Candy Licker (32 page)

On the afternoon of the fourth day I heard a key turn in the
lock. I'd been laying on the couch with my eyes closed, and before the lock could flip I screamed and was off that couch and on the floor, rolling straight up under that bad boy.

“Candy,” Knowledge said, rushing into the room. He got down on his knees and pulled me from under the couch and held me in his arms. “It's okay, baby,” he said softly. “I'm home. I got here as soon as I could, baby.”

I covered my face with both hands, ashamed to let him see what had been done to me. Knowledge kissed my fingers and told me I was beautiful. He whispered this as he pulled my hands gently away from my face. He examined me, getting a good look at the wound that I still hadn't seen.

“I'm ugly” I said, trying to cover my face again.

He shook his head no. “No, you're still you, baby. You'll have a scar, yeah. But so what? We all got em. It doesn't have to change who you are.”

I thought about that nasty triple X video, and my face started burning, hot with shame. If Knowledge found out about it he might never look at me the same. “My career is over,” I said. “Hurricane buried it.”

Knowledge shook his head again. “Uh-uh, Candy. We've both been through enough shit in life to know better than that. No shame, no shorts. Whatever happened at that House, baby leave it there. And anything you got one time, you can get it again. But if the career is really over, then let it be gone. Don't never hold on to nothing you can't let go of in a hurry.”

I looked up at him, then pulled myself up off the floor. Ja-deah had been right on point. Knowledge was power. I walked into the bathroom and faced myself in that mirror, and what I saw was even worse than what I had imagined.
But?
I thought
to myself.
And?
Yeah, I was gonna have a real nasty scar, and no, it wasn't going away. But I also had a life. I had a man. And I had a sister. I wasn't going away either.

Jadeah unlocked the side door and the heavy chain fell to the floor. “Hurry up,” she said, pulling it closed behind us.

“Did you turn off the security cameras?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “I tried to shut the system down like you told me, Candy, but I'm not sure I pressed the right keys. Besides, I couldn't stay up in there long. Something crazy is going down that got everybody shook in here tonight.”

Knowledge helped her push the chains back through the door handles and snap the heavy padlock back in place.

“Oh yeah?” he said quietly.

Jadeah rolled her eyes. “Hell yeah. The IRS called this afternoon and said they wanna do an emergency audit on all our books. And when I tried to make a withdrawal to take care of the payroll, all I got was dust. Zero dollars and zero cents. Every bank account Ju got is frozen. The bank said something about the record label being seized as assets for his tax liabilities.”

Knowledge glanced at me and nodded, then grabbed my hand as we moved into the House.

The pit was live and people were getting down in it. The three of us ran up the back stairs and down the hall, and when Jadeah walked out and signaled that shit was clear, we jetted past the gambling room and VIP Lounge and into the stairwell that led to Knowledge's office.

I was scared as hell, but it made me feel good to know that Hurricane's ass was already handled. He just didn't know it. The feds were about to put him and his entire posse about forty feet up under somebody's jail. All we needed to do now was get the books from Knowledge's safe, then wait while Jadeah went down to the pit and lured Caramel upstairs. We wasn't going for none of Caramel's bullshit either. We'd knock her ass down and drag her out the door behind us if that's what it took, because one way or another my sister was leaving this place tonight.

Knowledge had tried to make me wait for him back at the loft while he came and got Caramel and his books, but you know I wasn't having none of that. First of all, Caramel wouldn'ta left the House with him just because he said so. He woulda had to kill her crazy ass first. And second, I didn't like to fight, but I wasn't nobody's punk neither. If my man was going down into the lion's den, then my ass would be fighting, kicking, and scratching right in there with him.

Jadeah musta done a real shitty job shutting down those cameras because Knowledge had just opened the safe when his door crashed in. Butter, with his cock-strong country ass, kicked that bad boy down on the first try, and if Knowledge hadn't knocked me out the way it would have flattened me to the ground.

I hit the floor hard with my man spread out on top of me, protecting what was his to the end. I heard about thirty clicks, and when I opened my eyes I was looking down the barrel of so many gats I just gave up and closed them again.

How they'd managed to sneak up that flight of stairs without making a sound beat me. But how me and Knowledge got back
down those stairs wasn't hard to figure out. They dragged us down together, both of us scrappin like prime roosters in a country cockfight.

