Vicious Rebel (82 Street Vandals #2) - Heather Long Page 0,10

leave you intact. Play games, you’ll lose.”

I nodded to the first guy on the left, his bald, tatted head shining under the muddy red lights. That was the other part of this bar’s weird aesthetic. It had high backed booths, lots of dope to smoke and vape, and red lights to give the illusion you’d descended into Hell.

Unfortunately for them, Hell didn’t scare us.

“Have you seen him?”

“Like I’m telling you shit,” the man spat out, finding his balls or his voice for the first time since we’d stormed the club. Okay.

I did warn them.

A split second before I took a step toward him, I spotted the axe affixed to the wall behind him. It seemed decorative, only the way the edge gleamed, it really wasn’t. Sidestepping them, I passed the bat over to JD, and he accepted it without question before I gripped the axe and pulled it down.

Well, would you look at that? It had balance to it, a good, solid feel in my hand, and fit my grip like it had been made for me.

I tested the edge with a thumb and then sucked the blood that welled up from the cut. Sharp enough.

Time to make a point.

I returned to the first guy to offer a challenge to my question. “I’ll do you a favor,” I told him as kindly as I could muster. “I’ll let you choose. Righty or lefty?”

“What?” The man stared at me like I’d sprouted a second fucking head. To my left, Kellan had gone dead silent, and his attention was now on me.

Everyone’s was.

Good.

I liked having to demonstrate lessons only once.

“Are you a righty or a lefty?” I eyed the man in question. He had about three seconds to give me an answer, because while I might be kind enough to give him a choice, I wasn’t going to be waiting around on it all day.

“Right-handed,” the guy said slowly, almost warily, like it had sunk in.

“Hold out your left,” I told him. “And thank me.”

He didn’t move a muscle. “What the fuck for?”

I smiled. “Because I’m giving you the opportunity to only lose a hand. You make me come for it, and it might be the whole arm.”

He didn’t believe me.

It was almost more fun when they didn’t. At first.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the mood to play. I wanted Freddie’s whereabouts and straight answers to my questions.

“Vaughn.”

Seizing the guy by the back of his neck, Vaughn slammed him forward and not so gently bounced his head off the table before slamming his left arm down. Bracing him with a knee to his back, he eyed me, and I read the facts on his face. He was about to get covered in blood. No two ways about it.

“You should thank my brother too.” I closed the gap. “After you apologize for inconveniencing him.”

“Fuck you,” the man spat, even as blood trickled down his forehead.

I had intended to send one of the rats for ice. Well, if he couldn’t be bothered to be polite, I couldn’t be bothered to help him preserve his chances.

With one direct swing, I slammed the axe down through his wrist. The edge went clean through flesh, the muscle, the tendon, and the bone to bite into the table beneath. Blood splattered, and one of the guys promptly threw up.

Weak fucker.

The mouthy one didn’t have much to say beyond screaming.

Without a word, Vaughn just wrapped a towel around the end of the guy’s wrist to staunch the bleeding. Not that it would give him long.

“Who wants to go next?” I smiled, already picking my target in the wild-eyed stoner whose pupils had begun to shrink as reality sank in. “Freddie Dunlap. Have you seen him?”

Chapter 4

Kellan

A fucking axe. Jasper had picked a fucking axe off the wall. Thankfully, he hadn’t spotted the katana hanging there as well. I’d grab it on our way out, though I was pretty sure walking an axe out of here wasn’t just something that could be overlooked. The cops weren’t stupid or all on the take. A lot of them knew we kept our streets relatively clean and they cut us some slack.

Bloody axes and full-on swords weren’t going to win us friends or influence people, no matter how effective Jasper found it for his questioning. The second guy he pointed to dropped into a dead faint after pissing himself. I swallowed a sigh, studying the women lined up against the stairs.

They didn’t know much, but I wouldn’t say they knew nothing. Darla, the bleach