Page 5 of Roses Are Dead
And fuck pink. I slapped my foot into the middle of a puddle, turning a neon abomination into a muddy one. I searched for another puddle to complete the set. That’s why I didn’t notice the surroundings until the flash of lightning silhouetted a?—
Was that chick naked?
I froze in my tracks.
She stood on the end of an old boat dock. We were supposed to tear that down next week as part of the park renovation. It wasn’t safe.
Neither was standing over water during a lightning storm. But I’d be damned if I said anything.
Did I mention she was naked?
And she had the longest hair I’d ever seen in person. It wrapped around her and swirled like a living thing. The kicker? Every few seconds, there’d be a flash of boob. Or ass.
Oh, and those delicate little divots of flesh behind her knees. They lured me like a siren.
I wanted to possess her.
A lesser man would have. She had to realize how dangerous this was, didn’t she? Any predator would love to nibble their teeth into a chunk of that.
I stared down at my singular pristine pink shoe and crouched so the weeds would conceal my monstrous form. No sense in scaring her once she turned around. But if anyone else came down this path, I’d fuck ’em up. Whoever she was, woman, or nymph, she had my protection. Whether she liked it or not.
And she had my attention.
She cocked her hand back and screamed something into the storm. The object flashed white for a moment, then splashed into the river half a second later.
That wasn’t a rock. I knew a binding spell when I saw it.
Whoever was on the other end of that curse was a dead man. Assumptions aside, no woman pisses off another woman that hard. Nope. If the rare instance happens, most women do one of two things, well, most of the times both. First, they get quiet. That’s because they are plotting murder. Then they admit whatever plot they’ve concocted to their sister in spirit to compare notes and viability, and all’s forgiven and forgotten. It’s a damn fine thing that women are not the fragile creatures men think they are because one serious cat fight would have wiped out the planet.
But when that anger pointed at a man? Well… that’s when there’s an edge to the pain. Instead of theory, desperation takes over. Because while women aren’t fragile, they can’t take down a man my size and still have enough left over to slice his neck. Not without losing a piece of their own hide in the process. Which is why I assumed whoever this creature was, it was a man who’d made her angry.
All the more reason to keep my ass hidden until she left.
The rain began to blow sideways. It would be a pain in the ass to run face first into it to get home, but I’d made the dumbass choice to pick tonight for my first foray into outdoor jogging, I’d deal with it.
She struggled up the bank, wrapping the length of her hair around her arm at least three times. Her wet clothes were tucked under the other.
The dress she slipped into was homespun. Odd. But it gave me a clue. There were Pennsylvania Dutch settlers in this region. Varying religious sects made this area home, too. From Quakers to Amish, there was a hodgepodge of “folk” who made their own clothing. And then there were the new cults popping up among the Evangelicals who believed in trad-wives and that stuff. It fit with the long hair. Or, she could be one of the homespun pagan types who created their own ritual dresses. That was a puzzle piece I’d figure out later.
She shrugged a man’s utility coat on. The color might have been pale orange once, but age had frayed the cuffs and faded it to a dull tan.
And it was soaked. She was soaked.
I was soaked.
Despite that, I crawled to a break in the grass so I could watch her climb into her car… Gods damn it. I ducked back behind the weed cover.
I knew that car. It was not hers. There was only one F8 green Scat Pack Dodge Charger R/T in the county. And while we all “heard” Carl Windgren boast that he had a woman, no one I knew had ever seen her. No one in their right mind would ask him if he was lying, either. Because Carl had a reputation.
A weird one.
He moved at least 100K of our product every year. Had done so for at least five years straight. He was solid, careful, and meticulous. He rarely overindulged, and had a head for numbers. His house was a rathole in one of Harrisburg’s worst neighborhoods, and he didn’t do flashy. Except for that damn car. And everyone knew if you touched it, you’d die.
Well, the assumption was you were dead. He had an uncanny knack for making people disappear. Permanently. Even the Destroyers respected that. He was soft-spoken, rarely bragged, and didn’t hesitate to word his threats in such cold, calculating phrasing that you just knew he already had your murder plotted and it was all a matter of semantics at that point. Carl was our homegrown Norman Bates of the drug trafficking industry. And he really had a woman. One he hadn’t made disappear like so many others around him. I didn’t know if I felt sorry for her or not.
But I smiled as the woman drove away.
He’d pissed his woman off.
