Strength & Courage (The Night Horde SoCal Book 1) Read online

  He grabbed his angry brother by the neck. “Come on. We’re only making things worse.” Demon glared at the whole room but didn’t fight it; he let Muse pull him through the office. As they approached the door, two armed security guards came through, weapons drawn. “We’re leavin’,” Muse told them and pushed on through. The goons followed them to the exit.

  Bibi was only a couple of minutes behind them. She stalked up to Demon. “I covered the damage—Hoosier’s gonna talk to you about that, though. And honey, you didn’t even get to see him. Tucker’s right in there, and if you’d held your head together, you could have had some time with him.”

  Demon dropped his head, his fight gone. “Mama…” His voice broke.

  Bibi hugged him. “I know, baby, I know. We’re gonna get this figured out. C’mon. You come home with me. I’ll fix you something to eat, and we’ll talk to Hooj, okay?”

  Demon nodded against her shoulder, and Bibi led him around to her Cadillac. After she put him in the passenger seat, she turned to Muse. “We’ll see you, honey. I’ll have him give you a call later.”

  He kissed her cheek. “Thanks, Mama. Tell the Prez I’m keeping the van tonight. I got a date.”

  “That’s right! That’s today, isn’t it?” She gave him a hug. “Give her that for me, will ya?”

  “I will.”

  ~oOo~

  Muse took the club van back to Madrone. He’d started out before Bibi and Demon, but Bibi drove like a fucking maniac, and she’d passed him inside of ten minutes. Chuckling despite the dark thoughts lingering from that nasty scene at DCFS, he sent her a wave, and she wiggled her fingers at him.

  He turned off at Pinon Boulevard and headed left. He should have gone back to the clubhouse to check on the bikes he’d brought back this morning, but he needed to shower and decompress before the evening. They’d been at DCFS for hours. Muse felt dirtier after that than he had after standing out in the dusty desert all morning.

  Plus, he needed to let Cliff out.

  As always, the dog was on the couch, watching out the window, as he walked up. When Muse opened the door, he jumped to the floor and ran over, tail wagging.

  “Hey, buddy. You have a good day?” He squatted down and ruffled his thick fur. Cliff was a purebred German shepherd, full black. He’d been abandoned by his first owners when they’d had their house foreclosed on. They’d just left him inside and moved away. He’d almost starved to death before a neighbor called about a noise nuisance. He’d been five months old.

  Muse had gone to the shelter shortly after he’d rented this place, thinking that since he was settled for the first time in his adult life, maybe he’d get a cat, something low maintenance. Instead, he’d come home with a six-month-old Shep with crippling separation anxiety.

  But they’d worked through all that, and Cliff did okay on his own now. When Muse went on overnight runs, the next-door neighbor took care of him. The work they’d done together, learning how to be friends, and Cliff learning how to trust, had bonded them tightly.

  Being a Nomad had meant having a brotherhood across the country, but not having family, not having friends, not really. That was the way he’d wanted it. Counting on no one but himself. Even during the years he’d ridden with Demon, Muse had kept his own counsel.

  And then he’d landed here, and Cliff was the first new bond he’d made. This damn dog was his best friend.

  Muse dropped his kutte over the arm of the couch and toed off his boots. With Cliff in the lead, he went through to the kitchen and opened the glass slider, letting the dog out into the fenced back yard. Then got himself a beer and drank it down while he stood in front of the open fridge.

  It wasn’t much of a place he had—a tiny, boring bungalow in a low-rent neighborhood. Just three rooms, and bars on the windows. But the rent was cheap, and his next-door neighbors on either side were decent people; they all helped each other out. His place had a big two-and-a-half-car garage with a washer and dryer. It also had a big yard and a solid fence—and, especially in the fall and winter months, when the air was really clear, a beautiful view of the mountains.

  Hearing the dog barking, he grabbed a new bottle and closed the fridge. A neighborhood cat, a big, scruffy, black and white tom with only one ear, had come into the yard. Cliff loved that mean old bastard of a cat, and the feeling appeared to be mutual. Muse stood at the screen door and chuckled as his huge, scary-looking Shep playing friendly tag with a mangy, maybe-stray cat. Looked like he wouldn’t need to walk him tonight; he was getting plenty of exercise. He pulled the screen door open so Cliff could get in, and he went back for a shower.

  ~oOo~

  After his shower, he went out to his little slab patio and fell asleep on a fold-up lounge chair, with Cliff lying on the concrete at his side. He woke with a start almost two hours later, as the sun was moving down past the trees. Fuck. He was late.

  He’d intended to stop at the little florist in his neighborhood, but it was closed before he got his shit together and got out of the house. There was a strip mall next door to his destination, with a Ralphs on the end; that would have to do. So he went into the grocery and straight to their florist section. The pickings were slimmer this late than he’d have liked, but there was a big arrangement of fall flowers in the cooler. They were expensive, but they were pretty, they smelled good, and they’d suit Carrie. So he shelled out the seventy bucks and carried the vase back through the store, peering around the side to see where he was going.

