AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She continued to glare. “Well, okay. Good. Then thanks for dinner.”
After we left, she showed me the places she knew of that I could sleep and used one hand to push her hair out of her face. “You be careful tonight. I’ll be seeing you around, but I got, uh, work to do.”
I blinked at her before I cleared my throat. “Um, okay. Thanks again.”
Appearing to consider me further, she shook off her thoughts and gave me a wave as she walked off. “Later, Lost Boy.”
“Sure,” I said as I watched her disappear into the crowd on the sidewalk.
We weren’t far from the river, and I prayed she wouldn’t hook up with the wrong guy and end up floating in it. She was playing a dangerous game, but I wasn’t one to talk. If I didn’t figure something out, who knew where I might end up.
Suddenly exhausted, I made my way back to the alley she’d pointed out behind several of the bars. There were a bunch of motorcycles parked behind one, and I stopped to drool for a minute. I’d always wanted one but knew I’d probably never be in a position to own one.
“Don’t fucking touch them,” a voice said from the shadows, and I belatedly noticed the cherry of his cigarette.
Holding up my hands in surrender, I stepped back. “Easy, man, I wasn’t planning on touching them. Just admiring them; that’s all.”
The guy stepped from the shadows, and his eyes raked me from head to toe. He actually didn’t look much older than me in the dim light of the alley. I noticed the leather vest he wore had a small patch I couldn’t make out, but otherwise was blank. The back door of the bar opened, and another guy stuck his head out. “Hey, prospect! Here.” He tossed him a bottle of water that the guy caught with a “Thank you.”
The dude in the door glanced my way but addressed the man he called prospect. “Everything okay?”
The guy outside turned to look at him, and that’s when I saw the patch on the back that said PROSPECT.
“Yeah, it’s all good.”
“Good,” the guy in the door replied. “You need anything, holler.”
“Roger that,” he said.
While they were talking, I slipped off and went behind the dumpster of the place next door. There was some cardboard stacked against the dented metal, and I quietly spread some of it in the small space between the building and the metal bin.
Once I was satisfied with how it was situated, I shoved my bag under the dumpster where it wasn’t visible and laid my head on my folded arm. The faint sounds of music and laughter that carried out of the bars were my lullaby for the night.
Little to no sleep for over forty-eight hours had me quickly dropping off.
I had no idea how long I’d slept before I was startled awake by someone trying to take my pants off. “What the fuck?” I muttered, trying to get my bearings.
A shadowed figure was over me, pulling at my pants, and the smell coming from it was horrendous. In my sleep-addled mind, he was a demon straight from hell coming for me. The truth was possibly worse.
“You’re real pretty, ain’t you?” The demon creature cooed with fetid breath as I fought for all I was worth. The problem was, though I was tall for my age, I wasn’t a very big guy. He had a good fifty pounds or more on me.
Finally getting my hand around his neck, I pushed him back. When I made contact with his grimy skin, it was like being hit by lightning, and I gasped. Visions of the things he’d done horrified me and had me reaching blindly for something I could use as a weapon.
My fingertips were damn near raw by the time they curled around something cold and hard under the dumpster. The rasping sound of metal on asphalt startled the guy enough that he paused. It gave me a slight advantage, and I kneed him twice in quick succession. He reared back in surprised pain, allowing me to kick him off and scramble to my feet.
When he came at me again, I swung the chain in my hand wildly.
“You little fucker!” the guy grunted out when it made contact. “I’m going to kill you for that, then I’m gonna fuck your pretty ass as you bleed out on the ground!”
Panic and terror like I’d never experienced swept through me, and I began to blindly swing the heavy chain over and over. The roaring in my ears didn’t register as being from my own lips until a light was shining in my eyes. In straight up fight mode, I spun and savagely swung the chain again.
“Easy boy! Fuck! We ain’t gonna hurt you! Chill out, it’s okay,” the voice said. Eyes darting around wildly, I realized I was surrounded by a bunch of bikers. My heart was beating so fast, I thought it might either explode or burst from my chest.
“He’s dead,” one of the other guys said from where he was crouching over the crumpled heap of the man I’d initially believed to be a demon and then known to be worse.
“He—” I gasped. “He was gonna—” Backed against the wall, I wanted to cry. I was going to go to jail for murder, and I was only eighteen years old. Fuck.
The man who had spoken to me first glanced from me to the piece of shit on the ground. Then he looked to the men with him. One of them stepped forward and said something in his ear that I couldn’t hear.
