On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) Page 3

  Zeus guided her to the bar stool farthest from the others and walked back to the grouping of men. He reached out and freed his black-hilted blade from Juarez’s chest. “This is also mine. I was nice enough to let you touch it, but like the woman, I’ll keep it.”

  “I’m going to kill you, you fucking—”

  Zeus punched Juarez where he’d been wounded, eliciting another shout of pain, then hit him square in the face, knocking the smaller man unconscious. Only Lynx’s supporting arm stopped him from falling to the wooden floor in an undignified heap.

  “Welcome to the Brood,” Terry said, sliding two filled shot glasses her way.

  To hell with that, she thought, tossing back the rum. Yes, she’d wanted to be a part of a family since losing her mother and sister, but this one was definitely not it. She was getting the hell out of Dodge as soon as humanly possible. She looked at Zeus, who had knelt to wipe his blade on Juarez’s pant leg. Sooner if she was able.

  “What’s happened?” Price asked from the opening of the metal door at the back of the room. His voice sounded weary as he passed a hand backward, then forward over his closely cropped head.

  Eyes wide with feigned innocence, Big Country and Coen pointed blaming fingers at Zeus. They seemed happy not to be the ones at fault, which let her know they probably got into their own fair share of trouble.

  “He threw his blade at Juarez again. He didn’t miss this time,” Coen said.

  “Had my own blade,” Zeus said rising. “And I didn’t miss the last time.”

  “You were supposed to leave your blades in your room, Zeus.”

  “I tried, but they stick to me like skin.” He responded with that strange Zeus smile. It quickly faded. Undiluted crazy. “You may not see it, but I’ll always have a blade on me, even if I have to pull one out of the crack of my ass to get it.”

  “Lord, let’s hope I never have to see that,” Coen muttered.

  “You know first aid?” Price asked Sabrina, apparently fed up with conversing with Zeus.

  There was no reason to lie. If they knew her name was Sabrina Samora, they probably knew everything about her since she’d resurrected herself in New Orleans. “Yeah, I was an EMT in another life.”

  “Big Country, bring Juarez down to the clean room. She can get cleaned up and take care of Juarez after.”

  “Uh-uh,” Zeus said.

  “Uh-uh what?”

  “She won’t be patching him up. Can’t touch him.”

  Price pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. “Why can’t she touch him?”

  “Because then I’d have to kill him, and for some reason you all seem to want him alive.”

  “I’ll patch him up, Boss,” Lynx offered. “Shouldn’t be long. I’ll meet up with everyone in the living room when I’m done.”

  Sabrina could see Price was fighting to hold on to his patience. She didn’t imagine it was a character trait that came naturally to him. Price gave everyone in the room a hard look and nodded. “Mama’s living room in fifteen minutes. Coen, take her to the bathroom so she can attend to herself.”

  Price frowned when the rest of the men looked at Zeus, fingers seeking the safeties on their weapons.

  She hopped off the bar stool. “Maybe Coen and Zeus can watch the door while I shower and change. Having the two of them would really make me feel a lot safer.”

  “Really?” Price looked at her as if the events of the night had cracked her egg clean through.

  No, not really, she wanted to scream. “Yes,” she said, glancing at Zeus, who watched her, eyes and face expressionless.

  Price shrugged and left in the direction he had come.

  “I’ll lock up the bar and meet you all downstairs,” Terry said, hitting a switch that made the dim lights in the front window of the bar go dark.

  Big Country and Lynx lifted Juarez and headed toward the metal door. “You know, you might want to refine your wooing skills, Hoss,” Big Country said to Zeus. “In my experience the ladies tend to run from violent men carrying weapons.”

  “You would know,” Lynx said, shifting Juarez’s deadweight.

  “Big Country’s experience only extends to prostitutes, so he’s in no position to give advice on ladies,” Coen said.

  “Ladies of the night.” Big Country grinned back at them.

  The two men maneuvered Juarez through the door, and Coen waved Sabrina forward, trailing behind them. Sabrina walked, then paused, looking back to see Zeus directly behind her. She frowned at him to mask her agitation.

