Burn (Brothers of Ink and Steel #2) (28 page)

“Quinn?” Liam says next to me. “I think she’s waking up!”

“Sleep … all day,” I say, but something’s wrong. My mouth doesn’t work like it should.

He laughs at me, but it sounds strangled. “No, I don’t want you to sleep all day, I want to see your pretty blue eyes.” The way he says it sounds like he’s begging, not requesting.

I pry them open by sheer willpower.

And there is my Liam. He’s smiling and crying at the same time.

“What?” I strain from my lungs hoarsely.

He just shakes his head and rests it carefully against my hand.

I realize the room we’re in has only dim illumination to see by. I’m about to ask why it’s so dark when I see the heart monitor machine that’s making the beeping racket.

And then I remember.

Chapter Sixteen

July, 2005

Liam

Connor veers the car towards the curb on State Street in front of Vince’s favorite hangout, The DuBois—a rundown hotel that serves as the Westhill Cartel’s home base.

I open the car door, jump out before it stops and rush at the guy standing like a guard or bouncer by the downstairs door. Swiftly, I bash him in the shoulder with the bat. As he falls, he drops his walkie, and I smash it with the heel of my boot.

Reese kneels down next to the guy, gets his arms behind his back and wraps duct tape around his wrists, before putting his knee into his throat.

“Were you a part of what happened to the girl at State Street’s Town Pump tonight?”

The guy’s eyes fill with fear and he can barely shake his head no.

Reese rips off a piece of tape and covers the guy’s mouth. “Vince is a fucking rat who is about to be exterminated; I suggest you find another line of employment.”

Three girls who were standing on the curb huddle together now, watching us. “Where is Vince?” I demand.

They point up the stairs. “Room fourteen.”

“How many guys are up there?”

“Maybe twenty,” one of them guesses.

“Scatter,” I warn them, and they take off down the street.

I run up the steps two at a time and when I get to room fourteen, I kick open the door without ceremony.

Vince and his goons jump up from the chairs and couches they were reclined in, turn and move for their weapons, which appear to be laid out on the bar behind them, at the back of the room.

Ryder and Josh rush the asshole closest to the stockpile. It looks like there are at least two guns sitting there.

I don’t worry.

I don’t bother counting how many opponents there are, I don’t care.

I don’t care if I die—in fact I’d prefer it.

The only thing that matters is that my target is right in front of me.

My muscles bunch and coil as I tense. Then with a burst of speed I pounce, step up and over the top of the couch and come down hard, violently slamming my boot against Vince’s jawbone.

I will break it, like he broke Quinn’s.

As he stumbles, I swing the steel baseball bat, which Cade uses for fitness, with all of my power and strike between Vince’s collarbone and shoulder blade. I hear the crack, and Vince howls in pain.

A second later, some asshole’s fist jams against my kidney from behind.

Douchebag. I roundhouse kick the guy in the gut, and he falls over the couch, but then another intervenes with an elbow to my face. Before I can retaliate, Josh grabs him and throws him against the nearest wall.

I turn my attention back to Vince. “Sick fucker! It must be easy for a coward like you to go after a defenseless girl with four other guys, isn’t it?”

Forcefully, I ram the end of the bat into his chest. Vince’s breath halts as he opens his mouth to gasp for air.

I drop the bat to the floor and jab a powerful uppercut to the opposite side of his face that I kicked him on to make sure his jaw hangs loose. As I do, I picture Quinn’s jaw hanging the same way.

Fury makes me see red around the edges of my vision. “Motherfucking pussy!”

I kick his legs out from under him, pin him down and slam my fist, fortified with the steel bar, against his ribs.

He gets a few punches in, but they do nothing to hurt me. There is nothing anybody can do now to hurt me. One of his dick lieutenants could shoot my brains out and I wouldn’t feel it.

Nothing matters. I wasn’t there when she needed me the most.

Dying …

I punch him in the mouth—again, again, and again. He spits out a curse with blood and teeth.

