Crash by Jeanne St. James
Blood & Bones: Ozzy (Unedited)
Prologue
The Bitter End
Tommy adjustedthe heavy backpack full of textbooks over his shoulder. He was late. If she caught him, his mom would be pissed.
But he’d gotten good at sneaking into his room late at night.
He’d stayed at the arcade until management locked the doors and turned off the lights, forcing him and his friends to leave. He’d had his best bud Jon drop him off at the corner, so his rusty piece of shit Chevy with the hole in the muffler wouldn’t wake up his mother, giving it away he was out past curfew.
Last time he was caught, he was grounded for a month.
But if he got caught tonight, it would’ve been worth it. His badass initials, TKO, were now sitting at the number one spot on the high scores list for Galaga, his favorite arcade game.
His goal was to one day make it all the way to level 255. The final level.
One day…
It hadn’t been tonight and it might take a while to get there, but he was still happy about taking the number one spot from the cocky senior who had held it for months. Now he just needed to do his best to stay there.
He’d spent a small fortune to get that good. His mom thought he was saving up to buy a used car for when he turned sixteen next year. Once he got one, she wanted him to get a job and help her out since, even though she worked hard, she was always behind in her bills.
Yeah, if she found out he’d spent his whole allowance tonight—even though it wasn’t much—plus the money Mr. Johnson paid him for mowing his lawn this week, she’d be pissed.
He grimaced.
He’d rather get a video game console for at home, but she’d never let him spend his money on that, a reason he kept going to the arcade instead of where he was supposed to be: at his classmate Tim’s studying for tomorrow’s test.
He didn’t give a crap about school. He only wanted to hang with his buds and destroy their asses at Galaga. And, of course, see his initials at the top of the screen.
He grinned.
He stopped short on the dark sidewalk in front of Mr. Johnson’s house, which was three houses down from where Tommy and his mother lived.
The lots in their neighborhood were tiny and the houses seemed even smaller, so he could clearly see the motorcycle parked at the curb up ahead even though the street lamp had burned out a long time ago. The moon was bright enough tonight to reflect off the chrome on that bastard’s bike.
The corner of his lip curled up. He hated that fucker.
He didn’t know what his mom saw in him. All he did was drink, curse, smoke and smack her around.
He had a stupid name, too.
Fender.
How dumb was that? Who thought that name was cool?
No one. When he told his friends what it was, they all fell over laughing.
That stupid name was even embroidered onto a patch on that stinky, filthy leather vest he wore.
The one that had big patches on the back. The patches that made him think he was tough. A badass.
He wasn’t.
He was just an asshole.
His “road name” was just as stupid as the name on the back.
Deadly Demons MC.
He wished his father would get out of prison and kick that asshole from West Virginia out of his mom’s bed and out the door. Tommy was now big enough he could help him.
But his mom said his dad was never getting out. He would die in there before he’d ever be done serving his time.
She stopped visiting him a few years ago. She’d given up on her husband and told Tommy to do the same.
All because of a mistake Thomas Oswald, Sr., made. A mistake his dad couldn’t fix. Or take back.
A robbery gone wrong. A big house in a gated community broken into.
It was supposed to be a quick and easy job, that was what his dad’s buddy said.
It was anything but.
Two responding cops ended up shot in the head as his dad and his buddy tried to escape, did their best not to get caught.
Tommy wasn’t sure if it was his dad who even pulled the trigger.
Didn’t matter.
His dad had done something stupid and now had to pay for it. But then, Tommy was now paying the price, too, since he had to deal with assholes like Fender banging his mom and sitting at the kitchen table in his dingy tighty whities while scratching his low-hanging balls, belching loudly like the pig he was as his mother made the asshole food he didn’t help pay for.
The dirty asshole biker also never helped with the bills. When Tommy said something to him one night about that, Fender told him he paid his mom in dick. And that he only stopped in and stayed overnight once a week when he was in the area.
Seeing that motorcycle right outside their house tonight meant that Fender must have made his weekly “deposit.”
Tommy’s fingers tightened on the strap of his backpack and he set his jaw. He took long strides over to the bike backed against the curb and stared at it for a long moment. Hating it almost as much as he hated Fender.
He glanced over his shoulder back at the house to make sure no one was watching, then sucked snot up through his nasal passages until he had a big, thick hocker on his tongue. Then he spat the wad on the center of the seat.
Nah. That wasn’t good enough.
He shot another quick glance over his shoulder, then balanced his weight on his left leg, lifted his right foot and kicked the bike over.
He cringed at the noise made by the falling bike hitting the pavement. He quickly scrambled up the tiny front yard and hid in the dark shadows. Just in case Fender came out to investigate the noise.
