Fallen-Angels (3 page)
Authors: Ashlynn Monroe
For a long
drawn out moment, they sat in silence.
Purity
took the rest of Justice’s drink and downed it.
Purity set the glass down and looked at her with a broken, wild-eyed
expression.
It made the terrible
memories come rushing back and hit Justice in the pit of her stomach.
****
They ran.
Justice towed Purity along behind her, knowing that her ankle could be
broken, but not allowing her to stop.
They had to keep running.
It had
been a mistake for them to go on foot without protection and now they were
pursued by drunken Union deserters.
They had left the convent only days
before, their sisters buried, their old lives over, and their only option to
journey to a new town and new lives.
When
a group of noble soldiers had offered to escort the sisters, they had naively
accepted. It was only later that they had found out what nefarious intentions
the men had held.
When one of the men
had tried to rape poor, traumatized Grace, the sisters had run.
Purity had fought Grace’s attacker like a
wildcat, but when he’d kicked her she had fallen and broken her ankle.
Hindered by their cumbersome dresses,
the sisters were no match for the deserters.
They began to catch up, coming close enough for one of them to grab
Purity by the skirt and swing her to face him, hitting her in the face.
Justice skidded to a stop, turning back to
Purity.
“That’s what you get, whore.
Don’t you ever attack me again,” spat the man
who had tried to rape Grace.
Justice lashed out.
Her knee pounded into their attacker’s groin
and he collapsed, groaning.
She heaved
Purity’s arm over her shoulder again and tried to run, but Purity’s limp had
gotten worse.
Justice couldn’t allow her
to stop, better to be lame for life than dead or raped.
Grace was nowhere to be seen.
A gunshot startled her and Justice
turned.
Two rough looking cowboys appeared over the
horizon, riding up behind the soldiers, guns drawn, bullets flying.
It happened quickly.
Justice watched the soldiers fall from their
horses like stones, unable to even call out before they were dead in the sand.
The sisters finally stopped running.
Justice helped Purity sit and began to assess
the damage to her ankle.
The cowboys rode up beside
them.
Justice began to gush her thanks,
but the words she heard cut her thanks short.
“Okay, Heath which one of them gals
you want?
We split the heist money,
let’s split these little beauties too.”
Hugh’s friend looked uncertain. “I
don’t know Hugh, seems wrong to just pick ‘em up and take ‘em with us.”
“I want the damaged one with the
nice hair. It’ll be easier to keep her.
I’m going south, Heath,
you go
north.
You do what you want with the
other.”
Justice tried to fight Hugh off her
sister.
He pounced before they even had
the chance to run.
He grabbed the
hysterical Purity, pulling her across his horse, and galloping off.
Justice didn’t even have a chance against his
strength and his horse.
Screaming, she
tried to run after her sister and her captor.
It was at least a mile before she realized how impossible it was to
catch the horse.
With lack of food and
water taking a higher toll than grief, her body collapsed, unconscious in the
sand.
****
Purity
turned away which helped Justice clear the cobwebs of bad memories.
She helped her drunken sister up and together
they found the dressing room.
Daisy, one
of the newer, younger girls was getting ready for her turn on stage.
She gave Justice a dirty look.
Justice’s short temper snapped and she
slammed her fist down on the vanity table where the woman was applying the last
of her abundant cosmetics.
“You got a
problem?” Justice demanded.
“I don’t
like lesbians and drunks in here while I’m getting ready.”
“I don’t
see any lesbians or drunks here, bitch, so I think you need to apologize!”
“You might
be in a corset, but you act like a man.” Daisy sneered. “No straight girl would
want to scare away men like you do and it ain’t right, you robbing places and
gun slinging like you do.”
“I’ll show
you how fast I can draw these guns if you don’t apologize for your filthy mind
and mouth!”
“I’m ain’t goin’ to.”
As Justice
raised her fist to give Daisy a lovely shiner and ruin her made up face, a loud,
barking shout made her turn.
Jimmy and a
very well built companion stood in the doorway, blocking the light from the
hallway with their imposing bodies, darkening the room.
Jimmy spoke directly to Justice, but she
noticed that both Purity and Daisy cowered.
“Don’t you
dare mess up my product. Daisy needs that pretty li'l face to bring in the
money, don't you, doll?
Get out there
and shake that money maker.”
Daisy scurried
to the door.
Jimmy smacked her ass
loudly as she rushed past them and Daisy gave a startled yelp.
Jimmy laughed, a deep, crass belly laugh, but
his companion didn’t seem to find it funny.
Justice stared the pimp down, hard.
She had little tolerance for those that preyed upon the weak and
downtrodden and Jimmy’s entire business was built on the pain of others.
“What you
want ‘round here, Justice?
I know you’ve
done right by me in the past when there’s been trouble here, but if you lay a
finger on my girls I’ll kill you myself.”
