Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (23 page)

Connor was in the lead, a step ahead of his men. He hesitated, trying to make his brain ignore Pilar and take the fucking shot right now.

Esposito nodded, and a blast exploded. Trick flailed backwards and landed, unconscious or at least badly dazed, on the floor. At the same time, Hugo flew forward, toward Esposito.

“NO!” Connor shouted, but then the room went stormy with gunfire, and he was driven to the floor. A bullet caught his arm, slicing through as he fell downward. Diaz landed on top of him and then rolled off, firing.

When Connor came up into a crouch, Pilar was on the floor. Hugo was on the floor. Trick was down. Moore, too.

Esposito pointed his gun at Pilar. Still in his crouch, his dominant arm hot and numb, Connor didn’t think, he didn’t aim. He brought up his weapon and fired. The shot caught Esposito in the leg but didn’t knock him down. Connor stood and fired twice more. As Esposito finally fell, Connor felt like he’d been punched by the fist of God. He landed on the floor again, and the world spun and faded.

“Con!” Diaz was one his knees at his side, pulling at his shirt. “Can you get up?”

Connor had been shot in the vest, low on his ribs. Fuck, that hurt. “Yeah.” He struggled to his feet and saw Trick doing the same, his hand clutching at his chest. “You good, T?”

“Yeah. Jesus, that hurts.”

“We whole?”

Muse and Demon were in the apartment now, too. Demon nodded. “Yeah. You and Trick took the brunt. All hail Kevlar.”

No shit. But Pilar was still on the floor. Fuck! Forgetting the pain in his ribs, he climbed over Aztec bodies and dropped to his knees at her side. He snatched his blade and sliced the tape holding her wrists together, then rolled her over, checking for the bullet wound. Her head was bleeding, and at first he thought his heart was going to stop dead, but it wasn’t a bullet that had made her bleed. She had a gash over her temple and cheek. Esposito had hit her with the gun, not shot her with it.

“Thank God. Come on, baby. Wake up.” She didn’t, and he clutched her to his sore chest and looked around. All the Horde were inside now. The two Aztec women were cowering in a corner; Diaz was talking to them in Spanish. Moore had sat up; he’d been hit in the shoulder. His wrists had been bound, too; they still had the torn tape stuck to them. Hugo lay on the floor in the middle of the room, not far from Esposito’s body. His eyes were open and unseeing. A small, singed hole marred his cheek. He was dead.

All the Aztecs were down. When one moaned at Muse’s feet, he aimed down and ended the man. And then all the Aztecs were dead.

The entire gang lay dead at the Horde’s feet, on the floor of this shitty apartment. All but Sam, the one who was locked up, facing charges for rape and murder.

“We need to clean this up.” Trick’s voice was still strained, and he hadn’t managed yet to stand straight up.

“Yeah, we do. Lakota, call Bart. We need the service up here. We need the van, and we need J.R. at the clubhouse. We got wounded. Trick, can you ride?”

“I’ll manage. Let’s get Cordero and her buddy some help.”

When Trick said her name, Pilar stirred and struggled in Connor’s arms.

She opened her eyes, and Connor felt a painful rush of relief and love. He knew that he would forgive her, after all. He loved her too much not to. “It’s okay, baby.”

“Connor? Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was…I didn’t know.” She turned her head then and saw her brother’s body. “Hugo? Oh, no, oh Hughie! Hughie!”

Pushing away from Connor, blood dripping down her face, Pilar crawled to her brother and picked up his head. Connor saw then that the back of his skull was gone, but Pilar didn’t seem to notice or care.

She didn’t cry. She rocked him, moaning, “
Lo siento, Nana. Lo siento, lo siento.
”

Connor didn’t know much Spanish, but he knew enough to understand that she was apologizing to her grandmother. And then he thought he understood everything else. Why she’d been so protective of her shitty brother, why she’d tried to save him from Horde retaliation. She hadn’t been trying to save him. She’d been trying to save her grandmother the pain of losing him.

Still on his knees, he went to her and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s gonna be okay, baby.” He should have said he was sorry, that was the thing you said when somebody lost a loved one, but he wasn’t sorry. The only thing he was sorry about was that it hadn’t been his bullet that had ended the bastard.

No—he was also sorry that Pilar was hurting.

He tightened his hold around her, meaning to offer her comfort, but she fought him.

