Takedown Teague (Caged #1) (24 page)

I barked out a laugh.

“So Keith was right.”  A deep voice came from the porch.  “You have shacked up with some musclehead.  I really thought you were better than that, Demmy.”

I immediately moved toward the guy leaning against the doorframe.  He was a good five inches shorter than me, with black hair hanging in his dark eyes.  Tria stepped up and blocked my way with her hand on my chest, the same way she had months ago when Keith had come to her apartment.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said.  Her voice was full of warning.  “You told me you weren’t going to do this!”

“I told you I wasn’t going to
start
anything. 
He’s
starting it.”

“No!”

“He insulted you,” I said under my breath.  I balled my hands into fists.

“I will handle Brandon,” Tria said in a lowered voice, “and you will wait for me to get this shit under control, and you will not hit anyone!  As a matter of fact, you aren’t even going to say a word until I tell you to!  Now shut up, and I’ll let you touch my boobs tonight.”

My mouth dropped open for a moment, but I quickly closed it again.  I swallowed hard as I gazed at her and realized she was completely serious.  I gripped my hands into fists a couple more times and then released them as I swallowed a second time.

Tria raised an eyebrow at me pointedly.

I was never one to stay quiet, but after that look from Tria, I shut my mouth.

Tria turned back to the couple and quickly introduced us.

“This is Nikki,” she said, “and her husband, Brandon.”

I huffed a short breath out my nose and gave them both a slight nod.

“Brandon and Nikki, this is my boyfriend, Liam.  He came with me.”

“What the hell are you doing, Demmy?” Brandon asked with wide eyes.  “He can’t stay here!”

“Brandon!” Nikki said as she turned quickly to him.  “I asked her to come here and help with the arrangements.  It’s not like Liam’s going to be fucking me tomorrow, so what difference does it make?  And call her Tria!”

“You agreed to do it,” Brandon said. “You agreed to all of it.”

“Did I say I was backing out?”

The look on Brandon’s face made me wonder if he didn’t hope she would do just that.

“Maybe we should take this inside,” Tria suggested, and after a bit more grumbling, I followed the rest of them up rickety wooden steps to the front door.

The configuration inside the double-RV was odd to say the least.  The back part had been cut away to connect with the door of the second RV.  The first part had been gutted to be one room housing a kitchen area and a living space.  It was cluttered inside but not dirty.  The furniture was worn but not quite falling apart.  There were pictures of lighthouses on the walls.  Lobster knickknacks adorned most of the flat surfaces, and there were piles of homemade candles on every unoccupied square inch.  There were stacks of
National Fisherman
magazines next to a plastic folding chair that faced the couch and a cardboard box filled with mason jars sat near the door.

Under the kitchen table, there were stacks of canned goods, boxes of saltine crackers, and various other bought-in-bulk items.  Nikki brought out iced tea in plastic cups that looked like they were collected from some sporting event, but whatever logo had once graced the side was too worn to be discernible.  There was a huge pile of them on the counter by the refrigerator.

I felt like I was in some twenty-first century version of
Sanford and Son
, and I wondered at what point an old guy was going to escape from a back RV and clutch at his heart.

“You have no idea how much this means to me,” Nikki was saying to Tria.

“You would have done the same for me,” Tria replied.

I cringed and glanced over to her, wondering if she realized what she was saying.  I could tell by her expression she hadn’t really considered how the words could be taken.

“I mean,” Tria went on, “if I needed you…for anything…”

“I know.”  Nikki smiled slightly.

There was a pause in the talking, which became way too long for my liking.  I tried sipping the tea, but it was unsweetened, and the bitter taste hung around in the back of my throat.

“So, when’s the party?”

“Liam.” Tria chastised me with her tone and widened eyes.

“What?” I said.  “You want to just pretend we’re here for something other than a warped fuck-fest?”

“Liam!” Tria’s eyes widened again, and she mouthed
shut up
at me.

“It’s okay, Tria.” Nikki spoke up.  “What is it that midwesterners say about elephants hanging out at the table or something like that?”

“It’s just an elephant in the room,” Brandon corrected.

