Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men Book 2) Read online

  I searched my floor then the one below me and I was super tired by the time I checked the emergency room, but I made myself keep going because the thought of my hero being hurt made me frightened. I didn’t like to see all the blood and chaos in the huge room but I was determined to find my biker man.

  I was just pulling back yet another curtain to peek inside when a voice said, “Whatcha doin’, kid?”

  I froze.

  “Just ’cause you stopped movin’ doesn’t mean I don’t see you anymore,” the same deep voice told me.

  It was the voice of a monster, really dark and rumbly like there was something wrong with his throat. He didn’t sound mean though, it kind of sounded like he wanted to laugh.

  “I’m not supposed to be down here,” I told him without turning around.

  “Figured as much. What’s a little girl doing in the ER all by herself? Not that I’m not stoked to see you walkin’ around after what happened. How’s the shoulder, kid?”

  I turned around to look at him through my hair and took a step away because I’d forgotten how much he looked like a monster. He was humungous like a Titan or a giant but in real life. He was lying in a hospital bed, kinda leaning up against the pillow but I thought that if he stood up his head would hit the ceiling. He had a bunch of really long, crazy hair that was blond and brown and his big arms and sides were covered with drawings. There were pictures on his arms that looked like feathers, like those giant arms were really wings like on an angel.

  “Are you an angel?” I asked.

  I was closer to him than before, but I didn’t remember moving closer to his bed. I reached out to touch his skin because the feathers looked so real and I wanted to know what they felt like.

  He made a weird noise like he was choking. “No, kid, I’m no angel.”

  “I thought maybe you were a monster because you’re really big, but you have wings and you saved me from all the bad guys,” I explained.

  My fingers touched the feather curling over his arm. They didn’t feel like real feathers except his skin was smooth like when you pet a feather just right.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.

  “No but it hurt like a bitch to get ’em.”

  “A bitch?”

  “Damn, sorry, kid. Don’t say that, it’s a bad word.”

  “Then why do you use it?” I frowned. Angels didn’t say bad words. My grandpa was the pastor, so I knew these things.

  His lips twitched like maybe he wanted to smile. “That’s a good question.”

  I crossed my arms. “So, are you going to answer it or what?”

  He laughed this time but I didn’t think it was in a mean way so I let him.

  “Don’t have a good answer for ya. My dad cursed, my mum cursed, so I curse. Grew up with that shit.”

  “My grandpa says that if you do bad stuff like curse, then bad stuff happens to you.” I pointed to the white bandage that covered half his chest. “Maybe that’s why you got hurt.”

  “I got hurt savin’ a little girl who needed savin’,” he reminded me gently.

  I bit my lip and scuffed my heel against the floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you got hurt because of me. Do you want me to kiss it better?”

  He choked again, like he was swallowing laughter. “I’m good, kid, but thanks. I’ve had worse, trust me.”

  There was a thick rope of weirdly smooth and mangled skin on the right side of his neck. I pointed at it. “Like that?”

  “I did something a lot worse than curse to get that,” he told me and then winked.

  I giggled.

  He had really big eyes like a wolf, really pale and grey.

  “What did you do?” I leaned heavily against the side of his bed because I was really tired.

  He looked at me for a long time before he said, “I found a guy that did some bad stuff to a friend of mine and I did some bad stuff to him. Before I got ’im, he got me with a blunt machete.”

  He made a chopping motion against the junction of his neck and shoulder where the scar was.

  “For real?” I breathed.

  He nodded.

  “Wow. If you got him because he chopped you, what did you do to the bad guy that shot us?”

  “Smart girl.” His lips twitched again and he lifted one of his huge hands to show me his bloody knuckles.

  I nodded. “You’re definitely big enough to kill someone with your bare hands.”

  He tilted his head. “Don’t seem that disturbed about it, kid. You close to death?”

  I mimicked his pose and squinted my eyes at him. “You mean do I know him or something?”

  “Yeah, somethin’.” He grinned.

