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  “THE WHORE WAS THERE!” Papa Raven roared over him, glaring. Then, in a near-whisper, he added, “She was a piece of Carrion Crew property, correct?”

  The man nodded.

  “Did you calculate what the loss of the whore represented?”

  “Well, actually, I was able to—”

  This time, when Papa Raven pulled the trigger—his aim, as always, never faltering—it passed through the speaker’s still-grinning mouth, the passing bullet smashing five of his front teeth to dust, before punching through the back of his skull. Unlike the first to die, the force of the bullet knocked this informant straight back, toppling over his chair as he went, and leaving his legs sprawled up in the air like a piece of roadkill.

  Not seeming satisfied by this death on its own, Papa Raven pulled the trigger on the man seated directly to the right of this man.

  The aura of the room took on a heavy, loaded sense; it was not totally unlike the sort of tension that might hang over a table saturated with gamblers. Were the odds in such a place that all would walk away a “winner,” all would have been happy to take that turn. However, as this was hardly ever the case, gamblers were prone to find themselves in silent, biased trials with one another—wishing bad luck on others because they knew them, or because they did not know them, or because they felt that some prior string of good or bad luck should be a deciding factor.

  Not a single one thought of trying to run, however.

  To fold your cards and abandon the table altogether was to forfeit the game entirely.

  At that moment, unprovoked still, Papa Raven retrieved the semi-automatic yet again and put two rounds in the chest of the Carrion head seated to his right.

  A bittersweet duality of thoughts cycled in that instant.

  The bitter: if a Carrion head could be shot down with no reason other than one possibly existing in Papa Raven’s mind, then nobody at that table was truly safe.

  The sweet: that he’d sacrificed two bullets in the brutal act meant that at least one of the remaining souls seated at the triangle would be leaving with their life.

  Again, a silent sense of forced competition cycled.

  And while there were a fair number of learned men seated about still, fear and tension had shaved away much of their wits. Had any of them retained a shred of this, however, they might have realized that this cycle—the thoughts, and, furthermore, all of the thoughts being had in that moment—were a product of Papa Raven and his manipulations.

  Like the late, waste-of-space Malcolm Chobavich, a man that Papa Raven had seen particular promise in tormenting further, Papa Raven was a master at manipulating others; even moreso, in fact.

  Unlike the late, waste-of-space Malcolm Chobavich, however, Papa Raven was a man of action, not words.

  Looking directly at the only other Carrion head, Papa Raven asked, quite calmly and painfully outright, “Does the whore-Mia still live?”

  The Carrion head, seeming to realize what had just happened, didn’t bother to stand as he said, “Y-yes, Papa Raven. Yes… she lives.”

  “And she is with the Crows now, yes?” he went on. “With their leader? With Jason Presley?”

  “Yes… yes, Papa Raven.”

  Two more bullets stole the life of the only other Carrion head.

  Then, just like that, Papa Raven, the sole remaining Carrion head in the room, sat before twelve of the best men the Carrion Crew had.

  “GENTLEMEN!” he called out to them again, and if it hadn’t felt like a joke before it most certainly didn’t feel like one now. He spread his arms. Nobody questioned if the gesture was a religious one—his posture bearing a seemingly perverse nod to Jesus Christ in that moment—or if he was just making a show of stretching. Then Papa Raven said, “I… feel… like a great bird. A great and wicked bird, gentlemen; a great, wicked, and terrible bird.” He made a grotesque show of moving his spread arms up, nearly bringing the backs of his hands together, before “flapping” them downward—the motion slow and drawn out—until they were only partially held out from his sides. “A great and powerful bird…” he whispered to himself. Then, after repeating the flapping motion, faster this time, for three more cycles, he said, “And great birds, gentlemen, are large. They, being great and wicked and terrible, are very, very large, and this means… what?”

  Nobody spoke. Everybody was too terrified to speak.

