Chapter 20 Talon’s Past #2
Seems only fitting that when I finally do come here, it’s because I choose to.
As my luck would have it, the bowling alley’s a dead end. I end up using the cash from that dealer kid to bribe some lady not to snitch that I even showed up. Then I jump back in the car and take off.
Ash Street is less than five minutes away. The gym is a brick box with a broken staircase and a roll-up door tagged with a crown over the word REY. A light glows in the office window upstairs. There’s a van out front, and the moment I see it, something in me knows it’s them.
I don’t know how I know. Call it intuition. But I’d bet my fucking pinky on it.
I park around the corner and walk the rest of the way with my hands in my jacket and my head down. When I reach the side alley, I see a metal door with a broken push bar. I can slip inside easily.
Lovely.
I step in.
The first thing I see is a heavy bag swinging slowly. Iron pipes cross the ceiling. Bleach bottles are scattered on the floor.
And there they are.
Beanie with a bad nose. Scar, with a rope-burn mark crawling up his neck like something that tried to strangle him and changed its mind halfway. There’s also a third guy with them, a face with a patchy beard and a boys’ club laugh.
They sit around a table under a single lamp, eating from a grease-stained bag and talking with their mouths full. A duffel bag rests on the floor beside the table, its zipper half open.
“Evening,” I say.
They go still. Beanie’s hand drops under the table. Scar’s eyes narrow and flick toward the side exit. Patchy’s chair scrapes.
“Who the fuck are you?” Scar asks.
I take a couple of steps forward, let the light find my face. Beanie’s mouth peels back in a grin that makes my teeth itch.
“Oh, it’s you,” he says. He thinks he knows me. I don’t know him. “You’re the one who started a fight with our boys.”
And just like that, I realize what is going on.
Those fuckers from last night sent their friends. Worse, they sent them on Rhea.
Yeah… I don’t care if I don’t make it out alive. I’m saving her.
“You boys break into a girl’s place tonight?” I ask, as nice as a clerk. “Black jackets with yellow piping. One big, one wiry. That’s you, right? I’m terrible with faces.”
Patchy barks a laugh. “Oh yeah. There was one like that.”
Beanie chews slow, like a cow. “Brunette. Mouth on her.” He drags a thumb along his lip. “Great ass.”
“Why, jealous you weren’t invited?” the last one asks.
My eyes drift to the duffel as my hand tightens naturally.
“Where is she?” I ask.
Patchy smirks at Scar. “Hear that? He thinks she’s still here.”
Scar’s gaze slides back to me, lazy and mean. “Was, brother.” He lifts two fingers and pinches the air. “She was.”
Beanie chuckles low. “Wanted to make it last. She was good.” He makes a gesture I want to burn my eyes from. “Couldn’t stop myself though. I like it when they cry too much.”
They… killed her?
I don’t remember crossing the room. One breath I’m twenty feet away; the next, the lamp’s glare is in my eyes, Scar’s chair is toppling, and my fist is in his mouth. Teeth click so hard I feel it in my own jaw. The table skids. Fries scatter. The bag tips; grease spills out to the floor.
Beanie’s under the table for the gun. I kick the edge, hard, and catch his fingers between wood and steel. Someone screams; I don’t look. Patchy comes at me with the chair. It explodes on my shoulder in a burst of splinters and cheap staples.
I grab Patchy by the collar and bounce his face off the table. Once. Twice. On the second his nose goes soft. He gurgles; his hands go slack. I let him fall and put the ball of my foot on the back of his neck.
Beanie frees the gun and points it up, muzzle wild. “Don’t—”
I shove the table aside, step into the arc of his arm, and drive my thumb knuckle under his jaw.
His head snaps back. The gun booms. The round punches a neat hole in the gym’s ceiling tile.
Sound ricochets. I don’t blink. I hook his wrist and twist until the ligaments pop.
The gun clatters to the floor. He reaches with the other hand.
I slam his head into the roll-up door, once, twice, until his face smears. He drops down.
I know I’m not superhuman. I have limits. But what I feel right now pushes through them. It gives me hellish wings and the hunger to make these men pay.
Scar tries to stand, blood stringing from his lip to his chin. He spits a tooth and grins through the gap.
“You think you won’t die for this?” he pants. “You will be—”
I hit him again.
He swings wild. I take it on the cheek and let the world ring, then drive a punch into his ribs.
Knuckles meet cartilage until the gristle gives and he folds.
He gasps and drops to one knee. I place my palm on his head like a benediction and bounce his skull off the concrete. It’s enough to crack it open.
Beanie twitches. I kneel on his broken wrist, feel the bone strain, and lean over him. “Tell me where you left her.”
“N-no,” he wheezes.
“Okay.” I take his little finger and bend it back until it snaps.
He screams. I wait. When the sound fades, I break the next one.
He sucks air like a drowning man. In the corner of my eye, Patchy crawls toward the duffel, leaving a slug trail of blood and grease.
He’s not going to make it. I let him try.
“Where,” I ask Beanie again in a calm voice. “Either you tell me, or I’ll destroy you.”