Knowledge was handling his with Snake and Long Jon. Both of their wife-beating asses fought like pussies, and even though they had him two against one, my baby still had the wins.

Vince and Butter were on me. Butter was trying to pull me up by the hair, but I was locked on to his ankles like a prison bracelet. He bent over and punched me in the face, and I pulled his feet forward and made that chunky, corn-bread-eating nig-grow come down right along with me. He got me in a headlock and I politely reached up and stuck my finger straight up his nose. Before he knew it I was doing like Hurricane had done me, trying to poke a hole dead through that membrane between his nostrils. Tears fell out his eyes as I dug my nail tip all up in his sinuses.

Butter screamed and bucked just like a little bitch, sending us both toppling down the stairs head over feet. By the time we hit the bottom I was back on his ankles again, and no matter how hard he tried to kick me, I wouldn't let go.

We fought out to the vestibule, and Butter started kicking at the banister with his free leg. If he thought I had been holding on before, my ass was a part of him now. I saw what he was trying to do. Sling my ass through the banister slats and send me flying down into the pit.

It wasn't gonna happen. Not unless he broke his leg off so I could take it with me.

Hurricane was sitting in the red, crushed-velvet king's chair chewing on a toothpick and enjoying the show—and not the one that was going on down in the pit neither. I looked at him
with terror in my eyes and he grilled me. I glanced over and saw Knowledge getting his. He was kickboxing them niggahs like somebody's ninja. I screamed for Knowledge to watch out when I saw Long Jon pick up an iron plant stand, but he didn't hear me. He was too deep in the battle.

Long Jon swung, and I saw blood shoot from the back of Knowledge's head as my baby went down. I was screaming and crying and trying to crawl over to him when Butter grabbed me by the back of my shirt and flung me toward the railing again.

I landed on my back, with my head hanging over the edge of the balcony. I grabbed hold of the slat to my right and it broke all the way off in my hand and fell down below. The one on my left held, but all I could do was stare up as Butter glared down at me with a sweaty face and a bloody nose.

“You trick-ass bitch,” he said, then sniffed real deep and ccgg-chewed a clog of hot blood right in my face. “You looked a lot better from the back when I was tapping that ass.”

Then Joog ran up the stairs hollering for Hurricane. “Yo, ak! The phones is ringing like crazy in your office, man! Sissy just called from the crib and shit done got hot!”

I glanced up and saw that niggah Joog looking so nervous he was licking his soup coolers like they had pussy-flavored lip gloss on them.

“She said the feds just rolled on the mansion! They got marshals in the crib tossing shit up and saying they gonna padlock every fuckin’ door and window in the place before the night is over!”

Hurricane stood up, and for the first time ever I saw fear in his eyes.

His cell phone lit up in a thousand colors, and every eye up
there swung toward his belt where it was clipped. He snatched it. “What? … Well where the fuck is Tonk? … Get the fuck outta here! I got mad protection against that kinda shit!” He breathed real hard. “All right, all right! Tell them mothafuckas to sit tight. I'll be down there in a minnit.”

He knew what time it was. The cookie was starting to crumble and the House was about to fall.

Hurricane snapped his phone closed and spoke to his boys, but he was looking dead at Knowledge the whole time. “Tonk got knocked and the supply is bone-dry. Ain't a drop of dope on the streets, and the connects are singing to po-po like a bunch a little bitches.”

Snake touched his gun. “Somebody fuckin’ wit'chu, boss.”

“Yeah,” Hurricane said, cocking his
.44
and aiming it dead at Knowledge. “It's this grimy motherfucka right here.”

And then the sound coming out of the pit changed. Panic rose in the air and the music shut down as people screamed and hollered. Long Jon stepped over Knowledge and peered over the rail. “Oh, shit,” he said. “Motherfuckers is down there wildin’.”

With his gun still locked on my boo, Hurricane stood up to take a look, and I took my eyes off Butter for a second and turned my head to see too.

Vonnie and Caramel were in the pit throwing down.

Caramel swung a bottle and Vonnie went down.

“A knife!” somebody screamed. “That bitch got a knife!”

