Well, wasn’t this the SOB’s lucky night. Thanks to a whim and a good body, he’d just gone from corpse to lab rat.
Instead of stabbing him in the heart, Lash slashed the human’s wrists and nicked his jugular. As red blood flowed into the earth, and the man started in with the moans, Lash looked to the car and felt like the thing was a hundred miles away.
He needed energy. He needed...
Bingo.
While those veins drained, Lash dragged himself to the Mercedes, popped the trunk, and lifted the carpet section up. The panel that covered where the spare would normally go pulled out easily.
Hello, wakey-wakey.
The kilo of cocaine was supposed to have been cut down and repackaged for street sale days ago, but then the world had exploded and it had been left right where Mr. D had stashed it.
Wiping his knife off on his pants, Lash punctured a corner of the cellophaned block and dipped in the tip of the blade. He snorted the shit right off the stainless steel, loading up first his right then his left nonexistent nostril.
For good measure, he did another round.
Annnnnd... one more.
As he rocked some keep-it-in-there sniffing, the rush that thundered through him saved his ass, perking him up so that he could keep going even after his vomiting and passing-out routine. Why he’d had those problems was a mystery... Maybe that ’hood rat’s blood had been tainted, or maybe it wasn’t only Lash’s body but his internal chemistry that was changing. Either way, he was going to need that powder in the back until things stabilized.
Shit worked, too. He felt
After rehiding his stash, he returned to the crackhead. The cold didn’t help the draining process, and waiting around here while the fucker bled out wasn’t the brightest idea, no matter how well hidden they were under the bridge. Riding his considerable buzz, he strode over to the dead guy he’d done a Hannibal Lecter on; he ripped open the man’s filthy jacket and tore the undershirt beneath into bandage-size strips.
Fuck his father.
Fuck that little Shit.
He was going to make his own army. Starting with that bulldog addict.
It didn’t take long to wrap up the seeping wounds on the human, and then Lash picked him up and threw him in the trunk with all the regard a cabdriver would pay to cheap luggage.
Driving out from under the bridge, his eyes were bouncing around. But shit... every car he saw, from the ones on the surface roads to the traffic that whizzed by on the highway, every single one of them was a Caldwell PD unmarked.
He was sure of it. They were police. Humans with badges looking into his car. The police, the CPD, the police, the CPD...
As he headed for the ranch, he hit every single red light in Caldwell, and as he was forced to brake it, he stared straight ahead, praying that all the police behind and in front of him didn’t sense he had a dying man and a fuckload of drugs in the car.
It would take too much effort to deal with being pulled over. Besides, talk about buzz kill. He was finally feeling like himself, every single heartbeat drumming through his veins, the steel-shod hooves of all that cocaine trampling through his brain, creating a cacophony of creative inspiration—
Wait. What had he been thinking of?
Aw, hell, what did it matter. Half-formed ideas winged around his mind, plans forming and disintegrating, every single one of them brilliant.
Benloise, he had to get to Benloise and reestablish the connection. Make more
Fuck his father like the guy fucked him.
Fuck Xhex again.
Go back to the farmhouse and fight with the Brothers.
Money, money, money—he needed money.
As he passed by one of Caldwell’s parks, his foot eased off the accelerator. At first, he wasn’t sure whether he was actually seeing what he thought he was... or whether his coked head was warping reality.
But no...
What was going down in the shadows by the fountain presented the opportunity he’d planned on manufacturing for himself. Or infiltrating if need be.
Pulling the Mercedes into one of the metered parking spaces, he turned off the car and got his knife out. As he went around the hood of the AMG, he was vaguely aware he wasn’t thinking straight, but as he rode the cocaine rush, that felt just fine.
John Matthew took form in a stand of pines and bushes along with Xhex and Qhuinn, and Butch, V and Rhage. Up ahead, the ratty farmhouse with the yellow crime scene tape around it looked like something out of
Although if that were true, without Smell-o-Vision, you wouldn’t get an accurate pic even with great camera work. Despite the acres of fresh air around, the scent of blood was strong enough to make you clear your throat.
To properly cover Lash’s intel dump, the Brotherhood had split in half, with the others staking out the address which had been tied to the license plate on that souped-up Civic. Trez and iAm had just taken off to handle their own biz for the night, but they were ready to come back at the drop of a text. And according to the Shadows, there was nothing too special to report since Xhex had left them except for the fact that Detective de la Cruz had returned, spent an hour, and left again.
John searched the scene before him, focusing on the shadows more than what the risen moon illuminated. Then he closed his eyes and let his instincts bleed out from him, giving that indefinable, invisible sensor in the center of his chest free rein.
In moments like this, he didn’t know why he did what he did; the urge just came upon him, the conviction that he had done this before—to good effect—so strong it was undeniable.
Yeah... he could feel something was off... There were ghosts in there. And the certainty reminded him of what he’d felt when he’d been in that dreaded bedroom where Xhex had been so close and so far away. He had sensed her too, but been blocked from making the connection.
“The bodies are in there,” Xhex said. “We just can’t see or get to them. But I’m telling you... they’re in inside.”
“Well, let’s not fuck around out here then,” V said, dematerializing.
Rhage followed, poofing it right into the farmhouse while Butch took a more labor-intensive approach, hotfooting it across the scruffy lawn, with gun drawn and down at his thigh. He looked in the windows until V let him in the back.
“You going in?” Xhex asked.
John signed carefully so she could read his hands.
“Agreed.”
One by one the Brothers came back.
V spoke softly. “Assuming that Lash isn’t just showing off his induction efforts, and assuming Xhex is right —”
“No assumption there,” she bit out. “I am.”
“—then whoever turned the poor bastards has to come back.”
“Thank you, Sherlock.”
V glared in her direction. “You want to dial back the attitude, sweetheart?”
John straightened, thinking that however much he loved the Brother, he was so not appreciating that tone.
Xhex evidently agreed. “Call me sweetheart one more time and it’ll be the last word you ever speak—”
“Don’t threaten me, swee—”