  “It means…” Papa Raven said, rolling his eyes, “THAT THEY NEED LARGE WINGS!” He paused then, red-faced and heaving with anger. After a few breaths, however, he seemed to calm and, finally nodding to himself, he repeated, calmly this time, “Large birds need large wings to fly.”

  He pulled the gun and—BA-BANG!—fired two more shots. The shots seemed impossibly fast to lend to any sort of accuracy, but two of the best men seated at the side across from him fell dead at almost the same instant.

  Again Papa Raven spread his arms, the still-smoking gun held out to the side now, and, again, he said, “I FEEL LIKE A GREAT BIRD… but now my wingspan is smaller.”

  Another two shots; another two dead.

  “And smaller yet again,” he whispered.

  Papa Raven set down his semi-automatic, and then he slapped both of his palms down against the table. His palms clapped loudly on the wood on either side of the point he sat before.

  The men seated around him, strangely, seemed more startled by this than the gunshots.

  Papa Raven roared, his tone and rhythm changing like the shifting of a flock of birds. “WHY AM I, A GREAT AND POWERFUL BIRD, BEING FORCED TO FLY ON SUCH TINY WINGS?”

  The eight remaining men stared back, dumbfounded, and said nothing.

  He named names. Among those names were T-Built; these were the names of those who’s jobs were necessary and yet left unfulfilled.

  He named names. Among those names were Mia Chobavish; these were the names of assets who’d been allowed to slip from the great talons of the Carrion Crew.

  He named names. Among those names were Jason Presley; these were the names of enemies who, for whatever reason, had been allowed to remain alive and well.

  Then he fired three shots. Another three bodies fell dead.

  This time somebody did try to run. A fourth shot was fired; a fourth body fell dead.

  Papa Raven sighed and turned away from the table; turned his back to the shaken survivors. He’d looked sad before he turned, and several thought that this must have been why he turned. He’d looked tired before he turned, and another thought that this must have been why he turned. They were all right, but they were all also wrong. Papa Raven lifted the gun, aiming its barrel up towards the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. He emptied the extended magazine. Then he held the soulless gun behind his back so that the survivors could see it and celebrate what it represented to them. And while they celebrated this, they felt a great fear for what it could mean for them, as well.

  Them…

  The fortunate four…

  Had their survival been of total and reckless circumstance? Were their still-beating hearts—their still-thinking brains—solely the product of randomness and chance? And, if so, what value could they ever again place on their lives, lives that were now no more happenstance than which specks of dust came to clog a vent and which managed to slip through undetected?

  Or had they been chosen by some chaotic process? Could Papa Raven’s seemingly random gunning process have been, in the end, a calculated process?

  These questions might have been answered, but the learned men were far from fit to dwell on such things to any true substance.

  But, as it was known, Papa Raven was a master manipulator, and he was a man of action.

  The answers were there for those who had mind enough to calculate them.

  Still with his back to the survivors, Papa Raven said, “Change is coming, gentlemen. Change is coming, and, with it, I expect greater things. I expect greater numbers, greater profits, greater turnouts, greater sales; I expect greater things. I demand greater things
. Among these greater things, I demand greater sex and far, far greater death. Because, gentlemen, sex and death are life, and there’s money to be made from life. But, until we can be made rich and powerful, there are matters to be attended to…

  “I want to watch Jason Presley burned to cinders on that crass chopper of his with its gawdy fiery design and all its shiny chrome. And, along with Jason, I want his faggot lieutenant turned inside-out from his sodomy-loving rectum and left to bleed out in the streets. I want to see the Mia-whore gangraped until there was but one hole left—that of her very soul—which only then will I personally step in to defile. I want the traitorous Nancy-whore—the bitter slut who ironically named herself “Candy”—stripped of clothes and flesh alike; I want her to be made to march down the streets as a howling, tormented meat-thing until she can hold herself together no longer and comes undone before the eyes of many.

