A Siren's Song (Ride of the Darkyrie 2) (4 page)

BOOK: A Siren's Song (Ride of the Darkyrie 2)
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The Hel Cycle sat in the passenger seat, the gold lettering bright and shiny under the streetlamp. I remembered the way the grooves of the letters felt beneath my fingertips, so inviting. I wanted to know what lay within those pages, but I wanted to find this killer more.

             
I put the car in gear and drove the short distance to Prospect. I took a big chance driving into that part of town without backup or a SWAT team behind me. They hated cops so much it was more likely they’d shoot me before they’d talk to me. Especially this time of night when business was just picking up. There were some uniforms who wouldn’t even respond to emergency calls in this neighborhood after dark.

             
It didn’t take long to find the address. I pulled to a stop in front of a small ranch-style home. The yard was neat and clean, but the house was painted a bright green. There were five cars in the driveway. All of them looked like something from
The
Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
.  A group of young men sat in chairs in front of the single garage, drinking 40s and they were all tattooed from wrist to shoulder, some of them even on their faces. It was surreal, the glow coming off of most of the ink.

             
And the stench of sulfur hung heavy in the air.

             
When I stepped out of the car, each one of them pulled their piece and had it trained directly on my skull.

             
“I’m not here to bust your balls, gentlemen.”

             
“Then what the fuck you doing off the reservation, piggy bitch?” One stepped forward. He was most likely an enforcer, not the leader. The glow of his tattoos actually obscured the image from this distance, so I couldn’t tell for sure, but the alpha of the group would be in the shadows, quiet. Polite. No trouble at all.

             
“Family notification. Does Asuncion Montalvo live at this address?”

             
“I’m her son and I’m right here,
puta
. So take that bullshit on down the street. You don’t have notification of shit.” They laughed.

             
From their behavior, I could tell they didn’t know about Carmen either. “I didn’t say it was her son.”

             
He stopped laughing and vaulted from his lawn chair. “Who?” he demanded.

             
“The name listed on the emergency contact was Asuncion Montalvo. Does she live here?” I asked again.

             
“She’s at work.”

             
He’d never talk to me with his boys present. If I told him about his sisters’ deaths, this would be the end of line. They’d never let me close enough to his mother to even have a chance at getting her to talk. I had to find a way to get in with him. Now.

             
“I’ll make you a deal.”

             
“We don’t deal with five-oh.”

             
At least he hadn’t called me a pig. It was a small thing, unconscious really, but showed me that he was open to hearing what I had to offer.

             
“This isn’t dealing with five-oh. It’s dealing with
me
.”

             
“What’s the difference, bitch?” Another man piped up from the chair next to where Asuncion’s son had been sitting.

             
“I wasn’t speaking to you,
cabron
.” I didn’t even turn my head to look at him when I spoke.

             
“What’s your deal?” the son asked.

             
“I’ll trade you question for question. I ask a question and you answer honestly. You ask a question and I answer honestly.”

             
“Why would I do that? I could just wait for you to speak with my mother.”

             
“True.” I nodded. “But there are things I’d never tell her. Things that will never be in the papers.” Details that would help him find the killer and take his revenge. If he found the killer first, that would be fine with me. The killer would be dead either way.

             
Another man spoke up. This time, from the back of the group. He stepped forward. “Take her deal, Jorge.”

             
His entire body glowed with his tattoos, but most of them weren’t on his skin in traditional ink. With MS-13, the higher in rank member were, the more tattoos they had, the larger the artwork. It would be odd for a man to reach the status this one seemed to have without his face covered in them. His physical ink was no more or less than any of the other men in the group.

             
Until I looked at the markings on his body that simply glowed. There was an unending waterfall of tears tattooed on his cheeks and they flowed down his face onto his chest, the tears seeming to actually fall as I watched them.

             
For a moment, I thought I saw the faint glowing of wings sprouting from his back and the stench of sulfur became almost unbearable as he approached. His very presence sent snakes of revulsion slithering down my spine and I wondered briefly if people felt the same around me. If my wrongness inspired that sort of fight or flight sensation that his did in me.

             
“Hello, Brynn Hill,” he said cordially.

             
“And you are?”

             
“Ah, don’t remember me, yet? Dominic San Angeles. We were once very close.”

             
His name sent a chill of recognition through my veins, but then it was gone.

             
“Tell her what she wants to know, Jorge. Both your sisters are dead,” San Angeles said with a lazy smile.

CHAPTER THREE

 

             
Jorge hadn’t believed San Angeles at first, not until I’d confirmed it. Watching the dance of emotions on his face had been like watching a potter work clay on the wheel, forming up into one shape and then collapsing into something else, only to be dragged up again by those same cruel hands. He’d spilled his guts, the deepest and darkest things he knew about his gang and their operations spread out and flayed open like an autopsy.

             
And when I left, they were mobilizing for war.

             
Unfortunately, I hadn’t learned anything from Jorge about his sisters that I didn’t already know. Although something he’d said stuck in my head.

             
One of their main rivalries was with the Bloods.

