Phoenix Dead (New Adult Dark Romance) (The Vampire Years) (19 page)

Oscar was starting to lose control, his voice rough over my skin, his grip on my stake wrist almost absent as his other hand rubbed and kneaded the outer flesh of my pussy. He seemed not to sense how close Chris had gotten to us.

"You understand?" I asked and brushed my lips against the crown of his head. There was something in there, in the words, but I couldn't quite reach it.

He responded in a string of Spanish, his hands grabbing my hips as he nipped at my flesh.
Yes, little girl, I understand. I understand.

Entiendo, mija...

Entiendo...

A wave of memories washed over me. I saw boys, young men, mestizos, mulattos, Spanish. None as beautiful as Oscar. Tears, blood, whipped backs and thighs, blood on the hand that reached out to stroke my hair or backhand me...

"Sandalio."

Oscar stiffened against me. His fingers brushed my lips, as if warning me not to repeat the name. I wondered about the memories our blood carried - the ones we tried to keep even from ourselves. Were they more elusive or did they float as freely as the other memories?

Dropping the stake, I reached up to stroke his hair. With my other hand, I reached behind me for the knife tucked into my belt.

"Sandalio." I whispered, sliding the knife out.

"Careful, mija," he growled along my throat.

I rested my chin against the top of Oscar's head, my gaze on Chris. He was about five feet away, both hands wrapped around the raised stake. Tightening my grip on the knife, I mouthed "Do it."

Chris charged, yelling. It was nothing for Oscar to deflect him, his arm swinging out with an almost mechanical speed, his hand closed in a fist as it struck Chris's elbow. I had expected as much, but I needed the distraction. I brought the knife down, burying the blade in his upper shoulder in the soft spot behind his collar bone.

Roaring, Oscar reached for the handle. I kept a tight grip on it, felt him bury his teeth into my hand. Chris was picking himself up off the ground and I screamed for him to get Danny and go.

Oscar threw his arm back, catching me by the hair and lifting me off my feet. I threw my legs around him. He let go of my hair, grabbed my ankle and snapped the bone. Blood tears flooded my eyes but I didn't let go of the knife.

Behind us, I could hear Chris stumbling under Danny's weight as he made his way toward the emergency exit. Hope surged through me and I yanked the knife out and buried it just below Oscar's ear. He dropped to his knees, clawing at my arm and face.

Alarms sounded as Chris flung the exit door open.

"You hear that! They're out, they're fucking out!"

"But you're not, mija."

He wrapped his hand around mine, and I heard my bones splinter and pop as he twisted. The blade came out, went flying. Blood spurted from Oscar's neck, wetting my face, and then the skin closed over the wound. He rolled, trapping me beneath him. I could feel the bones of my hand and foot reforming, the sensation like the slow crawl of ants across sunburned skin.

"Sirens, they're almost here."

He had spun so that he was facing me. His hands squeezed my neck. "It'll only take me a second to kill you, mija."

"No rabbit holes, here, Oscar..."

"No retribution, either." He bent down, nipped my lip hard enough to draw blood and then he was gone.

Chapter Eight

With Oscar off me, I made my way outside to where Chris was folding Danny into the back seat of the car. Outside on the street, police cars raced past. The sirens, for the moment, weren't for us. I climbed into the backseat with Danny.

"We have to get him to a hospital!"

"No hospital," Danny grabbed my arm. "No hospital...no cops." He nodded weakly at Chris. "Just drive."

Grim obedience from Chris. We pulled out onto 51st and took the first turn into the surrounding neighborhood.

Danny tried to raise his left hand but it fell into his lap. "Front seat..."

I looked at the front passenger seat, saw a sliver of a red strap that disappeared into the darkness on the floor. I tapped Chris's arm. "Hook that."

Chris snagged the strap, pulling up a small red duffel with a white cross on it. I dragged the bag into the back, unzipped it. Danny pushed my hands out of the way. He put a squirt bottle in my hand.

"Clean it."

I had no idea what he meant until he jerked his chin in the direction of his shoulder. I peeled the Velcro straps of the safety vest apart and pulled it off him. The fabric of his shirt was sticking to his skin from the drying blood. I dumped some water on the shirt, loosening it enough to expose the stab wound. He kicked at the back seat as I rinsed the wound, a string of profanities punctuating each kick.

When the bottle was empty, he pressed a large foil-wrapped package in my hand and ordered me to rip it open. There was a sponge inside and a slight metallic scent mixed in the air with the smell of fresh blood from Danny's stab wound. Oscar may have missed hitting an artery, but the blade had gone all the way through Danny's shoulder and smaller cuts and puncture wounds marked his body.

"Push. It. In." Every word exited with a gasp. He was close to losing consciousness again, but the bright pain of my packing the sponge into the wound robbed him of any such mercy.

"Can he follow you?" he asked.

"Maybe - I don't know."

His head sank back against the seat, eyelids fluttering in exhaustion. "Find us a house."

"A house?" I repeated but he was beyond answering.

"You said they used foreclosures?" Chris offered from the front seat, where he had continued cautiously driving through the neighborhood streets, taking us further from St. Vincent's and any sound of sirens.

"Right, keep driving." I rolled the window down, my eyes and ears focused on the homes we were passing. I put my hand on Chris's shoulder. "Slower...there!"

I pointed to a cul de sac.

Chris took the turn, his gaze jumping from yard sign to yard sign. "Fuck, they're all foreclosed?"

"They're all empty at least. Pull into the one with the garage."

Chris turned into the drive. Seeing the padlock on the garage door, he gave an unhappy snort.

"Just pop the trunk," I said, getting out as he pulled the car to a stop. From the toolbox in the trunk, I took the thickest standard screwdriver I could find and a hammer. As a kid, I'd seen Paul do it maybe a dozen times, big thefts and small - once to get our stuff out of storage months after he had stopped paying and the place had put a lien on everything.