  “Don’t run on me,” he warned. “Not unless you want to know what it feels like to get caught.”

  She barely maintained her composure as she followed Coen through the metal door and down a stairwell engulfed in a red haze of darkness. She felt like she was walking into hell with the devil at her back.

  At the bottom of the stairwell they reached a hard, glossy floor, possibly polished concrete or limestone. The walls of the hallway were a dove-gray color, and every five feet black flame-shaped sconces radiated red light. After about forty feet they came on another hallway that ran perpendicular to the one they’d walked down. Big Country and his group went right and disappeared through the first door they came upon. Coen veered left and stopped at the door there.

  “This is the bathroom, and that’s the cleanup room,” he said, pointing to the door the others had gone through. “In another life Lynx was a surgeon, so Juarez will be fine,” he assured Sabrina. “We have sleeping rooms, a kitchen, a weapons room, and a few other interesting areas. Down there”—he pointed farther down the hall to the left, where it dead-ended at another sturdy-looking metal door—“is Mama’s front room. That’s where we’ll all debrief.”

  Sabrina understood the roughly constructed bar above was simply a portal linking the mundane world with this surreal labyrinthine netherworld of killer-protectors.

  Coen opened the door to the bathroom. “Feel free to use whatever’s available.”

  As she crossed the threshold, a soft, golden light illuminated a bathroom suite swanky enough to be featured in Architectural Digest. She suspected it took a lot of money to make a place like this, especially inside a mountain. Who exactly were her rescuers? Did she really want to know the answer to that question?

  “Ten minutes, Sabrina,” Coen said. He glanced behind him. “For both our sake’s, bolt the door behind you.”

  Zeus leaned around the slight barrier of Coen and looked first inside the bathroom and then at her. She knew, by the lowering of his lids and the slight flaring of his nostrils, he was imagining her wet and naked, door bolted but with him inside with her. She wouldn’t contemplate what he would do thereafter.

  Forcefully she pushed the door shut when Zeus growled and took a step forward. It was as if Coen were nothing more than a ghostly apparition to step through. Once she’d gotten the door closed, she slid the bolt—an honest-to-goodness bolt—into place and expelled a gush of air from her lungs. If she stayed around him too long, she knew the man was going to drive her insane. Which was probably his intention.

  She sagged against the door, allowing her body to calm from the hyperarousal of imminent danger, and looked around the bathroom. This one room was almost as big as her studio and way more luxurious. It was like a spa room at one of those resorts she could never afford to go to. The walls were avocado green, the floors were limestone, and the cream claw-foot tub was huge, as well as the circular, glass-encased shower that had large showerheads that could spew water from front, back, and above. There was a sauna area and… What the hell did a bunch of testosterone-fed muscle need with all this luxury? She imagined they’d be more comfortable with a bucket of cold water and scouring pads.

  She pushed away from the door and headed for the changing area sectioned off by a planked wall of Brazilian wood. Inside there was a bench made with the same wood, upon which a pair of black loose yoga pants and a spaghetti-strapped T-shirt were folded next to a pair of black flip-flops. There was a bu
ilt-in closet, where four soft, thick white robes hung on one side and on the other was a four-shelved cabinet that held cream-colored towels of various sizes.

  Sabrina quickly undressed, dropping her bloody clothes in the large, white linen-lined wicker hamper, which already held Zeus’s bloody clothes and used towels. Grabbing both a large and small towel of her own, she streaked her naked ass over to the shower as if a treasure of gold waited for her inside. She turned the faucet and discovered the feel of the hot water was better than gold. This was heaven.

  She took her time cleaning her body and face, the water falling from above reminding her of those summer storms in Louisiana that drenched you in three minutes and then moved on. She wanted to dance and laugh out loud she felt so refreshed. It was as if her soul had, just for a few minutes, escaped the shields she’d reinforced around it.

  There was a loud banging at the door, and she jumped.

  Her time was up. A brief moment of heaven before having to trudge back through hell.

