Grays shadow, p.20
Gray's Shadow, page 20
part #4 of Kings of Hell MC Series
“Not all,” Rev said, presenting a bag that could only contain jewelry.
He removed the pieces out of a fabric bag and laid them out on a white cloth. The contents of the underground workshop were now worth thousands of dollars, perhaps even more than that.
Jake pulled on Gray’s sleeve, and leaned forward, whispering. “Should he be doing that?” He pointed to Shadow, who had his palms on the wall and pressed the front of his body to the brick, as if he were hugging it.
Gray frowned, unsure what he was looking at. “Is everything fine?”
“Hm?” Shadow turned their way, but when he did so, Gray wished he were still oblivious to what was going on. Shadow was licking the wall, and his long tongue stuck out, tracing the black and green growth.
Rev’s mouth twisted. “That’s beyond nasty.”
A mild sense of nausea curled in Gray’s throat, but this was hardly the first time he’d seen Shadow consume inedible things, and he much preferred him to lick walls than suck on spider legs as if they were toothpicks.
“Okay. Bon appetit, and all that.”
“Not with everyone watching,” Shadow mumbled and walked up to the table with a childish pout. “What are we doing?”
Rev shook his head. “Have you been listening at all? Anyway, it doesn’t even matter. You’re only going with Gray so that he can do the job more easily.”
Gray’s gaze fixed on the table as silence stretched a bit too long. “He can do more than that,” he said.
Vars cleared his throat. “In any case, Magpie had the owner’s address for us, along with some information about the house, but obviously take it all with a grain of salt. You know what happened last time.”
Gray’s mouth soured. Nobody would let him forget how he’d risked it all only to fall for a decoy and lead armed men into their clubhouse.
Shadow reached out for one of the rings resting on the table, but Rev slapped his hand away.
“What do you think you’re doing? These are precious. More precious than your whole existence.”
Shadow growled in that low, guttural way that gave Gray the shivers. “And why is that?”
“Because they can save us all from your master flooding the world with more creatures like you.”
Shadow crossed his arms, his face still pinched into a frown. “How so?”
Rev shook his head. “I don’t know yet. Maybe if we put enough of them on his sigil next door, it’ll block him from coming out.”
Shadow frowned, staring at the table. “But you’d need rubies to affect his power. And there are none here.”
“Gray, get him out of here, or I’m gonna smack him!”
Gray raised his hand, suddenly cold in the pit of his stomach. “No, let him speak. Shadow, why do you think that?”
Vars and Jake gravitated closer, eyeing the precious jewelry that had become the focus of their existence.
Shadow looked around. “I can smell it. Can’t you? A real ruby is nutritious. I could eat it like I had the one buried in the chest with the bones. That one was enough to sustain my existence for the three new moons, and awaken the trees. These are nothing like it.”
Rev hissed and hit the table so hard the tools laid out on it clattered. “That’s a load of horseshit! I already had a look at a few of them!”
Gray eyed Shadow with a sense of emptiness in his chest. He picked up an earring with a tear-shaped ruby and showed it to him. “Are you sure? Every one of those?”
Shadow met his gaze and eventually took the earring. He put it in his mouth and sucked on it as if it were a piece of hard candy, but after several tense moments, his lips crooked as if he’d just gotten to the acidic center. He spat it out on his hand and shook his head. “It’s similar, but doesn’t taste quite right. As if… as if it has been grown too fast. It has no smell, no flavor.”
Rev took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a few seconds, but then opened all the remaining boxes. “Any of these?”
Shadow leaned down to smell the jewels, but shook his head.
Rev’s face was flushed, and he shook his head, clearly uneasy that his competencies were being questioned. “This must be a mistake. I fucking know my stuff!”
Vars chewed on his lip. “They might still be rubies, but Magpie said they need to be natural. Could those be lab-made?”
Rev’s arms dropped, but at least he seemed that tiny bit calmer now. “That’s the only logical explanation.”
