CHAPTER FIVE
Spot Conlon was straddling her.
Angel sank lower in the rickety chair, the small of her back touching the seat. "I can't deal with this right now," she stated, her voice pleading and miniscule.
His lips twisted into a wicked smile as a mischievous air flickered within his burning blue eyes. He cocked his head to the right, a stand of his brassy blond hair falling across his brow, and sank lower with her. He pressed his torso against hers, his legs sprawled carelessly upon hers, pushing his nose to hers. He was exhaling from his mouth, causing his exceedingly warm breath to play across her face.
She closed her eyes to bridle the arousal that surged through her gelatinous insides. She dare not look at him for fear that she may slide off the chair from sheer weakness.
"Oh, but you don't look like you are having any fun at your own party," he chided laughingly, pressing his pelvis briefly against hers.
She stifled a growl of pleasure by biting her lower lip almost to the point of drawing blood, as she clenched her eyes closed as tight as humanly possible. His body shifted over hers and an involuntary moan escaped her lips.
His light laugh pierced the air as she felt him begin to slide the worn- crimson suspenders off her shoulders, running his palms down her arms as he did so. A shiver danced down her spine as his hands halted at her wrists, and as he raised each of her hands to the air. She elicited a cry and her eyes fluttered open as she felt the tips of her fingers being slightly drawn into his mouth, the tip of his tongue dancing over them.
Her wide eyes focused on him. It was utterly sinful the way his crystalline eyes seduced her; the way the blaze from the kerosene lamp created a striking contrast of light and dark on his comely face.
"What is plaguing you?" he inquired, a touch of worry crossing his visage as he roughly tugged on the white-collar shirt that was tucked inside her trousers. She rose some so that he was able to emancipate the garment and reveal her abdomen.
Unable to cite a reply, her eyes dropped to the blood-red collar-shirt he was wearing. She focused on the garment until the last of the buttons had been undone and her shirt pulled back, revealing the creamy hued flesh of her torso. She cast her gaze to him once more, the passion mixing with her boiling blood at the site of his smoldering eyes glinting with mischief. He brought his fingers down lightly against her stomach, causing her to flinch and arch her back underneath him. The tips of them burned her skin, causing her to clench her teeth and her eyes together, as she willed herself not to succumb to the orgiastic sensations that rode at her heels.
He began to lower his head towards hers, and inclined it somewhat. His eyes glittered wildly and his lips were nearly pressed against hers, when out of the corner of her eye she witnessed the stealth gesture of his right arm and the violent glitter of an unknown object. He quickly backed his face away from hers as he cupped his palm around her chin and pressed her head back.
She could only watch the fire dance in his eyes as she felt a prick on her neck, like the pressing of a sharp object, a pain that continued in a straight line across her entire throat.
He released his palm from her chin, and she lowered her head, doing so spying the bloodstained blade he clasped in his hand, glittering ominously in the light.
"Does it hurt?" he inquired in a mocking voice, as she placed a hand to her throat, feeling a wet stickiness cover her flesh.
His laughter permeated the air as she brought her claret soaked hand in front of her eyes. She then glanced down, noting the blood was gushing from her slit throat, utterly staining the both of them with its hellfire red hue. Her gaze fell to him once more. He had thrown his head back and his gales of laughter were surging about the room. She cocked her head as confusion filled her brain at the lack of agony the wound inflicted to her trachea. It had a surreal quality to it, as his wild laughter filled her ears as she continued to unconsciously press her hand against the severed flesh, the dark blood coursing through the cracks between her fingers.
And audible bang then sounded, and she cast her vision over his heaving shoulder to see the door to the room had been thrown open and her brother stood in the doorway, doubled over, his palms on his upper thighs. Once he regained his composure, his dark brown eyes fell to her as he closed the distance between them with a cat-like grace. A smile played upon his lips as he observed the scene. He circled around the chair, nodding appreciatively. Conlon had since gone quiet.