“It’s not okay! My God, it’s not! This is going to kill her. He was my responsibility, and I fucked everything up.” She looked up then and saw her friend. “Fuck, Moore! God, you’re hurt!”

“I’m okay. Help’s coming.” Moore looked pale, but he was clear and coherent.

Setting Hugo’s head gently down on the floor again, she pushed Connor off again and went to her friend.

Connor sat there alone in the middle of the aftermath, his fists clenched, his ribs aching, blood running freely down his arm, and he watched Pilar check Moore’s wound. He fucking hated that guy.

~oOo~

After J.R. had him stitched and taped up, and he’d spoken at length with Bart, Connor went to find Pilar. She was with Moore—fucking of course she was. J.R. had already stitched the cut on her face, and he was wrapping Moore’s shoulder up.

“I talk to you, Cordero?”

She turned at his voice, and she frowned when she saw his arm. “You were hurt, too?”

It was the first she’d noticed. “Just a scratch. I’m fine. I need you, though.”

He took comfort in the fact that she came right to him. She wrapped her arms around his waist. He winced and groaned, and she flinched back. Scowling at him, she lifted his t-shirt. “Jesus! What happened?”

“Caught a bullet in the vest. Cracked a rib or two.”

“You got shot?”

“The vest caught it. I’m okay. But I need to get back to the hospital. I want you with me. Please. I haven’t seen my dad yet.”

She looked back at Moore, away from him, and Connor almost said fuck it all. He could not deal with that shit. But fuck, he
needed
her. So instead, he reached out and grabbed her arm, glad for the way the pulling pain in his ribs gave him focus. “Jesus Christ, stop picking people over me. Fucking stop it.”

She turned back to him, her eyes wide. “What?”

“Your brother, your job, your grandma, your friend. When am I first?”

“Connor, you
are
first. I love you. But you’re not only. I have other things in my life.”

He was sore and tired. He was angry and afraid for his parents. The part of him that saw the big picture knew he was behaving like a petulant brat, but if ever there was a time for him to come first on the list of things in her life, he thought it should be now.

Or maybe not. Her brother had just been killed. Her grandmother hadn’t been told yet. Her friend had been hurt and was in the middle of the Horde clubhouse, which wasn’t necessarily the most welcoming place for him, especially since Connor had had a drunken gripe or two about the guy.

So, okay. If she said no, he’d find a way to deal. At least until things calmed down again and they could talk it out like grownups.

They still needed to talk about everything that had happened today. Later, though. After things calmed down.

But she didn’t say no. “I love you, Connor. If you want me at the hospital, then I’ll be there. Let me just tell him that I’m leaving, okay?”

Relieved, he kissed her, and then he let her go to her friend.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Pilar needed to get to her grandmother.

Her brain was so stuffed full that she could barely think at all. She felt slow and numb, and a voice in her head kept trying to convince her that she was stuck in a dream. She’d pinched herself, slapped herself, whatever, and had not been able to wake up. Because this was no dream. This was all happening.

Her brother was dead. Fuck, Hugo was
dead
. He had killed people, hurt Connor’s parents, destroyed a whole street of houses, acres of wild land.

He’d had a part in it, anyway. His first task as an Assassin.

God, the things she’d learned on this day.

Now she stood next to Connor and tried to listen, to focus on what the doctor was telling him about his father.

Connor was crazed. She couldn’t keep up with his changing, charging moods: his need for her this morning, his fury and rejection of her later, his comfort of her in the aftermath, his demand of her in the clubhouse, his omnipresent jealousy.

She understood why, understood that he was going through so much so fast, that people he loved most were teetering on the edge, but she couldn’t understand what he needed of her. She was going through shit herself. God—where was Hugo’s body? What had the Horde meant about ‘calling in a service’?

How the fuck was she going to tell her grandmother?

Connor’s hand clenched harder on hers, and again she tried to focus. Behind them, around them, were several of his Horde family, also listening to the doctor’s monotonous voice. They were all standing; Connor had refused the doctor’s suggestion to sit.

“I need you to speak plain English, doc. I’m hearing a lot of syllables and no sense.”

Dr. Philpott nodded and cleared his throat. “Yes. Apologies. Your father experienced a severe brain injury—”

“I got that. You lost me in the rest of it.”

“There’s a considerable amount of swelling. To give the brain its best chance to heal and recover, we removed a section of the skull.”

“You took his head apart? The fuck?” He raked his free hand through his hair, and Pilar resisted the urge to try to liberate her hand from his demolishing grip.