Shadow cleared his throat several times in a row, but he only spoke when Gray caught on and asked him what he wanted to say.
“You do have one in the clubhouse. There’s a ring on Beast’s finger, and it definitely holds a real ruby.”
Jake’s shoulders relaxed, and he barked out a laugh. “Just imagine it. Beast’s engagement ring saves the world.”
Gray didn’t feel like laughing at all. “What is this shit? There’s always some fakes in each transport, and I’m sure many of the jewels we passed on to Magpie had been industrial-made but this? It’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe your monster is lying. He might follow your orders for the most part, but he is still serving his master,” Rev said in a cool, smoke-rasped voice, his gaze licking up Shadow’s face with distaste.
Shadow took a step back, filling his lungs with air, as if the accusation had physically thrown him off-balance. “I am human now, and my own person.”
Rev squinted. “Not for long.”
Jake cleared his throat. “About that… You said the ruby keeps you alive. Does it mean you’d stay with us longer if you ate another one?”
“Too bad we don’t have any to spare,” Rev said, without a hint of remorse.
Gray’s first instinct was snap at his father, because there was no need to be unnecessarily cruel, but then the meaning behind the words sank in, and he discreetly glanced at Shadow, sensing a cold emptiness somewhere deep inside him. Was Shadow capable of understanding that his time was limited and what it really meant?
The way light died in his ruby-tinted eyes suggested he did. Or had it just dawned on him now?
Chapter 15
The second the banana reached Gray’s mouth, Shadow became so flustered he gasped. Gray was eating it, not sucking on it, but its shape still brought back so many fond memories of lips on Shadow’s cock.
Gray’s lips. Now devouring a banana.
Gray was looking into the distance where the Lowe Estate loomed while Shadow sat at his feet by the bike. He wasn’t allowed on the vehicle on his own, but riding on it behind Gray was all he wanted anyway.
Shadow would have preferred to watch Gray eat bananas all day, but they were here to work, so he’d learned a lot about the human world in the past two days of reconnaissance at the estate.
The owner of the Pigeon Heart, Bill Lowe, was a private man. After making his fortune on Wall Street, he pretty much retired and was dividing his time between properties in the Bahamas, Europe, and his main home in the state of New York. But despite occasionally staying in a Manhattan apartment for shopping and other entertainments the city provided, Lowe much preferred a so-called quiet country life. In his case that constituted extensive golfing, which was basically pushing a ball into a hole with a stick.
The Pigeon Heart had been a gift from Lowe’s former business partner, who’d offered it to him almost fifty years ago, when rubies hadn’t been that rare or expensive. But the gem had significantly risen in value since Mr. Magpie had started taking off them off the market in preparation to fight his creator, so armed guards patrolled the property at all times. It seemed like overkill to go through so much effort just to keep the jewel at home, but Gray had told him people would protect not only what was expensive but also what had sentimental value.
Either way, the man wasn’t important. The jewel was.
Hidden in the dark, on a hill a considerable distance away from the high walls surrounding the private golf course, house, and gardens of the self-made billionaire who owned the most expensive piece of rock in the world, Gray appeared mildly satisfied.
The break-in wouldn’t be easy, but, there were patterns in the movements of the guards, as well as the schedule of the other staff.
Once Shadow sneaked into the huge house in his non-human form and found the Pigeon Heart in an underground vault, he’d offered to bust it out by any means at his disposal, eager to please Gray, but his human liked to assess things in detail. Apparently, it would have been too risky to take it forcefully without a plan. Despite his bravado, even Shadow had to admit that while getting into the vault was doable, getting out with the jewel would have been another matter.
Every time Shadow roamed the estate in search of useful information, Gray took care of his human body for a couple of minutes. Time and time again, Shadow had come back with enough details to oil the cogs in Gray’s mind. Intel on the guards’ schedules, locations of rooms, and he even memorized the appointments marked in Mr. Lowe’s diary.
