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“Phantom? You there?”
He let another impatient breath snort down the line to answer.
“Tomorrow morning, 9 a.m. sharp, meet us in the bar, got a new assignment for you.”
The man in the darkness let out the one noise he let escape his lips. “Hmm.” A short, deep, gruff grunt. That was all he said. Ever.
The man on the other end of the line sighed down the phone. “I’ll take it that that’s okay with you. Wherever the fuck you are, you better be at that table at 9 a.m., brother,” Colt hissed.
Phantom hung up. Colt knew he was getting out and about, following his own agenda. He didn’t know the full extent to it though. Phantom took in the time. Fuck, he’d have to ride through the night to get back on time. He’d have to leave now. He slipped the phone back in his pocket, took one last look at the dead body at his feet, and turned to leave.
The Darkness no longer breathed, no longer had eyes. It was just empty space again, the dead, black night. The man within had gone.
“Made it back, I see,” Colt muttered as he strode into the bar.
Phantom was already at the table in the bar. Unruffled, calmly stroking the resident cat of the MC, a little black tom cat called Shadow, who was happily nestled into Phantom’s lap. Shadow and Phantom got along well, a mutual disinterest in the concerns of everyone else around them. Shadow purred at Colt’s arrival, and blinked lazily with his green eyes. Shadow was missing his back legs and had a little wheelchair contraption that allowed him to pull himself about. Colt had rescued him, and the little cat had thrived at the Black Coyotes MC.
Phantom merely grunted and blinked in response to Colt’s pointed comment. He had ridden hard all through the night. It had been exhilarating, the wind whipping around him, the empty road in front of him, the dark of the night surrounding him. His bike roaring beneath him. People thought he was silent, but he let the big engine of his motorcycle make any noise he needed to make. Phantom managed to squeeze in a quick shower and a cup of coffee, too, after arriving. He didn’t feel tired, he didn’t feel anything. A minor residue of professional satisfaction from the kill last night; a job well done. That was all he felt. He scooped up Shadow and placed him onto the floor gently.
Two others clomped up to the table, Ash and Jared. Ash firstly held the door open to allow Shadow to wheel himself out and into the adjacent room, what was marked as the ‘family room’ but currently was basically baby Chase’s nursery, Colt’s son. Ash, the young Sergeant at Arms of his MC, and Jared, the tall, bearded MC member, waited patiently while Shadow rolled himself at his own leisurely pace. Once the little cat was out, they immediately resumed their loud conversation, complaining heatedly about the breakfast the sweetbutts had attempted to make that morning as they swung themselves into seats at the table.
“I told Tammie the eggs were runny as fuck and she threw my plate on the floor-”
“Well, why did you tell her before eating them?”
“She needs to know, she never fucking listens-”
“So you didn’t get your eggs after all that?”
“No, I would have eaten them anyway-”
Colt cut in. “Food’s shit again, huh?”
Jared rubbed his hand over his bearded jaw. “I wouldn’t have said shit exactly, but-”
“Yeah, it’s shit,” Ash said.
Colt raised his eyebrows. “April’s trying to recruit a chef…” Colt cleared his throat. “Anyway, we gotta talk.”
Ash and Jared parked their conversation immediately, Phantom nodded a silent greeting to them both, which they returned with chin lifts and muttered, “Hey buddy”.
“Phantom, dude, you’ve got blood on your T-shirt,” Ash pointed out quietly.
Phantom’s heart rate spiked. He looked down, and sure enough, some speckles of red dotted his white T-shirt. On his abdomen. Where he had last cut himself. Fuck, he must have caught it when he was sitting down or something. He looked up.
Colt was giving him an X-ray stare. Jared was trying not to frown. Ash looked from the blood, to Phantom’s face. They had all seen his body. They had to fucking wash him and dress him at the beginning, when he’d first come to them. Phantom had been a literal shell of a human, he wasn’t eating, he wasn’t talking, he wasn’t feeling. They had fed him and held a cup of water to his lips and patted him down with a towel. They had hauled him up on his feet. They had all seen what was on his torso. They didn’t know what the cuts were for, but they knew it was nothing good. He felt the tremor of worry around the table. The undercurrent of fear. They loved him, as a brother, he’d proven himself loyal and trustworthy and true. But they had seen the darkness that he carried with him, that inhabited him. They didn’t know half of what he was capable of, they didn’t know his story, because he hadn’t uttered a word, but they all suspected it would be terrible.
“You weren’t doing a contract kill last night, Phantom, we don’t have any wet work on the books right now,” Colt said.
Phantom stared back, defiant. He wasn’t going to explain anything to anyone.
“Cut yourself while shaving or something?” Ash added lightly. Too lightly. Everyone at the table knew blood on Phantom’s T-shirt meant he had most definitely not cut himself shaving.
Phantom didn’t blink, or break eye contact with Ash. He simply zipped up his leather cut, hiding the blood specks.
Colt took a breath to say something. He changed his mind, shook his head slightly, cleared his throat and got down to business. That’s what Colt always did, what all his brothers always did. Turned away. Because he was a monster who killed and no one wanted to know why.
“So this whole SoCal Demonios assignment from the FBI has turned stale. No one’s fucking seen or heard from them for months, Blue’s calling us off the case. Giving us a new assignment.”
