Godless
GODLESS
A BLOODLINES NOVEL
SLMN
Kingston Imperial
Godless: A Bloodlines Novel Copyright © 2022 by Kingston Imperial, LLC
Printed in the USA
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved, including the rights to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Kingston Imperial, LLC
Rights Department, 144 North 7th Street, #255 Brooklyn N.Y. 11249
First Edition
Book and Jacket Design: Damion Scott & PiXiLL Designs
Cataloging in Publication data is on file with the library of Congress
Trade Paperback: ISBN 9781954220126
EBook: ISBN 9781954220133
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Kingston Imperial
CHAPTER
ONE
The truck charged towards the compound, engine shrieking, gears howling, tires spitting grit and dirt, powering towards the fortified gates at ramming speed. The barriers were built to keep out anyone who did not belong to the Awon Woli.
It had begun as a dust cloud heading in his direction, but something about it wasn’t right, so Daudi M’Beki raised the alarm. He’d been joined on the ramparts by three other men. Each of them clutched an automatic rifle, muzzle trained on the truck. All four of them were killers. They wouldn’t hesitate to squeeze the trigger and end the lives of everyone in that runaway truck if it tried to breach the compound. No questions.
The truck came closer and closer, showing no sign of stopping. The distance and the dust made it impossible to tell if it was one of their own. If it was, their man was returning with the hounds of hell on his tail.
The Awon Woli had been driven out of their own country by civil war—and unlike the ‘legitimate’ businessmen who exploited genocide for gain, they’d seen their own opportunities reduced to the point where their survival was seriously in jeopardy.
They weren’t far from the border.
They’d worked hard to keep supply lines open, but at a cost.
The Awon Woli remained vigilant. On edge. Prepared for the inevitable escalation when it came. There were plenty who wanted them out and would go to any length to see them in the ground rather than let them live in peace.
Looking at the dust storm behind the truck it was hard not to think that the time to die had come, finally.
Daudi was the youngest of the four on the ramparts, but he was ready. Death held no fear. The butt of his rifle dug into his shoulder. His finger rested over the trigger. His hands were slick with sweat. Heat haze shimmered between him and the truck.
He didn’t blink.
“We wait,” he said.
They had an understanding; whoever had been on watch decided when it was time to fire. It made it easier than arguing about authority and power.
“Until we see the whites of the dead man’s eyes,” one of the others laughed.
It was Razi, one of the young guys who were obsessed with old films. They’d found rusted cans filled with reels of them and watched them at night on a rusty old projector. There was an irony to the original line that he didn’t get; it had been used to decide when the white soldiers pull the trigger to execute the oncoming black men.
“On my mark,” Daudi said, ignoring his companion.
He knew that he would have to make the call soon or it would be too late to stop the vehicle from crashing into the gates. And without knowing if it was friend or foe he was executing.
He breathed deeply, keeping his heart rate steady. The slightest rush of blood could have the bullet veering wide of the mark, the markings from this distance were very slight.
He was ready.
His lips parted, ready to give the word, but the truck suddenly braked and slewed sideways spitting even more dust as the driver executed a handbrake turn. He saw a broken taillight.
Something was thrown from the back of the truck and then it was thundering away again.
Daudi lowered his weapon. The threat was gone. The dust slowly settled around a dark shape on the makeshift road.
“What the fuck is that?” Razi asked, slowly lowering his own weapon.
Daudi knew what it was.
What he didn’t know was who it was.
“Keep watch, he said, then gestured for one of the others to follow him down from their vantage point.
There were other people moving around the compound. There were questions, but most of them just carried on with what they were doing.
Daudi called, “Open the gate.”
He moved quickly towards it. The rusted iron hinges protested. The bottom edge dragged across the ground in a wail of metal. He wore the black armband that marked him as watch leader. That was enough to give him the authority to bark orders and expect them to be carried out without question.
“What the fuck is going on out here?” a voice behind him demanded.
Daudi turned, knowing who the voice belonged to.
The hulk of a man had emerged from the central building in the compound. He was known to all of them as Boss. No more, no less. Boss. It wasn’t that there weren’t those amongst them who knew his real name, it had just lost any sort of meaning, and Boss liked it that way.
“There’s someone out there,” Daudi said.
“One of ours?”
“Maybe.”
