Black Lotus Read online

  Table of Contents

  ___________________

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  About K'Wan

  Also Available from Infamous Books

  Copyright & Credits

  About Akashic Books

  PROLOGUE

  It was nearly midnight before Father Fleming was able to finally stop and take a breath. It had been a busy day at the church, with two funerals and a confessional that went on for nearly an hour. A woman had committed adultery and was carrying her lover’s baby. She was terrified that her husband would leave her and wanted to abort the fetus rather than telling him. Father Fleming was quick to remind her that abortion was murder and a sin. They sat and talked for a long while, exploring alternatives. She eventually agreed to bring her husband in the next day to see Father Fleming, hoping that would make breaking the news easier. He promised her that he and the Lord would do all they could to walk them through the troubled waters. Doing the Lord’s work was often tiring, but the joy that filled Father Fleming’s heart with every soul he helped made it worth it.

  A soft breeze tickled the back of Father Fleming’s neck. He cast a glance over his shoulder and saw that the front door of the church was ajar, flapping in the evening wind. It struck him as odd because he was sure he had closed it before sweeping the empty aisles. It seemed like the older he got the more forgetful he was becoming. Using the edge of the bench he was sitting on to push to his feet, Father Fleming shuffled to the door and closed it, this time sliding the lock into place. With his chores done, he was ready to retire for the night.

  When Father Fleming began heading back to the room he kept in the rear of the church, something in the middle of the aisle caught his eye. Stiffly he crouched down and picked it up to inspect it. It was a child’s baseball cap that looked like it had seen better days. It was worn and dirty, with some of the stitching coming loose at the edges. Something about it rang familiar to Father Fleming, but he couldn’t place it. As he turned the cap over in his hands, examining it, he noticed something dried on the brim. Blood!

  “Donovan Fleming,” the wind whispered softly.

  Hearing his name, Father Fleming jerked his head up and scanned the dimly lit church. “Whose there?” he called out.

  “Salvation,” the wind replied.

  There was the soft rattle of chains somewhere to Father Fleming’s left, drawing his attention. At first he saw nothing, then he spotted it. In the corner, beneath the huge wooden cross mounted on the wall, something moved in the shadows . . . Rather, the shadows themselves were moving.

  “Demon,” Father Fleming gasped, backing away.

  The shadows chuckled. “To some, yes. To others I am the word of the Lord. The true word of the Lord.”

  Father Fleming crossed himself, and brandished the crucifix that dangled around his neck. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the—” His words were cut off when something whistled through the air, knocking the crucifix from his hand and opening up a gash on his cheek. His eyes landed on the culprit, a small metal cross with edges so sharp that it had embedded itself in the wood of the altar.

  “The words only have power for those who believe, and you are no believer!” the voice accused. This time it sounded closer, almost directly behind him.

  “For near thirty years I’ve been a faithful servant of the church and the people,” Father Fleming shot back.

  “Is that the script you read to gain the trust of the parents who left their children to your twisted devices? Did his parents believe you when you stood on your soapbox preaching false hope, while they grieved for their missing child?”

  Father Fleming’s eyes involuntarily shifted back to the baseball cap in his hand. He hadn’t even realized he was still holding it. The pieces finally fell into place and he realized why the cap had been so familiar to him. The sight of the blood brought back memories Father Fleming thought long buried.

  “I was sick back then,” Father Fleming said, barely above a whisper. “I couldn’t help myself. They were just so—”

  “Tempting,” the voice finished for him. “The tender flesh . . . pretty pink, young lips. Children of soft and supple skin, smelling of dime-store candy and innocence.”

  Something stirred low in Father Fleming and he felt warmth settling in the crotch of his pants as his penis rose ever so slightly. “No, no . . . That was before.” He dropped to his knees in front of the altar. “The Lord has healed me and washed away my sins.”

