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ELEVEN

DRACO

“Why are we still here?” I ask, placing my car in park, looking at the entrance of the strip club.

“I need you to help me, and I can’t do it alone,” Kaden says, watching the front door.

It means he wants to fuck someone up and needs my help.

Kaden has a short fuse. I don’t know what happened when I left him inside with the others. Whomever it was, pissed him off to the point of violence.

Violence is the answer when he’s angry, but I can’t be a hypocrite and not help him. The problem is, he needs to understand. Not everyone should die when they piss you off.

“What do you want me to help you with, Kaden? We need to get back.”

He closes his eyes, as if he’s struggling with something. “We will, but I need to do this first,” he says, clenching his teeth.

The door to the club opens, and the girl on stage before I left walks out wearing an oversized sweater covering her ripped tights. She changed out of her platform heels for sneakers as she walks across the parking lot. Usually, I don’t go to the club with Kaden and the others, but these last two years I’ve been tagging along. I tend to fuck whoever I want and then quickly lose interest. Dahlia and Vega both quench my appetite, but ever since we came back from England, I’ve been on edge. Something has changed in the air at Stockbridge besides the usual, and I don’t know what it is.

My purpose coming here tonight was to pound into a tight cunt that wasn’t Dahlia and Vega, but that evaporated like smoke when the woman I’m currently watching danced on stage and told me she was bored with me. I didn’t mean to insult her, but imagining her fucking for money pissed me off, and I never give out my name. When I felt her hands on my thighs, I didn’t want Dahlia, Vega, or anyone else. I couldn’t look away when her platinum blond hair brushed against her waist. Her dark brown eyes begged me to touch her as she slid down the pole. Her red-painted lips were full.

There was a sense of innocence about her, but underneath, there was something sinister that set fire in my blood. It felt like I’d met her before, but that would be impossible. Because there is no way a man would forget a woman like her.

“You want to follow her?”

“No. This isn’t about following her,” he says, watching the door intently.

The door to the club opens again, and a bald man with a beer gut walks out wearing khaki pants and a blue polo shirt.

“Him,” he says, pointing in the bald man’s direction.

It appears that the individual is employed at a car dealership, where they attempt to manipulate customers into purchasing a vehicle that they are unable to afford.

“What about him?” I ask probingly. He doesn’t look like the usual pricks we cut up. They wouldn’t come here and show their faces.

“He touched her.”

I roll my eyes. “And? I’m sure it’s nothing new. Whoever she is, she works at a strip club. It’s part of the job she chose.”

He turns to face me with a lethal determination on his face. “He’s not going to stop.”

“They usually don’t, Kaden. They come back. It’s not a foreign concept.”

He shakes his head, annoyed. I’m hoping this is not about the blond that is currently walking alone. “You don’t understand, Draco. She’s different.”

She had my attention inside, but she also had everyone else’s, including his. I’m not sure what his intention is with her, but I’m hoping it’s not what I think it is. That would complicate things.

I roll my shoulders to relieve the tension. “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking she’s…”

“I know it sounds crazy,” he interrupts, “and you don’t believe any of it.”

“I don’t. I never did.” All that shit with the readings and psychics is bullshit. They’ve been feeding my family bullshit for years. “It’s a curse,” I mock. “An omen.”

“It’s not.” He presses the pads of his thumbs over his eyes. “Lazarus…”

“Is an idiot?” I snap, cutting him off. “He goes around campus stalking that girl from the bar at the strip club. If she hasn’t noticed him lurking, she’s probably freaked out by now.

“Why are you like this?”

“Because it’s stupid,” I remind him. “Things like stalking land you in trouble.”

“And killing those fucks and using them as props doesn’t?”he argues, making my blood boil.

“That’s different, and you know it. It’s not the same. Look, there’s no prophecy nor a girl who is destined for you. The people who are raping and killing innocent girls are real. None of the things you and that psychic lady believe in are real. None of it has happened. My parents lived this fantasy. You can’t honestly believe that this girl, walking in the middle of the night on a dark street after swinging on a pole half naked, is part of a prophecy.”

He scoffs. “Whatever, Draco.” He points at the car currently pulling out of the lot. “Can you follow him?”

I watch the loser in his Tesla and wait until he pulls out onto the road to follow him. “Look, if it makes you feel any better...We’ll come tomorrow night, and you can offer her to spend the night with you at the motel.” The minute those words leave my mouth, I want to take them back.

“It’s not like that. She’s not…”

“The type to fuck for money?” I snort. “Unlike the other girl, she doesn’t work at the bar. She dances to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” in a place called The Church. I’m confident the next song will be “Like a Virgin.”

