Chapter 47 Nyx
FORTY-SEVEN
NYX
DARKSIDE - OSHINS, HAEL
“What’s wrong?”
“Why do you think anything’s wrong?” I hedged.
Lodestar didn’t immediately answer, but I frowned as she pulled out a pack and started rearranging it.
I considered it a rucksack—not a bag—for a reason. While the metallic barrels and the bullets would have triggered questions in anyone else, they didn’t with me.
Not when she’d proven her loyalty to the club several times over.
Secrets—I knew how to keep them.
Still, I needed to make sure she wasn’t heading into a fight without backup.
“You going to war and not telling me?”
Her eyes glanced off mine as she shrugged. “Always good to be prepared.”
“That’s all this is?”
“Sure is,” she replied as she ran her fingers along the tips of some bullets that weren’t for a revolver or a handgun.
The gauge alone was questionable.
“If you say so,” I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck.
“You heard about your uncle?”
I frowned at her. “What about him?”
“That his body went missing from the morgue?”
I knew that bastard’s remains had washed up on the Hudson’s shore, and I was also aware that his corpse had gone missing.
Not that I told her that.
Secrets—I knew how to keep them.
I just said, “Someone else clearly had a grudge against the piece of shit. Not surprising. Maybe he molested someone else’s kids too.”
Her hum was disbelieving as she studied me, making me think she’d ask more questions, interrogate me some, but she didn’t, just grumbled, “Why are you here, Nyx? It ain’t to keep me company, is it? Trust me, I have more than enough of that in this household.”
“Maverick told me you’re rich.”
“I am.”
“So why do you stay here if it’s so fucking noisy?”
A high-pitched giggle echoed down the hall in answer, and a soft light, one that was pretty much creepy where Lodestar was concerned, appeared in her eyes.
“Oh.”
She smiled. “Yeah, oh. Her family’s here. I don’t want to break them up, and I don’t want to leave without her. Even though those fucking brats at the local school definitely need to be taught a lesson—”
“Let’s not set the villagers on us,” I warned. “I don’t need the normals driving up to the compound with pitchforks.”
Lodestar pursed her lips as she completely ignored what I’d just said—I could see the cogs churning as she dismissed my warning. “You here for parenting advice then? Because you really don’t want to be asking me. I’m pretty sure some social worker somewhere is trying to find Kat—”
Who the hell would go to her for parenting advice?
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “No, that’s not why I’m here. Does Rex know about you stealing Kat?”
“I think so. I think Maverick might have mentioned it to him at some point.”
“I should fucking hope he did. Which state?”
“Which state did I steal her from?”
“Yeah.”
“Colorado.” She smirked. “Or maybe it was Ohio. I forget.”
“You’re a fucking pain in my ass.”
“I won’t apologize for it either. We’ve all heard how you won’t let Giulia play with it—”
Anger flashed in my eyes, but she didn’t back down. “Fucking women. Never know when to keep your goddamn mouths shut.”
The smirk faded and morphed into a smug grin. “Why are you here, Nyx? If it isn’t for parental advice or a ‘how to’ on pegging, what could you possibly want from me?”
“Fuck knows,” I groused, storming away from the kitchen table and heading away from the exasperating bitch.
Before I left, she called out, “I know you made Kevin suffer, Nyx. I’m glad you did.”
Sliding a hand over my hair, I just grunted as I escaped Lily’s place and retreated to my bike.
Fucking Kevin.
Some nights, when I couldn’t sleep, I thought about the backfiring shotgun shredding his face.
Some nights, it was the only thing that let me get any rest at all.
I hit the road, needing the peace from the journey to calm me down.
Something about Lodestar managed to piss me off more than anyone fucking else, and considering my brothers were all douchebags, that was saying something.
“Stupid to ask her for advice anyway,” I muttered under my breath, but with the wind blasting me, no one could hear.
Despite the chill of the evening, I was hot beneath my winter gear. My palms were even sweating, and there was an uncomfortable amount of perspiration dotting my back.
“I’m not doing anything wrong,” I told myself.
And I wasn’t.
This was just a meeting.
A meeting that might help facilitate the capture of more sick fuckers who needed their cocks sliced and diced…
A meeting that would help me give training wheels to Harlow…
That was what I told myself.
What I believed.
But why I hadn’t told anyone about the phone calls and texts I’d been getting, the outside help in regard to Kevin’s missing corpse, I really didn’t know.
Lights flickered on behind me, catching my attention in my side mirrors, and I saw one of the beat-up trucks Link kept going out of sheer muleheadedness.
Most of our cages were three to four years old max, but that one was at least twenty.
Link said he maintained it out of spite, but I knew he was being a smug asshole about his skills in the garage every time he got the clunker running again.
For once, I was grateful because it stuck out like a sore thumb to me on the road to Manhattan.
As I veered in and out of traffic, switching lanes and dropping back so I could determine who was behind the wheel, I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disappointed to find Harlow staring blankly at the gridlocked traffic ahead.
