Page 10 of Dark Savior

The gas station was right down the street, thankfully, so I didn’t even have to go far. Deciding to fill up while I was there, I parked the car at a gas pump and began the fueling process before I went inside to buy a pack of cigarettes. The cashier, a middle-aged woman with brassy blonde hair, tried to chit chat with me, but I wasn’t in the mood. As soon as I’d paid and had my cigarettes in hand, I pushed out the door, heading back for my car.

Tossing the pack into the front seat through the open window, I watched the cost of the fuel slowly rise and grunted impatiently, leaning against the back passenger door. This was something I hadn’t missed about this small town—the slow-ass gas pumps. I missed the chain gas stations back in the city where the pumps were reliable.

I was going to be here all goddamn day.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up right before someone’s boot crunched over the gravel behind me. I spun around⁠—

Too late.

A rag was stuffed over my nose, and someone rushed up behind me as I began fighting back, clawing at the eyepatch on the asshole’s face all while I tried to get out of his grip, but his fingers only tightened in my hair, holding me in place. The person behind me grabbed my arms, keeping them still. I tried not to breathe in. I did my fucking best, but my lungs were screaming at me.

And the thing about the body when it was starving for oxygen… it would force the person to breathe, even to its own detriment.

My eyes began to roll back in my head, and I slumped just as the gas pump behind me clicked off, signaling my car was full. Fucking piece of shit small town and even shittier goddamn gas pumps.

My knees gave out beneath me. I hoped like hell Callan would notice I was missing before long and come for me. And when he did, I knew he was going to slaughter everyone. The man had staked his claim on me, and the thing about a man who wore the cut of the Royal Saints MC?

They were overprotective of their women. Touch them and fucking die kind of shit.

“He’s gonna…” my words trailed off, my speech slurring and tongue feeling thick— “kill you,” I whispered.

Everything went dark.

I shivered as I came to, so cold that my skin was pebbled with goosebumps. The room was dimly lit with a nightlight of all fucking things, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to complain. At least that little bit of light let me see where the hell I was and what I might have to work with to get out of here.

My head hurt, and the urge to vomit rose up my throat, but I swallowed it down.

I could throw up when I got the fuck out of here. Not a second fucking sooner. Throwing up would only alert my captors that I was awake. Sure as hell didn’t need that happening.

I quickly rolled onto my hands and knees, sucking in a sharp breath of the cold air when my stomach rolled. Fuck, this shit sucked. My head spun, my vision momentarily blurring in front of me, but I continued to push up regardless. My fucking life depended on it.

I needed to find something to use as a weapon. Even now, I could hear footsteps above my head, meaning those fuckers that took me—eyepatch asshole and probably his little friend he had with him when they tried snatching me at the grocery store—were on their way down here to check on me.

I intended to be armed before then. My brother and I might have clashed heads a hell of a lot growing up, but he made sure I knew how to get myself out of a tight situation.

“If you don’t have a gun or a knife, you find the heaviest fucking thing you can handle, and you start bashing skulls in, and you don’t stop until they’re fucking dead.”

That was exactly what I planned on doing.

I picked up a heavy, steel pipe from the corner where other housing supplies were located at—paint, a shovel, flooring—and picked it up, testing the weight of it as two sets of boots began to descend the steps that led into the basement. Figuring I could swing it easily enough, I pressed myself into the dark corner of the basement where the nightlight didn’t reach, keeping my breathing slow and steady to not only keep my position hidden but to also not vomit all over the floor. Didn’t help I could feel it rising up my esophagus.

A door creaked open. I inched along the wall, my eyes laser-focused on that door and the two men stepping through it. The one with an eyepatch snarled when he noticed I wasn’t lying on the floor where they’d no doubt dropped me if the pain in my back and skull was anything to go by.

“She’s in this room,” Eyepatch sneered, scouring the walls as if he could see into the pitch-black areas. “Split up. We need to find her. The prez wants her.”

Didn’t know why his president wanted me, and I wasn’t planning to stick around long enough to find out. Callan and my brother could figure out those answers on their own fucking time.

As eyepatch’s friend, Broke-Tooth, drew nearer to where I was hidden in the shadows, I lurched forward, the pipe already reared back like a baseball bat. I smacked it against his skull, and a sickening crack ripped through the room, the pipe bashing his skull in. I cringed and stepped back, grimacing at the blood that splattered over my shirt and arms—a drop even landing on my fucking face.

I heard Eyepatch coming up behind me, and I swung around, smacking the fuck out of his skull, too, creating a pretty dent and another sickening, wet, crunching sound. He hit the floor across from his little broken-tooth friend, and I immediately rushed up the stairs, not wanting to stick around in case other people were in the house.

If there were other people, I needed the element of surprise.

The house proved to be empty as I made my way to the front door, where a car was sitting in the driveway—more than likely the car they used to transport me here. I rushed over to it and slid into the driver’s seat. Setting the bloody, steel pipe on the seat beside me, I reached under the steering wheel and pried the plastic off so I could reach the wires hidden beneath.

My hands trembled as I hot-wired the car, praying I remembered how to do it. Carter had shown me how in case I ever needed to know. I’d thought he was fucking insane at the time.

Now, I was silently thanking him.