  “I guess so. I’m dying, probably,” I told him. It was dramatic but I wanted to see what he would do if he thought I was really dying. He was an angel so I figured he would know if that was true or not. Besides, my mum always said it was a lady’s right to be dramatic and it was the only one of her rules I actually liked.

  My feet were cold on the plastic floor so I pushed the bedside chair closer to him and climbed onto it.

  “Dyin’?” His body got tight. I watched his face screw up and to the left like a twist cap on soda pop.

  “Why are you making a funny face?” I asked.

  “Don’t think any person finds out a little girl is gonna die is going to smile at it,” he replied.

  “That’s a nice thing to say.”

  He shook his head, studying me really hard. “I got a son older than you and a little girl ’bout your age. Hope like fuck that they turn out to be as cool as you, kid.”

  “Are you sure you aren’t an angel?” I asked him, because he was being really nice and it made me feel like I was standing in the sun.

  I wanted him to be an angel. My grandpa told me that God could save a person from death if they were pious and faithful, and I was a good girl so I was both. He was the town pastor so I think he knew what he was talking about but I never really believed him. What did God care about me?

  But if this man was a real angel maybe it meant that I didn’t have to die. Maybe this angel man would wrap me up in his winged arms and make my bones stop hurting.

  “Nah, kid, I’m no angel.”

  “That’s too bad. I was thinking you could be my guardian angel or something cool like that.”

  I stared at him while he laughed at me. One of his big hands pressed to his chest just above his heart where the bandage was wrapped, so I could tell laughing hurt him. But he did it anyway, and he wasn’t quiet about it.

  “I’d be a shit guardian angel. I’m not a good man, kid.”

  I stared at him, squinting as I looked at his messy hair, all the dark and twisting images on his really tanned skin. At first, I’d thought he looked like a monster, all big and dark and scary because I didn’t understand him.

  But, “You have nice eyes. My grandpa says that kind eyes don’t lie.”

  His face relaxed in a way that made something flutter in my tummy.

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “I’m a Lafayette,” I told him because that was the important bit of my name.

  He frowned. “Yeah, got that kid. Your dad is one of the guys rootin’ for a life sentence and it’s safe to say he hates my fuck—freakin’ guts. I wanna know what you call yourself.”

  I didn’t want to tell him so I bit my lip. My name was stupid and I hated it. Louise was an old person name and I wasn’t old. It was also a boring name and I really, really didn’t want to grow up to be boring like my mum with her parties and my dad with all his work stuff.

  So, I said, “Loulou.”

  No one had ever called me Loulou before even though I’d tried to make it stick. Mum and Dad said it was a common name, which meant they didn’t like it, which meant I couldn’t have it.

  “Cool. I’m Zeus.”

  “Zeus,” I squeaked. “For real?”

  His mouth twitched. “I got a name my parents gave me but don’t like it much so, yeah, Zeus.
”

  “That’s the coolest name I ever heard,” I told him, bouncing up and down in my seat. “Do you know who Zeus is? He’s like the king of all the gods on Mt, Olympus. He throws lightning!”

  “Smart girl,” Zeus rumbled in his super cool, super god-like voice.

  I stared at him, having a moment because mum told me girls are allowed to have moments and I was pretty sure this man was the absolute coolest man on the planet.

  “I’m pretty sure you are the absolute coolest man on the planet,” I told him.

  His eyes danced at me and got all crinkly in the corners. Suddenly, it was harder to breathe.

  “I’m damn sure that you are the absolute coolest girl on the planet too.”

  “Cool,” I said, pretending that wasn’t the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me ever.

  He smiled again.

  After a minute, it faded and he said, “You should probably head back to bed before someone worries about ya.”

  He was right but I really didn’t want to go. Zeus was big and strong and I was pretty sure he was half angel, half monster, which meant that all the other monsters in the hospital wouldn’t hurt me if I stayed with him.

