“Now,” she said, as he stared in horror at the blood seeping through his clothes. “I don’t like abuse of any kind, but I especially fucking hate men who abuse women. So the next cut will be your dick. Tell me, boy, you ready to lose that useless appendage?”
Dumbfounded, he dropped the knife and put a hand to his stomach to staunch the trickle of blood.
Wounded Knee lunged forward with a frustrated cry.
Talk about stupid . . .
Gaby tripped him, took him down to his back hard enough to knock the wind from his lungs, and then dug her knee into the base of his throat. He tried to gasp for air, but could get none past the calculated restriction she inflicted.
Blood oozing from between his fingers, the last man standing pleaded with her. “Hey! He can’t breathe!”
“That’s the point, moron.” Caught on a whirlwind of discordant emotions, Gaby dug her knee in harder.
She needed to hurt him, she really did.
But . . . she didn’t want to.
Panicked, the youth came forward. “Lady, please. You’re gonna kill him!”
“Yeah, so?” She nodded to his knife, still open, lying on the sidewalk. “I suppose you just wanted to trim my hair with that switchblade, right?”
He ran a bloody hand over his face, adding a sinister taint to his punkish appearance. “We were just messin’ with you. Honest. We ain’t never killed no one before.”
“You guys bragged about forcing women. You expect me to just forget that?”
“It was bullshit, I swear. We . . . we took some shit that fucked us up, that’s all. We weren’t thinking straight.”
At his pleading, Gaby eased a little. “I’ll say you weren’t.”
Panic added an urgent edge to his pleading tone. “It was a fucking stupid mistake, okay? We didn’t mean no real harm.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Unwilling to give an inch, Gaby said, “What if you’d harassed someone other than me? What if you’d pulled this shit on a”—she almost said “normal person”—“a woman less skilled?”
“I’m sorry. We’re both sorry.” His voice went high and shrill. “Please, he’s my brother. Let him go.”
Gaby had a soft spot for siblings—since she had none. But the mention of drugs intrigued her. “What are you high on? What’d you take?”
“I don’t know. Some strong shit. Stuff we bought earlier.”
Huh. “Stronger than usual?”
“Yeah.” He shifted his stance. “Usually that shit is cut, ya know? This might be, too, but not as much.”
Gaby returned the pressure of her knee into his brother’s chest. “Where’d you get it?”
Fear flashed over his ashen face, and he shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”
That exacerbated Gaby’s already pissy mood.
“Don’t make me ask twice, you dolt.” She did all she could to suppress her fury, marshalling her remaining control to keep the rage at bay.
“But . . . ”
“I want to kill him,” Gaby explained, and it was only a partial lie. She didn’t want the boy’s death on her conscience, but the need for violence churned within her. “Be smart and don’t push me.”
The guy blanched. “We . . . we used to buy from some dude named Bogg. But someone ’bout killed Bogg and left him for the Five-O. They hauled his sorry ass off to some high-security hospital hellhole. His brother stepped up to handle the biz.”
Clarity burst inside Gaby. This was why she’d ended up here, tackling these boys today. She glanced heavenward, shook her head at the subtlety of the message, and the fog of murderous rage cleared as a gust of determination washed in.
Oh yeah. Now she felt more like herself, like the Gaby she knew and understood.
The Gaby with a specific purpose.
Clenching her jaw, she tucked her chin in with gleeful anticipation. “Give me the dealer’s name.”
“I don’t know. I swear it. He was handing out stuff free, looking for any word on who got his brother. We took the shit and split. That’s all I know.”
“All right. Then tell me what the asshole looks like, and where I can find him. I’ll take it from there.”
His gaze going to his brother’s purpling face, the guy swallowed and rushed into speech. “He’s tall, a real skinny fucker. But mean, ya know? He shaves his head and has this bitchin’ tat on the back of his skull. Like a demon or some shit. He was hanging out on Race Street.”
“Near where the kids play?”
“Yeah. Where the cops nabbed his brother. You might be able to find him there again tonight.”
“Oh, I’ll find him. Count on it.”
Drowning in his own strangling fear, he begged, “Please don’t tell him you heard it from me. He’d kill me for sure if he knew I sent you.”
“And you think I won’t?” Gaby stood, allowing her prey to suck in a strangled gulp of air. He rolled to his side and promptly puked around his gasping breaths.
She paid no mind to his struggles. The numb-nuts would live, and maybe now he’d think twice about who he tried to bulldoze.
Stalking over to the other boy, she locked eyes with him. “Listen up, shithead. You’ll never know when I’m around, but believe me when I tell you that I see a lot. Everything that’s important.”
Something in her gaze convinced him, because he nodded fast and hard. Gaby knew that sometimes an otherworldly light shone through her eyes. Luther had told her she morphed some, just as her evil prey did.
She fucking hated that, but what the hell. For now, it worked to her advantage.
“If I catch you bullying anyone else, if I see you hopped up, if I see you so much as eyeball a dealer, I’ll not only kill you, I’ll fucking well take you apart piece by piece. You got that?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” He walked a wide berth around Gaby and, anxious to be on his way, helped his brother to his feet.
“You’d better.” Looking at them both, seeing how terror had replaced their cocky attitudes, Gaby felt devilish and pretended to lunge for them.
They scrambled away, hobbled by painful injuries.
It almost made her snicker, but laughter was so contradictory to her existence that she didn’t quite know how to get it out.
If she stuck with Luther long enough, would she turn into one of those twittering fools who found humor everywhere, regardless of the suffering that existed in everyday life?
Did she maybe . . . want that? Did she want to conform and become like every other mundane person in life, oblivious to the reality of iniquity?
If it meant keeping Luther, then she would try.
Now that he had shown her something so special, the thought of losing him left her hollowed out with an invasive sense of despair.
Despite the conflict she’d just concluded, she still twitched with an abundance of energy. And no wonder, considering that she needed to destroy a cannibal, shut down a drug dealer, and save a child.
And she needed a way to do it all without alienating Luther.
She touched the choker around her neck. It was a gift from him—the first gift she’d ever received in her entire life.
Replacing the earbuds in her ears, she turned on the music Luther had chosen for her.
So many remarkable ways that he’d influenced her. He’d shown her a side of life that she’d never before experienced. In a way, that cognizance of everyday normalcy helped her because now she could understand why people chose to remain oblivious to the truth of their own frailty.
With every step, Gaby felt her newest gift from Luther, a narrow cell phone, which was wedged into the back pocket of her jeans.
He’d taken over, changing her irrevocably, and the awful truth was that she craved the changes, scary as they might be.
But could she change enough to make it all matter?
A pale sun attempted to peek through gray clouds as Gaby finished her stroll to Mort’s. The old neighborhood lent her a moment of serenity. The debris-covered walkway felt familiar beneath her feet. The smoggy air smelled the same, and the depressed people hadn’t changed much.
More than anywhere else, this was her home.