  He stopped abruptly when he collided with someone. While he fumbled the flowers and recovered, there was a crash, a splash, and a crackling thud, and a feminine voice cussing in a decidedly unfeminine way.

  “Motherfucker! Look where you’re fucking going!”

  “Sorry.” He set the flowers down on the floor and found a slender blonde squatting in the middle of an impressive mess. It looked like she’d dropped a couple of bottles of red wine and a chocolate cake that had been in a plastic container. “Fuck.”

  There was no use for her to try to clean any of that up—the employees here would have what they needed—so he bent down and took her elbow, meaning to help her to her feet. She yanked her arm from him and looked up.

  The social worker from earlier in the day. The one who’d taken Demon’s kid. Muse took a step back. She looked as surprised as he was.

  He wasn’t wearing his kutte, but he hadn’t been then, either. In most respects, Muse didn’t think he was a particularly memorable-looking guy—not with his shirt on, anyway. But he had a tattoo on his neck. It had been a scorpion; now, it was a phoenix. It was elaborate, and it made him instantly recognizable to even the most casual acquaintance.

  “You’re Cindy,” he said, to break the tension. She still hadn’t stood; she was simply staring at him.

  His statement shook her out of her little fugue state, and she stood, brushing her hands and taking a couple of steps out of the mess. “Sidonie.”

  “Sidney?” He’d thought it was one or the other. He’d never realized how close those names were to each other.

  She huffed. “SID-oh-nie.” He must have given her a look that showed the confusion he felt, because she rolled her eyes. “Don’t pull a muscle. It’s French.” She looked around at the mess. “Fuck. This day just sucks.”

  As a grocery grunt wheeled a squeaky cleanup cart their way, Muse pulled his wallet out of his pocket. Club dues were up tomorrow, and the flowers he’d just bought had really put a dent in his available cash, but he’d crashed into her. As much as part of him wanted to tell her to suck it, that was karma taking its payment for stealing Tucker away from his father, the rest of him saw a pretty girl looking stressed out. “How much to replace what I broke?”

  She eyed him for several seconds before she answered. “Seventy-five.”

  “Shit. What? For two bottles of wine and a cake?”

  She glared at him, her arms crossed.

  He emptied his wallet. Everything but his emergency fifty, which he kept fold
ed up behind the only photograph in his wallet: him, his sister, and their grandma. That had a been a decent year.

  “You have expensive taste. All I got’s fifty-three.” He handed out the bills. At first, she just stood there, still glaring. Then she snatched the bills out of his hand. She didn’t bother with a thank you.

  The grunt started cleaning up the mess while they were still standing there. Muse reached down and picked up the flowers that had cost him, now, well more than a hundred bucks. “Have a nice night,” he said, not really meaning it. She turned and headed back into the store without a word.

  ~oOo~

  He set the flowers on the table. “Hey, pretty lady. Happy birthday.” Leaning over the railing, he kissed his baby sister on the forehead. As always, her skin was like cool paper. Her unseeing, unknowing blue eyes were open and dully dry. Some days, they were closed; other days they were open. Some days, she blinked; others, she didn’t. Muse picked up the bottle of artificial tears and squeezed a couple of drops into each of her eyes.

  He opened the drawer in the nightstand and pulled out her brush—an old, silver and ivory piece that had been their grandma’s. When Carrie had been able to treasure things, it had been her dearest treasure. Muse brushed her long, thin, brown hair with it.

  “Hi, Mr. Musinski.”

  Without stopping his steady strokes of the brush through his sister’s hair, he looked over his shoulder and saw one of Carrie’s regular nurses. “Hi, Rachel. How’s she doing?”

  “Good as ever.” She pointed above the bed. “There was a class from the middle school here today, doing art projects with some of the other residents. They made Carrie a birthday sign.”

  He looked up and saw the sign, big and painted with the kind of paint that puffed up off the paper. It read Happy Birthday, Miss Carrie! and was covered with flowers. “That’s nice. She likes flowers.”

  “I know she does. You always bring the prettiest. That arrangement is gorgeous. Well, you stop by before you go, okay?”

  Rachel was a gossip and a flirt, and often liked to chat with him. It was why he’d never stopped her from calling him Mr. Musinski. He wasn’t about the fuck his sister’s nurse, and hearing himself referred to by that name kept his dick safely in storage. It hadn’t stopped her from batting her eyes at him, though.

  But he suspected that today there was more to her request than flirting. The installment payment for Carrie’s care had been due last week, and he’d been dodging the Center’s director until his next club cut. He wasn’t in the mood for that conversation, but he nodded. “I’ll say bye, anyway.”

  “Okay. You know where to find me.” She left, pulling the door to.

  When his sister’s hair was soft and fluffy, he put the brush away, took out her favorite book, and sat down at her side.

  The book was a cheap paperback, and it had been well-worn and repeatedly read when Carrie could still read. In the years since, it had begun to fall apart to the extent that sometimes Muse had to rearrange the pages into their correct order. He’d finished it at his last visit, so he carefully opened it at the beginning and started again.

