The Five Horsemen Book 1: Death Warmed Over

Chapter 16

**Flashback**

*Trigger Warnings as follows: dog fighting, death of a child (no details, just a mention), death of a young woman (gruesome and yes there will be details) death of bad guys, death of good guys, psychological torture of a bad guy, animal cruelty and abuse and death. You have been warned- this warning goes on until the end of the flashback chapters.

“Miss? Excuse me? Are you Hemy?” My sister and I look up from our burgers and see a young woman standing at the next table over. Long brown and wavy hair, caramel colored eyes with thick lashes under neatly trimmed eyebrows. Flawless tan skin, she looked Hispanic and had a slight accent. Her lips were full and pouty and the perfect shade of pink that can never come from a tube. As a male, I can appreciate her good looks, even if she is too young for me. She looks to be about 5’8” with generous curves and a bubble butt I can see from my slight angle since she’s facing my sister across from me at our booth.

“Depends. Who are you and what do you want?” Hemy asks, polite but cautious. I developed the skills at a young age to be able to assess someone and determine whether they were friend, foe, or neutral. I observed this girl, she seems ok. For now.

“I need your help. May name is Maria Santiago and the lady at the dog shelter said I could find you here.” Maria said, then she dropped her voice closer to a whisper as she stepped a little closer. “My father, he is not a good man. He is fighting dogs and stole my little sisters puppy that our mother got for her on her birthday last month. He broke into our house- he doesn’t live with us anymore- and just stole her while we were in school. It was my mothers day off so she was there when it happened. He beat her so badly she is in the hospital when she tried to stop him. My sister Maribelle is with my friend’s family. Please help us, the lady at the shelter said you could help get her puppy back. Will you please help us? I beg of you. The police will do nothing! My father has a lot of local police in his pocket so they will do nothing but warn him.” Maria was crying but still trying to be quiet by the end of her explanation.

Dog fighting. Disgusting, loathsome, horrible and so beyond illegal and immoral I had no doubt Hemy will help this girl, we all will. Even my parents. All of us will do something, although with that almost feral look in my sisters eyes…. She may actually kill this man. No, he isn’t a man, he is a parasite that we will do our best to exterminate.

“Give me his address, yours and his name please. Also, stay out of your home for at least 24 hours, preferably don’t go back until we contact you.” Hemy instructed in a no-nonsense tone of voice. Maria looked shocked for a moment then took a pen off the table and wrote everything on a napkin. She handed it to Hemy and still looking a little shell shocked we’d agreed to help, quietly. Maria said a small thank you, and left.

I turned to my sister to find her already looking at me with a look I can only describe as psychotic. There are a few rules when interacting with our family, or even becoming friends with us:

1. Do not f**k with kids (or with anyone weaker than you really).

2. Do not f**k with animals.

3. Do not f**k with our family.

4. Do not f**k with our food (we all love food and hate wasting it).

5. Do not f**k with our money (None of us grew up well off and we all know what it’s like to be hungry and/or homeless- or at least close to it. We’ve all had to choose paying bills over being able to eat).

This guy f****d up royally and I had a feeling Hemy has something truly terrifying in store for him, and everyone else involved. Neither of us said anything as we finished our food, me reading the latest manga I was into on my phone, my sister typing furiously on hers in between bites of burger and fries- I could see the gears turning in her head. The waitress; young, blonde and too perky in my opinion for a food industry job where people are assholes to you all day; came over, literally bouncing, to see if we needed anything else. We both shook our heads as our mouths were full, and her smile faltered a bit before I saw her force it back brighter and with more teeth than before. What’s up with this chick?

“Check please.” Hemy said when she swallowed her bite of burger, without even looking up from her phone, which has been going off every few seconds. She most likely has messaged everything in the group chat. Mine’s on ‘Do not Disturb’ for a reason. While most of my sisters enjoyed downloading ringtones and notification sounds from the Zedge App they all have, I use the regular ringtone that came with the phone. I get overwhelmed and overstimulated sometimes and I send a text in the chat letting everyone know. Everyone sends back an affirmative they know I’m ‘going dark,’ ha-ha Hemy is SOOO funny- insert hard eyeroll here. I’m very lucky they understand instead of judging or getting frustrated, they sympathize. Of course, since my parents want to ensure I’m safe, a condition is that I am to be with someone that is part of the group chat so I can be alerted in case of emergencies. If no one is available, instead of going on DND I just put my phone on silent and am required to check it at least once an hour, just in case. There are a few people in the chat- Hemy being the worst about doing it so often- that just send random memes, pics and YouTube videos she thinks are either funny, informative, or something we’ve been looking into. She will sometimes just spam the chat with that stuff over and over again for over an hour sometimes if we don’t check her. I blame the ADHD….but I also know that’s just how she is sometimes.

I had zoned out and was looking down at the table. When I looked up, I paused, Hemy was pissed, and it was at the waitress.

“Um… are you like… totally sure you don’t want dessert? Like, our brownies are made to order! They are so good!” The bimbo, whose name tag said ‘Stacy’ – figures, I never met a ‘Stacy’ that I liked, or was even nice. What the f**k was going on here?

“Hey, we asked for the check, let’s get to it, we have things to do.” I told her, I was abrupt, but I gave zero shits, something wasn’t right here. It was like she didn’t want us to leave, but why was the question. We had research and investigations to do in order to stop this dog fighting ring. I looked at Hemy, she looked at me, she knew something was up.