  She dried herself, taking special care to dry the moonstone pendant hanging from her neck, and tiptoed to the counter that held an assortment of male and female grooming items. She lotioned her body and pulled out a brand-new toothbrush still covered in thin plastic from a small glass container filled with new toothbrushes. As she brushed her teeth, she took a second to look at the bruising on her face. Though it looked raw as hell, her eye shouldn’t swell shut too much. She shrugged. She would heal. She might have a few more scars to show for it, but her body always healed.

  Dressed in the yoga pants and formfitting T-shirt, she unbolted the door and opened it. Zeus stood there, more overwhelming than the actual Greek god ever could have been.

  He reached out and ran his thumb over her exposed collarbone. She shuddered, not willing to explore if it was in fear, revulsion, or something else.

  “Missed a drop,” he said.

  She was sure she hadn’t. “Where’s Coen?”

  “Right here,” a voice said from the side. “He didn’t want me to see you, just in case you weren’t fully dressed.”

  “How…um, chivalrous.” It sounded crazy saying it, but what she had seen of Zeus so far, it was probably as close to the behavior as he was ever going to get.

  “I really want to fuck you,” he said, stepping forward and gripping her around the back of her neck. Her eyes grew big as she reached up to press back against Zeus’s chest. She tried to scream, but it came out as a strangled squawk.

  A click reverberated through the hallway, the sound of a safety coming off.

  Zeus’s eyes, his grasp, didn’t release her, but he stopped manhandling her. He tilted his head, taking in every detail of her face. His thumb caressed her jaw.

  He took a deep breath and sighed loudly as if greatly put-upon. “You’re right; you’re right, too soon.”

  And Coen withdrew the gun.

  Sabrina stepped away from Zeus, trembling from panic and then with rage. She hated the feeling of powerlessness, hated feeling trapped, hated admitting that on more than one level, this thing that called himself a man affected her. She was confused, and she wanted to cry. Real tears this time. She never cried real tears anymore. Doing the only thing she knew would make her feel better, she punched Zeus dead in the mouth.

  It hurt her hand, but she instantly felt better, especially when she saw blood trickle from his busted lip.

  Let’s see him try and force a kiss on her now.

  “Move,” she ordered as his tongue darted out and licked away the blood. He did that caricature of a smile and took two steps back. Coen, careful not to touch her, directed her in front of him and pointed her toward the door at the end of the hall.

  “I really want her,” Zeus said in a low tone as if conversing with the shadows of the hallway. “Can’t be normal to want something so much.”

  “As if he has any clue about what’s normal,” she muttered.

  “And you do?” His voice was flat. “I watched The Cosby Show. I recognize normal when I see it, and you ain’t it.”

  “Are you serious?” she yelled, turning. Coen blocked her from attacking the crazy man. “Is he fucking serious?”

  “Come on. Don’t let him drag you down into his madness.”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm the agitation. “I need another drink.” Her voice sounded tremulous, even to her own ears.

  “Bottle’s waiting for you on the other side of the door.”

  Coen looked up at a camera attached to the corner of the ceiling, and a soft buzz sounded. He reached around her and pushed the door open. “Go on in. Me and Zeus will be inside in a minute.”

  She nodded and walked into the space the others had called the living room without looking back.

  Chapter Two

  Zeus watched her until the door closed, then turned his gaze upon the other man.

  “Stop freaking her out with your psycho bullshit, Zeus. We need her rational. We need to understand what Kragen’s motives are for kidnapping her, figure out how she fits into his trip to the Bay Area. You’re making that job harder.”

  Zeus looked up at the camera, wondering who had eyes on them. Wondered if Sabrina was watching him. He liked the idea. Liked imagining her watching him, enjoying the opportunity to take him in at a distance, feeling safe in letting her eyes leisurely linger on all the places she yearned to touch.

  “Zeus.”

  He looked down at the man in front of him. Coen was a pest. Almost as bad as an unhappy old nun with his constant nagging.

  “I don’t give a shit about how hard things get for you,” Zeus clarified.

