Kings of Chaos by Eva Ashwood
Knox
I don’t even breaka sweat as we dump the body that girl left in the alley in the trunk of my car and haul it out of town. Ash pouts the whole way there, but that’s Ash. He loves getting what he wants, and he definitely didn’t want to be stuck on corpse duty with me when he could be doing more fun stuff.
I don’t know what he’s so annoyed about, though. It’s just work. Easy work, too.
We head out to a spot in the middle of nowhere that I’m familiar with, all looming trees and craggy ditches.
“Well, this is a cheerful place,” Ash mutters under his breath, climbing out of the car when I kill the engine.
“Not supposed to be cheerful,” I tell him, even though I’m smiling. I pop the trunk and haul the body out, throwing it over my shoulder.
“You’re going to get blood on your shirt,” he comments, following behind me once I slam the trunk closed and start hoofing it into the trees.
The smell of damp dirt and mildewy leaves and pine is thick in my nose, and I don’t mind it. There’s something kind of peaceful about being out here in the middle of the night, handling business.
I’ve used this spot before, a little patch of woods off the highway enough that no one comes here unless it’s to do shady business. The pine needles, soggy leaves, and dirt cover the sound of our footsteps, and I can tell there’s no one else around.
It’s just the two of us and the trees and the holes in the ground. And our dead friend, I add mentally, bumping him higher up on my shoulder.
“It’s just a shirt,” I tell Ash over my other shoulder. “I’ve got a lot of shirts.”
I don’t need to be able to see him to know he’ll be rolling his eyes, crabby that his night has been ruined by some strange girl dusting off some strange dude in the alley behind our club.
“Let’s just make this quick, okay?” he says, and I shrug and hustle along.
I’ve always felt like I have some kind of sixth sense when it comes to where to bury a body. I’ve done it enough times that it’s not new, and there’s a certain kind of feel to the ground where you know it’ll be easy to break through the earth and dig a deep enough hole to bury the remains.
“Did you grab the stuff?” I ask Ash, dumping the body on the ground in a good spot with a huff.
“Yeah,” he replies, hefting a bag in one hand and a shovel in the other. “This isn’t my first rodeo. But it’s your kinda thing, so here.”
He hands over the bag and leans the shovel against a nearby tree. I take the accelerant out of the bag and start squeezing the bottle, squirting the nasty smelling liquid all over the body.
Ash wrinkles his nose and steps back, but the smell doesn’t bother me as much. Maybe I’m just used to it. It burns my nose, but it’s a familiar feeling, and I smile a little as I light a match and drop it onto the body, watching the flames catch and grow immediately.
The fire lights up the woods, making flickering lights dance off the trees, and I watch it like a kid staring into a fireplace ready to roast a marshmallow. There’s something beautiful about it, and about the way the fire eats through the body, leaving a pile of charred bones and ash behind in a dark spot on the ground.
I look over at Ash, who has his phone out, not interested in the show. Oh well. It always has been my kinda thing.
I grab the shovel and dig a hole deep enough that someone would really have to go digging to find what’s left of Mr. Nobody here, and then I shovel the remains and the dirt back into it.
It’s easy work. Honest work. My muscles get warm from the repetitive movement, and it makes me feel good and alive. I was right about the spot being perfect, since the dirt splits easily under the shovel, with no hard stone or solid rock to get in the way.
All told, it takes about half an hour, and when it’s done, I wipe my brow and smile with satisfaction, breathing in the cool night air that’s still scented with the aroma of char.
“Are we done here?” Ash asks, his voice cutting through the quiet of the night with that impatient edge he gets when he’s not doing something he thinks is worth his time.
“Yup,” I tell him, gathering the stuff back up and slinging the shovel over my shoulder. He watches and then shrugs, leading the way out of the woods and back to the car so we can head back to the city.
“You know, I had better things to do with my night than this,” he grumbles. His amber eyes gleam behind his glasses as he turns to look at me over his shoulder. “Much better things.”
“What’s better than this?” I ask him, grinning teasingly. “Spending time with your favorite person in the great outdoors. Sounds like a good night to me.”