He starts to say something about Quinn but stops when I jump to my feet and catch hold of his useless arm—the one I dislocated with the baseball bat. I twist it up and around behind his back as I kick him over to his belly. Vince screams as I’m sure I rip apart his shoulder ligaments.

“LIAM!” I hear Talon’s voice echo through the room.

Turning fast, I see a guy coming at me. He gets a couple hits to my gut before I get him in a headlock and flip him up and drop him on his head.

Before I turn back for Vince, I quickly register the scene around me. Josh and Ryder are each fighting two guys.

Reese, Connor and Chase have formed a back-to-back triangle and are kicking ass. Talon is directly behind me, and I realize he’s been my rear guard.

When I get my eyes on Vince again he’s crawling across the floor—like a half-smashed cockroach. I kick him over onto his back and put my boot over his Adam’s apple and press. He starts to choke and sputter and flail his good limbs.

I’ve been in a lot of fights—so many I’ve lost count—but I’ve never killed someone. Vince deserves to die, and I don’t have to think twice about being the executioner.

“EVERYBODY DOWN ON THE FLOOR!”

The police flood into the big room.

“We’re not done,” I tell Vince as I obey the cops. “I’ll be back for you.”

It’s early morning by the time Cade gets us out of the downtown lock-up.

On the way home, he says something about a deal with the district attorney for house arrest. I don’t give a shit, all my overly compulsive mind can think about is getting to Vince again.

He’s quiet for the rest of the ride, which would suit my mood fine, but he’s also not talking about Quinn, and I can’t bring myself to ask.

When I get home I go straight to my room. The guys follow me.

“What do you want?” I growl.

Talon stands tall in the doorway. His left eye is cut open and the side of his face is swelling. “Quinn wanted us to be brothers.”

“Yeah?” I shake my head. “What of it?”

“Tonight we were,” Josh states, walking past Talon and into the room. His knuckles are wrapped with gauze, but the blood has seeped through, and his arm is held up in a sling—seems he threw his elbow out of place.

I nod my head. Tonight we were.

“We should stay brothers,” Ryder says. His t-shirt is ripped at the neck and shoulder, and blood is smeared on the front of it. It isn’t his. And I’m proud of that.

“We spilled blood tonight for each other and for Quinn,” Chase adds in a low voice. He has two handfuls of busted knuckles “That makes us family now.”

Reese and Connor nod their agreement. They’re fucked up too, in one way or another.

“Tattoo it, Liam,” Talon says. “On each of us, as a sign of our brotherhood.”

Without a word, I rise and go to the drawer where I keep my tattoo gun and the bottle of black ink.

As I set it up, I remember a photo I came across in
Ink Magazine
of soldiers who scribed matching tats on their biceps. I had always longed for that band-of-brothers closeness.

“
I am my brother’s keeper,
” I state. “Quinn would like that.”
Would’ve liked that …

“That’s perfect, man,” Talon says, and everyone else agrees.

Josh picks his dirty, bloody shirt up with a clenched fist. “It should go on our left upper rib—closest to the heart.”

I try to say okay, but I can’t; the emotions I’ve been holding at bay seem to be rising. I choke them down and say gruffly, “Lay down.”

When I turn on the needle, the sound soothes me and makes me think of Quinn. The last time I used it was to etch the birds on her shoulder. A peace comes over me I can’t explain. In that moment, I think of her and the angel, and think to myself that maybe everything is going to be okay.

Josh is first, then Talon, then Ryder.

“I have a shitload of silver-steel barbells, I could pierce each one of us too,” Ryder says when his tat is finished.

We all agree to that, and he jogs to his room for his stuff.

Almost an hour later, as I’m sinking the needle into Chase’s skin, Cade pops his head in the door. He doesn’t look as surprised as I thought he would, with all seven of us in the same room, not killing each other. I also expect him to freak the fuck out when he realizes what we’re doing, but he doesn’t.