  The voice laughed. There was a rush of air as a chain sprang from the darkness, tipped with a steel hook, and bit into Father Fleming’s right forearm. Another followed it, this one hooking itself into the priest’s left shoulder. The chains rattled as he was lifted to his feet like a puppet on strings. The pain was so intense that Father Fleming couldn’t manage a scream, so he whimpered.

  “Only blood can wash away sins,” the voice spoke again. This time it was coming from directly in front of Father Fleming.

  Through a haze of pain and tears he beheld his attacker. “Mother of God,” he gasped, as cold, sharpened steel was suddenly placed against his throat.

  “No, I am His justice.”

  Those were the last words Father Fleming heard before the blade released him from this world.

  CHAPTER 1

  For as long as Archie Jones could remember, he always wanted to be a gangsta. As a kid he had been fascinated by crime. While other kids in his class aspired to be like LeBron James, Derek Jeter, or some other sports hero, Archie wanted to be like Scarface. Even when watching old Batman reruns with his siblings, he would be the one rooter for the Joker or some other archnemesis to finally take the hero down.

  Eventually, Archie got his wish and was recruited by one of the local drug crews and officially initiated into a life of crime. It was a far less glamorous existence than Archie had anticipated, having to start from the bottom, but his prospects had started looking up recently. During a chance meeting through a friend, Archie had met a man looking to buy a large amount of cocaine. Archie didn’t have any weight of his own to push, but he knew someone who did and brokered a meeting between the two. This brought him to a seedy diner on the outskirts of Queens in the wee hours of the night.

  “Where the hell is your boy?” Smush asked, looking down at his gold watch. They called him Smush because his nose laid flat on his face as if it had no cartilage. He was second in command of the crew Archie ran with, and the one sent to oversee this deal.

  “I dunno, he was supposed to be here by now. Maybe he got stuck in traffic,” Archie suggested.

  “Well, I’m gonna give him five more minutes, then I’m leaving. I don’t like my time being wasted.”

  “He’ll be here,” Archie assured Smush. The last thing he wanted was for the deal to fall through. Archie was not only looking forward to the broker’s fee he’d been promised, but if the deal went well the boss would look favorably on him. It would be an opportunity for him to move another step up the ladder.

  The doors to the diner swung open and in walked a man who seemed to immediately draw everyone’s attention. He was tall, over six feet, and wide at the shoulders, with a Yankees fitted cap pulled low, shadowing his eyes. Long braids spilled from beneath the hat and tickled his shoulders. The black leather jacket he wore was shiny and slick with rain. One hand was shoved into the pocket of his jacket and in the other he held a briefcase. From beneath the brim of the cap, his dark eyes scanned the room. When he
spotted Archie, he headed in his direction.

  As he neared the table, two of Smush’s boys rose to meet him. They were mean-looking guys, both with gun butts jutting from their pants in plain sight. They stood between him and Smush, glaring.

  The man peered up at them, allowing them to get a direct look at his face. He appeared youthful, clearly no older than his late twenties. He was a good-looking man, in a very rugged sort of way. With his shaggy sideburns, deeply cleft upper lip, and slightly pointed canine teeth, he bore a striking resemblance to a dog. “You gonna stand there gawking at me or ask me to dance?” he addressed the men blocking his path.

  “Take it easy. That’s my guy, Wolf. He’s the one I was telling you about,” Archie said excitedly. The men continued to stand there until Smush gave them the signal that it was okay to let him pass. One of the men moved but the other hesitated. He continued to stare at Wolf for a few more seconds before allowing him to pass.

  “What’s good, Archie?” Wolf removed his hand from his pocket and gave him dap.

  “Waiting for you, so we can close this deal,” Archie told him. “Wolf, this is Smush. Smush, this is Wolf.”

  “Good to meet you.” Wolf extended his hand, but Smush made no move to shake it.

  “So, I hear you’re looking to buy some drugs?” Smush got right to the point.

  “I hear you’re looking to sell some drugs,” Wolf countered. “Now that both of our roles here are clearly defined, how about we get to it? I’ve got a few more moves to make after I leave here. You got what I need or what?”

