A Sinful Vow: Inked Angels MC (24 page)

Chapter 14: (Blaze)

I willed myself forward.
Get there, goddammit
, I said in my head. I didn’t know how much time I had, but it couldn’t be much. Lobo was insane, but he was no idiot. He had to have some kind of hidden escape route—a motorcycle in the woods or a helicopter tucked away nearby. If I didn’t stop him before he left the compound, I’d never find him again.

Every building I checked was empty. “Where are you, motherfucker?” I growled to nobody. I ripped aside curtains, kicked down doors, overturned every piece of furniture in search of something that would point me to him, but I found nothing.

The fire from the first explosion had taken hold amongst the buildings. I saw pillars of smoke rising up into the sky, thick and noxious. Gunfire still rang out, but by now it would have been reduced to a few Diablos cooped up in a corner somewhere, trading shots with the Angels, who were wreaking havoc on their territory.

I burst out of another frustratingly barren building and then I saw it. This was the one. The structure was long and low, one story, but it had an air of importance to it. The second I turned the corner and it came into sight, I knew this was where I would find him.

Right as I came out of the doorway, a bullet buried itself just an inch wide of my head. I flung myself to one side as another three shots slammed into the space I had just been occupying.

“Come back, you cocksucker!” called a Diablo from the other end of the alley. I crouched behind a wall and paused. When I heard nothing for a moment, I tried to venture my head out to see if I could spot the bastard.

The second I looked out I immediately recoiled. A spray of automatic fire shrieked past, barely missing me.

I was pinned down.

“Think, motherfucker, think,” I said to myself. The clock in my head was ticking down faster and faster. I had five minutes, maybe less, before Lobo would slip through my grasp yet again.

I heard the rasp of a gun being dragged across adobe. “
Dónde estas
,
hijo de puta?
” called the Diablo. He was coming closer to where I hid, narrowing my escape options with every approaching step. “Come and play,” he called out again.

I looked to my right. The walls were closed on three sides, and too high to climb over easily. The only way out was directly into the line of fire. I had to hope my trigger finger was faster than his—otherwise I was about to get gutted.

I steadied my shooting arm, pointing at the corner where the man was about to come around. I saw the head of his shadow, then the shoulders. He would be visible in three, two, one.

I saw the outer edge of his torso. I aimed. I pulled the trigger.

Click.

The clip was empty.

The Diablo came around the corner, his weapon aimed directly at where I was kneeling in the dirt. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten this far in, only to be trapped and killed in a back alley like a wild dog. If it ended like this, well, then God must be a real cruel son of a bitch.

He saw how I stared at the useless hunk of metal in my hand and knew right away that I had fired my last shot. A broad grin split his face.

“You stupid shit,” he spat at me. “Idiot Angel, about to die on your knees like a—”

He never finished his sentence, thanks to the spring-loaded blade that went scything through his throat at breakneck speed. Steezy yanked his arm away from the corpse and came around the corner, wiping Diablo blood from his sleeves.

He strode over to me and offered his hand. I grabbed it. He yanked me to my feet and smacked his hand on my chest.

“Close one, brother,” he said to me.

“I owe you,” I said back to him, still shaken by how close I had been to losing Olivia.

Then a gunshot rang out. Time froze.

I looked at the Diablo that Steezy had stabbed. With the last of the life left in him, he’d raised the gun in his hand, pointed it unsteadily at where I stood next to my brother, and managed to pull the trigger before collapsing in a bubble of blood.

I looked down at my own torso. Smooth, unblemished. I hadn’t been hit.

I looked at Steezy. He tried to smile, but grimaced instead. Then he crumpled under his own weight and fell to the ground. I dropped to my knees immediately.

“Steezy, don’t you dare fucking die on me,” I told him.

He winced. “I’ll be okay,” he told me. The left torso area of his shirt was quickly being stained crimson. He pressed a hand against the wound. “I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse. Now get the fuck out of here. If I take a bullet for you and we don’t even get the girl you came for, my ghost is gonna haunt your ass forever.”

He tried to laugh, but the pain cut him off midway. I squeezed his shoulder in my hand, then took off for the main building.

Lobo had a lot to answer for.

The first room I ran into was floored in geometric tile. I saw a man on the ground in front of an open cage. He was unconscious, though alive, I saw, as he continued to breath slowly. His balls had fallen out of his jeans, but they were smashed all to hell. Looked like someone had taken a real dislike to this poor son of a bitch.

Something colorful caught my eye. I reached down and picked up a loose piece of fabric next to the Diablo’s head.

At first I wondered why it looked so familiar, and then I remembered.