“I didn’t
stop the Grover Brothers for you.
I did
it for my sister.
My business with her
is a family matter.
If you ever try to
kill me, Jimmy, you’ll find out how quick you can die.”
Jimmy
didn’t say a word, but he backed down like the coward he was, no longer
grinning. The other man watched the exchange impartially.
Justice wasn’t sure what it was about his
level gaze that irritated her.
“Let’s go,”
Jimmy said to his companion. As the two men walked into the hall, Justice heard
him add— “That’s the one I was telling you about, the girl with steel balls.”
Justice
scowled.
She was as feminine as any
other woman- she just used a gun better than most men did.
Unfortunately, her skills tended to
emasculate every man in her general vicinity.
“What do
you want, Justice?” Purity demanded, drunkenly.
“It’s
Grace.
I think I might have found her.”
Purity sat
up a little straighter.
The news
infiltrated her drunken haze, sobering her momentarily. “Where is she?”
“I think
she’s in
I want you to come with me to look for
her.
If we can find her I think we
should all be together.”
“I don’t
care what happened to that little coward.
If she’d stayed to fight, maybe we could have fought them off.
We’d have at least had a chance.”
“Do you
remember how scared and tore up her mind was?
She wouldn’t have been any help.
God works in all things.
I might
not be a nun anymore, but I haven’t forgotten Him.
I’m just not worthy of Him anymore.”
“Bullshit,
after everything, can you really be telling me to have faith?
Get real, Sis.
And get out of my face.”
“Please,
Purity, let’s just go.”
“I don’t associate
with gun slingers.
Go be a hero
somewhere else.
I can’t stand to look at
you!”
Hurt, too
tired to fight any longer, Justice left her irate sister.
She knew Purity blamed her for not saving her
from Hugh.
Because of Hugh, Purity was
living such a different life than she had ever dreamed of living.
It had taken her an entire year for Justice to
find Purity and by then the damage seemed done.
Justice could do nothing except try and reach out to the suffering
woman.
If only Hugh had taken her
instead of Purity, she would at least have one sister left in her life.
Finding Grace was her obsession.
Missing the girl left a dull ache in her
heart, a constant reminder that no one was safe in
Someday,
Purity would come around and understand. Justice just hoped it happened before Purity
lay dying of a social disease.
If
Jimmy’s temper didn’t kill her first, her lifestyle would certainly finish her
off.
Not that Justice was one to talk—
her own life would certainly end in a hail of bullets.
It hadn’t taken her long to come to terms
with death—life was what worried her.
She knew she lived with the welcome mat out for Death and that knowledge
made her even more intent on finding Grace.
She had let her sisters down, but hope for making amends kept her going
each day.
As Justice
walked down the dark hallway toward the back exit, a hand shot out of the
darkness and grabbed her arm. She yelped, but
she had her gun pointed into the shadows
before the sound of her fear died away.
She cleared
her throat. “You’d better come into the light and state your intent,” she said
harshly. “I don’t kill for nothing, but if I feel threatened that’s not nothing
to me, buddy.”
A masculine
chuckle, sinfully sexy, emerged from the darkness.
“I’d put
that down.
I don’t kill women, but I
hear you’re as tough as any man is and you kill just as quick.” When he spoke,
his voice was rich like warm brandy and soft as velvet.
It made Justice suddenly very aware that she
was a woman. “I guess I could make an exception for you, but it’d be a helluva
waste, Beauty, so let’s put our weapons down.”
“I’ll show
you mine if you show me yours,” Justice replied, hand on her gun. “I can’t see
you in the darkness. How can I trust you?”
He chuckled
again. She hadn’t imagined it, the man sounded like sex.
Justice was still a virgin, but she had
certainly heard and seen enough, running with her rough crowd, to understand
the complex mechanics of the act.
If
done right, it could be a very nice time.
She just hadn’t found a man who could touch her heart. She had held that
part of herself apart from who she had become.
She had also held out the hope that if she died pure of body, it might
balance out the unclean life she lead.
The voice
stepped forward, and Justice had to back up.
Close up, the man was even taller then she had thought when he had stood
next to Jimmy.
Life hadn’t been soft for
him, his body was a machine made of sinew and muscle and he didn’t have an
ounce of fat to spare.
“Why did
you grab me?” Justice demanded.
Her
voice sounded soft and uncertain to her own ears.
His bright
blue eyes crinkled charmingly and his row of white teeth was bright in the
darkness.
His smile was wicked, but it
made his face even more handsome.
Justice was tempted to move the lock of thick dark brown hair out of his
face, but she managed to restrain herself.
“I have a
very profitable proposition for you.
I’d
like you to help me rob a train.
Just
the two of us, less people to split the profits with, are you in?”