As he did a second lap around the chair, he suddenly halted directly in front of her, rubbing his chin between his fingers and his eyes glowing in agreement. "Very good, Angel, I must say very good. Nice work. It's such a relief that we won't have to worry about that Brooklyn bastard Spot Conlon any longer."
Conlon had turned over his shoulder to regard Oliver, a slight stain of red washing over his face. "Awh, Oliver, it was nothing."
Oliver's grin widened as he produced a clicking sound with his tongue, playfully mussing Conlon's hair with his hand. "I always knew you were the best damn assassin-no, the best damn sister around!"
She leaned forward in the chair, her eyes waxed and hand still pressing against her slit throat. She opened her mouth to issue a string of protests, yet her words were soundless. When she realized that her voice was silent, she struggled even more.
The other two seemed to be oblivious to her.
"So, Angel, ready to go dump his body in the river?"
She once more dropped her jaw, mouthing soundlessly that she was Angel Haddox, not the imposter Brooklyn leader that straddled her. Yet, her brother proceeded as though Conlon were his kin. Conlon then slid slowly off of her, two sets of eyes burning into her soul.
The eyes then broke contact as her brother went around the back of the chair, her frantic gaze following him.
"You get the feet and I'll get the head, Angel."
Conlon silently nodded as he fell to his haunches, his dark stare regarding her, simultaneously grasping her ankles and rising to his feet just as she felt the chair being sharply pulled out from behind her, her brother catching her easily.
She was now horizontal in the air, her brother at her head and Conlon at her feet, as panic raced through her just as the blood raced from her painless wound at her throat. She rolled her eyes back in her head, taking heed of the amusement that seeped through her brother's pores as he exchanged glances with Conlon. "Just think of what Brooklyn will think when they find their leader floating like a gutted fish in the river the next morning!"
Conlon released a chortle at her feet. The two then began to move forward as her lips issued forth soundless screams, pleading for her life-
Angel bolted upright on the tattered mattress covered in a mantel of cold sweat and breathing labored. Her eyes immediately opened to their entirety, and her pupils constricted painfully due to the bright light that flooded the room. She brought her knees to her chin and placed a hand to her clammy brow, pushing back tangles of flaxen hair.
The dream still remained candidly vivid in her psyche, along with the burning fever that still lingered on. It was a ridiculously uncomfortable feeling; the iciness of the perspiration coated her skin, yet a hot sensation was pulsing through her blood, almost like an internal itch. She released a gasp as her hand brushed over her face, wiping away the beads of perspiration.
"What in the name of all that is holy was that?" she whispered breathlessly, closing her eyes. Yet, she saw the pair of burning, crystalline eyes from the dream. Her eyes immediately fluttered open at the image that haunted her, her chest heaving heavily.
The image deeply unsettled her, along with the smoldering sensation that raced inside her. She shut her eyes once more, bowing her head between her knees and running both hands through her hair. She then raised her gaze to the window that ushered forth the shafts of morning light.
Angel slowly rose to her feet and crossed over to the window, the floorboards unusually quiet under her weight. Resting her head against the cracked border of the pane of glass, she gazed out to see that morning was fully underway in Midtown. Several of the bulking newsies were loitering outside on the avenue, the shadows of the warehouse and the desolate apartments across the way mixing with the sun on the cobblestone street. Nero Night stood in the midst of them, his back to the warehouse and his arms gesturing wildly as he spoke to the newsies that comically triumphed over him in both size and stature.
She averted her gaze away from the scene outside and to the dusty sill of the window. A shutter wrought through her courtesy of the hotness that shot through her once more. Her mind wandered once more to the dream, to Spot Conlon. Her index and middle finger found their way to her full lips, running over them, as Night's words to her at dawn haunted her:
You reek of Brooklyn.