Kissing my way down her body, between her breasts and down the gentle rise and fall of her stomach. My fingers working the buttons of her jeans, slowly freeing the clasp. Each tooth of the zipper catching softly. Lower, lower, lower. Peeling the jeans down from around her hips…the flash of green lace…

These were Olivia’s panties.

I saw a ragged edge where someone had sliced them with a sharp edge. Anger, hot and rich, surged in every part of my body. I looked down again at the man on the floor with the kicked-in dick. Now I understood.

Burning, white-hot anger. Nova hot. Explosion.

Reaching into my boot, I pulled out a new handgun with a full clip. I roared as I emptied shot after shot into the man’s body. Every bullet sent blood arcing to the ceiling. His body twitched, but I kept shooting long after he had ceased moving.

I squeezed the trigger, again and again, until I realized I had run out of bullets a dozen pulls ago.

My ears were ringing, my anger slaked—for now at least. The man on the floor was far past dead. His body was riddled with holes and a tide of blood flowed away from his still corpse.

Motherfucker. He got everything he deserved.

Hurry
, came a voice in my head. The seconds were sluicing away too quickly. I needed to find her. She had been here recently. Where did she go?

I swiveled my head around the room. Cage, empty. Chair, empty. Nothing in here but the body of the motherfucker who’d dared to touch my girl. There was only one other man in the world who’d done that, and what I was planning to do to him would make this fucker’s punishment look like a slap on the wrist.

The only way to go was further inside. I moved across the room and down the hallway. Halfway down, I saw a rug that had been pulled off to the side. I fell to one knee to examine the tile floor beneath it.

There, a cord. Taking hold, I pulled hard, and a rectangle-shaped piece of floor rose up.

I heard voices from within. Without thinking twice, I climbed down.

My brain registered a thousand details at once: big room, bright lights, vats of liquid, tables, bins, and in the corner, two shapes—Lobo and Olivia.

Lobo was speaking. “And I am going to do the same thing to you.”

Olivia saw me, recognized me. Her eyes were open wide.

Her mouth. Saying my name. “Blaze!”

Lobo turned around, reaching for something. There was a flash of metal—he had a gun in his hand.

I leaptdown fast. Fast enough? I didn’t know.

I swung up with the knife in my hand at the same time

Lobo’s gun went off.

Olivia screamed.

My knife hit flesh. Blood spurted—hot, wet.

We fell to the floor, Lobo and I, my hand slick with his blood as it shot in jets up my arm. The knife was jammed deep into his rib cage, buried all the way up to where my fingers were wrapped around the grip.

I felt a searing agony in my shoulder. The motherfucker got me.

I looked down at the man I’d stabbed.

Gotcha, bitch.

Chapter 15: Banishing Demons (Olivia)

Everything happened at once. I saw a man drop from the top of the ladder to the tile floor.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Blaze. His eyes were burning bright green, drinking in everything at once.

I screamed his name. “Blaze!”

Lobo jumped back, moving faster than I thought possible, pulling a gun from his hip and swinging it to point at Blaze. I wanted to do something to stop him, but everything was happening too fast. Blaze jumped forward right as the gun erupted.

It was like slow motion: I saw the bullet shoot from the mouth of the pistol and crash into Blaze’s shoulder. With his other arm, Blaze swung his knife up into Lobo’s gut. I heard the crunch of bone and the wet slop of flesh being torn as he shoved the blade deeper. They both went tumbling to the floor, Blaze landing on top.

I ran over to where they came to a rest against the foot of the ladder. Blaze kicked away Lobo’s gun and stood. He had a hand clasped against his shoulder where the shot had hit him. I saw blood thickening between his fingers.

He used his good arm to wrap around my waist and pull me to him. Leaning down his head, he planted a crushing kiss on my mouth.

He pulled away and looked into my eyes. “I love you,” he said. I almost wanted to laugh. We were standing in the drug manufacturing facilities of a cartel, dirty, bleeding, with a sadistic murderer at our feet and fires consuming everything overhead, and this crazy man was kissing me and telling me he loved me.

I kissed him again, and said, “I love you, too.”

After all, what else was I gonna do?

A pained chuckle from below interrupted us. We broke apart and looked down at Lobo. The blood gathering in his lap was almost as black as his eyes. There was too much of it for him to survive, but he was chuckling.

Blaze stared at me intensely. “No one is ever going to touch you again,” he promised.

“It’s too late for that,
amigo
,” Lobo hissed.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Blaze said. “You don’t want to know what’s going to happen to you if you don’t.”

Lobo only laughed again. Blood oozed between the cracks in his teeth, painting his lips when he spoke.“Go ahead,” he said, jutting his chin at me as best he could. “Ask her.”