But knowing that fat drunk, he was probably already passed out with a beer still in his hand in what used to be his father’s recliner.
Tommy should go in and spit a hocker right on the asshole’s face.
He waited in the dark for a few more minutes and, when Fender didn’t come rushing out of the house—bellowing like he normally did—Tommy snuck around to the window he’d left unlocked.
He had a small wooden box hidden behind a bush that he used to climb in through his bedroom window. He slowly worked the window up and carefully climbed in, trying not to make too much noise.
After pushing off the window sill, he landed softly on his feet and tucked his backpack into the corner of his dark room. He could hear the TV blaring in the living room as he toed off his sneakers, stripped off his jeans and tugged on pajama bottoms. Ones that were now snug since he had grown a lot since he mom bought them a couple of years ago.
He slapped a hand against his stomach when it growled loudly.
Maybe he could sneak into the kitchen, dig up something to eat and then sneak it back to his room without dealing with the drunk dick.
He put his ear to his closed door, held his breath and listened for one heartbeat. Then a second.
Nothing could be heard except the drone of the TV. His mom probably went to bed a while ago since she had head to work early in the morning.
He tiptoed down the dark hallway, and frowned when he noticed his mother’s bedroom door partway open and her bed messy but empty.
She probably fell asleep on the couch again. At least now if she woke up and saw him, she would see him dressed for bed. He could pretend he’d been in his room doing his homework.
At the end of the short hall, he peeked around the corner into the living room.
Empty.
His eyebrows pinned together and he twisted his head to look into the kitchen. Or at least the part he could see, which wasn’t much from where he stood.
His heart was pounding because he was worried the drunk asshole would come around the corner at any minute and be his typical beligerant self.
Tommy listened for a few more seconds and, even though the overhead light was on, he heard no movement in the kitchen.
Where were they?
Not in the bedroom, not in the living room, and the kitchen was quiet. When he passed by the bathroom, it had been dark and the door open, too.
Were they out back smoking?
That was possible. But since when did that fat, stinky drunk bother to get his ass out of the chair to go smoke?
Never, the lazy fucker.
He crept toward the kitchen, peeked his head around the doorway and froze.
He blinked.
Blinked again.
He blinked once more to try to clear his vision.
He had to be seeing things.
Because there was no way he was seeing what he saw.
It couldn’t be.
He was tired and his mind must be playing tricks on him.
That was not his mother.
It couldn’t be.
It didn’t even look like her.
Maybe it was one of her friends.
It couldn’t be. She had no friends.
Maybe it was someone Fender invited over.
Yeah, that was it.
A stranger.
A stranger.
It had to be a stranger.
Someone he didn’t know.
Someone he didn’t recognize.
She had borrowed his mother’s clothes, that was all.
But there was no way that was his mother.
It couldn’t be.
He closed his eyes, ground the heels of his palms into them, then opened them again.
Whoever it was was lying on her back in a large pool of dark blood. His mom would have a difficult time cleaning that blood out of her clothes. She might have to throw them away.
Why would she let this lady borrow her clothes? Why would she let this lady into their house?
Where was his mother?
Tommy turned his head enough to check out Fender who was passed out at and on the kitchen table. A bloody gun sat in front of him. The fingers on his left hand looked as if they’d been dipped in red paint.
His cheek was resting on the table but Tommy could see the blood splatter on his face, over his torn T-shirt and that leather vest he always wore.
But he wasn’t wearing the vest. It was spread open on the table patches up. A big bloody X had been drawn in blood over those patches. On purpose. It was a message. A warning.
It didn’t matter. None of that mattered to Tommy. He didn’t give a shit about the whose mouth was gaped open and eyes were closed. Fender’s forehead was also bloody from something being cut into his skin.
The woman on the floor also had a bloody gaped open mouth. Her eyes weren’t closed, though.
Her teeth had been broken out and some were scattered on the floor like frozen kernels of corn. Her right temple was crushed in, smashed hard enough to pop out her eyeball. The one still in her head stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. The right one, hanging by a tendon, stared directly at Tommy.
He knew the color of those eyes.
Gray, the same as his.
It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be.
But he needed to be sure it wasn’t her. That it was someone else like he first thought. Someone who looked like her, had the same color eyes, the same color hair, who wore the same type of clothes.
Because it couldn’t be.
He moved closer, not caring that the blood on the floor soaked his socks all the way to his skin.
Not caring that the kitchen smelled really bad. A stink that twisted his stomach enough that he had to take shallow breaths through his mouth.
Not caring that the drunk douchebag still sat within arm’s reach at the kitchen table.
Tommy stopped near the hand extended out from her beaten body, took another shallow breath and looked down.
He was afraid to touch her.
To move her.