She froze, paralyzed, as the words echoed in her mind as though he had hollered them into some canyon of massive breadth. A bolt of reality then struck her as she realized that she was smoothing her lips, and she turned, disgusted, from the window only to have her eyes fall upon the revolver. It lay still on the floorboards, gleaming from a shaft of sunlight, where she had carelessly tossed it previously that morning.
Immediately, her psyche was bombarded with atrocious images. Of Flick standing before her in the dark, his knees knocking, body convulsing, and eyes a light in utter fear of the barrel of the revolver that she had pointed to him. Of Charley Cicatrice and his rank breath and the even ranker scar that trailed his visage; how his life had been so brutally ended with Flynn's simple utterance of the word "three." And of the two corpses lying sprawled on the docks in night, pale slivers of moonbeams reflecting off the blood that oozed from the quarter-sized gunshot wounds to their foreheads.
Angel elicited a slight gasp as she felt her knees weaken from under her. She clung to the windowsill, easing herself to the ground, as her wide eyes beheld the murderous weapon that lay casually on the floor. She pulled herself over to the weapon, stretching one arm ahead of the other, and brought her curled legs in close to her body. The gun held her in a trance, the hideous feelings that had accompanied last night returning once more with a vengeance and holding steadfast. She reached a hand out in front of her to grasp the gun, when out of the corner of her eye she viewed a subtle sparkle. Her gaze dropped to her bent legs that rested on the floor, clothed only on the ebony garters from the previous night.
The sunlight that entered from the window was reflecting off the blade that she kept sheathed and bound to her upper thigh. The slain Brooklyn newsies vanished from her thoughts as she regarded the partially unsheathed blade, gleaming brightly in the light. The blade that she had planned to use to slit Spot Conlon's neck.
She released an involuntarily sigh in spite of herself as she thought of the name. The passion that had lay dormant for the past few minutes roared to life once more like an inferno under her skin, heating her flesh. Her already sticky from sweat epidermis was met with a fresh coat of perspiration as the crackling, intense emotions that had been passed from him to her during the ill-fated embrace of the previous night flooded back once again.
As a wave of heat rode through her, Angel brought her eyes away from the glimmering dagger, fighting the sensations that overwhelmed her. She pulled herself to her wretched mattress, lying down on her on her back. Her golden hair fanned out on the pillow under her head and her raven corset and garters clung uncomfortably to her body from the beads of sweat.
The heat passed, and logic returned once more. She dare not even attempt to make anything of the wild dream or the wonderful, wild sensations it had brought on. She only contented herself with blindly reaching for her revolver and once more stuffing it under her pillow. She reckoned that it must already be somewhere near noon. Flynn would most likely awake her in a few hours; it was best to forget all the heinous events that had occurred late last night and early that morning.
Angel exhaled, settling into the lumpy mattress, exhaustion immediately overtaking her. She peacefully closed her eyes. The two burning cerulean orbs gazed back at her in the darkness. A sigh came from her parted lips as she could imagine his fingers dancing over her abdomen.
She soon fell into a restless sleep, a sleep relentless of the dreams.
***
Slumber was banished from Angel as a violent shake to the torso awoke her. She immediately sat into a sitting position, her eyes only partially open, as lightheadedness descended upon her. Her brain could still not comprehend being so rudely awakened.
The grip now moved to her bare shoulder, squeezing it tightly, jolting her back and forth and causing the mussed hair that framed her face to swing wildly.
"Angel, for Christ's sake wake up now." The voice was an urgent, growling baritone, a voice she recognized immediately as Flynn's.
Hey dark gray eyes sleepily opened to their entirety, her pupils only the size of pinpricks due to the relentless waves of sunlight that streamed into the room. What she viewed caused the exhaustion to evaporate from her system. Flynn was positioned next to her mattress, fallen to his haunches. His golden-shot hair glimmering in the sun, he was still garbed in the same worn-out in hue black collar-shirt and matching colored trousers from the sojourn to Brooklyn, the revolver tucked carefully within its band. Yet, it was his face that chilled her blood. His flesh had turned a pale shade of white, causing his green eyes to be even starker. She read fear and consternation within the irises.
