn’t so hard to find a way inside. Half the windows had been broken, anyway. He found one near the back where the glass was completely missing except for a single shard still clinging to the top of the frame.
Angling to the side, he slipped through, the leather of his cut protecting him from the razor-sharp tip he felt drag across his Iron Owls patch.
He remained crouched as his boots hit the trash-strewn floor, and he checked his breaths, ensuring that he didn’t make a sound.
He doubted by the voices that any of them would notice, anyway.
Their own bloodlust saturated the suffocating air.
Vileness the only oxygen by which their depravedness was sustained.
“Gonna have her one more time, boss.” A voice cackled, amped up, both from drugs and the perversion that reeked in the air.
“No, this is sufficient to send the message I need. That and her body on his doorstep.”
Sickness rolled in Silas’s stomach. Bile climbing his throat. His heart shifted into overdrive.
A riotous thunder that battered at his ears.
Everything spun.
Hands slicked with sweat, twitching with the need for revenge.
All while something else pressed into his conscience.
Retribution was right there.
He could have them.
But there was something that drew him forward. A call he couldn’t help but heed.
He crept forward, cringing when his boot crunched against a sliver of broken glass on the floor.
But it wasn’t enough to penetrate their barbarity.
“Pick her up and toss her into the back of the SUV. You’ll slit her throat once we get there. I don’t want her bleeding out in the back of the Rover. Isius, get rid of her car.”
Silas peeked around the doorway and into what was the house’s living room. It was nearly pitch, and he was barely able to make out the outline of three men standing in the room.
Except Silas could see only one thing.
The stripped, battered body of a girl on the floor. An indistinct silhouette held in the pall.
It didn’t matter that he couldn’t really see her.
Silas felt like he got turned inside out.
His guts ripped from his body.
His heart toppled like the garbage on the floor, though it beat out of rhythm, out of time.
A monster moved to pick her up, and Silas didn’t think.
He didn’t wait for the cue from Phoenix for them to go in at the same time.
He just stepped out and started to shoot.
Going for the bastard who knelt first, refusing to allow him to get his fetid hands on her again.
The fucker howled when he was struck.
Chaos suddenly broke out.
Shots fired back.
The one that struck Silas didn’t even bring him to his knees.
The disgust, the fury, the rage were enough to keep him standing.
At the back of the house, he heard glass break. No doubt, Phoenix had heard the commotion and was rushing to make his way in.
Another barrage of bullets.
His and the men’s.
Silas was on his stomach, trying to crawl into the room.
Footsteps and shots resounded.
Shouts as the men suddenly ran from the room.
“Get up!” Phoenix shouted from the end of the hall.
An engine suddenly roared and wood crashed as the SUV busted through the garage door.
“They’re getting away,” Phoenix shouted.
Only Silas remained on his knees. Crawling for the girl.
Dead or unconscious.
He didn’t know.
Sirens sang in the distance.
Phoenix gripped him by the back of the shirt. “Get up. We have to get out of here.”
“No…I…she needs help.” He tried to get to the girl.
To change it.
His mother’s face flashed behind his eyes.
Her smile.
Her belief.
Was this someone’s mother?
Their sister?
Their daughter?
Pain splintered and shook.
“You have to get up now.”
When he couldn’t, Phoenix fisted two hands in the front of his cut and hauled him to his feet.
“Fuck, man. We have to get the fuck out of here. Right fucking now.” He jostled him. “The police are coming. They’ll get her help.”
Phoenix forced him back down the hall and through the window that he’d come through, then basically dragged him through the three-foot grasses that clogged the backyard, the toes of Silas’s boots cutting through the soil.
Phoenix tossed him through a missing slat in the fence and out into the alley at the back.
Their breaths were jutted and harsh as the sound of sirens approached.
Silas suppressed a wail that threatened to rise from his soul.
“The fuck, man? You just let them go?” Phoenix wheezed it near his face, disbelief threaded into every word. “You were supposed to wait for the cue.”
But in that moment, it wasn’t about vengeance.
It was about setting something right.
Helping an innocent.
Silas didn’t know her name or her face, but he knew there were uncountable others just like her.
Pain finally broke through the disturbance, and he pressed his hand to his side. Felt the warm blood dripping free.
“You’re hit?” Phoenix’s demeanor flipped into concern.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”
Phoenix gave him a clipped nod, confusion woven on his expression before he helped Silas to stand.
He kept an arm around Silas’s waist as they fumbled down the alley in the direction of their bikes.
They stayed low the way they always did.
Undetected, pausing for a minute when an ambulance with its lights flashing and siren screaming sped into the neighborhood.
And he knew, standing there cloaked in a blanket of fog, listening to the sirens, that he wouldn’t take it back.
As he climbed onto his bike, wincing from the bullet lodged somewhere near the same spot where he’d been hit the night his mother had been slain, he felt something inside himself break apart and rebuild in a flash.
And he knew there was no going back.