Hard Roads (16 page)

I could have closed my eyes to the room, but it would only serve to deliver me back to that yard. In whatever time I had left, I couldn’t go back there, couldn’t remember the carnage that played out before my wide eyes.

There was blood everywhere you looked, my memories turning it into small rivers that cut across the dirt lot, feeding the trees that had assisted Diablo in his inhuman acts. My hands had been covered in it and my palms were still stained pink when I was dragged to this new shithole. I didn’t want to look at my palms because I knew the reminder of violence would still color my skin.

I hurt all over. My entire body was tight with terror when he’d thrown me to his dogs. My face scraped against the ground as my body was bent over and used, laughter filling the air, barely drowning out the grunt of the guard who fucked me. Still sore from Diablo, I’d screamed like a little bitch, granting them the pleasure of my pain, an object used for their entertainment. By the time the second crawled on top of me, I’d stopped screaming because my throat was shredded. He didn’t like it and after turning me over and spearing himself inside me, he’d wrapped his hands around my throat, choking me so that he could pretend that it was by his will alone that I didn’t make a sound. I thought I was dying then, but I didn’t. Instead, I woke up chained to a tree, the sun burning against my skin and blood dripping from my body.

I used to think I knew what it was like to be a prisoner. I used to think I knew what it like to be used.

All those years, I’d been fucking stupid to think that.

Shit. Growing up where I had and going through what I went through, I was a damn fool to look at that life as rock bottom. It was fucking child’s play compared to the nightmare and monsters that haunted me the past two days. After what I’d just endured, I could look back on what I remembered to be a crappy fucking club, and even crappier brothers, and see them for the blessing they should have been. Sure, they fucked me when I let them and they laughed at me when I got angry about the next whore they bent over their bed, but they never hurt me. They never treated me like an animal that deserved to be beat just because it had tried to set itself free.

No.

Diablo had been the one to do that. I wouldn’t even call him a man because he was nothing more than a monster. There was no way that a single ounce of humanity could have existed inside him. The things he’d done to those bikers could never be committed by any person that was truly human.

After fucking me in his room, tearing apart every orifice he could find and laughing when I cried, he’d dragged me out, his men coming behind us from where they’d been waiting at his bedroom door. Diablo held me by my hair and his men took my legs and I was carried through that house, flaunted and shown off to all of the ghosts that never seemed to leave the couches and chairs where I’d seen them before. Their vacant fucking eyes had followed my body through the room, nobody stepping up to help or reacting with even the slightest bit of disgust or shock.

Normal day and another fucking bitch being butchered in the backyard, I guess.

JD hadn’t been kidding when he’d told me to just stay quiet.

The sun did me the favor of blinding me almost as soon as we stepped outside, so the only indication I had initially that we weren’t alone was the deep voice screaming and the sounds of metal hitting against metal. It was a loud twang of what sounded like iron against steel and it echoed over the vast space, an ominous beat that punctured the continual sound of the pain of a man.

The sound grew louder as we approached and I was dumped on the ground, pebbles tearing the skin on my back and my head hitting sharp against a larger stone. I could hear my skull crack against the ground, dust flying up to burn into my eyes, forcing them closed to the scene that surrounded me.

But Diablo wasn’t having that.

Within seconds, his hand was gripped into my hair, the individual strands tearing away from my skin as he pulled me up into a seated position. I felt the tip of a blade press against my throat, a small trickle of blood running hot along my skin. “Open your fucking eyes, bitch.”

Kicking out with my legs, I sucked in a desperate breath attempting to bring myself back to the room where I was now held, not wanting to return to the horror in Diablo’s compound. No matter how hard I tried, my thoughts kept traveling back, the images replaying continuously in my mind as if they’d been seared into my very being.

When I’d opened my eyes in that empty field and blinked away the dirt, I saw the beginning of what would be the worst murders I’d ever witnessed. I’d seen men beaten, I’d seen men stabbed. Hell, I’d seen men gutted, raped and shot. What I hadn’t seen was men torn apart slowly and painfully, their own bikes used against them as a means to end their lives.

