Sex & Mayhem 02 The Devil's Ride (46 page)

Tooth choked and hid his face in his hands. And now
Luci was gone too? Had the bastards laid their hands on him? Had
they cut him open already? Panic was rushing through Tooth’s veins,
and he couldn’t stop his feet from trembling. “What do you mean you
can’t reach him? Why isn’t he here?”

“He… I don’t know really. We just can’t,” she
muttered.

Before Tooth could ask another question, Priest
barged into the room. “Fuck. You’re up. Good.” There wasn’t a hint
of sadness in his voice, but Tooth could swear his face
had aged ten years.

He was being selfish to only think of Luci when his
family was so clearly hurting. “I’m so fucking sorry about Bell.
The fucker opened fire without any warning.” He let out a strangled
breath, lowering his head.

“We need to get the motherfucker who shot him. We
already did a check on him, and he was using a fake name. Only
worked in the Vanilla for a while.”

“What about Luci?” Tooth bit his lip. “The fucker
was expecting the boy, and he came carrying a gun!”

“Luci’s somewhere in the hospital. I told him to
stay put. You want me to call him?” Priest’s tone was as dead and
steady as a rock.

Tooth exhaled with a quick nod and fell to the
bed. His body was aching, the pain
spreading down his leg, but when he focused on
different parts of his body, he managed to push it to the
background, even if just for a while. It would be okay. Priest
stood there with his phone on speaker mode, and every unanswered
ring was making Tooth more anxious. Voice mail.

“You’ve reached Lucifer, son of Satan, please leave
a message,” pronounced Luci’s cheerful voice.

“Fuck!” He hit the pillow, already imagining Luci
being dragged through some dirty corridor to an impromptu operating
room where all his insides would be removed, leaving behind an
empty shell.

“He must be grieving,” Asty offered, covering under
a blanket. “There’s different… stuff happens.”

“No, he is in danger. We need to get to him first.”
Tooth was close to hyperventilating, hurt and stuck to the damn
hospital bed. The beeping sound picked up its pace.

“He must be somewhere in the hospital. We need to
find Rick Harris, or whatever the fuck his name is, before he
disappears.”

“Is he really in danger?”

Tooth glanced at Astaroth, who looked
at a pen she was playing with.
A cool pressure appeared at the base of his spine. “Yeah, he
is.”

She scowled and curled her shoulders as Priest
rushed over, exasperated.

“You know something?”

“
I don’t know… maybe,” she said with a long sigh.
“I saw
Mom take his cat.
She said Luci couldn’t take it all. That he wanted to go away and
Mom helped him out. I don’t know why. She’s… out of it. I get
it.”

Tooth stared at her, and if she were a guy, he’d
probably punch her. So she
did
know what was going on.

Priest seemed equally perplexed. “She did
what
?”

“
We need to find him now!” Tooth grabbed the
covers. Maybe Luci would pick up the call if it were from
him?
“Where’s my fucking
phone?”

Astaroth swallowed and tapped something on her
phone. “I’m calling you,” she said
.

After a moment, the ringing came from the
window.

“Asty, what did your mother do?” Priest growled.
“I’ve got enough of this shit!” He turned around and punched the
wall over and over again.

She flinched. “I don’t know... I was... it was after
she told me about Bell... I just don’t know...” Her voice broke,
face becoming tense, but she didn’t spill any tears.

Tooth stared at Priest. “Call her.”

Priest turned around with his face red. “No! First
you fucking tell me what Rick wanted from Luci!”

Tooth exhaled, tensing his jaw. He could have
explained it in detail, but what mattered now was speed. “Organ
trade, apparently,” he uttered, squeezing his hands into
fists.
“With what he did
today, it seems legit.”

Priest’s eyes went wide. “Jesus, fucking Christ!”
He got his cell phone and seconds later, he screamed into it.
“Dolly! Where the fuck is Lucifer? And don’t bullshit me or this is
fucking
it
, you hear me?
What the fuck are you doing? You wanna kill me?”

