Tangled Fates (22 page)

She shook her head. “I don’t. I’ve been in them before, and I think I have a general idea,

but . . . ”

Her voice trailed off. She didn’t know how to drive, and she assumed Nico didn’t either

since he was asking her.

“I really don’t have a good sense of how to drive,” Nico said. “I’ve kept myself separated

from the others.”

Annis wondered why, and guessed that the barbarianism had gotten out of hand, and Nico

didn’t want anything to do with it.

“It’s too bad he’s hurt so badly,” Nico said, pointing at Cohen. “But regardless, we need

to get out of here. Now, before they return. They left one of the cars, and it’s our only chance of

escape.”

Annis narrowed her eyes on Nico. She hadn’t seen him since she arrived at this house.

Her gut told her to trust him, but frankly, she didn’t trust any of her own emotions any longer.

Glancing over at Cohen, she knew that her feelings for him had just set her up for a long-term

heartbreak.

But what would the Saviors do if she brought a member of The Platoon into their lives?

Would they kill him?

And how in the world was she going to drive a car?

All that would have to be figured out at another time. Right now, her and Cohen had a

chance of escape. She would have to trust her gut and put her and Cohen’s fate into Nico’s

hands.

Chapter 36

Blake walked into the Black Cuff with the rest of the Warriors. All wore coats that hid

the arsenal of weapons they carried. Blake had a gun and knife strapped to his torso, and he

couldn’t imagine what Hudson’s full-length leather jacket concealed.

All scanned the area looking for The Platoon. The lights pulsed and the bodies writhed in

time with the beat of the techno music.

Not seeing them, Blake turned to Noah. “It might be a good idea to see if they have a

private room or something.”

Noah looked around, his black eyes darting to every corner of the room. “It may be better

to do this in public. The guy seems like he’s a few notes short of a full song, if you know what I

mean.”

Blake nodded. “Suit yourself.”

They found a few tables in back where it wasn’t as loud and pulled them all together. As

they sat down, the waitress came over to get drink orders. Blake watched as she flirted her way

from one Warrior to the other. All were polite, yet reserved. None of them were interested—they

all had very worried mates back at the silo. Except Talin. Talin didn’t give a shit about anything.

The waitress finally got to him. She was thin, wearing a black, lace corset that held on to

her large rack for dear life and black leather pants. Her brown hair was pulled up in a ponytail,

and the make-up was a little heavier than he’d prefer. However, she was attractive, and he’d had

worse. Hell, it had been ten months since he got any action besides self-gratification, and that

was way, way, too long. He’d been holding out for Annis, but now that he knew that would

never happen, he was reluctantly moving on.

He smiled as he remembered his night out with Jovan where they’d both ended up with

two women. Jovan had drunk so much, Blake thought for sure he would have to be scraped off

the floor and hauled home. He, however, had ended up feeling like a dirty whore in a haze of

whiskey, blonde hair, and tangled limbs.

“What can I get you, babe?” she asked, giving him a wink.

Yeah, he’d definitely have to explore his options with her later.

“What was your name, honey?”

“Brandy.”

“Well, Brandy, I’d like a beer. Whatever you have in a bottle is good.”

She smiled. “You got it.”

There was silence as all of them watched her walk away.

“Looks like you’re set for the night, Blake,” Jovan said.

“Not a bad set up either,” Hudson said.

“I’d totally tap that,” Jovan said.

“Oh, yeah,” Rayner said. “If I didn’t have Faith, of course.”

“Of course,” Jovan said.

They sat in silence for a moment, then Blake remembered the ringtone on his phone. He

took it out of his pants and tried to get into the ringtone directory, but couldn’t.

“What the hell?” he murmured.

“So I take it Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ wasn’t your idea?” Hudson asked. He was tipped

back in his chair, his hair pulled back into the standard ponytail. The guy wore a gray silk shirt

under his full-length leather coat and a sly grin on his face. He was deadly suave.

“Not really,” Blake said. “Do you know something about this?”