“I tried to give you pleasure, but you had to fight didn’t you? Didn’t want to fucking listen and do what you were told. Now you’re going to find out what happens to stupid little cunts that don’t know their fucking place. Keep your eyes open, Holly, because if I see them close, you’ll die a slow death along with your fucking brothers.” The menace in his voice told me he’d snapped. Gone were the polite mannerisms of the man who’d first greeted us at the door of his home. The only thing left now was the bloodthirsty ramblings of a killer. “Won’t matter anyway, bitch. It wasn’t like I ever intended for you to stay.”

Laughter, dark and cruel, rumbled out of his chest and with a snap of his fingers, I saw something that I would never be able to let go. The sound of wood creaking caught my attention first and I looked up to see something large hanging from a tree within 50 feet of me. The sun reflected off chrome before I could comprehend that what I was looking at was a bike. Attached to the frame of the bike were chains and those chains were pulled up and over a large branch of the tree. The bike had to have weighed 800 pounds at least and I couldn’t imagine how many men it had taken to lift it off the ground via the pulley system they’d created over the tree branch. On the other end of that chain were hooks from what I could tell, one end disappearing into the top of the black boots of a biker and reappearing out the bottom. If they had just been hooked through his bare feet, I’m sure the weight of the bike would have torn those hooks right out of him, but the strong leather of his shoes kept them in place, stretching his body up from where his forearms were staked into the ground with railroad ties or camping spikes. He was upside down and three men stood where his arms were attached to the ground, each one laughing as they kicked dirt into his eyes and wide open, screaming mouth.

Diablo laughed behind me, mimicking the sound of his guards and obviously enthralled with the scene that played out before him. “You see what happens to people who try me? The only reason that poor bastard is getting it worse than you is because he killed one of my men and he isn’t worth more to me than the entertainment his death can provide.” His free hand slid softly down my spine, resting on my ass where it was planted on the ground. “At least you don’t have to worry about that. Although…considering the place where you’re going next, what’s happening to that dumb fuck right there might be a preferable fate.”

Stretched between the ground and the chains, his face was the picture of agony and I couldn’t imagine how long it would take the weight of the bike to split him in two. You would think that the pain of being stretched alone would be enough, but not to a man like Diablo.

Calling out to his guards, his voice boomed over my head when he ordered, “Let him kiss the thing he loves so much. Dirty ass fucking bikers need to see how their love of their machines can be hazardous to their health.” More laughter and his free arm came around me, embracing me from behind. I blinked for only a second and felt the sharp point of his blade poke in even farther.

Leaning so that his mouth was against my ear, he said, “Remember to keep your eyes open. You don’t want to miss this.”

I heard a second bike roar to life. When I looked to my left, I saw a guard pushing it backwards up to where the man was stretched up from the ground. When I realized what they were about to do, my head shook involuntarily, my stomach clenched in my abdomen and the taste of bile shot up my throat.

Two men reached down to lift the back end of the bike a foot or two off the ground, just enough that it was at the same height as the biker’s face. Pulling it back so that the he was close enough to kiss the tire, the guard gunned the engine and I heard the biker’s brother scream from where he was being held down 20 feet away.

When the tire was spinning so fast that the spokes were a blur and the engine screamed, they backed it against the face of the stretched biker, his scream quickly drowned out by the roar of the engine. I tried to close my eyes to what I was seeing, but the prick of Diablo’s knife reminded me to keep my eyes open. The smell of burnt flesh wafted across the space and one whiff was enough for my stomach to finally give out as I wretched all over the ground beneath me.

A door slammed open, wrenching me from my memories of Diablo’s compound. I didn’t know if it was fear or relief that I felt at that moment, maybe a mixture of both as I was torn from one nightmare only to be forced to face another.

Five men poured in, most dressed in white t-shirts and jeans, except for one who wore a pair of grey dress pants and a back buttoned up shirt. It wasn’t difficult to tell who was running the show between the five of ‘em.