To shake her to see if she was still alive.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t.
Because this couldn’t be right.
This couldn’t be real.
If he touched her, it would become real.
Deep inside him something stirred, built. A pressure.
Like when dropping a bottle of soda.
And then someone twisting open the cap…
He screamed, “I told you he would fucking do this to you! I told,” he hiccup-sobbed, “you!”
He couldn’t stop himself from falling hard to his knees, right in the thick puddle of blood. Like his now sodden socks, the blood soaked the cotton at his knees, but he didn’t care.
He didn’t care.
None of it mattered.
Nothing mattered.
He squeezed his eyes shut but that didn’t change what he saw. He saw the same, whether his eyes were opened or closed.
A sight he would never forget.
A sight now seared into his brain.
Like the blood on his mother’s clothes, he’d never be able to scrub that memory clean.
Fingers ripped at his hair as a high-pitched wail filled the space around him.
He opened his eyes, thinking Fender had come to.
But he didn’t.
It was his own fingers pulling at his hair, his own screams filling his ears.
He couldn’t stop it.
He couldn’t.
The ache inside him was so awful, he thought he would die.
He folded in half until his forehead almost touched the floor, trying to ease the pain, but it didn’t help.
Nothing did.
The only thing that would was if his mother woke up, reached for him and smiled, telling him everything was okay.
Brush his hair off his forehead and tell him he’d only had a bad nightmare.
Because it couldn’t be anything else.
“Mom,” came out on another broken sob. He grabbed her shoulder and shook it. His mother was cold. Stiff.
Gone.
She was gone.
Her body empty.
This wasn’t a nightmare. It was reality.
He sobbed so hard he could hardly catch his breath.
It made his head ache, his stomach clench painfully and snot slide from his nose.
But he didn’t care.
He wanted to die, too.
He had no one left.
No one.
Everybody was gone.
A noise had him sitting up and turning his head toward the bloody kitchen table.
He was still alive.
The fucker was still alive.
Tommy managed to get to his feet and moved closer. He nudged the chair with his bloody foot and heard a weak groan coming from the “badass” who was now anything but. “Why’d you do this?” He tried to scream it but it got caught in his throat.
When he didn’t get an answer, Tommy yanked Fender’s head up by his hair, trying to make out the word carved into his forehead. Narrow slashes from a knife. He could barely make it out because of the seeping blood but he thought it spelled out “THIEF.”
No surprise.
He glanced down. Fender’s right hand was in his lap, still bleeding profusely. It was missing all of his fingers.
Some of the blood on the floor might not only be his mother’s. It was probably his, too. It should be all his. All of it.
The fucker was alive, but barely.
“Why’d you do this?” he finally screamed, wanting answers. Needing answers.
“Not… me.”
Yes, it was him. This was all Fender’s fault. He caused this. Because of who he was, what he did.
“Who did this?” Tommy demanded.
When he didn’t get an answer, Tommy yanked his head up higher. He screamed in his face, “Who did this? I’m not getting you help ’til you tell me!” He forced down the sob trying to escape.
“Blood Fury,” Fender barely got out.
What the hell was he talking about? Was he delirious from the blood loss?
Tommy shook his head, not understanding.
“Blood Fury.”
What the hell was Blood Fury? “Is that another MC full of losers like you?”
Once again, Tommy didn’t get an answer to his question, instead Fender managed to say, “Tell my prez… Blood Fury.”
Tommy wasn’t telling anyone shit.
“Tell him,” Fender insisted, but weakly.
Tommy’s lip curled again. “Fuck you.”
What if Fender survived this? The little bit of skin not covered in blood was ghost white, like death. But that didn’t mean he would die.
How could this stupid asshole survive and his mother not?
Tommy couldn’t let that happen.
No freaking way.
He dropped the asshole’s head and moved around to the other side of the table, using the biker’s hand that still had his fingers.
Tommy had never shot a gun before, he’d only had seen it done in movies and on TV. He knew there was a safety. Without touching the gun, he saw it was already flipped to off, like Fender might have been trying to protect himself.
But of course he failed because he was a big, fat fucking loser. Tommy recognized that even though his mother never did.
Was the handgun used to bash in his mother’s face and skull? It had to be since it was coated in congealing blood.
Tommy used Fender’s own hand and curled the man’s fingers around the butt of the gun and pressed his index finger to the trigger.
He wanted it look like a murder-suicide. Hopefully to throw off the cops.
This way Tommy could find the Blood Fury bastard, or bastards, who did this himself.
With his hand over Fender’s, he lifted the gun and put the barrel to the biker’s temple.
Not even a second later, with Fender’s index finger under his own, he pulled the trigger.
Continue Ozzy’s story here:
mybook.