It was past 1 a.m. when Gray decided to pack up for the night. The drive to the cheap motel they stayed at took a little over twenty minutes, as Gray didn’t want to stay too close to his mark, and by the time they parked, Gray was scowling, rubbing his forehead and Shadow would have done anything to relieve him.
“What do you like to eat most?” Shadow asked, eager to provide distraction from whatever pain Gray was suffering.
Since Gray accused Shadow that he didn’t try to get to know him, Shadow realized that maybe he was in fact missing something vital to humans, so he set out on a mission to find out everything.
He already knew Gray’s favorite color, his preferred brand of motorcycle, and that he considered bananas superior to oranges.
Gray sighed when his gaze met the broken neon above the entrance of the diner just a stone’s throw away from the motel. The ‘n’ remained dark when the rest of the letters lit up bright green, and for some reason that had caused Gray great discomfort when he’d first noticed, so Shadow had nodded and agreed that it was a disgrace. Though in reality it didn’t bother him at all.
“That depends when. I like steak, I guess,” Gray said, making his way across the parking lot and toward the restaurant.
“Why?”
Gray took a deep breath, as if Shadow’s questions were somehow tedious, when it was him who’d complained that Shadow wasn’t trying to get to know him. Well now he was, and that wasn’t good enough either?
“Because I like how beef tastes. Plus, it’s good for building muscle,” Gray told him, crossing the wooden fence around the motel and entering the diner parking lot, which only hosted three cars.
“Oh! You want to build more muscle? Do you think that I could grow too? I don’t really know if I’m growing older, because it’s only been a month.”
Gray walked on toward the Di-er sign, which kept blinking, as if it had faulty wiring. “I don’t know. You’re not like other people.” he said, entering the restaurant.
Most times, Shadow was wary of entering places that served food, but there was an undertone to the scent of this place that he found surprisingly nice.
Next to him, Gray scowled, standing in the entrance, as if he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to enter after all. “They can’t have a good hygiene rating,” he whispered, briefly glancing toward the other end of the elongated room. The brown tiles on the floor did their job, making dirt smudges and sand less visible, but the state of the diner was not on par with Gray’s standards. Gray even told Shadow to make his bed every day.
“But can you eat something here? Or we could try to get more bananas. Bananas with steak. Yum, right?” He smiled, stepping closer until his arm itched to go around Gray’s shoulders.
Gray covered his eyes with one hand and chuckled. When he shook his head, his fine hair floated through the air like the most intricate spider webs. “No. Bananas don’t go with steak. Then again, if you like everything most people don’t, maybe you’d like that combination.”
He was about to say something more when his body suddenly stiffened and backed into Shadow, who caught the rapid movement of a black dot along the pale counter.
The lively tap of cockroach legs was like an invitation to chase.
Shadow pushed Gray aside and slammed his hand over the bug before his brain could consciously make that decision. And then he stilled, gaze pinned to Gray’s pale features while the roach stirred under his palm.
It was the ultimate conundrum: if he followed his instincts and tossed the crunchy delight into his mouth, he’d have to face Gray’s disgust. If he let the roach go, he would miss out on the nourishing deliciousness hiding inside the exoskeleton.
He did the one thing that came to his mind—pointed to the parking lot. “What’s that?”
The moment Gray looked over his shoulder, Shadow packed the roach between his teeth and chewed through it quickly.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming. Jeez, you don’t have to punch holes in the counter,” said a woman from somewhere behind Shadow’s back. Her voice had a nasal quality to it that made it lower and more similar to the sounds men typically made. Shadow was sometimes confused by the subtler differences between genders but when the speaker emerged through a door behind the counter, Shadow was glad to find out he’d been right this time.
Dressed in a pale uniform with an apron that had a washed-out stain at the front, the waitress was relatively young, though the puffiness under her eyes and the earthy tone of her skin made her appear older than she likely was. Either way, her face held the expression of supreme disinterest.
