HARDCORE: Storm MC(92)

And he'd been right. In Mexico, in Arizona, and now in Ohio, the blood and screams remained as beautiful to him as ever, and they never seemed to stop for long.



Gaspar sat naked on the floor in the middle of the trailer with his legs folded, staring into a round black mirror that was eight inches across. His long, shiny black hair reflected the flickering lights from a dozen candles, most of them in tall glasses painted with the images of saints. His frame was long-limbed, sinewy with muscle, and covered in tattoos. Most cartel members carried plenty of ink on their bodies, proclaiming what badasses they were, how many people they'd killed, how much they loved money and pussy.



But Gaspar's body was covered with images of the orishas that his Cuban grandmother had taught him about. They were the demigods of santeria, the primitive form of Caribbean witchcraft she'd practiced. Gaspar had never become a devout believer in the mysticism of these peasant superstitions, but he'd still learned to embrace the rituals as personal methods of focus and meditation. The trance state they encouraged allowed him to visualize his enemies more clearly and consider the best ways to hurt them.



Also, his fascination with santeria kept all the right people nervous about him. Both his allies and his enemies believed that he believed, and that his talents for death and torture were somehow linked to the unholy influences that their own ignorant parents and grandparents had taught them to fear. He'd seen hardened killers cross themselves and mumble prayers when he walked past.



Gaspar liked that.



Now he took a small glass vial of cocaine from the floor next to him, shook some out into the crook between his thumb and forefinger, and snorted it. The powder helped his concentration as much as the obsidian disk he gazed into, or the sounds of drums and chanting that blared from an MP3 player hooked up to a small speaker. He allowed the red clouds in his mind to clear away and concentrated as hard as he could.



He didn't need his abuela's scrying stone to tell him that Keith had forced Nostril to talk and then killed him. He didn't need the stone to tell him that Hunter had sent his cute little sister to look after Cain. He didn't need the stone to tell him how much pain Cain was in, or how frightened and uncertain the rest of the Eagles were, now that they knew who they were up against. His men had been spying on the MC for a week before he'd even set the trap at the Teepee, and they were still shadowing the bikers now and intercepting their cell phone calls. They couldn't make the slightest move without Gaspar hearing about it immediately.



But even so, with his mind rapidly sharpening into a lethal crystalline point like an icicle, Gaspar imagined that he could clearly see them all before him, acting out their squeaking little dramas of terror and agony just for him.



He imagined Hunter in his clubhouse, furiously debating what to do with the other moronic greasers in his pathetic little gang. Should they run? Should they stand their ground and be butchered? Should they make a deal? Why, oh why, was this happening to them now, after so many months of peace and prosperity? Their confusion and helplessness were delicious to Gaspar as he pictured the Eagles thrashing and sinking into the quicksand of their own despair.



He imagined Cain curled up on his couch, fresh pain ripping through his body with every new breath, and still too proud to accept the help offered by Hunter's sister. He could practically hear Cain's thoughts as the biker sank into a mire of self-loathing and desperation. And would Cain's wounded pride force him to act, even against Hunter's orders? Would he stubbornly launch his broken body at Gaspar, cementing his own doom and throwing the rest of the Eagles into a blind panic of grief and rage?



Yes. Gaspar thought so.



Most of all, he imagined the entire world around him as a vast web, a tapestry in which each thread was connected to every other. He felt like he could reach out and touch the strands with his fingertips, pulling them this way and that, knowing which ones needed to be tugged or snapped in order to ensure his desired outcome.



He stood up and crossed the room, switching the drums-and-chanting track to a Mexican rap song. He shook another line of coke out of the vial and onto the black mirror.



Everything was going according to plan. Soon, the Blood Eagles would be just another pile of bodies in Gaspar's wake, and Ohio would belong to the Barros Cartel. From there, they would expand up into the Northeast. And of course, the opposition they encountered there wouldn't go quietly, and there would be more blood for Gaspar to revel in, and more beyond that, and even more beyond that. A glorious infinity of carnage.



“World without end,” Gaspar whispered to himself, snorting the line. “Amen.” The thin, sour trickle of the coke went down the back of Gaspar's throat, tasting like aspirin.