Up In Flames (Club Chrome 3)

-2-

Angel tossed in a fevered state, unable to stop the downward slide into memories she’d long since buried. The chemical haze in her brain didn’t much care for her feelings on the matter. She was Tokoyo-drifting down Memory Lane and there was no stopping this mad ride so she might as well just give in and let it happen.

A cry escaped her dry lips as the pain — real as it ever was — sliced her heart.

Her older sister Ashley, more beautiful than Angel would ever be, lying with blood leaking from her battered mouth. The bruises, blooming like mottled roses across her face and body, told a gruesome story even if her sightless jade eyes couldn’t. Tears tracked down Angel’s face as she cautiously climbed out of the crawl space in the closet, the one place they hadn’t thought to look when they’d busted down the door and raided the place looking for Pyro. She knew without needing to check that her sister was dead but she dropped to her knees and shook her sister’s body in the wild hope that she was wrong. But Ashley’s head simply lolled in the muck of her sticky blood and it seemed her body was already cooling. “Nooooo, noo!” she cried, hugging herself, rocking in sheer terror and shock. “Ashley, you can’t be dead. You can’t!” Her gaze strayed to the tiny, rounded bump that was barely there and stuffed her knuckles in her mouth to stop the cry as she realized the baby was going to die, too. Angel stared at the bump and felt an indescribable anguish that she could do nothing to save her unborn niece or nephew because even if she called 911 this second, the baby would be dead before anyone could get there. Angel threw herself on Ashley’s body, hugging her tightly as tears mingled with the blood on Ashley’s shirt and she sobbed her heart out. Ashley had been all Angel had in this world and now she was gone. The door burst open and her first panicked thought was that whoever had killed Ashley was coming back to finish the job but it was Pyro. His gaze, glazed with horror, assessed the situation and within a heartbeat, yanked her to her feet.

“C’mon, we gotta get you out of here,” he said but she wasn’t about to leave Ashley like this. She dug her heels in and jerked her arm out of his grasp. “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted. “The cops are going to be here any minute. Do you know what’s going to happen to you if you stick around?”

She ignored his question to cry, “Where were you, Pyro? They came looking for you! If you’d been here—“

“Well, I wasn’t!” he cut in over the top of her with a roar and she held his stare, refusing to look away from that dark as pitch gaze, refusing to let him off the hook. She shook with shuddering tears as her grief threatened to bow her to the ground and for a nano-second he softened. “Listen, kid, she’s gone. There’s nothing we can do for her now but if we don’t get you out of here, there’s gonna be cops and lots of questions that you can’t answer, understand? Come with me and I’ll keep you safe.”

“You couldn’t keep Ashley safe,” Angel said dully, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I think I’ll take my chances with the cops.”

He swore under his breath just as the wail of sirens split the air. His tone impatient, he tried grabbing her but Angel turned into a spitting, cursing demon, scratching and clawing until he gave up. “Fuck it,” he growled, backing away. “You’re on your own kid.” With one final look at Ashley’s body, he bolted, shocking Angel. He’d truly left her. She hadn’t expected him to leave her like that. How could he leave Ashley? She’d been his girlfriend…the dead baby in her sister’s belly was his kid! Angel stared at the empty space around her and the shock turned to numbness as she lost all ability to think or act. Her only family member was dead, the guy who was supposed to protect them had bailed and she was completely alone in this world.

Get up, get moving. You can’t sit here and cry.

She didn’t know where the voice came from but it galvanized her shocked brain into shoving her body into action. She struggled to her feet and stumbled to her room, seeing the small bedroom through a stranger’s eyes. Twelve hours ago she’d been a typical teen, obsessed with hair and make-up, the latest boy band craze, and getting a date to the prom. Now? Survival was her highest priority. Pyro had been right about one thing, she couldn’t wait around. She couldn’t let the cops find her there. The last thing Ashley had said to her before she’d shoved her into that tiny crawl space was, “Don’t fucking trust the cops!” and then the sound of splintering wood followed as Ashley’s killers had broken down the door. Then the muffled screams. Her sister being beaten to death.