When he comes in for a closer look, he doesn’t smile, but his eyes radiate pride as he sets his warm hand on my shoulder. “Looks like you’re now the brothers of ink and steel.”

After he walks back out, no one says a word.

Ink and steel.
I think of the steel baseball bat I used to beat Vince and the batons and blades some of the other
brothers
carried into battle. I think about the steel we lift regularly at The Core and how it’s made us strong—both physically and emotionally. I think of our own muscle and resolve as steel and of the black ink going beneath our skin to our souls.

It’s the perfect title for what we’ve become.

*****

2015

Liam

I run down the dirt path into the graveyard, past the headstone I leaned against when I first saw her …

And there’s Quinn, where I knew she’d be, by the angel.

I glide to a stop, slipping in the slush.

My brow presses down and my jaw clenches. She’s yelling and sobbing—her agony-filled voice reverberates across the open space.

I’m immediately consumed with her pain.

Taking a deep breath, I let the anger go.

She didn’t tell me about her fiancé
—so what, I would’ve done the same thing.

She didn’t come back for me, but for her mom
—
why
she came back doesn’t really matter, what matters is that she
did
come back.

And for a little while, all the planets aligned and she was the most beautiful star in my universe once again. I wouldn’t give that time up for anything.

We’d burned brighter than a fucking supernova, even if we weren’t meant to last.

All of a sudden, Quinn shouts and spins around, sees me and freezes. I straighten my shoulders, not sure what to expect.

She squints her eyes, as if she doesn’t believe what she’s seeing, then buries her face in her hands and drops to the ground.

She starts rocking back and forth.

I go over and stand next to her, and suppress the urge to hold her—I don’t know what she needs.

“Ten years ago,” she begins in a strained tone, “I never said goodbye to you because … I didn’t want it to be final. I was
going
to come back—I
wanted
to come back—but it was just too much.” Tears stream down her face.

I think back to when she came home from the hospital. She wasn’t the same, even after she’d physically healed. She had terrible nightmares nearly every night; her bloodcurdling screams would wake everyone in the house. After a while, she began trying to stay up all night so she’d exhaust herself, in hopes of sleeping without dreams. She’d startle and jump at the smallest noises and cry at random times.

She blamed herself, she blamed her mother, she blamed the angel and the social worker who dropped her off with no one home and no cell phone … but she never blamed me.

But I did—and still do.

“When I came home, I was like a cripple. Everyone stared at me with this mix of pity and pain—especially you!” she barks. “I knew you were thinking you could’ve stopped it or made it right if you had somehow been there. You weren’t there! And you couldn’t have been there! And it doesn’t even matter, because what happened, happened, and it couldn’t be taken back, and it couldn’t be undone or fixed! It just was. Just like now—the circumstances we’re in, it just is.”

She takes a second to wipe her eyes.

“The silence at the dinner table became torture. Playing Frisbee or volleyball outside, no one would touch me, everyone was afraid they’d hurt me. Group became unbearable—they all wanted me to open up about it—how the hell could I? Vince and my mother stole
everything
from me! Including you and the only home I’d ever known.” She stares at the ground. “I couldn’t stay.”

Dear God, her admission kills me—my heart crumbles in my chest.

I think of the inexplicable damage Vince did to her mind and body—how it demanded retribution—and how I had wanted to be the one to mete it out. But that revenge was taken from me when he was murdered in prison by a rival gang member. At least he was dead—I’ve always imagined it was slow and painful.

Quinn sniffs back more tears. “We were only kids. And how does anyone heal from that? You actually did so well—loving me again, holding me, touching me—as if I wasn’t soiled.” She cringes at the word.

You were never soiled
. I try to say it, but my mouth won’t move to form the words.

“But no one knew how I felt!” Quinn almost shouts the words in exasperation. “Every time I closed my eyes, they were there; and every time I heard a noise, I knew they were coming for me … again.”