Damnable Grace (Hades Hangmen, #5)

by Tillie Cole

“Cowboy?” Vike said under his breath. Cowboy frowned at Vike and his totally inappropriate timing. “That pineapple-cum thing? Does eating it really make your juice taste the shit?” “Vike,” I hissed. I grabbed his arm and wrenched him to sit forward in his seat. “What?” he asked. “If it’ll get more club sluts munching on my junk, like my love juice is pumped with piña colada, then you bet I’ll be eating my weight in the good stuff!”

“Shit.” Vike shook his head. “What’s with all the sign language crap? Maybe Styx should have come.” “Christ knows,”

“I ain’t fucking no bitch!” Flame came to a dead stop, face blazing red. Turning, I replied, “Then get the fuck back to the dorms and wait for us to come back.” His nostrils flared, and I knew the brother was seeing the slave bitches being dragged from pillar to post. He was rapidly losing his shit.

“Get the fuck back to the dorms. Call Maddie, forget what you’ve seen and calm the fuck down. She’s safe. She ain’t here. She’s with Ash at your home.”

“The man’s a fucking psycho. You want a bitch here sliced up and dead with blades in her eyes, you let him inside with one.”

“We’re passing through Texas on orders from Beau Ayers. Earl’s a solider for the cause, just like us. But we need pussy. He doesn’t. He just needs blood and the kill. That’s his porn.”

“He better not be a fucking fag,” the guard snarled, disgust written all over his face. “Please, feel free to go ask him if he’s a fag,” Cowboy offered casually, but his sadi...

His huge arms were tense under his tight shirt. His hair was scraped back into a bun on the top of his head. And for once in his fucking dumb life he wasn’t laughing. He looked me dead in the eyes. “I’ve done some fucked-up shit in my life, can kill without remorse, fuck any kind of bitch in all different ways, but what they’ve got those bitches doing in this place makes me wanna cut off some cocks and eat them for breakfast.”

“Keep your shit together.” I looked at Cowboy. “Both of you. Get some sleep. Tomorrow we get into that fucking saloon. I need to scope this place some more. I’m gonna try to get a shack, the barber shack. I need to get as close to the dentist shack as I can.”

“You’ve seen her?” Vike asked, his voice harder than normal. “Saw Meister carrying a redhead into the dentist cabin. Her weight was different to when we last saw ...

“Go into the barn again tomorrow. Same shit, different day. Once I get a visual on her, confirmation she’s here, and I’ve got a full assessment of the layout and the guards’ shift patterns, I’ll ge...

“I don’t fucking like it here.” He shook his head, and his lips curled over his teeth. “They need to die. They all need to die.” Flame hissed as he cut into his forearm. “I need to kill them.”

“Just get me a fucking kill.” His face tightened. “I . . . I can’t help what I’ll do if you don’t.”

“You see anything useful from the barber shack?” Viking asked as we walked toward the saloon. I flicked my eyes around us to make sure no one was near. “All quiet. Couldn’t see in. But there was no movement in or out. I got the guard schedule figured out though. That’s something.”

And I’d watched the dentist shack all night from my window. I’d slept on and off for a grand total of two hours. Night terrors, they were clinically called; at least that’s what the Marines’ shrink had said.

When every one of your senses tells you that your victims are here to make you pay, you fucking believe them and just let the torture begin.

Forty minutes later, Meister entered the bar with the same guard I’d seen him with before. The Himmler to his Hitler, no doubt.

I looked around the room to see fuckers jerking off as they watched her. Others were fucking their sluts for the night. It looked like Saturday at the fucking Hangmen. At least the club sluts chose to get their pussies smashed by me and my brothers.

My eyes met Viking’s and Cowboy’s. I saw the fire in their eyes. Fire and disbelief. Viking’s hands were in fists on his lap, and Cowboy’s foot was twitching. The brothers were one step from launching into this fucker and taking him out.

I remembered Phebe was bred for this shit in that cult. The prophet whoring her out to attract members. I could see why; the bitch was a fucking siren.

Phebe’s hands went into the air, and her lithe body began to sway. I couldn’t stop watching her, mesmerized by the way she moved. She was tall and too thin. But even looking as beat and broken as she was right now, all I could think of was her at that fucking tree. How she’d looked at me that day, her blue eyes slamming into mine, like she could see every fucking thing that was running through my mind.

I imagined that version of Phebe dancing, and I knew that if I’d been one of the fuckers she’d seduced at a bar, I’d have been signed up and singing hallelujah with the other cult fucks, just for the chance to nail her again.

She spun, facing me, and my breathing stopped. Even strung out on heroin, even starved and raped and captured like a dog, a fucking glimpse of a smile had spread on her lips. The dried blood cracked on her mouth...

Too focused on watching her lost to the music, I barely saw Meister get called away to speak to Himmler. I just kept watching. B...