Boss waved him away. “Go,” he said, motioning for one of the men who’d emerged from the building with him to follow Daudi out of the compound. It was another big man, this one mysteriously named Gentle when he was anything but.
Daudi would rather have done this without Boss standing over him, especially as he’d let the truck get so close to the compound, and then let it race away without firing a single shot.
It made them look weak, and in this life, perception was everything.
Outside, there was no mistaking the shape on the ground, or the fact that it was already dead.
There was nothing to be gained by rushing, but that didn’t stop him from running to it.
Boss wouldn’t want him wasting time.
The body was face down in the dirt, his hands bound behind his back with cable ties. There was a plastic bag over his head.
Daudi paused for a moment and took another breath to steady himself. It was long enough for the other man to come up alongside him.
“What are you waiti
ng for?” Gentle said, then crouched down and turned the body over. It didn’t help. The plastic was smeared with red, making it impossible to make out the features of the face inside.
Daudi tried to rip the plastic open, but couldn’t get a decent purchase, so he fumbled in his pocket for a knife.
“Leave it, we need to get him inside,” Gentle told him, ignoring the armband that should have meant Daudi was the one giving the orders. “I don’t like the idea of us being exposed like this when those fuckers can do something like this to one of our own. Watch my back.”
The big man lifted the body in his arms as if it was no weight at all and set off at an easy run back towards the open gates.
Daudi unslung his weapon and held it the ready, walking backwards toward the compound, scanning the open ground in an arc.
There was no sign of movement out there.
That didn’t matter.
He wasn’t about to drop his guard when a bullet could drop him before he blinked.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Gentle and his burden had already slipped through the gate. With them inside, he turned and ran.
CHAPTER
TWO
They burned the body the next day, well outside the compound, using a patch of scrubland.
Daudi had watched Gentle use the tip of a machete to delicately split open the plastic bag over the body’s head. His view had been obscured as others gathered around, close. Blood oozed rather than ran, thick and dark. They had to wash the dead man’s face before they could be sure who it was.
“Lebna,” one of the others said and there was a murmur of agreement that rippled through the gathering.
“Send word to his father,” Boss said, but no one seemed keen to break the news to him. Eventually, Boss took it out of their hands and nodded for a chosen messenger to go. The man peeled away from the crowd and set off at a run. Daudi could not take his eyes off the blood-smeared face.
Lebna had been missing for a couple of weeks.
Everyone knew he’d met some girl in town and had been planning to set up house with her. Boss hadn’t been too concerned; he hadn’t tried to stop him, which surprised a few of us, but most of them knew that Lebna would be welcomed back with open arms when he chose to return. That was how Boss ran the compound. They weren’t prisoners. No one had imagined his return would be like this.
Boss squatted on his haunches beside the boy. He rubbed a thumb across Lebna’s cheek. “They cut his tongue out,” he said, quietly at first, and then it came out as a roar. “They cut his fucking tongue out!”
He got to his feet just as Lebna’s father came hobbling towards the crowd.
He was not an old man, but a gunshot wound to his left leg had caused damage that would never be repaired.
“Who could do this?” he wailed. “Who would do something like this?”
“The Onisagbe,” Daudi said, knowing it was the truth, even without evidence. A few faces turned in his direction as if he had dared speak the unspeakable.
Who else could it be?
“Perhaps,” said Boss, fixing him with a steely stare. “Perhaps if you had stopped them, or at least given the order before they fled like the cowards they are, we might know that by now.”
Boss placed a hand on the shoulder of the bereaved father, showing him a moment of compassion. “We will have our revenge on whoever did this,” he said. “You have my word. We won’t just take out one of theirs, there will be no simple eye for an eye. We will find the man who held the knife and do the same to him; this is about justice, not simple revenge. In the meantime, whoever was on duty with Daudi, start gathering wood to build a funeral pyre, even if you have to work through the night. It’s only right that a father should have a night to say goodbye to his son.”
Daudi knew that he should have done better; he should have made the call to shoot. They should have riddled the Onisagbe truck with bullets and left the bastards bleeding in the dirt right alongside Lebna.
He motioned for the others who had been with him on the ramparts to follow him back out through the gate, filled with shame.
He knew where the funeral pyre needed to be built and they would do it without complaint.
It would take Daudi a long time to redeem himself.