  “Yeah, I expect you don’t, but think about this: that woman you want so bad? Kragen hurt her. If he gets a chance, he’ll probably hurt her again, kill her even. Are you going to let your lack of control terrify her into silence, or are you going to work with us to keep what you claim as yours safe?”

  “She’s not like your spineless women, Coen. Not some terrified victim you need to lend a shoulder to cry on.”

  “Well, I think you’re both right,” Terry said as he walked down the hall toward them. “You’re definitely freaking her out, big guy, but this situation doesn’t seem to be putting her under too much duress.”

  “What, because she’s not falling down in a puddle of tears? She’s in shock, Terry. You more than all of us know how it affects people,” Coen said.

  “Sorry, but I don’t see shock. There’s some fear, yes, but upstairs I saw her think clearly and rationally enough to defuse a situation that could have quickly turned deadly. She looks us in the eye. Even him. She’s engaging, given the circumstances. She’s confident enough to ask for what she wants and lets you know what she doesn’t want. And she’s a liar. You feel a need to protect because she’s trying to act like a terrified victim. But it slips. It’s not consistent or seamless. She pretends to be passive, but she’s not good at it.”

  Listening to him, Zeus remembered something about Terry having been a specialist in criminal and victim behaviors. The man had verbalized what Zeus instinctively knew. Like him, the woman was a survivor. He was intelligent enough to know that for as long as he wanted to fuck her, he was obligated to keep her alive. After their business was done, Coen could play the dark knight all he wanted.

  Tired of standing around interacting with the two men, Zeus banged against the steel door a few inches away from Coen’s head, smiling inside when the other man flinched.

  The door buzzed, indicating the lock had been disengaged.

  Zeus pushed passed Coen and entered Mama’s living room. The space he immediately walked into was living roomish, he guessed. Nothing like the one in his cabin.

  There were a tan couch and love seat, two rocking chairs, and two plump recliners. The large red, tan, and brown patterned rug, probably Persian because that was the only rug he knew the name of, was enclosed by the seating. There were two small tables, one between the couch and love seat and another between the rocking ch
airs. There were vases, candles, and sconces—the names of which he’d learned about by watching some cable home decorating network. If he were to guess, he’d say the room would be described as inviting, warm, or homey. He’d describe it as a waste of fucking energy. He snorted, finding his wit humorous.

  “He surely is one mad bastard,” Big Country said as he and Lynx entered the room behind him.

  Zeus went to sit on the floor next to Sabrina’s legs, less than two inches of space separating them. On the other side of her, also seated on the love seat, was Almaya, the woman the others called Mama. The two women, drinking what smelled to be peppermint tea, could have been mother and daughter, aunt and niece. Similar noses, an upward tilt of the eyes, same brown skin tone. He looked down at the skin covering his hands and arms. His ancestry was a mystery to anyone who saw him. His skin was the palest golden bronze, his eyes were gray, his hair was a darker gold than his skin, and his facial features could have been found in people across many cultures. Wide, high cheekbones, hard angular jaw, strong nose. The nuns he had been left with said a half-French, half-Algerian woman had birthed him at St. Catherine’s Hôpital Pour Les Indigents in Marseilles thirty-eight years ago. He and his mother had moved to the convent area of the hospital when he was two days old. Eleven days later the woman named Zahira Sauvageau, born March 18, 1959, had abandoned the son she’d named Zeus—no last name. The only parental information he had on his birth certificate related to his father was his nationality. Greek. With the closure of the convent when he was nine, the nuns, still uncertain if he was a child of God or of the devil, brought the orphaned Zeus to their sister orphanage in America. Five years later, at the age of fourteen, he’d taken his leave from the place.

  Zeus continued to watch the two women, noting details. Sabrina wore her natural hair in a plethora of two-strand twists, while Almaya had dark locs sprinkled with gray, which fell to the small of her back. Almaya was short, no more than five-two, while Sabrina was taller, more muscled, built like a sprinter. He could feel the heat radiating off her. It was the only thing that lay in the space separating them and made some of the tension that always built when he was supposed to sit and interact with others dissipate.