Blaze’s eyes narrowed. “Ask her what?”

He grinned his awful, crimson grin. “Ask her how my cock tastes in her throat. Ask her how it tastes to swallow me.”

The images came careening into me again, more relentless than before.

Lobo grabbed me by the roots of my hair and pulled my head up. He unbuckled his belt and pulled his dick free from his pants. It was monstrous, fully nine inches long, dangling just a few inches front of my face.

He rose up, tall and foreboding. His cock stiffened as he squeezed my cheeks to force open my mouth. He started to lean in, the head of his member coming closer and closer to my outstretched tongue.

My mouth was pried open. There was nothing I could do but accept it as he crammed his throbbing cock into my mouth. He banged my head back against the bed post as he thrust his hips forward and back. The tip of his prick rammed against the back of my throat.

My hands were bound. My tits, bared through the rips in my dress, were bouncing against my chest with the violence of his gyrations.

He fucked my mouth over and over again. I lost count of how many times he thrusted. I gagged, but I couldn’t vomit.

Finally, he climaxed, shuddering. His come poured geyser-like into my mouth, thick streams that filled and filled it.

He pushed the knife tip to my temple and said, “Swallow it.”

Blaze saw everything written on my face, as clear as day. I couldn’t hide it even if I wanted to. He roared like a gorilla, grabbed Lobo by the front of his shirt, and slammed him on top of the lab workbench. Pink glass flew everywhere.

Again and again, Blaze smashed his fist into Lobo’s face until it wasn’t even recognizable anymore. Bone disintegrated, blood and brain fluid dripped, but still, Blaze kept punching.

I didn’t know how long I stood and watched Blaze drive his fist into Lobo’s face. I could have watched it forever. Only when I noticed the smoke billowing through cracks in the ceiling did I realize that time had passed.

“Blaze,” I said, grabbing his arm. “We have to go! This whole place is going to burn down!”

He looked at me, his eyes brimming with hatred for the man slumped dead in front of us.

“No one will ever touch you again, Liv. I promise you.”

I could have lived in that moment forever, too. As crazy as it was, everything about him was wrapped up there. I was his, Blaze’s, the wife of an Inked Angel. My protector, my husband. His jaw was clenched at a fierce angle and sweat dripped down his face. His right fist was drenched in blood.

I loved him. He had come back for me, after everything. Even after he thought I betrayed him and lied to him, he came running thousands of miles to keep me safe.

I wanted nothing more than to be his forever.

We scrambled up the ladder, leaving Lobo’s bloodied husk of a body behind us. Above ground, plumes of fire were eating away at everything with ferocious appetites. The whole place was going to go up in flames, and once the inferno reached the lab equipment below, we were going to see an explosion that would rattle windows half a world away.

Blaze held my hand as we raced through the complex, winding between buildings in search of the exit. He kept looking up. I didn’t know why.

“Where the hell are they?” he yelled. His head was cocked back, searching the sky for something.

“What are you looking for?” I asked him desperately. The fire was growing hot at our backs.

All the sudden, I saw a blue flare pop and fan out on the southern half of the sky. “There!” Blaze said triumphantly. He redoubled his grip on my hand and we sprinted through a guard post and out into the field that separated the Diablos compound from a thick cropping of trees.

Our feet flew across the grass, kicking up clouds of dust where we ran. We scrambled over a hill and slid down the other side, coming to rest at the foot of Croak.

“Didn’t think you were going to make it,” he said to Blaze. “Where’s Lobo?”

Blaze wiped the sweat from his brow. “Dead.”

I looked over his shoulder and saw twenty or so Inked Angels. Many were hurt, with blood-soaked bandages and tourniquets cinched around their limbs. Their motorcycles gleamed, reflecting the fire that grew larger and larger with every passing moment.

Croak nodded. “Let’s get the fuck out of here, then,” he said.

I followed Blaze to his bike. He threw me on the back, then swung his leg across. The engine rumbled to life and I felt the wind weave fingers through my hair as we put rubber to road and took off screeching down the highway, all the Angels arranged in formation.

A few seconds after we’d pulled out, I felt a wall of air hit me like a speeding train, followed by the loudest tearing sound I’d ever heard in my life. Looking back, I saw a huge ball of flame expand and then rupture.

The fire must have reached the lab and caused it to detonate. As I watched, streaks of white flame shot up miles into the sky, spinning wildly through the night.

The hellfire heat poured on our backs, but we rode on, my hands wrapped tightly around Blaze’s abs. Against my fingertips, I could feel his heart beat.