Asty dared looking up at Tooth. “I’m sorry. I never
thought… I just… I understood that he might have wanted time away.
Mom said he asked for a lift to the bus station.”

Tooth switched off the alarm in the heart monitor
and pulled on a few of the cables to rip them off his chest,
flinching when they unglued themselves. The monitor flatlined, but
Tooth
had already
slipped his legs off the bed, staring down at the silly green
costume the staff put him in. The moment he got up, his back broke
out in goose bumps where it was uncovered. “We need to go to the
station,” he rasped. “No, send the guys. And ask Dolly which bus
station she took Luci to.”

“We know you took him. Which station did you take
him to?” Priest groaned and hit the wall again. “I don’t care if he
wanted to go!”

“
Damn right,” growled Tooth, staring at the IV
connected to the inner side of his elbow. He slowly removed
the
Band-Aid and gently
pulled out the needle. Holding a thumb to the small wound, he made
his way toward the window, where someone had folded his clothes
into a neat pile. Had it been Luci? The boy would fold his clothes
like that all the time.

Astaroth rose from her seat and got to her toes when
she reached Priest. “Mom, please, tell them. It’s not right, he’s
my brother!”

Priest listened for a moment before turning the call
off. “She told me which station she left him at, but she says she
doesn’t know which bus he took after that.”

Asty took a deep breath. “I just can’t believe he
would leave like that. He’s my only brother now,” she whimpered and
wrapped her arms around Priest’s chest.

He looked equally lost and bit his lip, scooping his
daughter into his arms. “I know, I know.” His eyes met Tooth’s, and
for a moment, they stayed silent before Tooth picked up his shirt.
“You sure you good to go? You just had surgery.”

“They said it’s nothing serious, didn’t they? You’ll
just take me by car,” said Tooth, gritting his teeth when a twist
of his body made the wound sting.

Priest took a shuddery breath
. “Are you all right to stay on your own,
Asty? Or do you want one of the guys to join you?”

“I’ll be fine. Just convince him to come home,” she
said and backed away, tipping her head back with watering eyes.

Priest groaned when Tooth leaned down to pull on his
briefs. “Asti face away, yeah? There’s nothing for you to see.”

Tooth rolled his eyes, squeezing a whimper as his
bent body screamed for him to stop moving. He fought through and
donned his pants as well, happy to hide his ass from view.

They only started talking again when they walked
out of the room after a quick good
-bye with Astaroth.

“You have any idea where he might have gone?” Priest
asked with a face as still as if it were carved in stone. Tooth
could only imagine the rage and sorrow he had to be going through
after losing his son, yet having no time to grieve with the other
one in danger. “Or do you know anything more about this Rick? You
think it was the same people who assaulted Suzy?”

Tooth sighed, turning his face away every time he
was walking past someone from hospital staff. The jacket hid his
shirt well enough, and people were usually not all that eager to
look straight into a biker’s face anyway. His absence would be
noticed only after
they
were gone.

He bit the inner side of his cheek in an attempt to
stifle the pain and walk normally. If the stitches broke, he’d be
fucked.

“Yeah, there’s reasons to suspect that. And no, I
don’t know anything about Rick, even if it’s his real name.”

“Tooth. The other question.” Priest snapped his
fingers in front of Tooth’s face. “Where could Luci go? You guys
twiddle twaddle all the time. We need to find him. And then kill
the motherfuckers who want to hurt him,” he growled as they walked
out of the hospital.

Tooth’s breath rasped, his mind too full of images
of Luci on an operating table to think straight. But the answer to
that question came to him right away. “California. He said he’d
like to see
LA.” He
stared at Priest, wide-eyed. “He’s your son. We need to find
him.”

All he got from Priest was a stare so tense he
didn’t want to ask. A man who just lost a son wouldn’t want to lose
another. Tooth couldn’t remember a drive ever feeling so long. He
was lucky the car had good
suspension, but each time they hit even the smallest bump,
Tooth was feeling growing discomfort, and he pressed one hand
against his injured side in an attempt to stop the flesh from
shaking. He resented each flash of discomfort as it was taking his
mind of what it needed to be focused on—Luci. The boy could be
anywhere. Rick could have contact to people dealing with face
recognition in city monitoring. He could have found Luci already.
He could have drugged him and cut out his heart.