And then I looked back at Phebe. I stared into her blue eyes. They were still drugged to high heaven. Still unfocused and glassy. Yet, as she knelt at my feet, her tears thick and her breathing labored, I could see right through them. They were fucking begging me for help.

“Is . . . is she safe?” she slurred, her once-pretty face contorting in pain as she lurched forward, like that pain was stabbing her straight in the stomach. My eyebrows drew together at her question. Phebe managed to raise her head and place her hand over her heart. “Is she safe? I didn’t save her . . . but is she safe? I want her to be safe.”

The bitch had just been raped, degraded in front of a crowd, and no doubt recently beaten by Meister, yet here she was on her knees at my feet, touching my face, and fucking smiling.

almost pulled out my gun and shot every fucker in here, just for the chance to get her out of this shithole right the fuck now.

“You,” she said again, a new lightness in her voice. Her fingers ran over my lips, then up, stopping at my eyes. Her hand curled, framing my eyes, and she released a long, happy sigh. “The one with the kind eyes,” she murmured. Her head tilted to the side like an innocent child. “You would not kill me. I deserved to die, but ...

I remembered that fucking night at the commune again. Remembered this bitch stroking Li’s hair and calling her Rebekah. Fucking crying. Fucking breaking. My chest cracked, and I swallowed the lump in my throat . . . the way she looked at Li. I ...

She . . . in that moment, she was me. Me on that fucking day that...

“The tree.” Phebe’s voice pulled me from my head. I shifted on my seat as she pulled back her hands and held them together in the way I’d tied them. “A devil’s man with angel eyes,” she repeated and began to sob. “Here for me again...

She said the sentences as though they were questions; her blue eyes were begging for me to take her from this town, from Meister. Fuck, the way she was looking at me, beseeching, begging . . . ...

Her eyes flooded with tears, yet even after the hard blow Meister dealt, her dazed eyes still sought out mine. And fuck me, but they softened. Like I was making everything better just by being here.

“Ain’t sure that bitch can be saved, brother. I ain’t ever seen shit like that before. He’s one fucked-up cunt.”

“You might be right.” I slumped to the edge of the bed and looked at Flame, proof that even the most fucked-up souls could be salvaged, somewhat. “But I’ll fucking die trying.” “Always the damn hero,”

Hero? Fucking far from it. Just didn’t have it in me to watch one more person die under someone else’s hand. So I’d take on Meister and his Klansmen tomorrow night. We’d deal with the rest after that. Even if she was already completely fucked.

The street rushed past me. I struggled to open my eyes. So I gave in to the dark. I gave in to the dark and let a pair of kind eyes watch over me. An angel disguised as a devil.

“Hush,” I hissed. What the fuck was the suicidal fucker doing? Arms spread wide, he shouted in his thick Cajun accent, “My mama’s white and my papa is black. I’m your worst fucking nightmare, so why don’t y’all come get me and my massive interracial cock!”

The asshole took off running. Guns fired, and men ran after Hush. I saw guard after guard abandon his post, like good little Klansmen after a black.

“What the fuck was that?” Cowboy snapped. He hovered over Hush, fucking pissed. “What?” Hush snapped back, his expression darkening. “The massive-interracial-cock taunt, you asshole. You were meant to set off an explosive, not offer yourself up for a fucking lynching,”

Hush ignored me and bored holes into Cowboy’s face. “You think after all those Klan fuckers have done to me, to my family, that I was just gonna distract them with an explosive? Fuck that shit. I wanted those fuckers to see my impure ass. I wanted them to seethe.”

“Well, job done, fucker.” Cowboy slid down to sit on the opposite side of the van. “You wanted them to seethe? Wait until Meister returns to see his se...

“Shit. That’s Phebe? Li’s sister?” “What’s left of her.” I motioned to Cowboy. “Get Prophet Dipshit on your cell. He’s needed at my cabin now. And tell the fucker it ain’t a fucking request.”

Phebe flinched in her sleep. I made my way toward her and drew back the covers. I stared at her emaciated body and imagined what she’d look like filled out and healthy. Shit. I knew, like that, she’d be the best fucking bitch I’d ever seen.

I imagined her skin free of gashes and track marks, the color of milk. And a smile on those lips that was due to being free from the shit in her veins and not from some misplaced gratitude for being saved from a sex-trafficking ring.

“This has to do with the bitch in your room?” I smirked. “Bitch, Ash? Careful, you might actually start sounding like a true Hangman soon.”

“Y’all say bitch, so now I do too. It ain’t bad to say that here. You only ever say it about chicks y’all like.”

“But yeah, kid, it has to do with the bitch in my room. And it ain’t gonna be pretty.” He moved to leave. As he passed me, I grabbed his arm. “You need anyth...

The potion . . . I needed the potion. “None here, Red. Just gonna have to ride through this shit with me.”