If he ever could.
The sky remained free of cloud and the light of the moon was enough that they could do their work quickly, three of them working while the fourth kept an eye out for potential threats, rotating the roles to ensure they all shared the work. But Daudi cut and carried word without a break. It was his penance even if the Boss hadn’t demanded it and wouldn’t see it.
They moved Lebna’s body from where it had lain, but even in the moonlight Daudi could make out the darker patch in the dirt. It would be kicked over and washed away for the next few days, but he would always remember where it had been.
He wished that his guilt was as easily washed away.
He would not forget the look on Lebna’s face, his father’s anguish, or the blood.
He owed them both vengeance, whatever Boss said. Justice. Vengeance. It was just semantics. They both meant the same thing. He owed them both a body.
CHAPTER
THREE
The music was pumping. The lights pulsed in time. A lone woman danced on the floor. Everyone in the club knew that it would be a dumb idea to go and join her without an explicit invitation, and even then, it wasn’t exactly smart for a guy to take up that invitation.
Most men watched and hoped she appreciated their admiration from afar.
Dana Danjuma, daughter of Sol Danjuma, the Onisagbe’s chief, and more importantly, the man who ran Freetown, could have any of the men in the room if she wanted them, and she knew it. Just as easily she could have had them killed, if the whim struck her. Both were a kind of death sentence as far as her father was concerned, but that didn’t stop her from playing. Once she was done with them, her playthings were better off disappearing if they didn’t want to be disappeared.
Dana could be every bit as cold as her father with people who didn’t matter to her, but fiercely loyal to those who did..
Sol Danjuma was in the club that night, too. He sat at his usual table on the upper landing, surveying the dancefloor and everything else he owned. It was noisier than he liked, but there were people he wanted to meet. People from out of town who had come looking to do business with him. They’d insisted on the public meeting. This was public.
It was good that they were afraid of him, but if they had done their due diligence, they should have known that nowhere was safe for them in Freetown if he made the call.
He’d been at the table for ten minutes when they arrived.
“You have the money?” Danjuma said.
This was not something for nothing.
The man put a battered attaché case on the table next to the pristine suitcase. He opened it to show the bundles of US currency, all of it well thumbed. “Do you want to count it?”
Danjuma snorted again. “If the money is short, you will be dead before you can get out of Freetown,” he said. “I’m assuming you are fond of life.”
“We are.”
“Good. And besides, I know you don’t want this to be a one-off arrangement. Stands to reason, given the trouble you’ve gone to, to get in front of me.”
Danjuma nodded for his bodyguard to open the suitcase and in the process reveal a number of packages of white powder. “Do you want to sample the merchandise?”
He enjoyed the other man’s uncertainty. There was no mistaking the nervous glance he gave to his silent companion.
“It’s fine,” he said, after a heartbeat. “What is a relationship without trust?”
“Indeed,” Sol Danjuma agreed.
The man got his feet and held out a hand.
Danjuma looked at it for a moment, his expression one of measured distaste, as though he was looking at shit stains where the man had just wiped his ass with it.
For a moment it
seemed he wasn’t going to accept it and seal their pact.
But then he got to his feet and grasped the man’s hand in a powerful shake, pulling him in. The man didn’t flinch, but Danjuma savored the pain in his eyes. He released his grip before it became unbearable. He’d made his point, asserted his dominance. That was enough.
He sank back down into his chair and returned to watching his daughter dance—or more accurately, the men who hungered for her, knowing she was unattainable, the forbidden fruit. He ignored the two men who had come to buy the cocaine.
By the time he next took his eyes from the dancefloor they were gone, as was his righthand man, along with the money they had brought in offering. He could forget about business for the rest of the evening. He gestured for the waitress to bring another Chivas.
He watched his daughter dance.
The music stopped for a moment and Dana smile up at him. She gave a little wave. He returned it with a smile and a moment later she had called another couple of young women up onto the dance floor to join her.
It made him smile to see her enjoying herself. He was happy to see her grown into the beautiful young woman she had become, so like her mother. But it would be a blessing from the gods if her younger sister decided not to cause him quite so much trouble. Sol Danjuma chuckled at the thought, knowing there was more chance of penguins turning up in hell. Lori might have been 14, but it was painfully obvious to anyone with eyes to see that she was going to be trouble.