The doctor winced at Connor’s aggressive tone, but he went on in that same cool, level voice. Every doctor Pilar knew was capable of the same detached way of speaking, used to talk to families, to tell hard news in a way intended to keep emotions in check. “We need to give the brain room as it swells. The compression against the skull would be devastating.” When Connor only heaved a breath without interrupting again, Philpott continued. “We’ve implanted the skull segment into your father’s abdomen to keep it alive until we can put it back where it belongs.”

“Again, doc. You’re telling me that you put my father’s skull inside his gut?”

“Part of the skull, yes. Under the skin. This is common practice for traumatic brain injuries like your father’s.”

“Jesus. What else?”

“The respiratory system experienced trauma from the heat and smoke. There is some permanent scarring, which will limit breathing function for the rest of his life, but if he survives, he should have enough function to live fairly normally in that regard.”

Connor’s hand, and his whole arm, were as rigid as steel. He was crushing her hand. “And his burns?”

“These are the least of the injuries. There are second- and third-degree burns on the right side of the body. There’ll be scarring, but there’s a chance grafts won’t be necessary. For now, our attention is on the brain injury. We’ll make a further determination if he begins to recover.”

“If you say ‘if’ again, or keep talking about my father like he’s a thing, you’re going to end up with a traumatic brain injury of your own.”

Philpott paled and flinched, and Pilar put her free hand on Connor’s chest. “Calm down, honey.”

Connor looked down at her, and his expression almost made her flinch, too. He was scatter-bombing his anger, and she was catching some shrapnel.

The doctor had regained his composure. “I assure you that your father is getting the best possible care. For now, we need to wait and monitor him, see how his brain responds to the surgery and the medication we’re administering. The next hours are crucial.”

“Can I see him?”

“He’s in the ICU, and he’ll be comatose for at least the next two days. Understand that his appearance might be…alarming at first.”

“I don’t care. I need to see him.”

The doctor nodded. “I understand. Only you, and no more than five minutes. He’s being closely monitored. He’s in Room 2.” The doctor looked past Connor and Pilar at the rest of the men and women who’d been hanging on his words, and he paled again before his attention returned to Connor. “Do you have any other questions?”

When Connor shook his head, the doctor nodded and turned away. Pilar had the clear sense that he was escaping.

Connor squeezed her sore hand again. “Come with me.”

“He said—”

“Fuck that. I need you.”

“Let’s go, then.”

He lifted her hand to his mouth, his grip relaxing as he kissed her fingers. “I love you.”

She loved him. The way she felt about him was so strong it freaked her out. But her head was numb and overfull, and she couldn’t get the words out. He wanted to be first in her life, and she was here, setting aside her own family, the violence that had been done to it, to stand with Connor while he grappled with the violence that had been done to his. For which she was, to a large degree, responsible. She was torn, and she felt it as a tearing pain somewhere inside.

But he needed her, and he’d asked her to choose. She’d chosen. Fuck. How would she, could she, ever make anything right for her nana? Or for Connor? For herself?

It was too much to think about right now, so she didn’t. Her whole life, she’d been good at setting aside the need for introspection. Some questions became more troubling when they had answers.

She stepped close and leaned her forehead on his chest, and she felt him dip his head and press his lips into her hair. For several seconds, they simply stood like that. Then he took a step back and led her toward the Intensive Care Unit.

The ICU was arranged in a circle, with the round desk of the nurse’s station in the center. A large bank of electronics dominated half the desk. The glass-walled patient rooms faced inward so that the patients could be constantly monitored.

When Connor, tense and angry, big and brawny, wearing his heavy boots and dark kutte, led her toward Room 2, the three nurses behind the desk looked up, but they didn’t stop them. They simply watched.

He drew up so short when they went into the room that Pilar ran into his broad back.

“Holy fuck. I can’t”—he turned, and his eyes were wide with shock and fear—“I can’t…”

She grabbed his arm. “You can. I’m here.”

When Connor nodded and turned back toward his father’s bed, Pilar saw what had him so upset. His father looked small and as pale as the sheets beneath him and the bandages around him. His long, grey beard was gone, and the thick tube of the ventilator filled his mouth. His head was wrapped in a thick swath of bandages, as was his chest and right arm. Dark bruising circled his closed eyes.