“It’s fine. He stumbled. Goodnight,” Gray said, retreating through the door.
“No? But you didn’t ask about steak,” Shadow tried as he followed Gray back into the cool evening air.
“I’m no longer hungry,” Gray told him as soon as they were outside, walking right back to the hotel. “That place was filthy!”
Shadow looked back longingly, but decided not to comment. “Any good places you know for steak?”
“Yes. There’s a good one in Brecon, fifteen minutes away from the clubhouse. Why do you want to know?” Gray asked, stepping through the fence again. A passing car briefly lit his ass with its headlights, causing a stab of jealousy deep inside Shadow, as if the glow had been a physical touch.
Unable to keep himself from caressing Gray too, he ran his fingers over Gray’s knuckles, shivering at the jolt of electricity that sparked between their flesh. “I want to know everything about you.”
Gray stilled for a second, and his gaze unmistakably lingered on the fragment of skin Shadow touched, so maybe he was feeling something too!
“How is this relevant? You hate human food.”
That wasn’t quite true. In Shadow’s limited experience, food often turned softer and sweeter as time passed, like the banana Gray had once forgotten about. It turned black, and in the end Gray had let Shadow eat it. “It gets better when you leave it in a warm place.”
“Yes, when it becomes poisonous to everyone but you,” Gray said, passing his elegant motorbike on the way to the stairs that led to their room.
“I’m just trying to get to know you. Now, if I were to get you a gift, I’d know you like white, black, and gray, and you don’t wear earrings.”
Gray stopped midway to the landing and looked down at Shadow. With the streetlight creating a distinct contrast to shadows, he was like a beautiful statue, his limbs strong, torso and shoulders rigid. “A gift? My birthday isn’t in another couple of months.”
Shadow carefully reached for Gray’s hand, pushing away the thought that he wouldn’t be here long enough to celebrate Gray’s birthday. “I don’t need an occasion. It would be a token of my appreciation.”
Gray opened his lips, but unlike many of Shadow’s other friends, Gray didn’t like to express his feelings. His face was usually serene, as if he were posing for a portrait. It made each of his smiles a rare yet beautiful event worth remembering.
“You don’t have to do that. I appreciate your help,” Gray said, moving upstairs again until he reached the second floor.
How could one human cause Shadow so much anguish, and so much joy all at once? Any hint of approval made Shadow’s heart beat faster, and any scowl made his eyes itch with tears. Reining in his emotions was a daily battle. He was a stormy ocean, but Gray was the moon that controlled the tides.
He followed Gray into their small room. Unlike Gray’s pristine living space at the clubhouse, it smelled pleasantly dated, and featured a patch of mold on the bathroom ceiling. Whoever decorated it must have loved patterns, because there were different ones on the carpet, curtains, and beddings. Shadow thought it looked lively, but Gray, with his love for solid color, had been much less impressed when they’d first moved in.
Gray put down the backpack that contained the surveillance equipment and sat on one of the two beds, holding a protein bar, which he’d pulled out of his stash in the bedside table.
“Can I have one?” Shadow asked.
Gray sighed, leaning forward until his elbows rested on his knees. “You know they make you sick.”
Shadow started unbuckling his jacket with resignation. He was doing his best to get to know Gray, to find out what he ate, what he liked, how he smelled, and yet it felt as if he wasn’t getting anywhere at all. There was a missing piece, a key to Gray’s heart that he couldn’t seem to find. Maybe he was destined for failure?
Gray pondered on it while quickly chewing through the bar, as if he wanted to just get it over with. “Are you hungry?”
“I know you don’t like to watch me eat. I can wait.” But Shadow was in fact hungry. The cockroach had been delicious but barely enough to whet his appetite. There were more important things than eating, though.
Gray opened the drawer of the nightstand again and pulled out a small plastic package painted with bright colors. “I remember you said this smelled nice when we were out shopping. Maybe you’ll end up liking it.”
