In The Darkness (Project Artemis #1)(6)
It didn’t take him long to find them. In the area behind him, two men stood shooting a game of pool and talking about the group’s goals and how they hoped they’d finally show the world how bad it had become because of the people in power and their love of money.
Nick turned around on the barstool and saw the two of them as they finished their game. Both looked like they’d come straight from a neo-Nazi meeting. Hair buzzed close to their heads, dressed in all black with black boots, they had a paramilitary look to them that he’d seen in pictures of the National Equality Militia online.
Sliding off the barstool, he took a breath and put himself into his role. Angry white guy ready to rage at the world. As he walked toward them, he said to himself, “Now to find out where these motherfuckers are and find Persephone.”
Before he reached them, one of them tossed his pool cue onto the table in disgust and said, “We need to find more people like us, man. The movement can’t die. We just can’t let those fucks win.”
That’s all he needed to hear. A few well-chosen words would be all it would take with these two. Not exactly great thinkers, they wouldn’t even stop to wonder who he was or why he wanted to join their group.
“You guys want to shoot a game?” Nick asked as he picked up the pool stick.
The two men looked at one another and then back at him. “Yeah, sure. You look like someone we can hang with.”
As the shorter one racked the balls, he looked across the pool table and said, “What’s your name? You from around here?”
“Nick and I’m from Warrenton.”
“Oh yeah?” the other one said, suddenly far more interested in him than he was before.
With a smile, Nick said, “Yeah. I guess you can say we’re best known for being the birthplace of no less than ten Confederate generals. Rebels through and through.”
The man at the other end of the table took his first shot and made a shitty break with only four balls trickling out of the triangle. If he’d been there to hustle pool, these two would be perfect marks. As it was, Nick didn’t give a damn about the game. He had bigger goals than taking a few bucks off these two assholes, so he kept their focus on the idea of rebellion instead of how bad the guy’s break had been.
“I heard what you guys were talking about while I was walking over. You’re damn right about not letting those motherfuckers win. They’re turning this world into shit for guys like us. Someone needs to stop them before it gets to the point that we can’t anymore.”
“Damn fucking straight!” the man who wasn’t playing said as he lifted his fist in the air. “Guys like us have to fight back or they’re going to make slaves out of us.”
Nick took his shot, intentionally only making one ball into a pocket instead of the two he could have, and nodded. “Fucking right. It’s time to rise the fuck up, man.”
He knew exactly what to say and how to say it. The eager way both of them agreed with him told Nick it wouldn’t take more than a single game of pool before he was in their club of angry white guys who wanted to change the world so only they benefited.
“Talk is cheap, man,” his pool partner said as he took another shitty shot and sent a ball careening off the side of the table into a group of his balls but getting nothing in any pocket. “What guys like us need to do is act. You ready to act or are you all talk and no action, man?”
Eyeing up his next shot, Nick smiled. “The time for talking is over.”
As the cue ball raced across the table into one of his balls, sending it into the corner pocket, the guy watching moved over to pat him on the back. “Then let’s get going. We have some people you should meet.”
Nick tossed the pool stick on the table and nodded. “Hell yeah. Let’s start changing this fucking world.”
Chapter Three
Thirteen days. One long, awful, terrifying week followed by six more horrible days.
Persephone stretched her mouth to relieve the pain of the gag one of her captors had forced onto her while another tied a rope around her hands behind her back, around her ankles, and her waist to hold her to the old wooden chair they kept her in day and night for the whole time they’d held her. The rope tore at the delicate skin on her wrists every time she moved. If only she could just sit still, but every fiber of her being screamed day and night she needed to move.
That she needed to do whatever she could to escape from these men.
They’d taken her to that farm and ordered her at gunpoint to dance around that pasture like some frolicking fairy loving life out in the country. Her legs nearly gave out half a dozen times, weak from fear as her whole body shook in terror while they barked out orders for her to look happier and to smile bigger.
“Look like you’re fucking loving this, bitch!” they screamed as she ran around in the green grass hoping someone somewhere could see her and how terrified she truly was.
That had been the only time they let her off that horrible old wooden chair, except when she begged them to let her use the bathroom. A half hour feeling the sun on her face out of nearly two weeks held against her will by them.
She still had no idea who they were. All she knew about the men who came into the room with her was they were young, white, and angrier than anyone else she’d never met in her life. She didn’t know if all of them where they held her were as angry as the ones who tended to her, but the four or five she’d met so far made her believe that one wrong move and she’d end up dead.