Tooth was hitting his fist on his thigh as he
spoke on the phone, mobilizing all their resources. Within twenty
minutes, they knew the route of the bus to Chicago, Luci’s most
probable transfer station,
and it had already left. But was it the one Luci took?
Tooth had Blitz go to the station to ask around, and it turned out
one of the cashiers had sold him the ticket, but so far, he’d found
no one who saw Luci boarding. Tooth’s flesh itched as if the seat
were spiked with tiny needles. He wanted to know what was going on,
but Luci didn’t even answer
his
calls. And somewhere beneath the utter dread of the boy
dying, there was a dull pressure deep in his chest. Why was Luci
doing this to him after opening up his chest with his pretty
long-fingered hands? Would he just leave him now? Just like
that?

He hated that they needed to gather somewhere,
which meant stopping at a truck stop just to have everyone join
them. Each second was tugging on Tooth’s veins, twisting and
turning every time the seconds hand on his watch moved. And to make
matters worse, for some reason the tracking website wasn’t working
properly and kept giving him errors. Every negative response made
Tooth want to throw his smartphone out
of the window. But as much as he thought of Luci,
as much as he tried not to make it all about himself, a small, but
mighty voice inside of him whispered with glee that he’d found
Tracy’s murderers, and that he wasn’t far away from showing the
rest of them a world of pain comparable to what he had done to
Harlow. Every time Tooth’s thoughts drifted off to pulling Rick’s
teeth instead of wondering if Luci was safe, guilt washed over him
and threatened to rub his skin raw. He needed to care about the boy
who was still alive, not avenging the one who would never come
back.

At least Ghost came as one of the first and checked
Tooth’s wound.

The guys eventually joined them, and the whole
club rushed to follow the elusive bus. Tooth bit his mouth shut and
stared ahead, letting Priest handle the car and everything else.
The flesh in his side was burned raw by the bullet and surgical
instruments, and the farther they went, the more of his mind was
consumed by the dull ache.
The meds had to be wearing off so he rummaged through
Priest’s glove compartment and stole some of his painkillers. It
had to do.

He looked at his brothers on bikes with a deep
longing. In the car, he felt incapacitated, useless, and what’s
worse, the thought of his Harley only reminded him of how
Luci
had scrubbed it
clean. He had looked up at Tooth with such a wide smile, so proud
of himself. Luci was always so full of energy, always so tidy and
caring. Was he so traumatized that he decided to leave? To not have
anything to do with the lifestyle Tooth led? What would Tooth do if
that was the case? He couldn’t leave his brothers, but even his
chosen family couldn’t stifle the hurt of knowing Luci left him
behind without a word.

At one point, they were almost ecstatic to have
caught up, but the bus they
caught up with turned out to be a false alarm. Tooth wanted
to howl, but all they could do was drive on. Every bus was a false
promise until they got close enough, but when they caught up to
another bus, Tooth was close to leaning forward, his heart thudding
in his chest. Would Luci be there? Still in the chain and padlock
Tooth put on him? One of the guys sped up to look at the bus’s
destination, and seconds later, he gave them all a wave.

Blood drained from Tooth’s face, making it tingle.
“Fuck. This is it. Get it.”

Priest waved back at the men, probably just as
annoyed at being locked in the car as Tooth. They watched the bikes
swarm the bus. Some passed by it, some drove on both sides, and as
they followed on the empty road, Priest caught up with the
bus
so they could see
the driver.

“Tell him to stop,” he said to Tooth.

Tooth opened his window with a button and looked
out, gesturing to the driver, whose face was a mixture of panic and
shock. “Stop,” he called out, raising his hands in a well-known
gesture. Was Luci there? He couldn’t see him in any of the
windows.