Page 46 of Blood of Vengeance

He stared hard, silent. I thought he wasn’t going to answer and had begun to rack my brain for what to say next when he finally opened his mouth.

“My twin sister owns it.”

“Oh.” His reply felt heavy, as if he had just admitted something he hadn’t wanted to. As if he had chosen to trust me. I couldn’t ignore that sensation. “Thanks for telling me. I won’t mention it.”

Rush huffed, grabbing a bag from the table and taking a step back. “Flinch knows. He and Cutter both. Your dad knew, too. Chiggy liked the calamari from the appetizer sampler best.”

I smiled, thinking about my dad sitting down with Rush and having a meal. “Last time he visited me, he took me to three different restaurants just to try their calamari. It was his favorite dish.”

“Sounds about right—I brought him calamari from Giacamo’s every week. We would sit out on his porch and shoot the shit after dinner. He taught me what biker life was really like, and I made sure to let him know how fucking old he was as much as possible.” Rush shifted his weight from one foot to the other, looking uncomfortable, then made a sound like a sigh. “He was a good man.”

I nodded, heart breaking a little and yet happy to hear Chiggy had impacted a brother in that way. “Yeah, he was.”

Rush nodded once and moved as if to collect the extra bags—plural—of food. “Well, I’m going to?—”

“Do you want to join me?”

The man balked, taking a visible step back. I would have been offended had he not looked almost terrified in that moment.

“No offense, Locklyn, but Flinch would fucking kill me if I sat at his table and ate dinner with his woman.”

“Right.” I pasted on a smile once more, pushing the irritation at being controlled by Flinch even when the man wasn’t with me to the side. I knew it was for my own good; it was just…new. “I hope you got something for yourself.”

He held up his bag, already moving toward the front door. “Definitely. No way would I pass up my sister’s food. It’s the best.”

I followed him to the door, trying to be polite. “Thank you for making this happen. I’m excited to try it.”

“Anything for Flinch’s woman. Now, lock the door, and don’t ever throw it open like that again.”

“Yes, sir.”

I did as I’d been told—locking the door behind him—then rushed into the kitchen. The scent of garlic and onions hung in the air, making my mouth practically water. I set about opening containers and making myself a plate, picking appetizers that wouldn’t reheat as well to eat first since there was no way I could finish everything in one meal. As I munched on calamari, bread, and pasta, I called Zella. She had worked in fancy restaurants. She would understand my bliss at the food before me. Unfortunately, she didn’t answer. She could have been working or out for the night, but it still stung that I couldn’t reach her. I wasn’t used to being so alone—no Zella to come home to, no Flinch, no one to chat with. I was sitting in a house I didn’t live in that was owned by a man I barely knew and with a man I didn’t know outside guarding me. Flinch would be home eventually, but even then, he wouldn’t be with me. He would leave me in his bed and go sleep outside in the hammock. He was respectful like that.

I was really tired of respectful and alone.

Once I finished dinner and had cleaned up—making sure to package all the leftover food to share with Flinch later—I grabbed a pillow and blanket before heading out back. I settled into the hammock, my phone in hand in case Zella called, and got comfortable. The desert wind danced across the pool, making small ripples appear, ending in a gentle breeze that cooled me. That wind carried a slight floral scent to it, which seemed both natural and out of place. I would have expected the acrid scent of the desert—the smell of baked earth and slight sweetness of desert vegetation. Instead, I got…

“Roses,” I whispered into the night, curling up in the hammock and looking out at the darkness. The night sounds of the world beyond Flinch’s house calmed me like white noise, and the blanket of inky night sky enveloped and soothed. I felt safe and at home, which made no sense. Not really. Maybe another day it would.

Maybe…but first…the night pulled me down. Deeper, darker. Until…the sound of motorcycles in the distance, the wolf howls ringing through the night air. The smell of land scorched by the sun and highlighted by a slight floral note I now recognized as the scent of roses. An intensifying sense of dread and an eerie feeling of being watched that chilled me as the valley came into full view. As the dream showed me her truth.

“Daddy.”

Fifteen

Flinch

There weren’t a ton of people who chose to live out in the desert. Those who did tended to do so to put a little space between them and their neighbors. They also had a propensity for lifestyles considered outside the norm. Sort of like the shifters who bought land to roam, or the gun nuts who built concrete bunkers as armories. Or the chaos demons who ran junkyards to get off on the residual energy from things like car crashes and stolen vehicles.

“How sideways is this going to go?” Zed asked as soon as we came to a stop at the gate. The sun had long set, the shadows caused by the floodlights along the fence of the lot growing deep and dark. Nighttime wouldn’t have been my choice to come talk to a demon, but we needed to find Chiggy’s truck and fast. That meant doing things we didn’t want to do.

Like talking to demons at night.

I sighed. “Real fucking sideways if we don’t mind our manners.”

Because while the chaos demon looked and acted human, he wasn’t. Far from it. If he decided to go all destruction on us, we’d be in for a fight. That was why I only allowed Zed to come with me—I couldn’t risk a younger wolf reacting to the stench of death that emanated from the man. The scent our wolves had a hard time staying docile around.

“Here he comes.” Zed sat up a little straighter, looking through the gate as what appeared to be a short but fit fortysomething man jogged our way in sweat pants and dad sneakers. The image didn’t match the malevolent energy vibrating through the air, though. The demon had arrived.

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