Hudson’s eyes slid over to Talin.

Brandy came back and served everyone their drinks.

“We’ll start a tab,” Noah said, handing her a credit card.

“Sounds good!” she chirped and walked away.

Blake looked over at Talin. Dressed in a white T-shirt and a leather biker jacket, he

sipped his beer staring straight ahead at the dance floor. The jacket hid the two pistols Blake had

watched him pack in his underarm holsters. Talin seemed a little rocky and unstable. The guy

probably shouldn’t be so heavily armed.

“Talin, do you know something about this?” Blake asked, holding up his phone.

Talin looked over at him. “Of course I do.”

Blake glanced at the other Warriors around the table, who were all smirking.

“And?”

“And the next time you start talking about washing my balls, I will make your ringtone

something by Beyoncé.”

Laughter erupted around the table, but Blake was pissed. After the laughter died down,

Blake said, “So what exactly did you do to make it so I can’t get access to my ringtones?”

“I’ll never tell.”

“And are you going to fix it?”

Talin shook his head and stared at the dance floor again.

“My phone’s still ringing Rod Stewart’s ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy,’” Hudson said. He

hitched a thumb at Talin. “That’s why I always have the damn thing on vibrate. This asshole put

it on there as a joke, but I’d love to hear how you offered to wash Talin’s balls and ended up with

a Michael Jackson ringtone. If you offered to wash my balls, I’d probably just stab you or some

shit, half-breed.”

Blake was about to unload on Talin, and maybe Hudson too, when Rayner said, “It’s go

time, gentlemen.”

All heads at the table swiveled to the entrance, and four large men, all wearing dark

sunglasses walked in, Micah being the biggest of them all. They looked around, and one of them

nudged Micah and pointed at the Warriors. The Platoon threaded through the crowd.

“Jesus, that guy is huge,” Noah said.

“Nervous?” Blake asked.

Noah smirked and stood. “Nah. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

The rest of the Warriors got to their feet, waiting for The Platoon. When the four arrived

at the table, all stared at each other, sizing each other up.

“I’m Noah,” he said.

Micah’s nostrils flared.

“Why don’t you guys sit down, and I’ll buy you a drink. We can talk like respectable and

civilized people.”

Micah glared at Noah another moment, then pulled a chair out. All sat down together.

“You’re able to be out at night without glasses,” Micah said.

Noah nodded. “Contacts.”

“What exactly is a contact?”

Noah waved him off. “We’ve got more important things to talk about.”

“What are contacts?” Micah demanded.

Noah sighed. “Its something that goes over your eyeball and mutes the glow of your

SR44 color.”

“I would like those,” Micah said, and the rest of The Platoon grumbled in agreement.

Noah shrugged. “Well, good luck with that.”

Brandy appeared. “What can I get you guys?”

Blake surveyed The Platoon. Only four had shown up tonight, and Blake wondered

where the fifth was.

“Who are your friends, Micah? And where’s the last one?” he asked after Brandy

sashayed her way back to the bar.

Micah pointed to his left. “This is Simon and Titus.” He then gestured to his left. “And

this is Jael.” Micah grinned. “We had a little fun tonight with Annis, and unfortunately, our Nico

suffered a stab wound from her.”

Blake took a long swallow of his beer to calm his fear and anger, wondering what fun

they were having with Annis. He wanted to take out Micah’s eye with a beer bottle and a

ballpoint pen.

Hudson laughed and leaned in. “I’m surprised you still have your intestines intact, Micah.

That is one female I don’t want to tangle with.”

Micah eyed Hudson with disgust. “I’m not afraid of any female. They are weak and only

good for carrying on our species.”

Blake cast a glance around the table, and he could see that statement went over as well as

an enema with the Warriors. Micah wasn’t making any friends at this table talking like that.

“Well, you aren’t going to get far on this planet with an attitude like that, Micah,”

Hudson said.