  “And, finally,” he said, going on in his verbal rampage, “I want the Crow Gang undone. I want the lives of every lost member of the Carrion Crew, including those who have died on this day by my own hand, to be paid for in cries of agony from those still pledging their allegiance to the Crow Gang. I want every dollar that the Carrion Crew had lost—be it directly stolen or lost in the great machine of profit, both old and new—to be replaced with the bones of every Crow Gang member in existence. And if we should run out of Crow Gang members and their bones before those dollars had been matched, I demand that the gap be filled with the bones of actual crows; that the very birds whose namesake the gang borrowed should be forced to suffer for the crimes of those pathetic, simple-minded whore-mongers.”

  The survivors, nearly mute of even their breathing, listened to Papa Raven as he spoke. Their eyes never wavered from the gun, for even knowing that it was out of bullets it seemed to exist behind Papa Raven’s back as a talisman of immense and awful potential. If the semi-automatic, at that very instant, had found eyes within itself and chosen that moment to open them and look upon them, the survivors would have been neither awed nor terrified, no more than they already were, at least.

  If nothing else, it would certainly explain why, even with Papa Raven’s back turned to them, they felt as if they were still under heavy scrutiny.

  Finally—finally!—Papa Raven completed his list of demands.

  And the room fell into silence.

  PART 1

  Wild

  Goose Chase

  ONE

  ~JACE~

  God-fucking-damn!

  I mean—seriously!—god-fucking-damn!

  How lucky could a guy get? Especially—especially!—when that guy was yours truly!

  I mean, sure, there were the aches and pains. Some stitches here, some splints there. But, hey, you couldn’t get something for nothing, right? It’d been an ugly show to get to this point, but we’d sailed rough waters and, at the end of the journey, found ourselves at a posh and tropical island paradise with all the luxuries to go with it.

  I’ll say it again: god-fucking-damn!

  I just couldn’t believe how great things had been, and, what’s more, they’d been great for three weeks. Three weeks! Not three hours, kids, no; and not just three days, either. No, weeks! Three of them!

  That had to be some kind of record!

  Well, for me, at least.

  Fuck, that was pretty telling of the shit-life I’d been leading up until that point.

  But, yeah…

  The Crow Gang had gotten to celebrate a substantial victory against our rivals with the Carrion Crew. We’d busted in, wiped out another of their little bases of operation—this time an entire neighborhood (go figure, right?)—and, in the process, taken out a lying, manipulative, incestuous little fuck-wad. It was one hell of a victory for the Crows, that was for sure, but, on a more personal level, it had brought me and Mia back together—“Where we belong,” as Mia had put it—and, in many ways, that was what had made the three weeks since as great as they’d been.

  To Mia’s credit, she’d been the one to finally take out her brother. This, however, seemed only fair, though, as he’d been the one to “sell” her, his own sister, to the Carrion Crew as an prostitute in an effort to weasel out of his debts to them. The scene at the cul-de-sac had represented the culmination of the slow-boiling clusterfuck that had been put into motion since he’d pulled that disgusting stunt.

  Who’d have guessed that the shit would have eventually hit the fan, right?

  Asshole wracks up God-only-knew how much debt with the Carrion Crew, finds himself on their chopping block, and, right before getting his punk-ass thrown in jail, says, “Take my sister! Use her as a communal fuck-toy and charge strangers to slip it to her whenever they like! I’m sure she’ll make back what I owe! Just please don’t kill my loser-ass, please!”

  (Okay, so maybe I’m paraphrasing a little.)

  If Mia—who’d given the Carrion Crew the slip, found herself true love, and refused to go crawling back to her murder-happy, whore-mongering “employers”—hadn’t earned the right to put a bullet in the bastard who’d put her there in the first place then there truly was no justice in universe.

  The fact that the “true love” in question just happened to be yours truly and the added fact that I wasn’t about to let her go notwithstanding.

  Even if that did represent the proverbial insult added to the Carrion Crew’s injury. Bad enough that they lost a money-maker like Mia in the first place, worse yet that they’d lost her to the leader of the only rival gang in town.

  Sucks to be the Carrion Crew.

