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I shoved through people, one girl grabbing onto me.
“Help me.”
I shoved her away. She wasn’t my problem, and I was no knight.
I pushed through the fabric of the side of the tent and scanned the quieter space. This was the backside and no one was out here. Not yet anyway.
“Xander,” she cried out.
I’d barely heard her over the roar of chaos inside the tent, but it was all I needed. I caught sight of her hair again, and this time I wasn’t far behind. The bite of gravel and what the fuck else scratched at my bare feet with every step.
“Let her go,” I shouted as I grabbed an old, worn out bar on the merry-go-round that had been pieced out long before we got here. The way the bar was rusted enough to come loose from its hinges spoke to how long the elements had taken the last scraps of life here.
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t the big bad Spector. You’ll excuse me if I don’t give a shit what your name is. If you know this bitch, then do you know where my brother is?”
Calliope squeaked as he put a knife up to her neck.
“I’d suggest you drop that knife. No one hurts her but me.”
The guy laughed. “She denied knowing you. She denied knowing the guy that shot one of ours, and where the fuck is Ripple? I’d say the Spectors just declared war.”
“You think we just declared war? I was already certain that started when I killed Ripple. Took you long enough to catch on that he was dead.”
The commotion behind me wasn’t getting any quieter. Fuck. I needed to get her and get out of here.
“You… You killed my brother? I’m going to carve you up like a fucking turkey and then?—”
He didn’t get to say anything else as a bullet landed between his eyes. I lunged forward and grabbed Cali.
“Sorry about this,” I said as I tossed her over my shoulder and followed Zeid to where three red, pinpoint dots were visible near an abandoned shed of some kind.
We got to the bikes and I glared at one rider.
“Backpack him. She’s mine.”
He didn’t say shit and moved quickly to the other bike. I knew we were on borrowed time but he shifted anyway.
“Hang on,” I said to Cali as I straddled the bike, helping her get on behind me. I couldn’t hear her response, but her arms wrapped tightly around my waist as the two bikes took off and we followed a second later, winding a path I didn’t know existed. The sirens quieted the further we got. We slowed near the back of the park as one of the guys got off. He held long bolt cutters and was making quick work of the chain-link fence.
Sirens blared again, and I looked back in time to see headlights turn our way.
Fuck.
Seconds later though, the first bike went through, then us, and then the third, picking up the last of our crew as we drove away, the cop car stopping where the path ended.
What the fuck had we stumbled into, and who the hell would mess with all the gangs?
TWENTY
calliope
I openedmy eyes as the echoes of motorcycle engines cut. The deafening sound had been like some dark symphony, and I liked it. The Vipers, or rather most of them, didn’t have nice cars, let alone motorcycles that could drown out the world, and even if they did, I don’t think I could have ever seen it the same.
Somewhere between the heat of his skin against my frozen body, the beat of his heart building a rhythm of calm inside me, and the sound of more than one bike at any one point, I remembered we weren’t alone.
Never alone.
I took in the warehouse around us. No, definitely not alone. No less than fifteen bikes were all parked in a large open space inside some kind of storage building. The scratch and creak of a metal door closed and only then did I take a deep breath.