“You’re an asshole, Draco. Next time I talk to her, I’ll tell her you said that.”

“If you haven’t noticed, I’m not the kind who takes girls out to dinner, and you’re not going to tell her I said that.”

“Why not?”

I don’t want to admit to him that I care what she thinks. I did something I never do. I left her a single rose. A symbol of my recognition. A heartfelt admiration of her talent. There is no doubt she has it. It doesn’t matter if it is on a pole in a strip club or the circus. You don’t get moves like that unless you’re a performer who has spent years training like me.

Kaden thinks she is part of some fate. In my eyes, she’s a woman with needs. She needs to be met, and I’m not one to judge her.

“It doesn’t matter what I think. I’m not her father.”

“I doubt she has one.”

“Why? Because she dances, probably fucks for money, and sleeps in a cum-infested motel,” I say harder than necessary, hating that she does.

“Don’t act like you’ve never fucked in that motel,” he snaps.

“I was drunk and high. I don’t remember much.”

“I’m sure your dick does.” The Tesla turns right and slows down. “Follow him,” he demands.

When I let off the gas and see that he’s following her, my stomach churns. “What did he do exactly?”

I shouldn’t care. I repeat this mantra to myself. She’s just a stripper. But it does nothing. I want to know.

“I told you, he touched her,” he says, his words cutting deep from the inside. “ He caressed her leg while she was picking up the money and the rose you left her. Don’t think I didn’t notice what you did.”

I scoff. “I’m sure she would’ve preferred cash. She probably tossed the rose in the garbage out back mixed with used condoms.”

“No faith?”

“I’m a see-it-to-believe type of guy.”

“Well, you didn’t see, but I did. You weren’t there when she told him to stop touching her.”

I tighten my grip on the steering wheel, prepared to extract the life from the asshole. “And?”

“He offered her four thousand to fuck her. More like begged her.”

My eyes cut to him briefly. “What’d she say?”

He’s watching the taillights of the Tesla. I follow his gaze as she walks quickly in the direction of the motel, and the asshole slows down.

“I don’t know. The music was too loud, but I don’t like the way he looked at her or the fact that he’s following her.”

I don’t either.

I hit the gas. The car jerks forward as my car picks up speed. Kaden grips the safety bar from the roll cage. “Shit,” Kaden mutters over the roar of the engine.

I jerk the wheel, cutting the bastard off, running him off the road. The girl looks over her shoulder and then makes a run for it. I wait, letting her get a head start so she doesn’t see what’s going to happen. It’s best she doesn’t recognize me and Kaden.

Kaden turns his head, watching the asshole throw up his hands, bitching about me running him off the road like I could hear him.

“Which hand?” I ask.

“Right,” Kaden says.

I look left but don’t see her silhouette in the headlights.

The front bumper of that asshole’s Tesla blocks Kaden’s path, making it impossible for him to open the door. I jump out of the car.

“What are you doing?” Kaden acts like I’m crazy.

“You said you wanted my help. This is me helping.”

“Draco, what the fuck!” He cries out, slamming his hand on the dash.

I shut the door, ignoring him cursing me out as I walk around my car. The asshole makes the mistake and opens the driver’s side door. I pull it from his grip and cock my head. His eyes widen in fear when he spots my fiendish grin on my painted face.

“Please,” he begs, raising his hands in surrender.

“Get out,” I demand.

He shakes his head rapidly, his expression filled with terror.

I sigh in annoyance. “Fine.”

I walk to my car, take out my staff, and then walk back to his car. He was smart enough to shut himself inside the car but not smart enough. I shatter the driver’s side window into pieces with the metal part of my staff.

“What the fuck, man!” the asshole bellows. “Are you fucking crazy?”

I grin obscenely. “Something like that.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he says, trying to brush the glass off, cutting himself in the process.

“That’s what they all say,” I say silkily, grabbing him by the shirt and yanking him outside of his car.

“Please,” he begs. “I have kids.”

“Of course you do. I’m sure there is a wife somewhere inside a house with a white picket fence.”

He nods. “Yeah, she’ll be looking for me.”

“I’m sure she’s searching for you right now.” I scrutinize my staff to make sure the metal is still intact. “Tell me, are you a religious man?”

“Y-yes. I mean, no.”

My eyes swing to his. “Yes or no. God or science. Faith or no faith.”

“No.”

“Good, this part will make sense then.”

“What part?” he stammers pathetically.

I pull the skull from the top of my staff, wielding the wicked knife. “This part?”

I swing the knife and slice his wrist. “Ahhh!” He screams like a wild animal. “My hand!”

“You like to touch things you shouldn’t. Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners?”