The color drained from Angel's face and she felt the room take on a glacial atmosphere, despite the blazing heat that roared outside. "Flynn, what's wrong?" she inquired, her voice barely above a whisper.
His eyes gazed into her intently. "There's someone from Brooklyn here to see Oliver."
And then it was as though as Angel was an axiom, for the walls about her began to spin violently. She leaned forward, planting her brow in her palm, her elbow on the mattress, for a wave of sickness washed over her.
The hideous images of the Brooklyn newsies murdered at the hands of Flynn once more emblazoned themselves in her mind; their cadavers wrought in perfect detail. "What in the hell do you mean there's someone here from Brooklyn to see Oliver?"
Flynn only shook his head, his eyes taking on a glazed appearance. "I, I don't know. I went out just now to get something to eat at The Hideaway and I see this fellow I never saw before standing outside the warehouse. I went up to him and asked what he wanted and he replied that he was from Brooklyn and wanted to see Oliver."
Angel sharply jerked her head up, her eyes burning. "That's all he said? Just that he wanted to see Oliver?"
He released a disgusted exhalation as he pushed himself to his feet. He stepped absentmindedly in a semi-circle, running both hands through his hair before dropping them to his sides and turning to face Angel once more. "It's just that. That's all he said. That he wanted to see Oliver. I knew that I should have blown him away, but I didn't. The whole thing sounded like a crock of bullshit to me."
Angel rose quickly to her feet and strode over to the window that faced out onto the avenue in front of the warehouse. Inverting her palms on the sill, she pressed her forehead close to the slovenly pane of glass, trying to discern the newsboy that Flynn spoke of. All she viewed was the façade of the abandoned apartment complex along the way as it cast its dark shadows upon the street, the street inhabited by not a single soul.
She turned over her shoulder to Flynn. "There's no one out there, Flynn."
Flynn halted in his pacing and halted to regard her, his jade eyes wide in disbelief. "There's no one out there?" he cried in true surprise.
She nodded her head and cocked a brow, causing Flynn's features to morph, to darken as his eyes narrowed. "Now, wait a minute, Angel, wait a minute. Don't go giving me that look like you don't believe me. You saying you don't believe me?" Angel could not keep the bitterness from seeping into her voice. "I don't know Flynn. I guess one of Conlon's boys could have waltzed right into Midtown in daylight and casually ask to see my brother. After all, anything's possible after your supposedly best friend holds a revolver to your head."
His dark expression fell and her words left him someone slack jawed. He finally regained his composure, stalking vehemently across the room and shoving Angel aside to find her observation true. When he saw nothing on the street below, he slowly turned his head toward her to find steel-gray eyes locked in a burning glare.
Flynn dropped his glance away from her, flabbergasted to find the right words as he involuntarily ran a hand through his hair. "Angel, just trust me on this one."
She crossed her arms over her chest garbed only in the corset as her eyes sized him up. She snorted. "But tell me this, Flynn. Did you get your Haddoxs mixed up or something? Do I really resemble my brother that much?"
Flynn's brows furrowed as he struggled to contain the beginning traces of rage. "No, Angel, Oliver isn't here. Neither is Night. If I recall you saw the two pieces of meat that they had this morning." He noted the confusion that lined her face. "The piece of meat that your brother was using as a footstool. Remember, Angel?" His words struck the nerve in her by the way her expression twisted into disgust. "Well, let's just say Nero grew tired with his and their carcasses are in the parlor as we speak. They went out this morning to the brothel."
Angel felt her knees begin to buckle from under her with Flynn's words. "Oh, Flynn," she whispered.
He strode expeditiously across the room to Angel, placing his hands on either of her upper-arms, his eyes glinting with seriousness. "Angel, I'm not pulling your leg with this. I have no idea in hell who he was. I want your opinion."
