I reach for the patch’s face and press his cheeks together. I pop a few in and grab a discarded beer can from the floor to help the man swallow. “We hear your VP has a black book full of names. Tell us where we can find him and then we will leave you to your backwater shindig.”
“No, don’t forget the other question.”
I throw a hand up. “Ah, yeah. Venom is right. Almost forgot. And when is the next Euphoria shipment due? That is all we wanna know. Tell me those two things and we’ll see about letting you live. Deal? Or maybe you can even take us to your VP.”
I get a wad of bloody spit on the end of my boot for an answer.
“Fuck you, Savage. I tell you anythin’ and you know our VP will slice my tongue out. Who told ya such a lie, anyway?”
I shrug. “Your president who is sitting in our basement. And what your VP does to you is not my problem. You’ll need to take it up with your prez when you see him next. But if I were you, I would worry more about what the man with a gun in front of you will do.”
To prove my point, I pull out my weapon and place the end of the barrel between his eyes.
“All you can do is shoot me or beat me with your fuckin’ bat. Dat man can do worse than put me in the ground.”
Venom grunts from the back corner. “Wrong answer, my friend,” he warns the patch, but it’s too late.
A woman I loved called me a man without a soul once. I didn’t agree with Everly then, but the longer I walk this earth the more I think she might have known something about me I didn't know about myself.
She also called me heartless.
I hate to admit it, but the green-eyed beauty wasn’t wrong about that, either.
I shake off old times and all the baggage those memories bring with them. Whatever, right? I mean she left me, not the other way around.
Three years later I don’t have two fucks to give about anyone outside my Savage brotherhood because my lovely Everly took what was left of a soulandmy heart the minute she walked out on me.
I can’t say I blame her, either. I chalk up my cold-heartedness to being raised by a junkie mother and an alcoholic father. It’s hard to love people who beat the shit out of you three hundred sixty-four days out of the year. But enough of the sob story.
It’s not my fault I don’t have enough empathy left to care how this fucker dies. He and his motley crew of thug bikers single-handedly killed over forty-three college kids between New Orleans and our little parish alone in the last two months. There’s no telling how many more got their hands on Euphoria outside our reach and ODed.
I grab a fistful of his shirt and haul him to his feet. I’ve got the underground sources in our parish tapped for information. Despite our prez warning us to be careful, I have a few moles digging around inside enemy territory, too. That is why Venom and I are back in the bayou in a freak blizzard hunting downthese cockroaches. Their president is sitting inside a Savage cage right now being bled for information. He’s not being very forthcoming so Venom and I have been tapped to find other sources. We are at our wits’ end to get the shit these fuckers are peddling off our streets and away from the kids it’s killing. The way they’ve marketed it as a safe drug is plain evil in my book. Of course every college kid, overworked mother, unpaid dad and anyone in between having a hard time is going to drop major money for something that promises a cure with no side effects.
You tell a college kid they can ace their exams, never need sleep and basically become Einstein with just a few pills, it’s instant cash flow. Add in the pretty baggies and throw around words like “designer” and “elite”...
Son-of-a-bitch. Before long everyone will be hooked.
This has to end now. And if it means getting my hands bloody to save the innocent, that is fine by me.
I tighten each of my fingers around the Vulture’s throat to where the tips of his boots barely touch the cracked cement floor. Red becomes his new color and I take a little bit more pleasure than I should seeing him suffocate.
“How does it feel knowing you are on the cusp of gasping for the last time? Not too good, huh? That’s how you made her feel.” I hook a thumb over my shoulder. I squeeze a fraction tighter. “Hmm…I have an idea. Venom, I’ll be back.”
Normally the shacks found out in the backwaters are made of wood. But there are a few like this one, that served for old railway stations back in the day that are made of cement. As the water shifted, some of these old places were placed on stilts andI just happen to know hatches were added in the floors for easy fishing.
My wicked grin returns.
I haul the Vulture to the back room and throw open the hatch. Cold air hits us both in the face and so does the smell of water.
I ease up on the pressure around the man’s neck enough to where he can wheeze out, “Whatcha gonna do, man?” His fingers claw at mine.
“It’s obvious, no? I’m going fishing. Either for information or your gnarled body after the gators eat most of you. Either works for me.”
Shocked eyes meet mine.
And then I release him. The Vulture's panicked gasps echo up from the hatch like a siren’s call, cutting through the relentless howl of the blizzard whipping across the bayou. Ice-laced wind claws at my face, carrying the briny rot of swamp water and the metallic tang of blood from the shack's cement floor.
The sound of something heavy hitting the water and then panic swimming is music to a gator’s ears. My boots grind grit over cement chunks underfoot as I crouch. My flashlight beam slices through the darkness below where murky water laps at rusted stilts. Yellow slits look back, hungry for the thrashing idiot flailing ten feet down.