“My mother is a bitch that left my father for a younger man,” he cries as tears run down his pathetic, ugly face.

“But you like to pay to fuck younger women. I thought you had a wife?”

“I do.”

I step back from the stench of shit. He shit himself. “Give me your hand.”

He tries to put pressure on the gaping wound. “No…please… whatever I did.”

“Hand?” I repeat more forcefully. .

Idiot probably tells his wife he goes to church. Not the real one. She probably believes he helps the community. A godly man. A devoted husband that puts food on the table and works late. He probably tells her that he fell asleep at the office and why he’s running late.

“Please. Please. Please,” he pleads pathetically through snot and tears.

I watch him intently. He knows he has nowhere to go, but that doesn’t mean he won’t try to make a run for it. He closes his eyes and finally relents. I grab his hand at the right angle and slide it off.

He suddenly jerks, shaking uncontrollably, probably in shock, and, as I had anticipated, he tries to run screaming at the top of his lungs down the middle of the road, tripping on his feet, and falls on his thick stomach.

“Help me! Help me. Oh God! Help Me! My hand!” He gets up and runs down the middle of the street in the direction of the motel but falls again.

“Pathetic,” I mutter.

His severed hand lies at my feet. I break all the cameras on his vehicle as quickly as I can.

I pull out my phone and place a call. “Yes?”

“The Tesla; burn it. I’ll send my location.” Then I hang up and send it.

I get in the car. The engine rumbles as I give it gas, my hand on the shifter placing the car in first gear.

“What are you going to do?” Kaden says, over the loud engine.

Before pressing the gas pedal, my foot is on the clutch, and I glance briefly at him before the car jolts forward at breakneck speed. The lights shine on the asshole’s back before we hear a loud thump and a noticeable jerk.

“Fuck, Draco,” Kaden says, looking out the rear window.

I shift the car into reverse, run over his mangled corpse once more, and then drive off.

“Teslas have cameras,” he says, like he just remembered something important.

“I took care of it.”

He nods, looking out the window when I slow down before reaching the motel.

“Do you want to go in and say hello?” I tease.

He swallows thickly. “No. She must be scared shitless, but the last thing we need is to let her know it was us back there.”

“I’m sure we’re the least of her worries right now.” I watch a group of college guys walk up to a room, each with a case of beer. One of them is also carrying two bottles of liquor. “Friends of yours?”

“Very funny. It’s just a bunch of jocks from school. They can’t drink in the dorms, and frat parties are usually on Saturdays. The only thing going on tonight is a high school party full of jailbait until we open the haunted carnival and start our first show next weekend.”

“Is that why you wanted us to go to the Church? Or was it because of her?”

Ever since she showed up out of nowhere, he has had this thing for her.

“Maybe.” I pull over and watch the guys laughing and shoving each other as they get into the room.

“Which room is hers?” Like I don’t already know, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“I’m not sure, but it’s usually on the second floor.”

“Why do you say that?”

He grins. “You know, your British accent comes out sometimes.”

“Is that our way of changing the subject?”

“Is that your way of changing the subject?” he mocks in a thick British accent.

“You’re in a better mood.”

“We just killed the guy—well, you just killed the guy who could have done God knows what to her. Of course, I’m in a good mood.”

The way she danced while watching me is still fresh in my memory. How hard she made me, and I hate her for it. Look what I did without thinking. I killed for her, and I don’t know her name.

“You don’t know what he would have done, but I did it for you,” I lie.

“He was following her, and like I said, you didn’t see it. The predatory look he gave her when she walked away from him. It was like I could feel his thoughts burning in my gut.” His chest rises and falls like he’s hyperventilating. “I wanted to kill him right there. It was like something inside me snapped, Draco. I can’t explain it. All I know is that I need to protect her.”

“You have it bad, Kaden.”

“I don’t want to sleep with her, Draco,” he says in frustration. “It’s not like that. But I need you to help me keep an eye on her. I know you don’t believe in fate like some of us, but can you do this one thing for me?”

The woman is none of my business, but I hear the desperation in his voice. I wish I could believe like him and my brother, but the truth is, I never felt love for anyone. Not the kind my parents had. Not the kind my mother Alice would tell me stories about, but maybe I could make this an exception. We’ve got a show. Girls are going missing, and I need him to have a clear head.

We all do.

“Alright. Only until we leave town for the next show. That’s all I can promise you.”

He thinks it’s her. The one destined for me, or whatever the cards say, but it’s not. There’s no way any of that is true. I hated that my mother fed me and my brother stories that aren’t real. My fate. His fate. Our fate. It’s bullshit in my book. Maybe I can use her to prove to him that it’s not true. Prove to him that she isn’t who he thinks she is.