He rolls his eyes. “I was supposed to have a fucking three-way with one of the dancers from the club and her twin sister.”
“Exciting,” I say, nodding along.
“Yeah, it fucking would’ve been. Have you seen this girl? She dances in the cages above the bar, and she’s fucking stacked. I mean, just gorgeous. Great tits, ass that won’t quit, long hair and sexy legs. She says her sister’s in even better shape than she is because she teaches yoga. You know what that means, Knox?”
“Bendy?”
He nods. “Bendy. In all the right ways. And there’s two of them, and they wanted to get it on tonight. I’d be there right now if it wasn’t for this bullshit. Gage finds a body and some girl in the alley and now I’m on body duty instead of getting my dick sucked by a girl who can probably put her legs behind her head.”
I don’t really see how that would make getting his dick sucked easier, but I don’t say that.
“Gage said it had to be done,” I tell him.
“Yeah, I know.”
“And I got put on body duty too.”
Ash snorts and rolls his eyes again. “Yeah, but you get off on this shit. You’d rather torture some poor idiot or burn a body than have a three-way with two sexy as fuck dancers anyway.”
I just laugh, not denying it.
I like sex, don’t get me wrong, but Ash has a point. I like this too. There’s something primal about death and pain. Something in it reminds me that I’m alive, but that I could die at any moment too. It keeps me on my toes and keeps me moving forward.
I got the nickname The Butcher of Seven Mile years ago, and there was definitely a reason for it.
We make it back to the car, and Ash pulls out his phone again, either texting Priest to complain about his night being ruined or trying to coordinate his three-way from a distance. Either way, I strap in and get us headed back to Detroit, turning on some low music to bop my head to while I drive.
I’m in a zen kind of mood after all that, the smell of the fire and the dirt still clinging to my clothes, reminding me of what I just did in a way I really like.
“Home or back to the club?” I ask Ash, looking over at him.
“The club,” he says, grinning now instead of the scowl he’s been wearing since Gage told us we had to take care of the random dead guy.
It’s so late it’s early by this point, but clearly his night isn’t completely ruined.
I give him a sarcastic little salute and drop him off out front, watching him get out and hustle his way inside, dragging fingers through his dark hair as he goes. He’s usually the best dressed out of all of us, the one who puts the most care into his appearance—not that the rest of us are slobs, we just don’t get into that shit the same way he does—and even after burying a body in the woods, he looks like he could’ve walked off the page of some men’s magazine.
I’m sure the ladies will be thrilled to see him.
Pulling away from the curb, I take myself back to the house the four of us share. We’ve been living together practically since we opened Sin and Salvation and went into business for ourselves, after deciding we weren’t going to get absorbed into any of the other gangs in Detroit. They came knocking, trying to recruit each of us for our various skills and connections, but we knew it was just them trying to control us in the end. So now it’s just the four of us, the Kings of Chaos, taking orders from nobody and doing only what we want, and I like it that way.
Priest and Gage are home, but the front room of the house is quiet when I get inside. Gage is probably in his room in planning mode, trying to decide what to do about all the shit we have breathing down our necks at the moment. This girl, Ivan St. James, the thing with the possible gun smuggling—which I still don’t think is that big a deal.
Priest is probably brooding somewhere, or staring off into the middle distance, which seems to be his favorite activity. I love the guy and would kill for him without question, but I don’t pretend to know what goes on in his head most of the time.
Everyone in the house has a place that’s kind of their space, their domain.
Mine is the basement.
It’s where I do all the dirty work that needs doing. Where I handle my business. Sometimes it’s as simple as hurting someone in the right way until they tell me what I want to know. Sometimes, they’re a lost cause and I have to eliminate them altogether. But it’s easy. All of my instruments are down there, the tools of my trade, and knowing Gage like I do, I know the girl we’re saddled with now is down there, too.
I don’t bother to change clothes before I head down the stairs. I want her to see the dirt and blood on me and to smell the scent of burned flesh, so she’ll know how serious we are. Intimidation is always important when it comes to negotiations, after all.