  Smush gave Archie a nod. Archie went into the bathroom and came out a few seconds later holding a paper bag, which he laid on the table in front of Wolf. The man peered inside the bag and saw a neatly wrapped bundle of cocaine.

  “That there is the best shit in the city,” Archie said proudly.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” Wolf pulled out a small pocketknife. “Do you mind?”

  Smush shrugged, letting him know it was okay to test it. Wolf stuck the knife though the package and scooped a small amount of cocaine onto the blade. Holding it out for all to see, he then made the cocaine disappear up his nose. “Now that is some good shit,” Wolf smiled after a moment as the cocaine hit him.

  “I told you!” Archie said.

  “Yeah, this is some good shit, but it looks a little light. I asked for three kilos, not one.”

  “I know what you asked for and that’s what you’ll get, after I see some bread,” Smush told him.

  “Right, the money,” Wolf said, as if he was just remembering he had to pay for it. “I got it for you right here.” He placed the briefcase on the table and undid the locks before turning it to face Smush and motioning for him to do the honors.

  Smush opened the case, expecting it to be filled with cash, but instead he found it empty, save for a silver badge that read, NYPD. The room got deathly silent. “What the fuck is this, some kind of joke?” Smush asked, looking from the badge to Wolf.

  “No joke, my friend. You’re under arrest. As a matter of fact, all of you drug-dealing shit bags are under arrest,” Wolf said, motioning toward Smush’s boys.

  For a few seconds, Wolf and Smush simply glared at each other. Archie sat off to the side looking like he would break down into tears at any moment. He had brought Wolf to Smush and therefore would be held responsible for the colossal fuck-up.

  “Fuck you, pig!” Smush then roared, and reached for the gun inside his jacket.

  Wolf kicked the table, sending it sliding into Smush. When it collided with Smush’s hand, the gun went off and a bullet nicked his side, before continuing to Archie’s thigh where it pierced muscles and shattered his femur. Between Archie and Smush, it was hard to tell whose scream was the loudest. Wolf tried to reach for his own gun, but one of Smush’s boys grabbed him from behind in a bear hug and yanked him from the chair.

  “You know I’m going to have to add resisting arrest to your list of charges now, right?” Wolf said to the man holding him.

  “Then it’s a good thing you ain’t gonna live long enough to file the report,” the second man said, drawing his gun and aiming it at Wolf’s face.

  Just as he pulled the trigger, Wolf’s legs shot up and kicked the gun, sending the bullet whistling past him and hitting an innocent bystander who had just entered the diner. Wolf threw his head back, breaking the nose of the man who had been holding him. When his grip slackened, Wolf fired both his elbows backward like torpedoes, connecting with the man’s ribs and knocking the wind out of him. Wolf followed with a kick to the nuts, and when the man doubled over, he kneed him in the face and knocked him out of the fight.

  The second man raised his arm to get off a second shot, but he was too close, which cost him dearly. Wolf grabbed the arm holding the gun and twisted until he heard the bone of his elbow snap. Without breaking his motion, Wolf drew his cuffs and secured the man to a chair by his injured arm.

  “You boys see if you can sit tight and stay out of trouble while I finish my business with your boss,” Wolf taunted his fallen opponents. When he turned to confront Smush, he found only Archie, who was whimpering as he struggled to his feet. He looked up and caught a glimpse of Smush disappearing through a door that said, Employees Only. “Stay down,” Wolf ordered, before kicking Archie in the face and pursuing Smush.

  Wolf drew his big .45 and pressed his back against the wall outside the doors he’d seen Smush leave through. It was hardly a police-regulation firearm, but Wolf had never been good with sticking with rules or regulations. After checking to make sure he was fully loaded, Wolf passed through the doors. He found himself in a storeroom, with rows of shelves stacked with boxes of liquor and glasses. Smush could’ve been hiding anywhere, so he moved cautiously. His eyes picked out what looked like drops of blood on the floor. When he bent down to examine them, a bullet shot past him and struck the shelf he had just been standing in front of. A stray piece of debris left a small cut across Wolf’s cheek, trickling blood into his beard.

