3
Mercy
The breeze flickedthrough my hair, the summer air cooler now that it was evening. I leaned forward on my rooftop perch, watching passersby come and go on the street of shops below me. With the sky darkening and the streetlamps blinking on, no one would have been able to make out my form where I’d used my parkour skills to clamber onto the top of the bank on the corner.
I’d been roaming around the Bend for the past couple of days since I’d left the Noble mansion—being careful like I’d promised Wylder I would be, but needing to see for myself what was happening out here in the aftermath of Colt’s fall. So far I hadn’t run into Xavier, which I couldn’t say I minded. My explorations had left me unsettled, though.
This was my home. I’d lived here since I was born, but it didn’t feel like the same place anymore. There was more tension in the atmosphere than I ever remembered feeling before, a nervousness to the way people moved. Most of these stores would normally have been open until well past dinnertime, but now they were locking their doors at six or seven. By now, coming up on eight, nearly everyone had vanished.
A pang ran through my chest at the thought of how much the ongoing battles for territory had affected the Bend.
Not quite everyone had gone home for the night, though. Raucous guitar music echoed through the streets. It grew louder until a car came around a bend, windows down, radio blasting a heavy metal song. The driver swerved back and forth a little as if he was distracted or drunk.
The car jerked to a halt in front of a bar partway down the street, and the music cut out. I frowned, narrowing my eyes.
That bar was the main reason I’d chosen this spot tonight. It was closed, the windows already gathering dust from disuse. The place had used to be one of the Steel Knights’ main business fronts, but it didn’t look as if anyone had been operating out of it since Colt’s death. I’d wanted to keep an eye on it just in case some of his former underlings were still in action.
The five guys who pushed out of the car and swaggered across the sidewalk to the bar weren’t Steel Knights though, at least as far as I could tell. It was hard to make out their features in the deepening shadows, but none of them had the typical red bandana wrapped around their upper arms. Three of them carried axes, the other two baseball bats studded with spikes.
Even though they hadn’t seemed to be keeping their arrival quiet, they glanced around shiftily as if they were worried about getting caught at whatever they were about to do. One guy flexed his shoulders, and I got the impression he was putting on his swagger to hide his nerves.
“Come on! Let’s tear it all down!” he shouted.
He and the other guys went at the bar with their weapons like they wanted to demolish the place. The bats smashed through the front windows, sending broken glass spilling into the bar’s interior. A guy with an axe hacked through the door. They barged inside, and more smashing and thwacking sounds reached my ears as they plowed through the furnishings inside. Every now and then, one of them let out a little cheer.
What the hell was going on? Who were these guys? One of the smaller gangs Colt had allied with who’d decided to give him the middle finger after his death? But I couldn’t figure out what he’d done that would have pissed them off that much, or what the point would be now that he was gone anyway.
The growl of incoming engines reached me. A few motorcycles and a car roared up the street from the opposite direction. Peering through the dim light, I thought I recognized a mustached man on one of the motorcycles from Colt’s crew.
But at the sight of the four men who got out of the car, pulling out guns as they did, a chill ran down my spine. Unlike the bikers, who were wearing tees and jeans, that bunch had on collared shirts and slacks. The air around them reminded me of the mysterious men who’d been hanging around watching Colt’s confrontation with the Nobles before—the ones we’d never been able to identify.
Now I had to wonder if they were Xavier’s people. If he’d been egging on Colt’s quest for power, planning to steal that power for himself once the Steel Knights had done his dirty work, that would fit.
The guys who’d been trashing the bar had emerged at the sound of the new arrivals, their original weapons discarded and their own guns in their hands. They hung back by the broken window, using the walls for cover. “What the fuck do you want?” one snarled.
“Your blood all over that floor,” said one of the posher guys, and opened fire.
Guns blasted on both sides, one group taking shelter in the bar and the other around their car. There were grunts and shouts, and I thought at least one guy must have been hit.
Now I was even more confused than before. Why was the first group going up against whatever remained of the Steel Knights and what I assumed to be Xavier’s people? I definitely hadn’t seen any of them around the Noble mansion. Who else would have dared to take on the guys who’d nearly conquered all of Paradise Bend?
I kept my ears pricked, barely breathing so I could pick up as much of the conversation below as I could. In between shots and muttered curses, the two groups were yelling at each other.
“The Storm has claimed this territory,” hollered a guy I thought was with Xavier’s group. “Anyone who crosses us will pay for it.”
One of the men inside the bar let out a rough laugh. “I don’t think so. The Red Shark is going to take it all. Death to the Storm!”
More gunfire thundered between them. I furrowed my brow. Who the fuck were the Storm and the Red Shark? I’d never heard either of those names before. None of this made any sense.
The Storm side—which seemed to be made up of Xavier’s men and former Steel Knights—had the benefit of numbers. There was a thump as another of the men inside the bar fell. The remaining guys on the side that’d talked about the Red Shark made a break for it, running to their car.
Two of them managed to dive inside. The third, trailing behind with a limp from a shot he’d already taken, caught a bullet in the chest. He collapsed on the sidewalk, and his associates didn’t even try to help him. Their car peeled away from the curb at top speed, tires screeching.
The Storm people fired a few more shots after them, but then one of the posher men held up his hand, and the others stopped. They took in the wreckage of the bar with grim expressions.
“Fucking Red Shark,” one said. “What the hell is that asshole thinking, sending his people in here now?”
So the Red Shark was a person—a he? Did that mean the Storm was too?