for the throne.
Chapter Eight
"So where did you dump the bodies?" V demanded as he strode out of the training center's rear exit.
As Qhuinn waited for John and Blay to get out of the flatbed, he let one of them answer V's question. He was too done to bother - matter of fact, as he glanced out the windshield and took a gander at the facility's underground parking lot, he considered just stretching out across the truck's front seat and going to sleep.
Too fucking tired to bother with anything else.
In the end, though, he followed John's lead and shifted his sorry ass out the driver's side door. He had to go check on Layla, and that wasn't going to happen from here.
Roadside confron notwithstanding, at least he and John and Blay had worked well together on the way home. About ten miles before the cutoff to the Brotherhood compound, they had pulled off onto a lumbering road, stripped the two dead men, and launched the bodies into a natural sinkhole that had no bottom that anyone could see. Then it was a case of backtrack, K-turn out on the road, and ghost away, allowing the snow, which had started to fall in earnest once again, to cover their tracks, as well as the various leaks that had left a trail of bright red blood. By noontime, assuming the accumulation estimates were correct, it would be as if nothing had happened at all.
A perfect snow job. Har-har.
He supposed he should feel bad for the dead dudes' families - no one was ever going to find those remains. But anecdotal evidence suggested the two guys had lived on the fringes, and not because they were hippies: guns, knives, a switchblade, weed, and some X had been found in their various pockets. And God only knew what was in those backpacks.
Violent lives tended to come to violent ends.
" - son of a bitch," V was saying as he walked around the Hummer on its flatbed pedestal. "What the fuck did they run into? A cement barricade?"
John signed something, and V looked over sharply at Qhuinn. "What the hell were you thinking? You could have been killed."
Qhuinn thumped his own chest. "Still beating."
"Dumb-ass." But the Brother smiled, flashing sharp fangs. "Meh, I would have done the same thing."
Out of the corner of his eye, Qhuinn noted that Blay was quietly and unobtrusively drifting toward the door that opened into the facility. He was going to disappear in another second and a half, finished with the drama that had once again been dropped at his feet.
Qhuinn felt a sudden, striking urge to follow the fighter into the hall and away from prying eyes. But like he needed to take another go at -
Your cousin is giving me what I need. All day. Every day.
Oh, Jesus, he was going to throw up.
"So any more personal effects?"
Qhuinn snapped out of the bullshit and got his useful on. "I'll get 'em."
Hopping up onto the flatbed, he forced open the crumpled rear door of the Hummer and squeezed through a twelve-inch gap to the backseat. It felt good to jam his body into places it didn't belong and didn't fit - gave his mind something to do, and the little ouchies from his injuries were another fantastic diversion.
The two backpacks had been bounced around pretty damn good. He found the one they'd seen first in the wheel well behind the passenger's seat, and the other was up in front on top of the brake and the accelerator. Weird luggage for those two as far as he could tell; the pedestrian vibe didn't go with all the other kinds of urban tuff guy that the stiffs had been sporting.
Way more middle school than middleman in the drug trade.
Unless they needed a place to put their meth lab merit badges or some shit.
As Qhuinn crabbed his way back into the rear seat, he made an abrupt decision not to go out the way he came in. Twisting himself around, he lay out on the ruined leather and brought his knees to his chest. With a sharp inhale, he punched his shitkickers into the other side door and blew it open, the metal hinges ripping free with a scream, the panel bouncing with a crash on the concrete.
Satisfying.
While the sounds echoed through the parking garage, V lit one of his hand-rolleds and leaned into the hole Qhuinn had just made. "You know they have door handles for that, true?"
Qhuinn sat up