  “You’ll never take me alive!” Smush shouted from somewhere inside the room.

  “Sounds good to me,” Wolf replied, and went in search of his prey. His nose twitched, picking up the faint smell of nicotine, which he was sure marked Smush’s passing. The shadows at the end of an aisle shifted a split second before Wolf saw a muzzle flash. He slid across the floor in time to avoid the bullets, and responded with three slugs of his own. He didn’t hit his target, but he got Smush off his back long enough to scramble for proper cover, which he found behind a stack of crates near the fire exit. He could hear Smush shuffling around in the dark . . . wounded and afraid. The hunt was on.

  Wolf spied movement on the other side of the boxes directly across from him. He could only see through the small creases between the boxes, so had it not been for the shift in the light he’d have never noticed Smush creeping. He was trying to come around the other side and get the drop on Wolf. If it was a drop he wanted, then a drop he would get.

  * * *

  Smush’s side was on fire. He was losing blood and feared that he would pass out at any moment, but the threat of going to prison for a very long time kept him conscious. He had fucked himself by trying to do side business with Archie, after his boss had already told him not to. Smush had secretly gone forward with the deal out of greed and the need to prove that he could make his own moves, and now it was costing him.

  He heard something shifting above his head and glanced up to the top tier of the shelf just in time to see something speeding his way. He barely had time to raise his arms in defense before the heavy wooden box landed on him. He knew without seeing a doctor that both of his arms were broken and he probably had a concussion. Smush wanted to just lay there and die, but the pain of someone pulling at one of his broken arms wouldn’t let him slip away.

  “As I was saying earlier,” Wolf began, while putting his spare handcuffs on Smush’s wrists, “your drug-selling ass is under arrest.”

  By the time
Wolf had brought his quarry out of the storeroom, the diner was filled with police. Archie and the two goons were being led out, and from the bathroom two uniformed officers appeared holding the remaining cocaine. Wolf couldn’t believe they’d been dumb enough to have it all stashed in one spot. It was a victory for the department and everyone was smiling, except Wolf’s superior officer, Detective Sergeant Grady.

  Sergeant Tasha Grady was the subject of many whispers in the department, in and out of the locker room. She was a brown-skinned woman in her late thirties, yet with the body of a twenty-five-year-old that she didn’t mind showing off. Before joining the force she’d had a budding career as a model, but she gave it up to put her life on the line every night for the city she had been born and raised in. Being eye candy and an African American woman, Grady had to work twice as hard as anyone else to earn respect on the force, though she was more than up to the challenge. She’d started out as a uniformed beat walker on the streets of Harlem and had climbed the ladder quickly, due in part to her network of confidential informants and snitches. Grady had eyes and ears everywhere, but would never reveal the identities of the people who fed her information. None could say for sure why she guarded the list so closely, yet there was speculation. One rumor linked her romantically to a suspected assassin who went by the name Animal. Rumors and speculation aside, no one could deny that Grady was an efficient cop.

  Grady stood there, in the middle of the mess Wolf had made, wearing a tight-fitting gray skirt with a matching blazer. Her tall black heels were resting in a pool of blood, though she didn’t seem to notice. Her face was often inviting and warm, but not at that moment. Grady looked like she was about to blow a gasket. Wolf handed Smush off to one of the uniformed officers to be booked and went to take his medicine.

  “Wherever there’s a mess, there’s Lone Wolf James,” Grady addressed him by the moniker he’d earned during his years on the force for his solo tactics.

  “Good evening, Detective Sergeant Grady,” Wolf said pleasantly.

  “What’s so good about it? I’m in a shithole diner in the middle of the night, it’s raining, they’re loading a premed student who got hit by a stray bullet into an ambulance, this is going to require tons of paperwork, and I’m left to clean it all up because my lieutenant had a brunch appointment with his mistress that demanded his immediate attention. So tell me again what’s so good about this evening?” Grady replied.