He was too eager for the kill, and it’d fuck things up for him if he didn’t contain it. But it wasn’t like I could judge. Wasn’t like I could give him another coping mechanism. If I had one, then I wouldn’t be here, potentially walking into a fucking trap just so I could take another pedophile out.
It was too soon.
He was still only a Prospect.
But I didn’t try to lose him. Neither did I let him know I’d figured out that he was tailing me.
I had no idea what was waiting for me in Manhattan. Could be allies or Sparrows for all I fucking knew, but if it was a legit operation to clean up muddied waters, then Harlow could listen in.
I wouldn’t be breaking my promise to Indy.
Neither would I be breaking the vows I’d made to Giulia and our kid.
That didn’t mean I wouldn’t test the limits.
I allotted more than enough time to get onto the island and be punctual for my meeting, but because of an accident somewhere on the way—no change there—I was running late.
I sped through the Lincoln Tunnel and rushed down the center of Manhattan to reach Harlem. I didn’t even look to see if Harlow was still tailing me; I needed to get to W 125th St. and fast.
With the GPS guiding me to the meeting point, I pulled up just as a great big fucking boom sounded. At first, I thought there was a bomb, but I realized the charge had run out on my headphones and the church bells had started tolling.
Once I’d parked, I stared around at the dark streets. In my side mirrors, I saw Harlow settling into a space about thirty feet away, and I made no move to draw him over to me.
I just peered around, trying to figure out who I was meeting with. Wondering if this was a trap or if it was a solid connection.
Slotting the earphones back in the charging case then tucking it into my pocket, I straightened off my bike and stretched. It was a move designed to make anyone watching me think I was relaxed, but I was on red alert.
Only trouble was, there was no reason for the red alert.
Not that I could see.
I was standing on a street that could be any street in the city. There were streetlights that didn’t illuminate the area well enough. Puddles of amber light that gleamed on the slick sidewalks and glittered in puddles when cars drove past and unsettled them.
Vehicles lined both sides, and twenty yards away, a crosswalk blinked and beeped even though no one was standing anywhere near it.
After five minutes passed of nothingness, I started to wonder if Lodestar could figure out who’d contacted me. I’d tried to broach the topic with Maverick, but his CTE was fucking with him and he had a heavy workload because of Rex’s absence.
Just as I went to reach for my phone, on the brink of conceding defeat and calling Lodestar for some input, I heard it.
A soft cry.
Cut off.
Sharp and loaded with fear.
Every instinct in my body leaped to attention at that sound.
I knew what fear looked like, sounded like, and fucking felt like.
Head whipping to the side as I started to hunt down who’d made that sound, I got a visual on a potential alleyway a short way up the street.
Leaving my bike, I headed for it, unsure if it was a passageway or just a cluster of shadows, but the nearer I got, the more sounds I heard.
Bile choked me. Suffocated me.
It sounded like Carly.
I nearly froze at the realization.
Dazed and terrified, soft whimpers and panicked mumbles of pleas were cut off by a hand held against someone’s mouth.
The wrenching of fabric—stitches torn and material shredded.
A gasp of pain.
A grunt. Different this time. Not pain-soaked but loaded with pleasure.
That was when I moved.
I didn’t need to know what was happening to know what was fucking happening.
I stormed down that alleyway, ignoring the pitch dark that made it easier for the bastard to hide, making my footsteps as silent as I possibly could while cursing my night-blind state from the streetlights.
A further cry, this time of pain, had me shoving stealth aside and I ran down the narrow alley. A gleam of silver caught my attention, a flash of red hair, a flash of blond—the guy’s watch had lit up as he moved his arm.
I saw cavernous shadows on a craggy face, eyes filled with rage and lust, a mouth curved in a sneer but a hunger tore at him that was undeniable. Recognizable.
I felt that hunger—but mine wasn’t for the innocent.
Mine was appeased by the spilling of blood of bastards like this one.
He watched me watch him for a split second, and that was when we both reacted.
I had over two dozen kills to my name—I was the faster draw.
My knife slipped out of its holster on my forearm like it was made of butter on a hot day, and as if it were magnetized and his throat was full of iron filings, I found my way there.
He was inside her.
I was too fucking late.
I was always too fucking late.
My fist glanced off his temple.
It was a righteous blow because he staggered, his knees starting to fold out from under him.
I took full advantage; grabbing a hold of his hair, I pulled his head back and dragged him off her. As she screamed, I sliced the blade across his throat, and she shrieked when his lifeblood arced and caught her in the spray.
A slash to the jugular wasn’t enough, not when the girl’s whimpers and desperate sobbing filled my ears.
I thrust it in his stomach the second he was choking on his own blood, and I made sure to twist that fucking knife.
Clockwise.
Counterclockwise.
As he cried out, I realized the sound of my heart pumping in my ears and the tunnel vision that came from a situation where it was either kill or be killed had shielded me from what was actually happening.
The sirens.
“Nyx! Quick! We have to get out of here!”
Harlow?
Red and blue lights suddenly flashed, bouncing off the narrow walls in the alley, while the heavy thudding of boots made themselves known to me at the same time as someone yelled, “Drop the weapon and put your hands in the air!”