One place was uttered over and over again.
The Point.
From what they said, the city had apparently been a booming port town, but when the recession hit and the money left, it had fallen by the wayside. Empty shells of buildings were welcome signs to squatters, arsonists, and every denizen of the darkness . . . and so they came, the people that wanted to disappear and that wanted to make their money in obscurity and on the streets. Decades passed, so did hope for rebuilding, and the city—like too many places—had been forgotten by the rest of the country. Or so people said. Forgotten was what I needed, and so I listened to that whispered name. The Point.
I made more money and managed to see that more illegal goods changed hands and soon I found myself headed there. My old home received prime airtime on the national news . . . the home I was headed toward seemed to exist only in nightmares and warnings.
I was in the Point for less than a day when I got word that the man that ran the streets wanted to see me. I liked to lay low. I liked to blend in, but here it didn’t seem like that was an option. Instead of desert sand, the battleground here was asphalt and concrete, and as soon as my presence was known, it was as if this place recognized the fight lying dormant inside of me. This city called to it. I don’t know why I instantly felt like I fit, but I did. So I went to see the man in charge, fully expecting to offer him the last of my cash in order to gain a foothold in the desolate kingdom. I was a survivor. I could do without money for a little bit. No man was more resourceful than I was.
I walked into a disgustingly gaudy strip club, offended by its crass ugliness. I was expecting to meet the ruler of the land, state my intentions, and let him know I would bow to no man here or anywhere else ever again. I was expecting a shakedown and maybe some strong-arming since I was obviously foreign and undocumented. I was technically legal since my mother had been an American citizen before she fell in love with an extremist, but I hadn’t really existed on paper since she handed me over to killers and radicals when I was just a kid. Mossad didn’t want me to be anything other than their trained attack dog, so they hadn’t offered up any proof of identity for me during my time at the end of their string. What I wasn’t expecting was that my cause, my reason, my purpose for living, and my something to believe in would be dancing nearly naked on a horrifically ugly stage, looking like she was going to cry at any second. She was so much more than freedom.
She was Honor.
She was beautiful, young, innocent, and so obviously resigned to her fate. It pulled at a heart I was stunned to find I still had buried somewhere deep underneath the brutal history that filled up the inside of me. It was the first time I felt it beat, and the pulse of its yearning scared and electrified me in equal measure.
I started to move toward her like all those invisible gods I spent my life killing for were leading me directly to her when suddenly a man twice her age and triple her size leaped from his seat next to the stage and hurled himself up onto the platform directly at the girl. In the blink of an eye he was on top of her, rough hands all over her naked flesh. I heard her scream. I saw her long limbs flail and thrash under him. A red haze filled my vision and I forgot all about staying quiet and laying low. I forgot all about being a ghost, and realized that I could channel the fight that had been forged into my very soul, the fight that was slumbering restlessly inside me at that moment, into protecting something so innocent. She woke the fight up and she kept it alive.
I was on the stage before my mind even registered that I had moved across the room. I pulled the hulking man off the dancer and offered her my hand. Pretty eyes the color of an overcast sky glimmered up at me. She looked at the hand I’d offered like it was her lifeline out of this place, out of this vicious world, and clutched it ferociously as I pulled her to her feet.
We stared at each other in silence and I knew in that instant that this young woman would mean more than anything in my life had ever meant.
“Are you okay?”
She blinked at me like a terrified animal and I felt all the dead things inside me roar to life with new purpose and passion.
“Yeah. I could’ve handled him. He just surprised me.”
She was so young and her words pounded into me so hard they hurt. She shouldn’t have to handle him at all. I was the opposite of innocent and suddenly all I wanted was to keep her as different from me and my life as I could.
I squeezed the hand I still held and told her, “I’m Nassir Gates.”
I gave her the name of the man I had decided I was going to be, half Middle Eastern, half American, one hundred percent lie. All the things I had done, all the things I had been, were no more. I was just a man that was going to make this new place his home. I didn’t know at the time it was going to require as much blood and warfare to survive here as it had in the desert.
As the guy who attacked her started to make noise on the floor behind me, I turned to regard him. I was far from done with the bastard, but I wanted a proper introduction before I did what was inevitable the instant I watched the brute put his hands on her.
She smiled at me softly and returned the squeeze like we were going to be friends or something. “Keelyn Foster.” Her eyes widened and she bit her plush lower lip, and I wanted to put my own teeth there more than I wanted anything in life. She was almost completely naked but I couldn’t look away from those eyes. “I mean, Honor. Around here I’m Honor.”
I smiled at her, and I was pretty sure it was the first time I had smiled. Ever. “How about I only call you that here in this club. I’m new in town but I have a feeling we’ll be bumping into each other. Keelyn is a pretty name.”
She blushed. She was gyrating for the pleasure of strangers, but giving her a throwaway compliment had her turning hot pink. And at the sight of her smile, everything suddenly made sense in my world.
“Thank you,” she whispered, but I heard the words as loud as a thunderclap.
I inclined my head at her and turned around to the man trying to crawl his way back off the stage. I could be civilized. I could be restrained. I could be calm. But when I thought about those meaty paws all over her, I didn’t want to be anything other than what I had been born to be . . . a killer.
I was on him between heartbeats. His face disintegrated under my hands. His bones turned to dust. His breath was stamped out under my feet. His life was nothing to me until I caught sight of stormy gray eyes looking at me like I was evil incarnate. Now they were the color of charcoal, and full of fear . . . fear of me. I shook the blood off my knuckles and walked away from her before I inflicted more damage.