             
It’s in the blood
, the voice had whispered to me.

             
And Dominic had told Jorge to give me whatever I needed and instructed the rest of the posse to do anything I asked. That was highly unusual. Dominic had acted like we’d had some former affiliation, but I couldn’t imagine any world where I’d willingly be in the same room with him. He set off all of my alarms, but he did not belong to me. He was something…else. I didn’t like that.

             
My cell rang as I was driving back to my loft. It was after ten.

             
“Where are you?” Jenna demanded when I answered, the roar of the bar behind her. “I’m sitting here in The Riot Room with Grimes all by myself.”

             
“So, then you’re not really by yourself.”

             
“Smartass.”

             
“Yeah, I’m on my way. I had to handle some things with the investigation.”

             
“Don’t you always.” She sighed. “But you are coming right?”

             
“I’m not even breathing heavy.”

             
“Bitch.” Jenna laughed good-naturedly.

             
“Slut.” I didn’t understand this banter, but I could do it and it seemed to make us closer friends. The nastier the names I called her, the more affectionate she seemed to think it.

             
“Quit your pillow talk and get your ass over here,” Grimes grumbled into the phone.

             
“See? I can’t do anything with… Hey! Give that back. I’m going to—” Then the line went dead.

             
What I really wanted to do was go home and stick my nose in the Hel Cycle after I read my father’s last letter, but I needed to meet Jenna’s friend so I’d stop having that damned reaction to my partner and to the assassin trying to kill me.

             
Or maybe I should just fuck Grimes and get it over with?

             
He obviously knew more about everything that was going on than I did. Maybe if he thought I’d submitted to him, he wouldn’t feel the need to have that control over me and he’d tell me what I wanted to know.

             
Then I could stop imagining what he looked like naked.

             
I sighed as I turned my car onto Broadway and then into the parking lot for my building. Sleeping with him would only complicate matters further. How did women do this? Life was so much easier when it was only the hunt and the kill that thrilled me.

             
No matter who I went home with, even if it was just myself, I’d be wearing my leather pants and my knee high Doc Martens.

             
It was times like this that I sometimes wished for a mother. I’d made one up in my head when I was a girl. My father was my whole world, but sometimes, when I was playing alone, I imagined Brynhildr was my mother. She wouldn’t be like the other moms that came to school, muttering inanities and breathing banality. She’d be like my father. She’d know how to fight, how to kill things.

             
My father said that as a woman, I’d have more weapons than a man. I didn’t know what that meant, although I assumed it had something to do with my body. Brynhildr would know and she’d show me how to use those weapons.

             
Helreggin had been born of Loki’s flesh alone in the myths I’d read, but what about me? I was sure I hadn’t sprung directly from Erik Hill’s loins into the world. I’d asked him once about my mother and he’d gagged me and tied me to a chair for four hours. I’d never asked again.

             
It was a lesson hard learned. Because for that four hours, he took out his frustration on one of the women he’d taken. I’d heard her screaming, begging for help. For mercy, and finally for death. Her voice had risen to a frenzied pitch, and then her screams had broken into harsh little barks. I heard every second of her terror drifting up through the vents like some poisonous gas.

             
I was seven. I’d vowed at the time that even if I ever had a little girl and her father was painful to talk about, I’d never have treated her that way—never make her listen to someone die simply because she wanted to know about him. I wouldn’t kill people at all. But being seven, I’d had dreams of a happy family. My daughter wouldn’t have had to ask about her father because he’d come home to her every night. We’d live in a big house where I’d let her roller skate on the hardwood floor and I’d bake like TV moms did in the old shows and…

             
I pushed away the memories and focused on the task at hand. 

             
Once inside my loft, I looked longingly at the letter on my bed, but for the first time, I wanted to wait. Those were my father’s last words to me. I needed to be able to take my time with them and just for a moment, tonight, I was going to pretend that I was normal. As normal as a homicide detective could be. I changed quickly and put on some lipstick and eyeliner—skills courtesy of Sephora salesgirl. In ten minutes, even allowing time to lace up my twenty eyelet Doc Martens, I was back in the car driving across town to The Riot Room.

             
It was packed, the band onstage was rocking some heavy riffs and Jenna waved at me from a table in the back.

             
As I approached, I saw a new face at our table chatting amicably with Jason. He’d be considered handsome by most standards; strong jaw, neatly clipped hair the color of mahogany and sharp blue eyes. He smiled when he saw me, his mouth full of sharp, straight, white teeth.

             
Jenna had outdone herself this time because I knew just from looking at him that he was a killer.

             
Nature had marked him apart with the asymmetry of his features. At first glance, he was all that was sought after, a standard of masculinity. Broad shoulders, smooth features, a strong profile, but he was like a copy of a facsimile.

             
All human features are slightly off balance, none are perfectly symmetrical. Yet with symmetry, it is a case of being able to judge a book by its cover. It’s why humans seek out symmetry as a standard of beauty, those are the traits both physical and ethereal they want to pass to their young.

BOOK: A Siren's Song (Ride of the Darkyrie 2)
11.69Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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