Page 24 of Kick

“Because you look exactly like him. Didn’t think I’d ever figure out who the hell you reminded me of; if I didn’t know you were an Angel—”

“I was never an Angel, but I make a perfect Saint.”

He laughs; this time it’s not the carefully controlled chuckle from before, it’s an all-out belly laugh.

“Yeah, you do,” he says when he recovers. “But if you fuck up like this again, I’m gonna have your balls in a vice for all eternity. You got that, Newbie?”

I smile at the use of his nickname for me. “Yeah, I got it.”

“You stay with her until she wakes up, and then you find out what she knows. I need that tape, and then I need those two fuckers taken out.”

“One question. Who gets to be the one delivering the bullet?”

“You do, kid. Get me my tape and they’re all yours.”

He opens the door and walks through it, and I spend the next few minutes wondering what the hell just happened. I just admitted to killing not one, but several of my former club brothers, an offense normally punishable by death, and my prez didn’t even bat an eyelid. Either he has way more faith in me than he should, or he’s dumber than I thought he was. Because if it’s the only means I have of self-preservation, for Indie or myself, then I’ll betray this club too.

The strange part is I’m just prolonging the inevitable. Neither one of us are particularly fond of living, it seems, though it looks like we’re both stuck here for a while longer.

Black.

That’s all I see.

Darkness.

There’s no white light, no pearly gates, no redemption. Just blackness and spinning and shouting, screaming. And then there’s his voice above me, around me, behind me. I turn but can’t escape it. I scream; I cry out and fall to my knees, covering my ears with my hands pressed firmly against the soft cartilage.

There’s a sting in my arm and the world snaps into place like a rubber band from a slingshot.

I’m back in the warehouse. I’m not with the biker at all. I’m back in that warehouse, and the Dentist is pushing the needle through my vein like a hot knife through butter. I struggle. Scream. Fight. And then it’s the biker’s voice in my ear. “Shh, I have you, Little Spitfire.”

“No!” I scream. I sob, but all I feel as I slip back under are his arms banding around me, holding me down. Holding me captive.

“Same shit, different day,” I mutter, but I don’t know if the words come out right or if I just think I said them. I don’t know anything anymore except that I want to die. With every fibre of my being, with everything I am, I know that much is true.

I just want to die, but he won’t let me.

I wake to a cool, dimly lit room, looking much the way it was before he drugged me with the morphine, which makes me wonder if it was all a dream. I guess the fact that it didn’t work makes it a nightmare, now, doesn’t it?

His long body is folded in the chair. I squint into the darkness, expecting to find him asleep but though his face and posture are relaxed, his eyes are not. They study me too keenly. I close my eyes and shift, wincing when my hand sears with pain from the catheter. My eyes fly open and my gaze narrows in on the needle in my hand. Panic seizes my chest. I follow the line of plastic tubing to the IV bag hanging by the bed and instantly I begin trying to free the apparatus from my skin.

“It’s just fluids,” he says, leaning forward in his seat. The blanket falls away from his body, revealing a heavily tattooed naked torso. His arms are decorated with pictures of skulls and mechanical parts; his chest, too. It’s painted with old-school style tats: anchors, pin-up girls … I squint at the image decorating the right side of his abdomen. The lighting is dim, and I could be seeing things on account of the drugs I’ve had coursing through my system, but she looks just like a 1950s, Victoria’s Secret version of me.Weird.

The biker’s blond hair falls over those hard blue eyes. He looks every bit as frightening as he did when he held me underneath the shower yesterday. “Doc says you’re severely dehydrated. Been back twice to change that thing over.”

Twice? How long have I been out? Days? A week?

My tongue and teeth are furry, and despite the residual tang of drugs and vomit in my mouth, my stomach growls. I want a shower. I want to scrub away every trace of their hands on my skin, but then I remember the biker touching me, sliding his calloused fingers against my arse, over my clit. Heat claws at my neck and cheeks, and I see flashes of his beautiful and terrible face twisted into rage as I tried to fight him, the smirk that played on his lips as I aimed his gun at him, the tight band of his arms around me as he cooed in my ear before the doctor knocked me out—all of these things slide through my mind. The sound of my sobs accompanies the memories. It’s a soundtrack I’ve become very familiar with in the last few weeks. That and the piercing sound of my screams.

The Priest was fond of the screaming. I knew it, and so I would clamp my mouth shut against the pain. I tried not to give him the satisfaction of hearing my agony made vocal, but the more I resisted, the more he pushed. The more he punished. The other two liked to watch his sessions as if they were taking notes, learning from his depravity.

“You thought the Dentist was fucked up? Baby, you haven’t seen anything until you’ve lived inside my fantasies for a day.”The biker’s words play on repeat, twisting my gut with fear. Despite the aching in my body, instinct urges me to move, to fight—to run. But what’s the point? He’d trap me at every turn, and I’d wind up a little more bruised and beaten up than I am already. And what would I run to? I can’t outrun the last three weeks of my life and the other two animals that did this to me are still out there. They’ll be watching my family, and they’ll come for me. Maybe not right away, but eventually, and I would rather spend an eternity in purgatory than fall victim to those men again.

“You should have let me die,” I croak. My throat is scratchy as hell; it hurts just sucking in breath. I guess downing a half bottle of pills and throwing them back up again will do that to you. I’m surprised to find my mouth doesn’t feel as bruised, and my body—while certainly stiff from misuse—doesn’t ache as much.

“Why are you so keen to check out?” he whispers. His voice puts my teeth on edge.

“I traded three monsters for one with a prettier face, and a heart blacker than any of the rapists I’ve spent the last couple of weeks with. I didn’t try to kill myself for kicks.”

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