  “Will you stay here all night and fight the monsters if they come to get me?” I asked him, looking around his little curtained room. “Do you have your lightning bolts with you?”

  “I got the bolts. You don’t worry, kid. I’ll stand watch.”

  “Promise?” I asked and my voice was stupid and small like a baby.

  Zeus held out his pinky. It was four times the size of mine and for some reason, I thought that was really cool. I linked mine onto it.

  “Pinky swear,” he swore.

  Then he hooked his thumb over our tangled little fingers to shake it against my thumb. I giggled and for the first time in a long time, when I went to sleep, I didn’t dream of monsters, I dreamt of him.

  The next morning, I ran down to the ER in my hospital gown, clutching my uneaten green Jell-O from the night before in my hand. I wanted to share it with Zeus because he’d kept the monsters away all night.

  “Fuck this, Z, you’re gonna go to prison for this, ya know,” a scary voice growled from behind Zeus’s curtain just as I was going to push it aside.

  I froze.

  “Maybe.”

  “There’s no maybe about it, dipshit. You got kids at home and you’re pullin’ this crazy-ass stunt without your brothers at your back?”

  “I don’t know who my brothers are at the fuckin’ moment, Bat, otherwise wouldn’t be in this fuckin’ mess in the first place. You rather Crux put a bullet in you ’fore I put a bullet in him? He killed our brothers and he went through a motherfuckin’ kid to get to me.”

  “Gonna lose half the brothers over this and half of ’em are gonna wanna back you as Prez now he’s gone.”

  “A Prez in prison isn’t the best call for the club.”

  There was a really awkward pause, like when I heard my mum and daddy fight.

  “Farrah’s gonna flip, you go to prison and leave her with the kids,” the angry guy said. “She can’t handle that shit on her own.”

  “Yeah,” Zeus said, soft sounding like he was sad. “But this is good, Bat. We needed a change in the club and now that rat bastard is gone, we can move forward.”

  “Hard to change the norm when the fucking leader of our revolution is goin’ to prison for manslaughter.”

  Manslaughter didn’t sound good. It sounded like Zeus had probably killed someone with his bare hands for real. I shivered but I wasn’t actually scared, not of Zeus. I was scared of what kind of monster that man had been that my angel slayer had to kill him. It didn’t occur to me to think it could be a man who shot a little girl in the chest.

  “The pigs are sniffing around but I’ll hold ’em off until you get out of this place. I brought the truck, bring it round front and meet you there in ten, yeah? Won’t buy you much time but I figure you can say goodbye to yer kids.”

  “Yeah, brother. Thanks,” Zeus said.

  I quickly ducked away from the opening just before a tall, scary-looking tattooed man blew past me. Before the curtain could close, I slipped into Zeus’s space.

  He was sitting up in his bed, really dark against the white sheets and way too big for such a tiny bed. They hadn’t changed the Band-Aid on his chest because I could see blood on it like a pink flower blooming underneath. His thick brown eyebrows hung low over his eyes as he stared into the distance at something that made him unhappy but as soon as he saw me, he smiled really big.

  “Hey there, kid. Come to say goodbye?”

  “No,” I told him primly as I walked over to the chair beside his bed and climbed onto it. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”

  His lips twisted, and I noticed they were pretty lips, almost like a girl’s. “Don’t have much of a choice here. I’m goin’ away for a while.”

  “Because you killed that bad man?”

  “Yeah, ’cause I killed that bad man.”

  “So…” I twisted my fingers in my lap and thought really hard about it. “I’m the reason that you have to go away, then. Because you had to save my stupid life?”

  “Hey,” he barked so suddenly that I jumped a little. His voice softened as he leaned forward to snag my eyes with his. “Don’t want to hear you talk like that, yeah? Innocence is always worth protectin’. If a baby needed your help, are you tellin’ me you wouldn’t help ’em?”

  “I’m not a baby,” I told him.

  “No.” He smiled at me and it made me forget to be annoyed at his comparison. “But babies are sweet and innocent like you. They haven’t learned about all the bad stuff in the world yet.”

