Dom Wars Round Five (11 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Getting bonded out of jail by an annoyed Preacher Dom was the icing on the cake. What was he pissed for? It was our asses out there making fools of ourselves. Did we get our scores in and flunk everything?

We followed him silently back to the Hummer after collecting our personal property and being booked out.

In another
McDonald's parking lot, the Preacher pulled out his laptop. "Scores are up." He held the tiny computer on his massive legs, his fingers moving over the keys as he stared at the screen. We all waited with bated fucking breath, no doubt all resisting the urge to crowd around him and see for ourselves.

"
No sales on first round, we already knew that," he half growled. "Ahhh but the humiliation scores were maxed out. Perfect. But not enough." He shook his head and tsked. "No sales at the second business."

"
But…give it time," I said, "it was well received."

He quirked his brow.

Steve jumped in, "Before we were arrested the women were very into it, absolutely, there's going to be sales, I'm sure of it."

"Regardless, your night in jail cost us time we don't have, so, we're off to the final assignment." Preacher sliced his dark gaze to a suddenly nauseous looking Steve, who looked back and forth from me to the preacher.

Tara sat forward and put a hand on Steve
's jumping leg. "Your assignment has specific products, we'll go over the various functions of each and what they could possibly be useful for."

His face slowly morphed with pained dread. I hurried to the back of the car, found the box with Steve
's name on it, and put it on his lap. "Here you go."

He stared down at the box and slowly put it on the floor like it were fragile. Then stared at it.

"Go on," Tara said. "May as well…get familiar with them. Handle them."

He slowly looked toward her but never let his gaze raise higher than her ankles. He jerked the box to him, and sat at the edge of the seat.
"Just gonna…quit acting like a cat covering shit on a marble floor with this." He opened the box and stared into it.

"
Better hurry Steve," Preacher said. "Destination in about fifteen."

Steve
's mouth slowly became an angry snarl and he forced the lids out of the way. It really sucked that he was the only one who wasn't allowed to look in his box until it was time.

Before he
examined the contents he looked around at nothing in particular "I don't get why they're making
me
go to this place and do this. Funeral homes don't buy sex toys," he wailed.

"
Saying it ten times isn't going to bring your fairy godmother," Preacher said.

He shook his head with a pained grimace and knocked the box over and dumped the
contents onto the floor and stared. He gently used the toe of his shoe to separate them. "Hell's angels of anarchy," he breathed. "Pussy foot?" He leaned over the pair of feet in a package. "I don't get it."

I pointed to the vagina on the bottom of the foot and he gasped.

"Oh dear God, I thought that was a laceration!"

"
Why would they have a blow up ball with a happy smile?" I asked.

I looked at what she held.
"Ah, because it comes with a dildo attached to it." I pointed to the cute ridged third “handle” on the ball. "For happy bouncing."

He gave a groan like I
'd stabbed him in the gut then spied another strange item and shook his head rapidly. "I don't want to know what that toilet bowl cleaner on a strap is for," he whispered.

"
Umm, no." I put it back in the box. "You really don't. But…just in case you do, it's a poop shoot cleaner."

Steve drew a sharp painful hiss, turning a horror stricken face to me. I could only nod in agreement as he
fixed his attention back to the shit on the floor.

"
Why have they done this to me?" He reached down and snatched up a small package. No doubt thinking size had something to do with the measure of horror. He gave a hack of disgust and threw it down. "Baby Jesus BUTT PLUG?"

The preacher let out a growl on that one but there was no throwing anything away this time.
All items in the box had to be sold. Those were the strict instructions. Impossible instructions. This was clearly a set-up. They chose the most impossible toys to sell at the most impossible place. There was a fucking mole, an anti-Lucian and Tara mole in that organization. Or maybe…I looked at Preacher. Maybe it was him they didn't like, not us.

He leaned to read another small package.
"Musical condoms?" He looked at me like each item was another knife wound in the gut and he was about to take his last breath. He fell to his knees and grabbed his head. 

"
It's just the game Steve," I said. "Take a breath."

He shook his head repeatedly.
"It's not that, you don't understand. This is a curse," he whispered. "My failures have caught up to me. Oh, I knew they would. Hell has expanded its boarders and formed a canyon of doom around my life. My eternal torment has come. It's here, I feel it. The demons have secured my failures and purchased a sick little mansion in hell for me." He gave a bitter sob. And then another.

I looked at Tara and the preacher and Becca. All seemed distraught. Except the preacher. He seemed to be lost in another time and place.

"Let me tell you about failure. Steve."

Steve looked up at
the preacher's words, wiping his face with the palms of his hands.

"
Sit down. It'll take a minute," he drawled, his voice that same rumble of doom when I'd first met him. I realized it was his ominous, get shit done voice.

Scowling, the preacher shook his head and drew Becca to him. His lips brushed her temple in what I now recognized as his way of gaining a little
control when he was pissed.

"
You think you know something about failure, mah brothah? Listen up, 'cause I'm an expert on the subject."

I knew this wasn
't going to be easy to hear, but somewhere in what he was about to say was the key to who the preacher was. That secret I'd wanted to unravel.

"
Growing up in the Bronx wasn't exactly easy for a fatherless boy. My ma tried, hard, but she was busy working two jobs to keep us fed and off the street." He paused and closed his eyes a moment and I sensed him pushing down the ghosts so he could continue. "Like a whole lot of kids in the same spot, I ended up in a gang. At first it was good, like more family. We had each other, and if one had a problem, we all did. But then our little neighborhood gang was absorbed by a bigger one. We had to meet expectations or pay up."