The tension at the table was pretty high, and Blake was happy to see Brandy making her

way through the crowd with a tray full of drinks. He decided that she needed to be returning on a

regular basis to keep the tension to a low boil, so he slammed back the rest of his beer. Glancing

over at Jovan, Blake noted that he must have been thinking the same thing, because the guy was

sucking back his whiskey like someone was trying to take it from him. And you didn’t take

Jovan’s whiskey.

Brandy set down the drinks and Blake motioned her over. He gently grabbed her arm and

pulled her down so he could whisper in her ear. “Honey, make sure you check back every ten

minutes or so. There are some thirsty guys at this table.”

Brandy nodded and gave him another wink.

“She was a nice piece of ass,” Jael said to Blake, tauntingly.

Blake looked at the guy, perplexed. Why hadn’t Brandy acknowledged she knew Jael?

Even if she didn’t like him, she would have acted a little uncomfortable around him. Instead, she

treated him no different than anyone else at the table.

He glanced over at the rest of the Warriors. “You bastard,” Rayner hissed, his eyes

narrowing. “Which one of you has it?”

“Has what?” Blake blurted.

“Since she doesn’t seem to recognize any of you, my guess is that one of you can erase

memories.” Rayner sat back in his chair and shook his head in disgust. “It’s a rare gift, Blake.”

“That would be me, Savior,” said Jael. “I’ve bedded sweet Brandy many, many times,

and every time I walk in here, she doesn’t know who I am. It’s really a nice gift to have.”

Blake imagined Brandy going back to wherever they were living and having this asshole

take off his glasses, only to see his eyes glowing. Did she scream and run? Did he rape her?

“You son of a bitch,” Blake said, on his feet before he even knew it.

“Relax. I also have the gift of making people see . . . or not see . . . things that aren’t

there. She never saw my glowing eyes, you fool. She enjoyed every blessed second with me.”

Blake sat back down and looked over at Brandy. He decided that if she would let him, he

would give her a night to remember for a long, long time.

“So where’s Cohen and Annis?” Noah said, staring at Micah.

“I thought you didn’t care?”

Noah shrugged. “Just curious. Like I said, they’re dead weight to me in this mission. A

blind Warrior and an SR44 male without his mate don’t bode well for productivity.”

Micah threw his head back and laughed. It was a deep, throaty laugh that vibrated around

the table, and his fellow Platoon members joined in.

Blake looked down at his drink to make sure it wasn’t shaking right off the plastic surface

of the table.

“I believe that we are handling your mission for you, Savior,” Micah said, his chest

expanding in what looked like pride.

Noah leaned in. “No, you stupid shit, you’re not. You’re smashing in the heads and

carving ‘The Platoon’ on the backs of humans. Human scum, mind you, but in the three you’ve

killed there isn’t one ounce of Colonist in any of them.”

Micah deflated a little. “How did you know?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jovan said.

“And those carvings?” Noah continued. “They’ve been turned over to the FBI. So you

have now officially put the SR44 language into the FBI database, which brings them one step

closer to finding out that there are indeed fuckers from outer space living among the humans.”

Micah didn’t say anything, but took a long drink of his beer.

“And as you well know, the government doesn’t exactly throw out the welcome mat for

our kind.”

Noah sat back and took a pull of his Jack Daniels.

There was silence around the table, the tension once again high. Blake looked around for

Brandy, but didn’t see her.

“We thought we were killing Colonists,” Titus said. “Those humans did terrible things.”

Noah nodded.

“They’ve got their own crop of bad guys,” Rayner said.

“So how do you know who is a Colonist?” Jael asked.

“Ash. They drop ash when they’re in a heightened state. Humans can’t see it.”

There was a long beat of silence. “That makes finding Colonists almost impossible. They

could be anywhere,” Titus said.

“Bingo,” Hudson said, and Blake noticed that Titus was having an “aha” moment, as if

everything was coming into focus for the first time. Yep, that’s why it took so long for the

Saviors to find the Colonists.

Blake saw Brandy coming out of the corner of his eye and slugged back the rest of his

beer.

“Can I get you guys anything?” she said with a smile that could have lit up downtown