People screamed even louder as the crowd went crazy and strangers started swinging on each other as they got hit by stray blows. Long Jon's security team tried to swarm, but they got
swallowed up when it got to be every-man-for-himself time and fools started throwing chairs and turning over tables too.

“They fighting!” I screamed up at Hurricane, hoping he cared even a little bit about my sister. “Vonnie stabbed Caramel! They down there fighting!”

Just then a cluster of flares shot up out of the pit. I rolled onto my stomach as they whizzed past my head. They spun through the air real fast, spitting out thick rolls of white smoke and dropping hot silver sparks on the crowd below as people screamed and tried to scatter. A second later another thick cluster shot up. More sparks fell back down into the pit, burning fighting dancers and sending mad niggahs charging toward the exits.

The screams coming from the crowd were agonizing, but security was still yelling over the mic trying to get a grip on the madness. “Chill, chill, chill!” they kept saying, but at that point wasn't no damn body listening. Smoke was clouding the air and it was getting hard to breathe. My nose started burning real bad, and when the next canister shot up Long Jon hollered, “Pepper spray!” And then some fool screamed, “Fire!” and niggahs broke out running in every direction.

“Motherfuck!” Hurricane cursed, and put one hand over his nose. He still had his gat locked on Knowledge, but his boys were looking shaky.

Omar coughed and covered his nose with the neck of his shirt just as Peaches came running up the steps. Hurricane was about to swing his gun on her but checked himself when he realized a red dot was lighting up his chest.

Peaches stepped toward him laughing her crazy ass off. She
held a laser-guided Glock in her hands and every motherfucker up there took notice.

“Who woke this pyscho bitch up?” Hurricane said, and tried to swing his gun her way. But Peaches had him. Still laughing, she squeezed the trigger three times. The first two shots struck Hurricane, one in the chest and the other in the arm. The third one caught Butter in the shoulder as he was bringing his gun up, and it slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.

Hurricane fell like a cut-down tree.

“Peaches,
no
!” Long Jon screamed, and rushed his girl, knocking her over like a bowling pin and covering her with his body. Niggahs was firing and coughing. Coughing and firing. I saw spurts of blood shoot up from Long Jon's back as bullets dotted his shirt. Peaches was laying under him with her arms out at the sides and neither one of them was moving.

Shit started rolling in a cloud of smoke.

I could hear the crowd breaking downstairs. Females crying and screaming and niggahs coughing and kicking at the chained exits as they tried to get the hell out. I woulda been screaming too, except the pepper spray was all in my eyes, stinging like crazy and burning up the lining of my throat.

I tried to get up and run and it felt like a herd of niggahs knocked me back down. Omar, Vince, Joog, Snake, Grip, Das, Quadir pulling Butter—all them hard niggahs had to breathe too, and they ran toward the stairs, one or two leaping over me, but most of them stepping dead on me as they tried to get to the doors and get outside.

And then Knowledge was getting up on his feet. Standing over Hurricane. My baby's head was busted in the back and blood was running down his neck and his shirt.

“Yeah!” he said, picking up Hurricane's
.44
and aiming it down at him. I squinted through my eyes as Hurricane tried to wiggle backward like a caterpillar.

“Knowledge …” Hurricane panted and coughed, reaching up with his big, powerful hand. “Knowl—”

“Nah, motherfucker,” my boo said, cocking that gun with a look on his face that I didn't even recognize. “It's Percy, big brother. Percy Graham Jackson, Jr.!” he said, and fired four times. Hurricane screamed like a bitch as blood spurted from his shattered knees. He sat up and tried to grab his legs, but fell back as Knowledge's last two rounds blew his head into a hot mess of blood and bone. Then Knowledge opened his mouth and spit dead in Hurricane's face. “That's for my mother, you trifling bitch!”

Another canister of pepper spray whizzed up past us and I closed my eyes as it exploded in the air. Thick smoke spiraled outward and choked me, and I thought about my sister hurt and scuffling down in that pit and I tried to draw strength for her. Fuck Hurricane. Knowledge had handled his problem. I still had to go get mine.

“Caramel,” I whispered, pulling myself up on my hands and knees as I moved toward the stairs where the smoke was now the heaviest. I hung my head and moaned as my lungs heaved trying to get even a taste of fresh air. “CARAMEL!”