He wasn’t a young man, but when Pilar had been around him, he had exuded a kind of eternal youth that rejected his age. Now, though, he looked ancient, his body shrunken and empty.

“Dad.” Connor’s voice broke as he went to the bed and put his hand over his father’s left arm. “I’m so fucking sorry.” After a moment, he turned back to Pilar. “Your brother did this.”

She nodded. “It wasn’t just him, but yes. He was part of it. I’m sorry.” The words sounded anemic. Insignificant. Powerless.

“Who else was in his truck?”

“You want to talk about this now? Here?”

When he only stared at her, she dropped her head and took a deep breath. “Freddy Macias. He was Assassin. O.G. From before even my father’s and Raul’s time. He was inside for almost twenty years, for murder and arson. Got out a few months back. You killed him when you came into the apartment this morning.” He’d set the Bridges fire in August. His big comeback.

And he’d burned her friend, Mia’s, house when Pilar was a girl. All of it Assassins vengeance. Her childhood had been steeped in more violence than she’d even been aware of.

“What—your brother was his fucking apprentice or something?”

Just the stooge sent to help out. “It was how he had to pay Raul back.”

He stepped away from his father’s bedside and faced her. “Why were you there today? They had you tied up. You and Moore. What the fuck happened?”

“I went to find him. I had to.”

“To keep him away from me.” His expression took on that vicious sneer that had shocked her earlier, when they’d first learned of Hugo’s involvement.

This was their breaking point, she knew. If he couldn’t be made to see, to forgive, then nothing would save what they had. “Connor, you have to understand. Please. He’s my little brother.”

He took a deep breath, and Pilar could see it calming him a little. “I guess I do. I’m trying to. I’m trying to get past it. But you understand me: he had to die.”

There was a part of her that agreed, and another part of her that even thought it might have been for the best. The rest of her at least understood why it was true for Connor and the Night Horde. “I know. And I had to try to save him.”

He looked back at his father. “What happened?”

It was too much to explain. Pilar tried to find a way in her head that would sum up those minutes—it hadn’t even been an hour—in the Aztec apartment. “I knew it was stupid to just go there, but I couldn’t think of anything better. I wanted to try to get him home, find someplace safe so I could talk to him—and then I would have come to you. I wanted to try to find another way to end all this.” At that, Connor made a scoffing, bitter sound, but Pilar went on. “I wanted to know that we were wrong, that he couldn’t have done it. But they grabbed us before we even got to the apartment door. Raul started…using me to fuck with Hugo. He wanted to make Hugo hurt me. But he wouldn’t. Connor, I know you don’t believe this. You don’t have any reason to. But my brother wasn’t a bad guy”—emotion broke her voice, and she stopped and took a breath. “Not deep inside. He was fucked up. But he was just—he was afraid more than anything else. Everything overwhelmed him, all the time. From the time he was little. I think hanging with the tough guys made him feel stronger.”

Connor only stared at her, unmoved. So she repeated, “He wouldn’t hurt me. They were starting to knock him around and threaten him when you came in, but he was fighting back.”

She shut her eyes against the memory of Raul’s hands on her, of the things he’d said to Hugo. What they’d tried to make him do to her. The sound of Moore’s shouts and Hugo’s protests, of Assassins’ laughter.

They’d tried to force Hugo to rape her. When he’d refused and fought, they’d muscled him down and threatened to take his dick off and rape her with it anyway. That was what the Horde had broken in on.

Deciding not to tell Connor any of that, she pushed it all away and opened her eyes.

Connor’s expression had not changed; he remained stoic and determined. “Did he burn my folks? It’s all I care about, Pilar. Did he do it?”

Maybe if she told him about what had happened in that apartment, he’d care more. But the story made her a victim, and she couldn’t stand that. So she told him what he wanted to know, what he wanted to hear.

Freddy had gone into elaborate detail about what had happened in the Elliotts’ house. They knew Pilar’s connection to them, and they had all enjoyed the story. “Yes. Like I said, he helped. He didn’t think he had a choice. It was Raul’s order, Freddy’s plan. Raul was yelling about how the Horde tried to take them down, but the Assassins would rise from Horde ashes. They didn’t know your dad was there, and I guess he surprised them. Freddy hit him. That’s how his head was hurt. I don’t know with what. But he was laughing about the sound it made.” She closed her eyes, shuddering at that memory, and then she steeled herself to say something more. “It was meant to be a message, that the Horde had a lot to lose in a fight with them.”