Angel dumped out the contents of her backpack, assorted text books and crap, thumped to the floor and then she filled the bag with the first things she could get her hands on, extra clothes, cash, and whatever else her panicked brain could latch onto, and then she bailed, careful to avoid the blood seeping into the carpet, and fled blindly into the night, not knowing where to go or who to trust.

Angel groaned as she returned to reality, the taste of something metallic in her mouth. She rolled to her side and gagged when she realized she’d bitten her tongue pretty hard and was bleeding. Pyro had left a glass of murky water on the battered and scarred coffee table, so considerate, and she gulped it down, the thirst in her body nothing the water could quench but she knew she was dangerously dehydrated. Sitting up, she managed to grab the glass and drag herself to the sink to refill the glass. Several glasses later, her stomach rebelled and she puked in the sink. Good God, kill me now, she thought in misery but she knew there wasn’t an option of just checking out. She had to deliver Pyro or else…she squeezed her eyes shut as a wave of panic and pain threatened to knock her on her ass again.

Please God, protect my baby. Don’t let them hurt her. Please.

***

Pyro didn’t know the first thing about being a care-giver but he figured the smart thing to do would be to buy some actual food to have in the house. He wasn’t entirely sure why he wasn’t driving Angel straight to the hospital and dumping her off there but he wasn’t. All he knew was that he couldn’t at least try to help her after everything the girl had been through. Girl? Hell, she was no girl no more. She was a fucking woman now and she looked enough like her sister to put his mind in strange places.

Ashley…

No, don’t go there. Don’t think of that time in your life.

Yeah, solid advice but when had he ever been smart about things? Never. He’d spend the rest of his life paying for what happened to Ashley and now, by the looks of things, what’d happened to her younger sister, Angel. She’d been such a good kid, from what he remembered. Good student, not a trouble-maker at all. He remembered all the boy band posters on her walls, the way she’d gotten all excited about stupid crap like new clothes and shit. Like most normal kids. Ashley had been doing a good job of picking up where their parents had left off when they’d been killed in a car accident years earlier. That was until Pyro had come into their lives. He’d first seen Ashley at this little dive bar he liked to frequent and she’d been the newest bartender. She’d been out of her element, just learning, and cute as hell. He’d zeroed in on her at the start. There’d been something sweet and vulnerable about her, which had drawn him in faster than if she’d been standing there naked. He’d been the worst kind of guy for a girl like her but he didn’t give a shit. He wanted her and he set out to have her.

Things had been great at first.

But the fact of the matter was…he was a shit boyfriend. He didn’t deserve someone like Ashley and hell, he was doing her a favor if he managed to chase her off with his bad behavior, right? That’s what he told himself anyway. But she didn’t leave him. No matter what he did, she wouldn’t leave.

He swore under his breath as he scrubbed at his eyes. But there was no amount of scrubbing that would erase the image burned into his brain of Ashley dead. Nope, that was his punishment for taking a sweet girl and introducing her to a world that she had no business being in.

And now there was her kid sister to deal with. Something he should’ve done years ago. He should’ve ignored Angel’s protests

and thrown her over his shoulder if need be, and dragged her from that apartment that night instead of just bailing like he had. He’d tried to find her but she’d disappeared into the wind and he’d had his hands full with tracking down Ashley’s killer so he’d figured Angel would be fine without him.

Apparently, he’d been dead fucking wrong on that score.

Chalk it up to the mountain of shit he’d been wrong about and call it a day, right?

A mirthless chuckle escaped his lips as he pushed open his front door to find Angel sacked out on the sofa, sprawled like a broken doll, her long hair trailing to the dirty floor, and her mouth slightly open as she slept like the dead, and he knew he had to help her. He owed it to Ashley.

Hell, he owed it to Angel.

Maybe this was his chance to make things slightly right in the books. Maybe he was fooling himself and there was nothing that could right that wrong but he couldn’t bring himself to piss on the chance. He just couldn’t. Even when a part of him was whispering that he was no one’s savior and he would be doing the girl a favor if he just dumped her off at the hospital and let them sort out her problems.