  “1801.—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.”

  He read until his throat was dry. Then he closed the book, put it away, and sat holding his sister’s clawed, empty hand.

  CHAPTER TWO

  She was early. She hated to be early to things like this.

  “Happy housewarming!” Sidonie hoped the smile on her face looked a lot more natural than it felt. She really had had a shitty day, and being social with the people she’d spent that day with was not on her list of things she wanted to be doing.

  “Sid! Come in, come in. Here, let me take that.” Carole Rucker, her boss’s wife, lifted the fancy cake from her hands and then stepped back and let her into the front hall. “Oh, and you brought wine, too? You didn’t need to go to so much trouble!”

  Sidonie smiled. “It’s no trouble at all, Carole.” Well, it wouldn’t have been if she’d been able to make it out of the store on her first try. She cast an irritated glanced down at the spray of red dots around the bottoms of her jeans and the tops of her boots. Probably no one could see them but her, though—at least she hoped so. Waving the bottles slightly, she asked, “Where should I put these?”

  “Harry’s got a bar set up in the kitchen. Go on back, and I’ll set the cake out.”

  Nodding, but without much enthusiasm, Sidonie went in the direction Carole had pointed. She hoped Harry wasn’t alone in the kitchen.

  He was, and he grinned widely when she came in. “Hi, Sid. Feeling better?”

  Not really. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  He was still grinning. That creeped her out.

  She’d finished her Master of Social Work degree in the spring. She’d only been working for DCFS for a couple of months, and she’d only been assigned to San Bernardino County for a few weeks. She hadn’t decided that she really liked or really hated any of her coworkers yet. But Harry made her uncomfortable. Her boss. Made her uncomfortable. Yippee.

  It wasn’t anything she could identify clearly—not yet, anyway—but things like the way he was grinning now, just a second or two too long, just a shade too intensely, made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Maybe he was just socially awkward, or maybe she was just paranoid. Probably both.

  But Harry and Carole had both been nothing but nice to her since she’d moved out from Orange County, taking her out to eat, helping her get settled, so she needed to calm the fuck down. She cleared her throat and held out the bottles of cabernet. “Carole said I should bring these to you?”

  “Yes! You can set them over there.” He waved toward the end of a counter, where other bottles of wine and a selection of glasses were arranged. Then he followed right behind her, reaching around her as she set the bottles down and picking up one of the others. Just a hair too close. “I assume you’d like a glass?”

  His mouth was inches from her ear. Resisting the urge to shudder, Sidonie sidestepped once and turned to smile at him. “Actually, I don’t suppose tequila’s on the spirits list?”

  Harry laughed. “A girl after my heart—straight for the hard stuff. Well, since we’re off tomorrow, I suppose that’ll be fine. You can stay in our guest room if you lose your head.” He winked.

  Whether she was paranoid or not, Harry was creeping her out extra tonight. So, no, she didn’t think she’d be losing her head. But she would be starting off with a shot.

  California was going through one of its recurring fiscal crises, and employees of the state were on furlough, working four-day weeks. Departments of what had been deemed ‘essential’ services—mainly fire and police—did rolling furloughs, with employees taking different days throughout the week. DCFS had not made the list of essential services. Kids in crisis Friday through Sunday got help from the police until DCFS was back on the clock on Monday.

  Thinking about the kid in crisis she’d spent most of the day sorting out, Sidonie accepted a generously-poured shot of tequila from Harry and tossed it down before he could hand her a slice of lime. She handed him the empty glass.

  “Another?” Harry cocked his head and made an impressed face.

  Another would definitely help. Then she’d move to beer or something. “Yeah. Please.”

  He poured and handed it to her, but when she tried to take it, he pulled it back a couple of inches. “They won’t all be like that, Sid. Some will be worse, but most won’t be so bad. We have happy stories, too.”

  Today had been her first day out in the field with her own cases. Her third home visit had been a horror that had taken up most of the rest of her day and probably her mind for the foreseeable.
/>   “I know.” She pulled the shot glass out of his hand and tossed it back. “Okay, I’m good. Beer, maybe?”

  With a chuckle, her boss pointed to the refrigerator. “Help yourself. If you’re drinking Corona, I’ve got the limes sliced right here.”

  Carole came in then, carrying an armload of six-packs of fancy beer. Harry went to help her, and Sidonie was on her own. She got a Corona from the fridge, popped the cap, pushed a lime into the neck, and went out to the relative safety of the living room.

  There weren’t many people around yet, but thankfully, Dina was one of them. If she’d been asked to name someone in the office she thought she definitely liked already, it would be Dina she’d name. Another caseworker, only a few years more senior than Sidonie, and a year or so younger, Dina had a sharp sense of humor but not a hard edge. A lot of the people they worked with seemed to be going through the motions, but Dina still worked like their job had meaning, like they had a mission to do good in the world and were succeeding at it.