Page 7 of Hostile Saint

Pulling air into my lungs was with difficulty, which I was thankful for. Death had never looked so appealing.

The brothers’ car raced into the night as the dragons got closer.

Dragons—I gasped with awareness when I realized there were no such things as dragons. They were motorcycles, in the middle of the night, on an abandoned dirt road. That couldn’t be good news. I instantly assumed they were part of a gang and would bring Lace more harm.

“Lace—” I coughed up blood. “Baby… f-find,” cough, “me.”

Staring into the full tree limbs above her, Lace stayed motionless.

I was seeing stars, too, but not the kind in the dark sky. “Lace, we’re,” cough, “in trouble.” Please God, let me stay awake for just a little longer. I knew I was in no shape to save myself but hoped she could. “I need you to,” cough, “run, baby.”

Remarkably, Lace, in a numb state, reached down and pulled up her sweatpants.

The bikes had parked down the road, but I felt I couldn’t take any chances of them finding her. No man in his right mind would sexually want anything to do with Lace in her horrendous condition, but my mind was far too shattered to comprehend that and had to assume the worst since it was all it knew.

“Lace, get up,” cough, “Run. Find me later,” cough, “after they leave.” It took so much effort, but I reached my right hand out for her. I had to stop when more coughing took over.

As soon as I could breathe again, I reached for that damn hand I wanted to hold while I died—

“I’m here.”

That soft voice… My eyes snapped to hers. “Lace?” Blood spurted from my mouth.

Instantly crying at the sight of me, my Pretty Girl reached out. “I’m here. I’m here, Tate.” She looked pitiful and so unbelievably sad I wanted to hold her and lie—tell her I wasn’t dying. But there was no time. “You find me, okay?”

Coughing, I couldn’t repeat, I need you to run and save yourself, but, somehow, in her shock, she had heard me say it. I don’t know if she knew that was why she was rolling to her side, her fingertips touching mine as she prepared to get up, but she was doing it, thankfully.

Crying, she assured me, “Okay, Tate. I will. I promise.”

Against my will, my body began to shut down. I prayed so hard for my eyes to stay open that I think they did. The last thing I saw was our palms finding one another, concreting our evermore.

Scar to scar is how we were… when I died.

CHAPTER TWO

Finding Signs

A hardy slap to the face and a firm order, “I said wake up!” are what had me coming to. The deep, commanding voice came from a man on his knee, at my right side, where I had last seen Lacey. My mind was so foggy I thought I was imagining his eye patch. That he didn’t have only one blue eye staring at me. “Welcome back, Nine Lives.” It felt like his wide shoulders were taking up all the space above me. That’s why I struggled to see past him when I looked for Lacey.

Noticing it was still night, I was confused at how much time had passed.

“Gone,” another voice told me from my left.

My head felt like it weighed a thousand and one pounds as I slowly lolled it in the opposite direction. Tree limbs above passed my view before I found another man. He looked a tad younger than the man to my right, but I was confident his shoulders were even wider.

My and Lace’s brothers had always felt big to me. Possibly because they were so dangerous. At least, that is how I had viewed them. Now, seeing truly hazardous—most certainly deadly—men, I wondered how my brothers had tricked me at all.

The answer plowed into my stabbed gut. My mom and… Lacey!

Frantically, I scanned beyond the large man also on a knee, inspecting me. He shook his head, his longer dirty blond hair moving as if in a shampoo commercial. “Whoever you’re lookin’ for, is she the one who screamed?”

Screamed?

Opening my mouth to speak felt foreign. It was full of blood. I think I was bleeding so much my brain was conserving the rest. It was deciding where I was permitted to spend energy. And my mouth had been denied since it already had its fill.

The hair commercial model-man had inquisitive grey eyes as he placed a huge hand on my shoulder. “Easy, kid. I’m just trying to put the pieces together. You got some family we can call so they can come and help you? I don’t do the whole ‘call the cops’ thing. Feel me?”

All I could ‘feel’ were stab wounds and aching in my heart when thinking of my only other family—my mother. I didn’t want to believe she wouldn’t search for me, but deep down, I knew my brother wasn’t lying, so, I did my best to shake my head no.