He sighed as he stared down at the woman. She was too thin. He could practically count her rib bones through her thin T-shirt. She moaned and whimpered in her sleep, scissoring her legs, drawing his attention to the vee of her thighs and something twanged inside of him, igniting a rusty feeling that he didn’t want nor appreciate. Goddamn, Pyro…you knew her when she was just a kid. Fucking, cool it.

He stalked away from her, going to the kitchen to put away the food, irritated with himself and the situation. Even if she wasn’t the kid sister of his dead girlfriend, she was a junkie and he didn’t fuck with that. No matter how hot they might look. He preferred girls who didn’t drop to their knees at the promise of a little fix. As messed up as Angel looked, he wouldn’t doubt she’d sucked someone off to get her drugs. Jesus H Christ, he braced himself against the countertop, hating that he was such a depraved asshole that his cock immediately stirred as if ready to stick it to her at any given moment. You did this to yourself, he wanted to growl. He’d been the one to cut off sex with a self-imposed celibacy. Sex…it was his Achilles heel. Maybe if he’d just given in to the urge now and then he wouldn’t be white-knuckling the desire to give into his baser instinct. Pushing away from the counter, he grabbed a pot and tossed the contents of a soup can into it. He figured she needed something in her gut to counteract whatever havoc was going on in her body so what was better than a can of soup, right? From what he vaguely remember from his shitty childhood, soup was a cure-all. His granny used to give him soup when he was sick or feeling puny. She’d been the one bright spot in his life. Too bad she’d kicked the bucket before he’d turned ten. Maybe if she’d lived…he wouldn’t have turned out as twisted and wrong as he was now.

Within a few moments the soup was bubbling and he served up a steaming bowl, dumping a few crackers into it as well, turning it into “soup surprise.” He carried the bowl over to Angel and after setting it down on the coffee table to cool, he gently nudged her awake. Her eyes opened sluggishly as if he were holding her underwater and with his help, she struggled to a sitting position. Her hair hung in lank clumps and he wondered when she’d showered last. Dark smudges ringed her green eyes and he was momentarily shocked at how different the girl was from the woman. Time had melted the baby fat from her face, leaving behind an angular jaw and a long, lean neck like a dancer’s and everything about her seemed fragile. What happened to you, kid? He wanted to ask but a part of him was afraid to know. Some things had the power to stick to your brain and he had enough shit sticking to him. Besides, what did it matter? The hows and whys of things never changed the reality of the moment so who cared about the back story, right?

“You need to eat,” he said gruffly as she struggled to sit up. She winced as if every bone ached and her skin was on fire, which from what he knew about drug detox, it probably was. She reached for the bowl with shaking fingers and he knew if she tried to hold the bowl by herself, it would land in her lap. He stopped her with a curt, “Wait, I’ll do it. You don’t look strong enough to hold a spoon much less the soup bowl.”

She shot him a cranky look but he let it slide. By all accounts she was having a pretty bad day, so he could give her that one. He withheld a sigh as he served up a spoonful and held it to her lips. She drank it down and nodded with a rusty, “It’s good,” and he grunted in return.

“It’s stuff out of a can,” he said, not looking for praise. “Try to eat as much as you can.”

She nodded and he fed her about half before she pushed the spoon away. “I can’t eat any more.”

“When was the last time you ate a real meal?” he asked.”

“A few days,” she mumbled but he was willing to guess it was longer than that. She risked a short glance his way before adding, “Thanks for the soup.”

“Don’t get all sappy on me; it’s not an engagement,” he said and immediately wished he’d just kept his mouth shut. But it was out there and couldn’t take it back so move on. “Listen, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings but you smell like you’ve been dragged behind a dumpster and left there to die. Are you strong enough to shower on your own?”

“Don’t sugar coat it for me,” she said with a sour smirk, her tone raspy. “Tell me some more how I look and smell like shit.”