  I twisted my fingers in my lap again. “I don’t want to be like a baby. I want to know about the bad stuff. If I don’t know, what am I going to do when it happens to me when I grow up? Wait for some stupid prince to come save me now that my guardian monster is going away?”

  Zeus laughed a great big laugh. “No need to grow up too fast, kid. You got lots of time and once you lose that innocence, you can’t get it back. Trust me.”

  “I do,” I told him eagerly. “That’s why I don’t want you to go away and never see me again. Can I visit you where you’re going?”

  “No, absolutely fuckin’ not.”

  I thought about being hurt for a second and then I guessed, “Because bad people go to where you’re going?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I want you to be my friend,” I tried to explain, reaching forward to put my little hand on top of his giant one resting on the bed.

  He stared at our hands for a moment with gentle eyes and then looked up at me with a nice smile. “We are, kid.”

  “Hurrah!” I whispered, because I was excited, but it felt like too important a moment to ruin with a shout.

  “What are you doing in here?” Nurse Betsy said in a really high voice like the one my mum used when I was doing something gross or stupid.

  She pushed back the curtain that separated Zeus’s bed from the rest of the big room and ran over to me, checking me over with her hands and glaring at my new friend.

  “What is she doing in here with you? You’re in enough trouble as it is,” she hissed at him.

  I tried to pull away from her, but she pressed me close to her chest, tucking my head into her neck as if that meant I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Sometimes, adults are so dumb.

  “Relax, Bets, she was wandering around down here and decided that I looked like a fuckin’ angel. She took a seat and we shot the shit for a minute. Nothing else.”

  He didn’t seem that concerned about how angry Betsy was and it was kind of weird that they seemed to know each other. Betsy was tiny and pretty and soft. She didn’t look like she had it in her to be friends with Zeus.

  “You never think,” she continued to hiss. “If someone else had come in here and seen you talking to a cute little girl, what do you think they would have done?
You’re already going to freaking prison for manslaughter. Do you need a molestation charge on top of that?”

  I couldn’t even see him but the air got weird and heavy and I knew without looking that Zeus was mad.

  “Don’t even fuckin’ say that out loud. I’m a father for fuck’s sake, Bets. I’d never hurt a kid.”

  Betsy relaxed a little against me and pet my hair. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m protective of this one. They think she’s got Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. She’s been in here a lot and she’s curious, likes to roam.”

  “Fuck,” Zeus said, soft and angry at the same time.

  I wanted to reach out and pat him like I did when my dog growled. My grandpa had always warned my mum that I was attracted to dark and damaged things. I was just a kid but I was a smart one and I knew Zeus was both of those things.

  A fallen angel. A monster, but a good one under all the scary.

  I didn’t want someone like him to feel sad for me like everyone else.

  “Told you I was dying,” I grumbled loudly enough that he could hear me even though my lips were up against Betsy’s boobies.

  Her arms went loose and I pulled away to see Zeus staring at me with that soft face that made my tummy strange.

  “You’re not gonna die, kid. Let’s stay positive, yeah?”

  “You don’t know. You’re not a doctor.”

  “No, but I’m Zeus. I throw lightning bolts and I’m king of all the gods. I know you ain’t gonna die and now all you gotta do to get better is believe me. Yeah?”

  I stared at him. He had really pretty eyes with lashes thick and dark like a lady.

  “I don’t wanna die,” I whispered.

  Betsy squeezed me really hard but I didn’t take my eyes off Zeus.

  He leaned as close to me as he could. Without meaning to, I reached up and put my hand on his fuzzy cheek. He flinched like I’d hurt him but then he said, “Bad things happen to good people, kid. Sucks that you’re sick at all. Tellin’ you now, you’re gonna get through this and even though I won’t be around to see it, I promise you, I know it. You said you trust me, right?”

  I nodded mutely, stuck somewhere in his silver-dollar eyes.

  “Then believe me,” he ordered.