The obvious leader looked me over, turning every once in a while to speak to the four other men in a language I couldn’t understand. It sounded like Spanish, but it could have been French, Italian or Portuguese for all I knew. I was too damn tired, almost catatonic from shock, and my thoughts felt thick and sluggish in my head. After a few comments, two of the men disappeared out into the halls and I barely registered the sound of female voices and screams faintly echoing within the room. Those sounds were completely silenced when the men shut the door and approached me.

“Hello Holly.”

Goddammit. It seemed like every psychopath west of Illinois knew my fucking name these days.

“You’re probably wondering who I am.”

I didn’t respond for several reasons. One, because it didn’t matter who the fuck he was. My knowledge of his name or why he had me wouldn’t save me from whatever evil intent he had. Two was because my throat was still shredded from screaming in Diablo’s backyard and I hadn’t had any water in who knows how long.

He didn’t seem to like it when I just stared at him like the zombie I’d become.

One of his men was on me within seconds, grabbing a fistful of my hair and pulling my head back against the wall. I whimpered from the pain, but it wasn’t that bad compared to what I’d already been through, that was until the other guy punched me in the face, most likely breaking my nose.

“You going to talk now?”

Clearing my throat, I was able to squeak out a weak reply. “What would you like to talk about, exactly?”

He laughed and the putrid smell of his breath went together well with his ugly face. Wrinkled and fat, his cheeks pudged out at the sides, the skin looking like leather from too much sun. He had beady, black eyes that seemed to stare right through me and his hair was stringy and long, the sweat and grease on his skin causing it to stick within the folds of his face.

“Well, we can start with how much you’re going to make me.”

His hand was between my legs and it burned when the salt of his skin met the tears in mine. I was numb to the fact that his finger was pushing up inside me as he attempted to gauge whatever it was he was trying to discover.

He didn’t speak again except to look up and blurt out something to his goons, once again in a language that escaped me.

Releasing my hair, the two men started to walk away as the leader pushed himself up, no longer interested in having a deep conversation. I was glad to see them leave, but somewhat concerned that I hadn’t learned exactly what it was they were planning to do to me.

It wasn’t until I tried to talk to the asshole that I realized how thirsty I was. I blamed the dehydration on the reason why I couldn’t see straight or the absolute lethargy in my body. I would have killed at that moment for something to drink.

Within another couple of minutes, the door swung again and one of the goons stepped in. By the time I was able to lift my head to see what was in his hands, I was pushed back into the wall by the spray of ice-cold water from the hose.

It felt like razors across my skin and the water entered my mouth when I opened it to scream. I realized at that moment what my mom had meant years ago when she told me to be careful what I wished for, because in this instance, I definitely got it.

Chapter Seventeen

~ JD ~

I should have kept driving east. I should have continued allowing the wind to break against my face, the rumble of the engine to power beneath me as I tore down miles of highway in search of a life where I didn’t have to worry about the MC, or Diablo, and especially not about Holly.

Those people weren’t my problem.

Not anymore, at least.

Somehow, when I was driving through the pitch black of the night sky, the long desert roads stretched out in front of me begging me to keep going and find peace at the end of wherever they took me, I stopped. Looking up, a thousand white eyes stared down at me like the heavens above were witnesses to my cowardice, my guilt and my greed.

I’d stolen her to save myself.

I’d left her to run drugs to the man who’d ordered her capture.

I was leaving it all behind, as if her life, her safety and her soul were not worth risking everything I’d worked so hard to gain.

Why was my life more important when it was my hand that put her in that place to begin with?

Kicking down the stand, I pulled my leg from over the bike and walked out into the cool breeze that blew across the dust and low-lying plants. Animals could be heard hunting in the distance, but other than that there was only the whisper of wind, carrying with it the secrets and silent prayers of every poor bastard out there who lived a life as bleak as mine. Mixed within that wind was Holly’s voice, the words she said to me before I left her to die and the lies I’d told not only her, but also myself, to make us both feel better about the situation.