Page 1 of Fury

Chapter One

The angry buzz beside my head continued, ricocheting off every angle of my dehydrated brain. I thumped the fucker twice, and still it vibrated. Incessantly. Torturously.

“Fury,” the voice beside me joined in the melee. “Fury. Shouldn’t you answer that?”

The voice was alien. Feminine, laced with the northern rumble of the Geordie accent. But not one I recognised.

Turning over towards the nightstand, I felt for my mobile, tugging it roughly from the dock that was charging it, the sickly neon green display reflecting the way I felt inside.

“What?”

“Where the fuck have you been?” the voice on the other end complained.

“Asleep, mate. That’s where most people are at fucking 4.30 in the morning. Inspecting the insides of their eyelids.”

“Aye, well. You’re needed at Trouble. It’s been hit.” Indie’s words woke me up.

“Hit, how?” I sat upright, ignoring the spin I’d just sent my head into.

“Done over. Don’t know much more than that right now. Tez rang and I need you down there.”

“On it.”

The room stilled, the spinning slowing down, but the thick clouds in my brain lingered. I’d probably had an hour’s sleep and much more alcohol than I should have. And now I was needed for club business, half-cut and half-asleep.

“Alright Jane…”

“It’s Gemma,” the woman lying next to me grumbled.

“Aye, Gemma. I’m gonna need to call you a taxi.”

“I can just stay here till you get back.”

“Nah, pet. Dunno when that’ll be.”

I held the mobile to my ear.

“Carl, I need a taxi straight away.” I pushed the covers off us both, cool air filling the space.

“I haven’t got owt for an hour at least.”

“That’s no good, Carl, mate. This is me calling in a favour.”

The man on the other end of the phone sighed heavily, and I was sure I could actually feel him rolling his eyes.

“Alright, alright. I’ll pull someone off a job. Be with you in ten minutes.”

“Make it five, Carl.”

He sighed again, bigger than the last. But our cloaked conversation was clear to us both, even if the naked woman in my bed didn’t understand it.

“Aye, aye, five minutes. I got it.”

*****

Trouble on the Tyne was a mess. The front doors were smashed inwards, big, thick pieces of wood bent and hanging off their hinges, splinters littering the floor. It was carnage. Messier than the remnants of a bike rally.

The wooden shards had been walked up the stairs, a trail of destruction left by an enraged Hansel and a menopausal Gretal. Inside, brothers in leather circled, wandering around surveying the damage, bewilderment and exasperation the only facial expressions.

---