  And, as far as I’m concerned, if it sucks for the Carrion Crew then it’s great news for the Crow Gang, which meant it was fantastic news for me.

  Plus, I got the girl.

  Since then, the Carrion Crew had gone quiet. Whether this meant they were too injured to retaliate or if they were just biding their time for something big, I wasn’t sure, but I was, for the time being, content with the notion that they were shivering, whimpering, and licking their wounds like the mangy mongrels I thought of them as. Cocky as I presented myself as, however, I couldn’t help but wonder how long the peaceful quiet would last; couldn’t help but wonder just how long things could stay normal.

  Or, rather, what passed for “normal” in my world.

  Until then…

  God-fucking-damn!

  I glanced over at Mia, sleeping beside me in our bed. That it had become so easy to think of it as “our bed” was something of a miracle in and of itself, I realized. I smiled, appreciating both the sight and the thought, and leaned forward to kiss her forehead. She made a small sound and stirred in her sleep, a faint whisper of a smile growing across her face as she did. I stared in awe, taking in the small, subtle act as something almost divine. For a short while I just sat there and marveled at how beautiful she was. Then, as the tranquilizing effect of the moment wore down and emotional momentum demanded a fresh push, I smirked.

  It had been a while since I’d given her my “special” wake-up call.

  Careful to not wake her too early, I crept downward and then worked to slowly part her thighs. Once this was done to my satisfaction, I looked up to make certain that she was still asleep. Thankfully, she was.

  I grinned again, this time at the sight of her beautiful pussy, perfect and waiting only a few tantalizing inches from me. Thank fuck we sleep naked, I thought.

  Then, moving with a slow-yet-direct intent, I began parting her lips with my fingertips, revealing my target.

  And there it was…

  I leaned in, running my tongue across her clit and stifling a groan at the taste. I wanted the wakeup to come from the sensation alone; any sounds I might make could potentially betray the effort, and where was the fun in that? Through my forced silence, I heard a faint moan emanate from Mia’s parted lips—the sound faint and sleepy still, her body registering the first waves of pleasure but not yet seeing them as cause to stir from her slumber. I smirked at this and paused, waiting until the sound of h
er breathing dipped again. Then I repeated the action. Again and again: lean in and feast for a few seconds and “work” before withdrawing and letting the effect subside.

  Bring the purring engine up to a low growl and then let it idle back to resting, I thought with a wide, mischievous grin.

  It was, I’ll admit, a technique that I’d been working on over the past three weeks. It wasn’t a daily thing, though; there were the mornings when Mia and I woke up together, after all. And then, of course, there were the mornings when Mia woke up before me.

  Let’s just say that I wasn’t the only one who’d been working on a “wake up” technique.

  And, yeah, maybe this was payback for the four… no, five mornings that I’d been robbed of this opportunity.

  I wanted to make it last.

  Eventually I convinced myself that I’d teased Mia’s pussy as much as I could. It probably wasn’t true. She was still asleep, and—who knew?—I might have been able to keep the game going another few minutes, at least. Her body had begun to invest more in each of my “swoops,” though; she’d shifted in her sleep to be more flat on her back, her knees had parted even further on their own, and the muscles of her thighs had begun to tense ever-so-slightly in an effort to hold me in place. The decision to move on to the next phase of the wakeup was more out of my own throbbing erection’s growing eagerness.

  The extent of a man’s patience was, more times than not, limited by the willingness of his dick to wait. Which was to say, of course, that the extent of a man’s patience was practically nonexistent.

  And so, as Mia’s still unconscious body tensed further, her fingertips beginning to clench into the fabric of the sheets, I moved my hand up and slid two fingers past her now incredibly slicked entrance. I heard a gasp, a moan, and then…

  “Oooooh!”

  It was a sound that was woven from equal lengths of pleasure, playfulness, and defeat. It was the sound of a woman on the brink of climax who’d simultaneously realized she’d lost a game that she’d only just then realized was being played.