He stopped again and just stared out the window for a minute.
"I quickly learned I was good at being an enforcer. I was tough, could beat the shit out of guys twice my size. It wasn't long before I moved up in the gang. Me and this other guy started getting sent on secret missions. No one else knew, and we didn't wear colors. If we got caught, we were on our own. So this one night, we were supposed to go remind this guy he owed money."

Becca patted his hand when he paused again, silently encouraging.
"We always went armed, ready to shoot or cut our way out. So we went into this dude's building and when we knocked, his old lady opened the door, holding this little kid, with a couple more clinging to her legs. She stepped back, like to let us in, and there he is, sitting behind her with a shotgun. He shot first." Preacher pulled his shirt up to point out a series of scars on his belly and chest. "I took most of it. The guy with me started throwing lead, shooting as fast as he could. When he ran out of ammo, the dude we'd come to see was dead." He seemed to suddenly have to hold his jaw shut, the muscle in the corner ticking hard. "So was his old lady. And the kid she was holding. Another kid was down… dying. The other had managed to duck behind something."

When he stopped again, his hands were shaking.
"I passed out from blood loss. The guy with me ran. When the police came, I was arrested, treated, and indicted for killing two adults and two kids. The surviving kid wouldn't talk, wouldn't say it was someone else. Too scared. Thankfully, my public defender managed to show that the bullets that killed the victims weren't from my weapon. I was charged with attempted 3
rd
degree murder and since I was seventeen, given an option to serve time in the Army instead of prison. I thought I was getting a break." He gave a low dry laugh. "I was a
damn
good soldier. I was deployed to Iraq, Desert Storm. First I was in the push for Baghdad. That was sheer nastiness. Then my unit was pulled for another detail, escorting convoys, guarding this or that.

"
One night, we were pulled for special duty, to guard a prisoner transport. We passed by this little bitty village, just a handful of buildings and a well. But it sat at the opening of this narrow pass, and when we got in there, we got cut down by cross fire. The next thing I knew, mine was the only American heart still beating there and I'd been hit three times. I was taken prisoner, figured I would die."

He pulled Becca into his arms and took a shuddering breath. I really wanted to ask questions, but I didn
't think he was finished. I wasn't about to interrupt.

"
After maybe six months of being held in a dirty goat pen, my wounds were healed, but I knew I was going to die. Bit by bit. I stayed sick and weak, partly from malnutrition. They always sent two boys to feed the goats. One held a gun on me, the other fed the goats and left my little bit of food. The younger one, the one that fed the goats, talked to me a little, taught me some of the language. And one evening he brought me a good meal and said goodbye. That meant I was either going to be shot, or traded to someone else. When he left, he didn't completely lock the door. After dark, when I checked it like always, it opened. I walked out.

"
I couldn't go back to the States, couldn't face all that. Instead, I worked my way southwest, through Jordan and Egypt, moving slow, staying out of sight and under the radar. I was still sick, and my wounds were causing me a lot of trouble. I have no idea where I thought I was going, just kept on keeping on. I made it as far away as I could go. To Africa. I just wanted to escape the death. I couldn't go home, didn't want to, really. Too much blood in my mind and heart."

He shook his head, the memories turning him into a stiff statue.
"I ended up in the Congo. I don't know what happened to me there," he said quietly. "Contracted a sickness and nearly died. A little village found me half dead and took care of me. Nursed me back to health and treated me like family." He shook his head. "Poor. Destitute. Hungry. But they took care of me like I meant something to them. It was the first time I'd ever felt….

“A
nyway, three weeks in, and the little village was hit by the rebels." His fists clenched and unclenched. "What they did was so far beyond evil…" His voice was a raspy tremble now. Everything about the way he acted said he didn't want to go on but he couldn't stop. He was stuck in the confession. "They gang-raped…
baby girls
. Killed men… disabled them… cut off arms or legs, whatever. Raped women and girls to dishonor them…so their husbands wouldn't take them back. I tried to stop them. I fucking tried. I killed the majority of them eventually and ran off the rest. But…when it was all said and done… I'd done nothing. I'd saved nobody.”

Tara
's tears streamed and she wiped them.

"
I knew it was a miracle that I was once again, the only heart beating. But it wasn't a good miracle. This one woman came to me after the raid, carrying her little girl, about three fucking years old. The mother had been raped so brutally, she was bleeding everywhere, weak, but that baby… My God," he gasped. "Her tiny limbs were all crooked…blood all over her. They literally tore her apart." The preacher wiped his face on a shoulder and kept on, his voice turning harder and louder. "I held that mother and baby in my arms while they died. And…" his voice choked up. "For the first time…I felt God. It was such…an awful fucking feeling. This crazy…knowing. This
weight.
It was so un-fucking-bearably-heavy," he gasped. "And filled with
His
pain.
His
sorrow. For the
whole. Fucking. World, man.
" He looked up at me and my breath froze at the weird light in his eyes. "The pain of the world…" he pounded his chest. "He gave it to me, my brother. He gave me that burden. He said
this. This is now yours. Help me.
"

He shrugged then.
"Of course I ran again. This time from God. From the terror of that pain. Terror of that weight. Of that responsibility. I made my way to Kenya, where I met Becca. But the fear was still there. It never let up. Demanding I do something.

"
Through her, I got involved with an orphanage. And I'll never forget when I walked into that stinky one room house where all the children sat. Soiled with days and days of body waste. Starving, sick, dying. And looking up at me with this…
fucking hope
in their eyes." He looked at me, his face pinched in pain. "Hope, man. They had
hope.
And… I was so fucking ashamed. But while standing there, staring at this…this insanity, I feel it." He gasped several times, a smile on his face. "Peace. Fucking amazing. Peace. Like I'd done a handful of Xanax and everything was going to be a-fucking-okay. I had found my soul drug. Those kids. Helping those kids."