The blade of the screwdriver in position, I brought the hammer down once with all the strength I had. The lock shattered, small bits of metal biting for an instant at my flesh before being repelled. I raised the garage door and waved the car in.

With the garage closed, I forced the door into the house and we carried Danny inside. There were cheap, pull down shades on the front windows, nothing in the back. No furniture or electricity, but pale moonlight spilled in from the back yard.

We placed Danny on the living room's carpeted floor. I went into the kitchen. The water was still on and the garbage hadn't been emptied from the last visitors. I fished some plastic bottles out and cleaned them, then filled them with water for Danny.

Chris stayed near the front door, watching the entrance to the cul de sac as I coaxed Danny into drinking some water. Holding him, I searched for bite wounds but couldn't find any. I didn't know how much of his condition was blood loss and how much was pure exhaustion from Oscar toying with him. But his heart rate was rapid and his skin was pale and cool to the touch.

Was the blood loss so much he would die without help?

I helped him settle back against the floor, my lips against his ear. "I can fix this."

He didn't ask me how, just warned me away with a scowl. I retreated to a wall, watching as he reached into his jeans pocket. He pulled his hand out and I saw the dark red reflection of garnet and then the cold glint of silver. He'd detached the crucifix from the necklace I'd left on my dresser.

He had taken it with him to capture Oscar. I wondered why - as a talisman of his god or of me? Not that it mattered anymore. I could tell by the way he had just looked at me and how his fingers smoothed over and counted the inset crystals that he thought I was as big a monster as Oscar.

As if I could feel any worse, Chris came into the room and settled a few feet from me. He kept his attention mostly on Danny, but every few minutes I could feel him looking my way. I couldn't meet his gaze.

I'd just ruined his life.

***

It had been near midnight when we reached the safety of the house. We would leave, on Danny's insistence, a little before sunrise. After instructing Chris how to dress the shoulder wound, Danny made sure he left every cop marker he had on him at the abandoned house. Chris tossed Danny's safety vest up into the crawl space and we buried his badge deep down in the trash.

Leaving the cul de sac and its empty houses, Danny had Chris point the car towards South Phoenix and straight into gang territory. We passed fences and buildings with old and new tags for Las Cuatro Milpas, Lunatix and Malditos, plus a lot more I didn't recognize. I focused on the names, trying not to hear the pain in Danny's breathing.

We stopped at last in front of what looked like a house with a junkyard behind it on S. 10th that was surrounded by treed, but otherwise empty, lots.

Three guys were hanging out in front of the house. The youngest approached the passenger side of the car, where Danny was sitting with the window rolled down. Only he wasn't Danny any more - not in this neighborhood, not with these gangbangers.

The Mexican leaned into the window until he was looking Danny in the face. His gaze traced the cut along Danny's cheek and then eyed the slashed shirt and bloodied bandage beneath it. "Lazaro, man, you're bleeding."

"Not any more. Tell Robles I'm here." Danny's voice was strong when he answered, with zero trace of the hellish night he'd survived.

The man straightened, resting his arm on the roof of the car and looking over the street as he talked. "Man, you don't come around for weeks and then you show up bruised and bleeding?"

Danny ignored the question and the man brought his face back down to the window and glanced first at Chris and then at me. "What's with the chica and the maricon?"

"Why, you looking to suck dick or lick pussy?"

I kept my face a bored mask while my brain cart wheeled through Danny's memories for Robles or these men in front of the house or Danny's under cover life as (a seemingly foul-mouthed) "Lazaro." But I came up with nothing - it was as if this place and the men in it didn't exist in Danny's mind. He had compartmentalized his undercover identity down to a molecular level.

I didn't have time to think about it because the guy put his hand through the window, tongue flicking as he reached for me. "Pussy, definitely."

Danny caught him by the pinkie, holding it in a way that brought a flash of pain and surprise across the guy's face.

"Quite wasting my time, Cabron." Still holding the guy's hand through the window, Danny opened the car door and motioned for Chris and me to follow him. Deftly, he switched his hold on the man's hand and we walked through the open fence and the lot of wrecked cars beyond it.

At the back right corner of the lot was a long, narrow shed, its rusting metal body hidden from the sky and street by the closely packed trees. Danny's captive gave a trilling whistle a few seconds before we reached the open door.

I heard several metallic slides and clicks and reached for Danny's arm. "Guns."

He cut his gaze in my direction. "What? You want to walk through first?"

His eyes, the set of his mouth, the dripping sarcasm told me I was in the backseat on this one - even if he had left a good fifth of his blood on the floor at St. Vincent's. I dropped my hand and slid to the side - between Chris and the door. Chris offered a small gurgle of protest at my shielding him.

Danny stepped through the door, still leading the young man from the front yard.

Someone said that other name,
Lazaro
, the one I still couldn't accept as belonging to Danny, and then the three handguns aimed at this head were lowered. Danny released his captive after he squeezed a small yelp from the guy.

"Fuck, dude, that better be someone else's blood on you - or ain't you as Teflon as I thought?" Using the barrel of his pistol, the man speaking pushed at the fabric surrounding Danny's knife wound. "Lazaro,
levántate y anda!
Primo, who fucked you up?"

Danny answered with a hand gesture, something that apparently had meaning to the men around him. Their chests inflated and their hands tightened around the guns they hadn't quite put away.

"You don't listen. I told you Rogelio was looking to have you sliced." Pulling back, the man wiped the barrel against his jeans and then tucked it in the back of his pants. He nodded towards Chris and me. "Los gabachos?"

"Other business." Danny walked over to Chris, took the keys from him and tossed them at the yard man. "Get it off the street."