Angel did not have to raise her eyes to his again. It was only a matter of moments before she had slid into a wrinkled pair of gray trousers, leaving the suspenders dangling at her sides, and was hurriedly following behind Flynn as their footsteps pounded against the flights of stairs.
"Flynn, why in the name of God would one of Brooklyn pull a stunt like this?" she gasped, thundering down the second flight of stairs they had covered, the flight that lead to the first floor. With the fast pace, it was a struggle to bind her tangles of hair in a tattered black ribbon that she had stealthy plucked from the top drawer in her dresser.
"Beats the hell of me," was his reply as he leapt off the penultimate step, stumbling and nearly losing his balance.
She followed after him as he raced down the straightaway that led to the main entrance of the warehouse. Angel pumped her legs as forcefully as she could, the rotting, splintered floorboards digging into her the bare soles of her feet, each step excruciating to take. Flynn had already pushed the door open, allowing bright shafts of sunlight into the moody, dark atmosphere of the Midtown warehouse, just as Angel was struggling past the parlor. She shuttered inwardly as she passed the parlor, a monstrous room that jutted off to her left. She forced her gaze straight. She was not sure if she would be able to suppress the urge to retch if she did indeed saw the corpses of the girls her brother and his foil had murdered.
She slowed her pace to a halt as she reached the doorway, pressing the warped board that served as a door back slowly and stepping into the sunlight. Her eyes narrowed involuntarily and as she began to pan the surroundings, when behind her the door slammed shut, causing her to jump somewhat in fright and turn over her shoulder.
When Angel perceived that it was just the wretched board banging shut, she elicited a broken exhalation and slowly descended the set of caved-in stairs that lead to the warehouse. Her gaze flickering about quickly, she took in the atmosphere. Flynn was standing in the median of the deserted avenue some way down to her left, turning in circles, most likely, trying to discern where the so-called Brooklyn newsie had vanished.
She slowly made her way into the avenue also, her head turning this way and that. A light wind picked up in the stifling air, caressing away the first beads of perspiration that had broken out on her flesh and blowing her bound hair behind her.
There was an unusual, queer air to the atmosphere. The silence was deafening and the structures around her seemed surreal, the sprawling lot of abandoned apartments before her even more mammoth. The entire scene was just not right. It sent chills down her spine.
"Flynn," she called over the wind as it picked up once more, her eyes trained away from him and down the rest of stretch of road. Her voice sounded unnaturally sonorous, shattering the silence. "Flynn, this better not just be some kind of joke-"
"It isn't, Angel," his voice growled defensively in reply. "It's-"
She had heard the sound after he had paused after her name. It was a whizzing sound, as though some object was in flight in the air. She would have brushed it off as a figment of her imagination if she would not had heard Flynn's blood-curdling cry of agony.
Angel ripped her eyes from the sight she was viewing and spun sharply about. Flynn had fallen to one knee and had his right palm pressed tightly against his opposite upper-arm. His face was contorted into an expression of immense pain; even from the distance she was at she could view that.
"Flynn!" she shouted in a shrill pitch, as she dashed over to his side. She fell to her haunches; one hand on his shoulder as she tried to deduce what had produced such a frightening sound from his lips. "Flynn, what in the name of God happened?"
She placed her hand upon his, trying to pry his fingers off of his flesh to that she could glance at the wound that plagued him. As she did so, he hissed in pain, jerking his arm away from her. He glowered at her, his green eyes glimmering, and his lips twisted into a snarl. He hauntingly resembled an injured animal.
"Flynn, what happened?" she implored once more, her tone growing impatient, as she reached out to him. He only leaned away from her grasp, applying more pressure to his arm. Her agitation and need to help him finally grew so great that she leaned forward, falling into him and catching him off balance. He brought his hand away from the injured arm and used it to stabilize himself as he fell onto his bottom. She took this as her chance and gripped his bicep firmly. What she saw caused bewilderment to wash over her.
