Hellbent - Shannon McKenna

Seattle, WA

The lightshow that accompanied the first set in the nightclub downstairs sliced like a razor straight into Anton’s aching head, but he didn’t allow himself to close his eyes or turn away.

Don’t flinch. Only pussies flinch from pain. Jeremiah’s harsh, drill sergeant voice echoed in his mind.

Get the fuck out of my head, old man. You’re dead and gone.

The past had no hold on him. He repeated that to himself often. Most of the time, it was true.

It didn’t feel true today. Not after going back to Shaw’s Crossing for his foster father Otis’s funeral. That trip last week had stirred up a shitload of toxic memories.

He stood by the viewing window that covered the entire wall of his private office and stared down at the gyrating crowd below. He focused upon the young DJ on stage doing the opening set. The kid had talent. He was young and green, but he instinctively knew how to manipulate a crowd. It was still early, but the dance floor was packed.

The spectacle didn’t soothe his jagged nerves the way it usually did. The whip scars on his back itched and throbbed, and his hand was burning like a hornet had stung it. He wore a big pendant on a heavy chain around his neck, and when he looked down, he saw that he’d been squeezing it in his fist so hard, the sharp studs and gems on the white gold cylinder had left purplish-red marks in his palms.

Anton leaned his hot forehead against the glass to watch the dancers below. Years back, when he’d worked as a bouncer in the Vegas dance clubs, he’d discovered that he liked the club scene. That anything-goes vibe chilled him out. GodsAcre, the remote mountain enclave where Anton and his brothers grew up, had been a ruthlessly controlled environment, and their leader Jeremiah’s extreme, fucked-up, rigid moral and religious code had been rammed down their throats every damn day.

Being the contrary bastard that Anton was, he’d become a DJ. He’d built up a following, gotten famous, and then more famous. He had toured the world, produced his own music. He eventually opened his own nightclub. It was a success, so he expanded the enterprise. Now he had a chain of notorious dance clubs all over the West Coast. The perfect antidote to all the hellfire and brimstone he’d spent his childhood listening to.

He’d also gotten rich in the process. Which did not suck.

Down on the dance floor, the writhing masses were cutting loose, letting go of their inhibitions. Jeremiah would have said they were piling onto a train that was headed straight to hell. That Anton was selling them express tickets.

So be it. Everyone could go to hell in his own special way. Yay, freedom.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, jolting his rattled nerves. He pulled it out to check. A text message from Eric.

When are you getting your ass back here? Bristol wants to tell FBI, CDC and the press about the death pen. We don’t have much time. Researching the latest in biological weapons. Nothing yet, but my skin is crawling. Call me.

Damn. Biological weapons? Seriously?

Anton had blasted out of Shaw’s Crossing at the first opportunity, right after Otis’s funeral. So had his youngest brother, Mace. But not Eric, his middle brother. Eric had insisted on lingering there, to wrap up loose ends, he said. To take care of business.

His brothers knew perfectly well that was bullshit. Eric was all hung up on a woman who lived there. The same one he’d been wildly in love with seven years before. Things had ended very badly for him back then. A massive clusterfuck, in fact. Eric had barely survived it.

But had his little brother learned his lesson? Oh, no. Not him. That stubborn idiot was drawn to Demi Vaughan like a moth to a flame. He just couldn’t wait to self-immolate.

And once Eric had gotten himself wound up with Demi again, the two of them had then proceeded to almost get themselves killed by a band of murderous thugs up at the moldering ruins of GodsAcre, the long-defunct doomsday cult in the mountains where they had been raised. It was miraculous that they’d survived at all, the way they told it.

None of it made sense, but according to Eric, the Trask brothers were now honor bound to go back to that godawful place and figure out what the fuck had happened before more people died. They had to figure out what those people digging holes