He shrugged. “You came to the wrong place if you came for pretty words and flowers on your birthday. That’s not my style.”

She swallowed and looked away. “I remember.”

The small statement stabbed him in the heart. “Yeah, I bet you do,” he said, regret heavy in his voice even if he tried to hide it. “Hey, uh, I don’t know what you’re looking for but I’m sure I’m not the right person, you know? It’s obvious you’re in some kind of trouble…is it a pimp? I know some people…they can take care of that problem for you if that’s what you need.”

Angel leaned back and closed her eyes. “I’m not a whore but thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“C’mon, cut me some slack,” he said, flustered. “You come to me all drugged up and what am I supposed to believe? Girls who look like you…they end up on the streets and then the streets find them, you know? I’m not making a judgment, just stating what I see as facts. Do you need help or not?”

Angel’s jaw hardened and her mouth compressed as if she were holding back her answer and everything about her vibrated with raw anger but she didn’t come back with hot words. Just a single tear snaking down her cheek and a short nod that spoke volumes.

It was the tear that killed him. This girl didn’t want his help — but she needed it.

He was all she had. He knew it. And it was a wispy connection at best but it clung to him like spider webbing. He was responsible for her sister’s death. Did it matter that he’d killed the dirty cop who’d busted up Ashley? No. Street justice wouldn’t bring Ashley back. Wouldn’t change the fact that his baby died that night, too. And certainly wouldn’t change the fact that Angel’s life was, apparently, irrevocably fucked, too.

“What kind of trouble are you in?” he asked again.

She opened her eyes and held his gaze. Her eyes, red-rimmed and glazed, still had the power to knock a man back. She and her sister both had such exotic eyes, like somewhere along their DNA chain was some Creole blood that popped out of nowhere to gift them both with such beautiful peepers. “If I were to ask you to help me shower, would you?” she asked, shocking him.

Truthfully? He didn’t want to help her in the shower. He didn’t trust himself. Not right now. He was a worthless son-of-a-bitch if he couldn’t be a decent human being and shut off his perverted brain for two seconds but it was the truth. He was like a starving dog, pacing and growling at the sight of food and in this case, even as skinny and obviously messed up as Angel was, there was something about her that was twisting rusty gears that he simply couldn’t trust or even understand. He liked women with meat on t

heir bones, nice fat tits and round, thick thighs with a fat ass you can grab onto with both hands. So what the fuck was he doing getting hard at the idea of stripping Angel bare? He shook himself and rose, taking the bowl with him. “That’s not a good idea,” he answered. “I’m not cut out to be a nurse. I can take you to the hospital if that’s what you need.”

“I can’t go to the hospital.”

“Why not?”

“Because hospitals ask questions that I can’t afford to answer.”

“Which brings us back to my original question…what kind of trouble are you in?” He walked back to her. “Someone after you?” She nodded in answer but didn’t give details. Frustration laced his tone as he prompted, “Well? I need a little more than that. Who’s after you? I can’t help if you don’t talk.”

“I need a shower. Can you please just help me into the bathroom? I can handle it from there.”

“You aren’t going to answer me?”

“Will you help me or not?”

“Damn girl, you’re testing my patience.” But she seemed neither moved nor frightened by the dark look he was sending her. Maybe her brain was shorted out from all the drugs and malnutrition. He swore under his breath. “Fine,” he bit out, unable to believe he was going to do this. “I’ll help you to the bathroom but you’re on your own from there.”

A weak smile curved her lips and she accepted his hand as he hauled her up from the sofa. She wavered but he caught her elbow to steady her. They walked slowly to the bathroom and he didn’t know how she thought she was going to handle things on her own but he wasn’t about to offer more. Once they reached the bathroom door, he released her cautiously and stepped away, half-expecting her to crumple like wadded up newspaper thrown on the tile but she remained upright. “Thank you,” she said and then disappeared behind the door.

It wasn’t until she closed the door that he let out his breath. Hell, he wasn’t cut out for this Nightingale shit.