The left bicep held a nasty looking, circular shaped welt. The bruise itself had already turned a violent shade of dark purple, with the color becoming shades of red as it progressed out from the center. As she gazed at the welt in awe, Flynn roughly pulled his arm away from her, nursing the painful infliction once more.
Though, Angel's interest was distracted from him at the moment as she dropped her gaze as her eyes began to hunt the ground in the surrounding areas. She found the object she hunted for at the tip of Flynn's sullied boot. Falling to her elbows, she stretched out in front of him, plucking the object from the cobblestones as Flynn murmured blue curses into the wind.
She held the object between her index finger and thumb, her gaze studying it intensely and her countenance twisted into disbelief as she rose slowly to her feet. She lifted her arm, the object twirling slightly in her grasp. As she did so, its glass-hewn surface caught the sun, causing it to refract off its surface and glitter in the light.
Angel held a smooth, rounded marble between her fingers, its color an intense peacock shade. Her eyes narrowed and she cocked her head in wonderment. "What the hell-"
It was as she regarded the strange marble that fell from the heavens to strike Flynn, that the distant whizzing noise, no louder than a housefly, caught her ear. Before she had time to react, a small object collided into her lower right shoulder, in its wake leaving blinding agony. She issued a scream at the stabbing pains the miniscule object brought on as she dropped the cerulean marble she had held in her hands, leaving it clatter to the street.
Fighting the tears that welled in the creases of her eyes at the excruciating pain, Angel writhed, desperately trying to sedate the jarring bolts of pain that radiated from her shoulder blade. She was finally able to clasp her palm over the wound, after bending her arm behind her back.
She deemed that she could hear Flynn shouting to her, yet his cries were only a fuzzy whisper. She twisted her head around and searched through blurred vision until she saw it, lying on the smoothed cobblestones at her feet. A black marble rolled to a stop, glinting in the beams of sun. Her mind drew an absolute blank for a moment as she gazed unblinkingly at the raven marble.
And then a thought dawned upon her that chilled her to the innermost core despite the blazing heat that saturated the air. In her mind's eye, the ebony marble slowly metamorphosed into a strikingly blue marble-like such a strikingly blue marble that had been positioned in a slingshot between two strikingly blue eyes.
The pain was all but forgotten as the fear replaced it. She blinked and the marble retained its black shade once more. "Oh no," she whispered in a shivering voice. "Oh, God."
Beside her on the avenue, Flynn had subdued his wild oaths to regard her incredulously and implore what was up her ass. She only stepped away from the marble, shaking her head and whispering under her breath.
"Angel, what the hell is wrong?"
Angel shook her head more intensely, her mutterings becoming more audible. The blue marble held steadfast in her mind as she slowly lifted her eyes to see the desolate apartment complex rise. Her eyes focused on the annex and what she espied caused her blood to curdle. Lining the rooftop, poised shoulder to shoulder, stood the newsboys of Brooklyn, all with slingshots pulled taunt, just waiting to be released. They were a fear-inducing sight, even to a Midtowner on her own turf, due to the hateful expression wrought on their faces. Flynn must have viewed them also, for he had since fallen silent.
Her eyes ran down the lines of them, until they fell upon one particular form in the center of them. His brassy hair blew in the slight wind and caught the sunlight, making it seem as though it were a halo of some sort. From this distance she could read the revilement and loathing in his striking crystalline eyes.
Her eyes locked upon his, Angel could only stand perfectly still, still holding the welt that one of the Brooklyn marbles had inflicted upon her. The blue eyes narrowed in determination, the elastic bands of the slingshots grew tighter.
Angel silently uttered, "Oh, God," just as their leader's voice rang out in Midtown, issuing forth their command. Their noise of hundreds of fatalistic marbles in flight permeated the air as Brooklyn's cries of war rose with them.
She could only close her eyes in anticipation of the showers of rounded glass that rained down upon her.