“Right.” Nikki agreed with a nod.  “Brandon went to the high school in Jonesport.  He knows a lot more about life outside.”

“How’d you manage that?” I asked, genuinely curious.  “I thought you guys were all pretty much isolated here.”

“We do tend to keep to ourselves,” Brandon said as he eyed me coolly.  “But the exile is self-imposed.  We stay here because we choose to.  I volunteered to go outside for schooling to bring knowledge back to the community.”

His eyes shifted to Tria.

“Which is what Tria
should
be doing.”

“Brandon.” Nikki sighed as she looked at him.

“Tria’s not coming back, you hear me?” I yelled.  “So just get over it.”

“Liam!”

“
Tria!
” I mocked her tone.  “This whole ‘use the guy’s name as a form of punishment’ thing is getting old.”

Brandon snickered under his breath.

“Brandon!”  Nikki scolded him again.

“What did I do?”

“Just stop it!”

More silence as everyone shuffled their feet and pretended to be interested in their drinks.

“Well?” I wasn’t going to let this go.  “Is anyone going to answer my question?”

“It’s tomorrow,” Nikki said.  “As soon as the moon rises.”

I couldn’t help it—I rolled my eyes.

“Does the moon fuck you, too, or just watch?”

“Liam!”

“Is boiling lobster part of it?” I asked.

“All right, Liam!” Tria suddenly shouted as she stood up.  “You are either going to stop with the crass remarks, or you are going to shut the fuck up.  Do you hear me?”

God, I loved her temper.

Raising an eyebrow at her, I leaned back on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest without a word.  She seemed to understand my answer, so she sat back down and turned to Nikki.

“I have to admit this isn’t a ritual I know a lot about,” Tria said.

I had to squeeze my lips together to keep quiet.

“It takes place up on the hill near the clearing in the trees,” Nikki said.  “You remember the one?”

“Yes, I know it,” Tria said.  She glanced at me sideways but quickly looked away again.  “There are a lot of ceremonies held there.”

“I’ll be in the center,” Nikki continued, “and all the women of the community will stand around me in a circle with their husbands behind them.  The single men stand farther behind, either near their mothers, or sisters, or some other woman who is there to represent them.”

Nikki paused for a moment to collect herself.

“Leo will start the ceremony with an offering, and then…and then Brandon goes first.”

“Ultimately, it will still be my child,” Brandon said.  “So it starts with me.”

This time I had to ball my hands into fists and only barely resisted the urge to muffle myself with a hand in my mouth.

“If Brandon had any male relatives, they would go next,” Nikki explained.  “Since he doesn’t, it will go by the men who have already fathered the most children, and then by age—oldest to youngest—of the men without children.”

Tria looked down at her hands and nodded.

“And you’re really going to do this?”

“It’s our way, Tria,” Brandon said in a cold voice.  “Maybe you should remember that.”

“Careful.”  I growled under my breath.

Brandon glanced at me before looking back to Tria.

“We have to do it for the tribe,” he said.  “We don’t have to like it, but it’s our decision.”

“Nikki?” Tria turned to her friend.

“Well, the good news is,” Nikki said with a half smile, “that I’ll be fairly drugged up the whole time.  Makes everything a little easier on me.”

Tria’s eyes met my questioning ones.

“Peyote,” she said simply.  “It’s used in a lot of the rituals.”

“You ever do it?” I asked.  My hands were starting to shake, but I locked them into fists to keep them still.

“Yes,” she replied but didn’t elaborate.

Nikki told us about a few more details of the ceremony and how Tria was mostly to be there for her afterwards.  She didn’t go into the details about what they were going to do, only that I wasn’t invited.

“Can he stay here?” Tria asked.  “I mean—while you and I get the arrangements made?”

Nikki looked quickly to Brandon, who just scowled at her.

“They came all this way,” she said to him.

He turned to glare at me for a minute, then got up off his chair and headed for the kitchen.

“Fine.”  He grumbled as he walked away.  “But he’s bringing beer.”

“I’ll buy it,” Tria said as she looked over to me.  I knew what she was saying—that Michael would be buying it.  I just shrugged.

