Bone Gods

a pass. Just this once.”
    “Fan-fucking-tastic,” Jack growled, and his fingers curled in the waistband of her trousers, searching and tugging at the fly button and zipper. Pete shoved his hands away, and felt a twinge low in her stomach when their skin lost contact.
    “I … I can’t…,” she managed. “We…”
    “Come on, luv.” Jack attacked her neck again, then her earlobe, tangling the fingers of his right hand in Pete’s hair to expose more flesh. “Being dead’s like being in jail. Shit food and no women. ’Specially not ones hot as you.”
    “Jack, stop it!” Pete shoved him again, putting her back into it. The shrieking music made any conversation besides screaming or lipreading impossible, but Pete put her mouth near Jack’s ear and tried. “This noise is mucking with your mind!”
    Jack blinked once, and then rubbed the heel of his hand into his temple, a gesture Pete found so familiar she felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach all over again. “Sorry!” Jack shouted. “I told you we needed to get out of here!”
    “After you!” Pete said. Jack took her hand, but before they could get far the blank door at the end of the hall opened, and a man in a black suit emerged. He pointed at Pete, and then at Jack, and beckoned.
    “Yeah, don’t think so,” Jack mumbled, tugging her along. Pete fetched up when two more figures appeared at the other end of the hallway, blocking the way to the front door and bottlenecking her with little choice but to turn around.
    “Do you know these gits?” Jack whisper-shouted at her as the trio herded them toward the blank door.
    “Yeah,” Pete said. “You’re not going to like it.”
    She’d expected something in keeping with the rest of Motor, lots of leather and rivets and maybe some light BDSM decoration, but what lay beyond the door was a blandly modern office filled with ASDA furniture and an LCD screen flickering between grainy CCTV images piped in from the larger club.
    Nick Naughton sat behind the glass desk, rocking his chair back and forth. “Now, this is confusing. I recall telling you only this morning to stay the fuck out of my business.”
    Beside her, Pete felt Jack stiffen. “You twat,” was all he said. Naughton regarded him, one eyebrow up.
    “Mr. Winter. I was under the impression you were no longer with us.”
    “Check your sources,” Jack suggested. “If you have time before I come over that desk and wring your neck.”
    “All right, all right,” Pete said, snatching Jack by the arm before he could get himself wrapped in a curse like the one Naughton had thrown at her. “No need to measure. We all know you’re the big man, Naughton.”
    One of the suits patted her down and took away the Walther. Naughton shook his head as if she’d disappointed him, and nudged the gun away from him. “Mind telling me what you think you’re doing in my place of business?”
    “Business?” Pete jerked a thumb at the door. “That’s what you call that out there?”
    “Don’t be cute,” Naughton said. “Or I might not be so calm. Why are you here?”
    “I think you’re a fucking liar and you broke into my flat,” Pete said, deciding any excuse but the truth would just get them run through a wood-chipper and scattered in someone’s garden.
    Jack twitched again at the mention of Naughton in the flat, and Pete dug her fingers into his arm. He’d definitely put on muscle—he was hard in places where he’d been stringy, and his skin was hot under her fingers.
    “Hmm,” Naughton said. He shoved his chair back and stood up. “Bring them here,” he told the suits, who hustled Pete and Jack through a door in the rear of the office and through a closed-down kitchen. Water dripped and roaches scuttled out of Pete’s way.
    “I can’t say you’re making my life easier,” Naughton said, “but it appears you may be the solution to an intractable problem.” One of the suits opened a rust-rimmed door to a walk-in freezer, and Pete nearly slipped on the damp floor when she saw inside.
    “He’s giving me the silent treatment,” Naughton said, brandishing a finger at Ollie, who was tied to a chair and sporting a cheek and eye that were swollen and starting to go blue. “I don’t fucking appreciate it.”
    “Ollie…” Pete went toward him reflexively, to insert herself between Heath and Naughton, but one of the suits hauled her back and slammed her into the metal wall. Her skull connected with a dull