I half expect to see the girl huddled in the corner as far as her chains will let her go. Or for her to be ready to beg for release as soon as she sees me. It always depends when it comes to the people we keep locked up down here.
Some of them are already scared shitless when I show up, eyes wide and the scent of fear hanging on them like cologne. It doesn’t take much to make them start singing for me. And then there are the ones who come in stoic and close-mouthed. Who watch me with defiant eyes and set jaws. They take a little more work, but it’s never too hard to get them to open up in the end. Just takes the right touch.
From what Gage said about this girl, she’s probably the second type. If she wasn’t, she would have already told him what he wanted to know, and she’d be freed or dead by now. But she’s still here, enjoying our hospitality, so she must be stubborn.
I like the stubborn ones best.
They’re more fun, for one. And for another, it’s always interesting to try to figure out what makes them tick. So I’m curious about this girl, and I’m surprised to see her sleeping, head tipped back against the wall.
She must be out of it, because she doesn’t even stir when I step closer to her, looking her over.
Even in the dim light of the basement, she looks sexy as hell. Her dress has ridden up, showing off her long legs, smooth thighs, and tattoos, and there’s a lot of cleavage on display too. Her hair’s a mess, but the silvery color looks good on her.
There’s dried blood on the side of her face from where Gage hit her, and it catches my attention more than anything else. I step closer, breathing her in, and then lean in to drag my tongue up the side of her temple, licking the blood from her face.
It’s sharp and coppery, and I lick my lips, watching her face as she snaps awake with wild eyes.
She lunges, trying to bite me, and I grin, catching her jaw in one hand and pushing her head back against the wall with ease.
“Now that’s not nice,” I say in a teasing voice, grinning at her with her blood probably still staining my teeth a bit.
“What do you want?” she snaps, her dark blue eyes narrowed. She’s trying to get her calm back, but I can feel the way her heart hammers, making her pulse beat faster under my hand. It’s a dead giveaway that she’s startled, like a little deer in headlights.
“I’m just visiting,” I tell her.
“Are you here to interrogate me like the other two?” she asks. “Because I’ll give you the same thing I gave them. Jack shit.”
She’s feisty, and I grin wider. “No, not at the moment. If Gage decides that I should interrogate you, though, you won’t like it very much.”
I glance over to the side of the room where my cabinet and workbench are. The cabinet doors are shut now, but the inside is full of neatly arranged tools of torture. Everyone gives me shit for my bedroom being a mess, but I keep my tools neat and tidy, so that I can use them when I need them.
She follows my gaze and seems to get the point. Smart girl.
I expect there to be more fear, more anger, in her expression. Some kind of reaction I’m familiar with that goes along with how most people react when they realize the situation they’re in.
But instead she grins right back at me, feral around the edges.
“I’ve played this game before,” she tells me in a low voice. “I’ve been hurt before. I know you’re gonna kill me no matter what, so I’m not giving you what you want.”
Huh. Definitely not what I was expecting.
The look in her eyes tells me she’s not lying. She’s no stranger to being hurt, maybe even tortured, and she’s come through it well enough to be sitting here in front of me.
There’s something sexy about that. About her showing no fear. She thinks she’s not going to make it out of here, and she’s still not backing down, not showing her neck.
I use the hold on her chin to tip her head to one side, forcing her to show it to me anyway. It’s not the same, but there’s something satisfying about how much bigger I am than her, how easy she is to move physically, even if she won’t be moved to talk without more force.
“You’d be hard to crack, I bet,” I murmur, leaning in to let my voice drag over her skin like my eyes. “I’d have to use the special tools for you. Maybe make you beg for it first.”
“You could try,” she spits out. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
She throws the words in my face to try to shake my confidence, but I just grin back at her.
“I was wrong about you, little fox,” I say. “You’re tougher than I expected.”
There’s no deer in the headlights here. She’s a predator in her own right, but that still won’t help her here. My brothers and I are at the top of the food chain.
I tighten my fingers on her chin, letting her feel the strength there. “But you’re in the wolves’ den now. And little foxes don’t survive when they go up against wolves.”