The two women continued talking, the conversation turning to people they knew in town and what Tria was going to wear to the ceremony.  I took the opportunity to sneak outside for a smoke.  I stood on the little porch and leaned on the slightly slanted railing, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke into the misty air.  As I stood there, the mist turned to steady rain, so I took a step back to make sure I was completely covered by the roof of the porch.

I heard a sound to my left and glanced over to watch Brandon open and close the front door quietly.  I looked back out into the dirt driveway and watched the potholes fill with water from the rain.

“Could I have one of those?” he asked.

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to figure out just what the hell he was doing, but the request at least seemed genuine.  I grabbed the pack out of my back pocket and pulled one out.  I handed it and the lighter to him, and Brandon lit up.  He coughed a couple of times, which made me smirk.

“I don’t really smoke anymore,” he said.

As if I couldn’t tell.

He took a couple more puffs to get used to it and then tried inhaling again.  He handed the lighter back to me with a quick thanks and stared out into the rain.

“So, how does this work?” I asked, partially because I was curious but also because I felt like being an asshole.  “You stand outside in the rain and watch guys fuck your wife or what?”

He tensed, and I felt my body react the same way in a natural, defensive gesture.

“No,” he said through clenched teeth.  “It’s a sacred ceremony.”

I tried to keep myself from snorting out loud, but I failed.

“Never heard a gang bang called
sacred
before.”

“You know,” he said as he turned toward me, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“Well, you are right there,” I agreed.  “I wouldn’t let anyone lay a hand on Tria—not for any reason.”

“It’s not the same at all,” he said.  “It’s not like we’re…fuck it.  You don’t get it, so there’s no point in talking about it.”

“So why don’t you enlighten me?” I suggested as I tried to hold my sarcasm at bay.  “Go ahead and justify this shit, if you can.”

Brandon sighed and took a drag on the cigarette.  He seemed to be getting the hang of it.

“We’re dying,” he said quietly as smoke curled around his long hair, “in a very literal way.  Every year we lose more people to death than we gain from births.  If we don’t do something about it, we will cease to be.  Beals and our way of life would be no more.”

“It’s because of the fucking inbreeding, you know.”

“I know enough,” he said with a nod.  “It was one of the reasons I went to school in Jonesport.  They were offering a course in genetics.  We do look outside the community to strengthen the gene pool, but it’s not that simple.  There are very few people who aren’t born to this life that want to embrace it.  We’re simple.”

“You mean you’re poor,” I corrected.

“That, too.”  Brandon moved a couple of steps away, which allowed me to relax a little.  “That’s why people like Tria are so important to us.  She may not have been born here, but she grew up here.  She understands us better than other outsiders.”

“That’s a crock of bullshit,” I said.

He stared at me through narrowed eyes but did not reply.

“Did you entice all the lovely ladies with promises of orgies?”  My sarcasm came out again at full throttle.

“This isn’t what I want, you know!” he shouted back.  “If there was another option, don’t you think I’d take it?  Do you think I want her to have to go through this?”

“I dunno.  Maybe you get off on it.”

“Fuck you!  Like you’re any better than us.”

“Maybe not,” I said.  “But I wouldn’t put up with this shit.”

“I suppose I should be impressed that you hit people for a living.” Brandon sneered.  “Like hanging out in some crappy bar pummeling people is something you can consider a long-term goal.  You gonna support a wife on that?  You gonna tell your kids ‘
It’s okay, it’s the good sort of beating people up—and they’re asking for it
’?”

“Kiss my ass!  You don’t know a fucking thing about what you are saying, so shut your goddamn mouth.”

He laughed.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” he said.  “You don’t know anything about us, but you think you can stand there and judge me.  I don’t know why I should be shocked that doing the same to you pisses you off.”

There was something deeply flawed in his logic, I was sure, but I couldn’t come up with exactly what it was.  It did make me wonder what it was like to be in his shoes.  I was certainly familiar enough with the idea of family expectations weighing on your conscience.  The main difference was that when push came to shove—I got the fuck out.  He was going to stay here and put up with it.