He laughs, a ruined, wet sound. Blood bubbles at the corner of his mouth.
Fucking gang shitheads. Why does loyalty always show up at the last second? Or maybe it’s not loyalty at all. Maybe it’s just spite.
Something scorches up my throat.
Bile. Tears. Regret for being given this life.
“Her body,” I manage. “Where did you leave it?”
Beanie’s eyes glitter. “What body?”
I slide the gun into his mouth. He tries for a wisecrack around the steel, but only a vowel comes out. I lean until the barrel bumps his back molar. We both hear it click against enamel.
“You should pray,” I tell him.
He shakes his head the tiniest bit. Right. I’m not a praying person, and he’s not someone prayers were written for.
“Okay,” I say.
I shoot him once through the soft of his palate. The sound is small, contained, a cough that becomes meat. He goes still with a twitch.
Patchy sobs. Scar groans, not dead; I fix that with one round behind the ear. Then I stand over Patchy and look him in the face. He shakes his head so fast the world blurs, palms up.
“Please,” he says. “Please—I didn’t—I just—”
“Open your mouth,” I tell him.
He does, hiccuping. I drop the grey scrap into his tongue and close his jaw with my hand until his teeth click. It ends so fast that when it is over, I feel like a dick for not drawing it out.
I find a counter and a mop sink. I wash my hands under a thin trickle, not looking at the stainless mirror that reflects my face in melted strips. I am not interested in the sermon it wants to give.
Before long, I’m gone from the room and, like a fool, back in her apartment.
I have to leave this town.
It’s that or die here.
I tell myself death would be easier once the dust settles, once the anger burns out of me.
But when it’s only grief and regret left, the will to die slips away too.
I pace the room, drag a hand down my face, and look around what used to be Rhea’s place.
Fuck.
“She’s gone,” I mumble. “Fucking gone.”
The blood is still underneath my nails.
It’s over.
And it’s my fault, really.
I brought the storm. I parked it outside her bar and walked her straight into it. I told myself she was safe if I didn’t touch her. That I could keep my hands clean if I just played the bright fool, the guy who tells jokes and smiles while bleeding inside. But that trick’s run dry.
First Lark. Now Rhea.
I should leave. Right this fucking second.
The problem is, I just want to sit on the floor here, on Rhea’s floor, and wait for her to come back.
Wouldn’t that be something?
If she could just walk through the door, hug me, and I’d tell her, fuck it, you know what? Let’s leave this town together. I always wanted to anyway, just felt stuck in it, like in mud.
Maybe she’d bring Lark with her.
What if the three of us could just fuck off to some better place with rainbows and sunshine and whatever else there still is to experience?
I press my palms to the edge of the counter, lean in, and laugh.
“Wow. I knew this would happen, didn’t I?”
And guess what?
Fisher will be cleaning house when word gets out about Rey’s boys being dead.
He’ll say I overstepped, stirred shit when he told me to cool it.
Maybe he’ll even send the cops after me, because that bastard’s the kind who’d sell his own mother in the darkest hour.
I told him I’d be gone anyway. What’s the use of being decent anymore?
I grab a cigarette from the counter, light it, and lean my back against Rhea’s fridge.
Am I a walking contamination or something? Does everything I touch just start dying?
I take another drag and let it burn deep. My ribs ache with every inhale.
If there’s any justice in this sick world, the universe should ban me from feeling anything that soft again. It should tattoo a warning label across my forehead for no one to approach me. Like I’m a leper.
I laugh again, rougher this time, until my throat scrapes. “Maybe I should make friends with a ghost next,” I say to the empty air. “At least then the fucker would be already dead. Can’t fuck that up, right? Can’t send death upon them.”
There’s no one left to judge me here, but I sure sound pathetic.
Still, wouldn’t it be nice?
Being friends with a ghost?
Like in those old cartoons for kids.
They’d float around and haunt my sorry ass, maybe whisper me to sleep when my brain starts chewing itself.
Yeah. It’s nice to imagine.
I take one last drag and stub the cigarette on the counter. My hands are shaking. I don’t even know why.
I didn’t love Rhea. I know I didn’t.
And still, she died anyway.
What would happen if I actually fell in love?
The thought alone makes my gut twist. I picture it: me holding someone, wanting to keep them safe, really safe, but the curse comes for them anyway.
It’s laughable.
Pathetic.
I’m pathetic.
I open the fridge, grab the half-empty bottle of whiskey, and drink straight from it.
“I’m not the quitting type,” I mutter. “So no, I’m not putting a bullet in my brain tonight.”
I set the bottle down harder than I mean to.
But I can’t stay.
Not here.
I take one last look around her apartment. A shabby little place. Better than anything I ever lived in, and yet it still feels like shit.
I flick off the light.
Step into the hallway.
When I close her door, the broken chain swings once and goes still.
I don’t know where I’m going, and I don’t care.
As long as it’s away.
And maybe, just maybe, if I keep driving long enough, I’ll find that ghost who doesn’t mind the company.
A man can wish, right?